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By Root 2821 0

Augustus quickly outshone his peers in the scramble for absolute power. The pivotal moment in his rise was the defeat of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. Already holding Italy, France, Spain, Libya and the Balkans, Augustus now followed the example of Alexander the Great and seized the richest prize of them all – Egypt. The immense wealth of the Nile kingdom was at his disposal. He made Egypt part of Rome – and then turned the Roman Republic into his personal empire. Across that empire, statues of the new ruler were erected. There were already hundreds of statues portraying him as Octavian, the man-of-action party leader; but in 27 BC the Senate acknowledged his political supremacy by awarding him the honorific title of Augustus – ‘the revered one’. This new status called for a quite different kind of image, and that is what our head shows.

Our head was made a year or two after Augustus became emperor. It was part of a full-length, slightly larger-than-life statue that showed him as a warrior. It’s broken off at the neck, but otherwise the bronze is in very good condition. This image, in one form or another, would have been familiar to hundreds of thousands of people, because statues like this were set up in cities all over the Roman Empire. This is how Augustus wanted his subjects to see him. And although every inch a Roman, he wanted them to know that he was also the equal of Alexander and heir to the legacy of Greece. The Roman historian Dr Susan Walker explains:

When he had become master of the Mediterranean world and took the name Augustus, he really needed a new image. He couldn’t copy Caesar’s image, because Caesar looked like a crusty old Roman; he had a real warts-and-all portrait, very thin and scraggy, and bald – and very austere, very much in the manner of traditional Roman portraiture. That image had become a little bit discredited, and in any case Augustus, as he now was, was setting up an entirely new political system, so he needed a new image to go with it. Having assumed this image when he was still in his thirties, he stayed with it until he died aged 76; there’s no suggestion in his portraits of any ageing process at all.

This was an Augustus for ever powerful, for ever young. His deft, even devious, mix of patronage and military power, which he concealed behind the familiar offices of the old Republic, has served as a model and a masterclass for ambitious rulers ever since. He built new roads and established a highly efficient courier system, not only so that the empire could be ruled effectively from the centre but also so that he could be visible to his subjects everywhere. He reinvigorated the formidable army to defend and even extend the imperial borders, establishing a long-lasting peace during his forty years of steady rule. This golden period of stability and prosperity began what is famously known as the ‘Pax Romana’. Having brutally fought and negotiated his way through to the top, once he was there Augustus wanted to reassure people that he would not be a tyrant. So he set to work to make people believe in him. He brilliantly turned subjects into supporters. I asked Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London and a Classicist, how he rated Augustus:

Well, he was about the greatest politician the world has ever seen. If you wanted to have a first eleven of the world’s leading politicians, the most accomplished diplomats and ideologues of all time, you’d have Augustus as your kind of midfield playmaker, captain of the eleven.

He became a vital part of the glue that held the whole Roman Empire together. You could be out there in Spain or Gaul, and you could go to a temple and you would find women with images of Augustus, of this man, of this bust sewn on to their cowls. People at dinner parties in Rome would have busts exactly like this above their mantelpieces – that was how he was able to enthuse the entire Roman Empire with that sense of loyalty and adherence to Rome. If you wanted to become a local politician, in the Roman Empire, you became a priest in the