Download Name: Date:______ BBC: Head of Augustus A History of the World

Name:__________________________
Date:_____________
BBC: Head of Augustus
A History of the World from the BBC
Directions:
You will need Internet access to complete this assignment.
You can access the web page in any of the following ways:
use the link on the class website: mrsgoodstone.wordpress.com
google “BBC Objects of the World Augustus”
go to the address below:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/z0_uHq1TSnWMEHR_sZDc8g
Look
Look carefully at the images (watch the video for a detailed view of the statue)
Describe what you see
What do you think this statue communicates about Augustus?
Listen or Read
To listen, click
on the right hand side of the page
This radio segment is about 15 minutes long
To read, go to: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/about/transcripts/episode35/
Provide detailed answers the questions below
What message does the
narrator say the statue
communicates about
Augustus?
Why did Augustus need a
new image?
How did Augustus initiate
the “Pax Romana” or the
Roman peace and
prosperity?
Name:__________________________
How did Augustus promote
his name through
propaganda? Provide
examples
What is important about the
location the statue was
found?
Throughout his reign, how
did Augustus portray
himself?
How was Augustus honored
after his death?
How does the radio host
connect Augustus’ story to
modern history?
Date:_____________
Name:__________________________
Date:_____________
EPISODE 35 - HEAD OF AUGUSTUS
Head of Augustus (made 2,000 years ago). Bronze statue, found in Meroe, northern Sudan
I'm looking into the eyes of one of the most famous leaders in the history of the world - Caesar
Augustus, the first Roman Emperor. We have his bronze head here in the Roman galleries in the
British Museum and, tarnished as it is, it radiates charisma and raw power. It is impossible to walk
past. The eyes are dramatic and piercing. And wherever you stand, they won't look at you - he is
looking past you, beyond you, to something much more important: his future.
"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, most accomplished diplomats and ideologues of all time,
you'd have Augustus as your kind of mid-field playmaker, captain of the eleven." (Boris Johnson)
The curling hair is short and boyish, slightly tousled, but it's a calculated tousle - one that clearly
took a long time to arrange, because this is an image that has been carefully constructed, projecting
just the right mix of youth and authority, beauty and strength, will and power.
"The portrait was very very recognisable, and very enduring. And it was a very successful
marketing of an image because Augustus has never had a bad press." (Susan Walker)
His head is a bit over life-size, and tilts as if he's in conversation, so that for a minute you could
believe that he's just like you and me - but he's not. This is the Emperor Augustus. He has recently
defeated Anthony and Cleopatra, he has conquered Egypt, he is well on his way now to imperial
glory, and is firmly embarked on an even greater journey - to become a god.
In this week's programmes we've been looking at how rulers commissioned objects that asserted
their power - somewhat obliquely, and essentially by association. In China, the Han Dynasty used
exquisite craftsmanship as an emblem of imperial wealth and order; in India, the Emperor Asoka
invoked philosophical ideals. But in this programme we have something completely different - a
ruler, the one in whose empire Christ was born, who quite simply projects himself and uses his own
body and his own likeness to assert his personal power - the Roman Emperor Augustus.
His bronze, over life-sized head gives a brutally clear message: I am great; I am your leader and I
stand far above everyday politics. And yet, ironically, we have this commanding head here at the
Museum only because it was captured by an enemy and then humiliatingly buried. The glory of
Augustus is not quite as unalloyed as he wanted us to believe.
Augustus was Julius Caesar's great-nephew. The assassination of Caesar in 44 BC left Augustus the
heir to his fortune and to his power. He was only 19, and he was suddenly catapulted into a key role
in the politics of the Roman Republic. Known at that point as Octavian, he quickly outshone all his
peers in the scramble for absolute power.
The pivotal moment in his rise was the defeat of Mark Anthony 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
Name:__________________________
Date:_____________
immense wealth of the Nile kingdom was now 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 would now be 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, and
awarded 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 comes from this time, a year or two after Augustus became emperor. It was once part of a
full-length statue that showed him as a warrior, slightly larger than life-sized. It's broken off at the
neck but otherwise the bronze is in very good condition. It's an image that 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 distinguished Roman historian Susan Walker explains what is
going on:
"When he had become master of the Mediterranean world and took the name Augustus, he really
needed to find a new image. And he really 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. So 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 to have a new image to go with it. And having assumed this image
when he was still in his thirties, he stayed with it until he died aged 76, so there's no suggestion in
his portraits, even any subtle suggestion such as we see in the portraits of our Queen, for example,
of any aging process at all."
This was an Augustus forever powerful, forever young. His deft, some might say devious, mix of
patronage and military power, which he concealed behind the familiar offices and titles of the old
Republic, has served as a model and a master-class for ambitious rulers ever since. He built new
roads and developed a highly effective courier system, so that the empire could be effectively ruled
from the centre and so that he could be visible to his subjects everywhere. He reinvigorated the
formidable Roman army to defend and extend the Imperial borders, and he established a longlasting peace during his 40 years of steady rule, initiating a golden period of stability and prosperity
famously known as the 'Pax Romana'. He'd brutally fought and negotiated his way to the top, but
now he was there, he wanted to reassure people that he would not be a tyrant. So he set to work to
make people believe in him, and more astonishingly want to follow him, brilliantly turning subjects
into supporters. We asked Boris Johnson, a classicist and a political leader, how he rated Augustus:
"He became a vital part of the glue that held the whole Roman Empire together. You could be out
there in Spain or Gaul or Cyrenaica - you could be all over the world - and you could go to a temple
and you would find women, with images of Augustus, of this man, in this bust sewn onto their
cowls. People at dinner parties in Rome would have busts exactly like this above their mantelpieces
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- that was how he was able to infuse 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 cult of Augustus."
It was a cult sustained by constant propaganda. All across Europe, towns were named after him.
The modern Zaragoza is the city of Caesar Augustus, while Augsburg, Autun and Aosta all derive
from Augustus. His head was on coins, and everywhere there were statues. But the British
Museum's head is a head from no ordinary statue, it takes us into another story - one that shows a
darker side of the Imperial narrative, for it tells us not only of Rome's might, but of the problems
that threatened and occasionally overwhelmed it.
This head was once part of a complete statue that stood on Rome's most southerly frontier, on the
border between modern Egypt and Sudan, probably in the town of Syene near Aswan. It's a region
that has always been a geo-political fault line, where the Mediterranean world clashes with Africa.
In 25 BC, so the writer Strabo tells us, an invading army from the Sudanese kingdom of Meroe, led
by the fierce one-eyed queen Candace, captured a series of Roman forts and towns in southern
Egypt. Candace and her army took our statue back to the city of Meroe and buried the severed head
of the glorious Augustus beneath the steps of a temple dedicated to victory. It was a superbly
calculated insult. From now on, everybody walking up the steps and into the temple would literally
be crushing the Roman Emperor under their feet. And if you look closely again at the head, you can
see tiny grains of sand from the African desert still embedded in the surface of the bronze - a badge
of shame still visible on the glory of Rome.
But there was further humiliation to come. The indomitable Candace sent ambassadors to negotiate
the terms of a peace settlement. The case ended up before Augustus himself, who granted the
ambassadors pretty much everything they asked for. He had secured the Pax Romana, but at a
considerable price. It was the action of a shrewd, calculating political operator, who then used the
official Roman propaganda machine to airbrush this setback out of the picture.
Augustus's career became the imperial blueprint of how to achieve and retain power. And a key
part of retaining power was the management of his image. Here's Susan Walker again:
"He always looked exactly as he did on the day that he became 'Augustus', and he presented himself
very modestly. He often showed himself wearing the Roman toga, and drew it over his head to show
his piety. And sometimes he was shown as a general leading his troops into battle, even though he
never actually personally did so. And this was a very enduring image; we have surviving even today
over 250 images of Augustus, which come from all over the Roman Empire, and they are pretty
much the same - the variations are really not very significant. So the portrait was very, very
recognisable, and very enduring."
This eternal image would be coupled with an eternal name. After his death, Augustus was declared
a god by the Senate, to be worshipped by the Romans. His titles Augustus and Caesar were adopted
by every subsequent emperor, and the month of Sextilius was officially renamed August in his
honour. Here's Boris Johnson again:
Name:__________________________
Date:_____________
"Augustus was the first emperor of Rome, and he created from the Roman Republic an institution
that in many ways everybody has tried to imitate for the succeeding centuries. If you think about
the Tsars, the Kaiser, the Tsars of Bulgaria, Mussolini, Hitler and Napoleon, everybody has tried to
imitate that Roman iconography, that Roman approach, a great part of which began with Augustus
and the first 'principet' as it was called, the first imperial role that he occupied."
All through this week, we've been looking at how a few privileged individuals imposed their will on
the world around them. Next week, we'll still be looking at the world in the time of the Pax Romana,
but the objects will be focussing on the passions, pastimes and appetites that have always governed
more ordinary people's lives. It will be a week of vices, and spices. And we begin with a silver cup,
made for a pederast in Palestine.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/about/transcripts/episode35/