AS Alter Egos Go on, Augustus Caesar isn't bad for Mark Zuckerberg, Pontifex Maximus of Meta, owner of the Facebook family of apps. Both began their march to power as teenagers. Both stopped at nothing to build an empire — though unlike the impetuous Mr Zuckerberg, Augustus's motto was “make haste slowly”. Both gave the illusion of sharing power (Augustus with the Senate, Mr Zuckerberg with shareholders) while wielding it almost entirely. The Roman emperors are Mr Zuckerberg's role models. In a recent podcast he used the 200-year era of stability ushered in by Augustus to explain why he wanted to build Meta's generative artificial-intelligence (Hey) The models are available in such a way that, with some poetic liberty, they call it open source.