In 30 B.C., Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, grandnephew and heir to Julius Caesar, became master of the empire that Rome had amassed over the previous three centuries. Over the next forty-four years, he introduced institutions and an ideology that combined the traditions of republican Rome with the reality of kingship. A new type of leadership evolved in which Octavian officially relinquished command of the state to the Senate and the people while actually retaining effective power through a network of offices, privileges, and control over the army. In 27 B.C., after this restoration of the republic, the Senate conferred on Octavian the honorific title of Augustus, an adjective with connotations of dignity, stateliness, even holiness.
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Title:Colossal marble head of the emperor Augustus
Period:Early Imperial, Julio-Claudian
Date:ca. 14–30 CE
Culture:Roman
Medium:Marble
Dimensions:Overall: 17 7/8 x 15 in. (45.4 x 38.1 cm)
Classification:Stone Sculpture
Credit Line:Rogers Fund, 1921
Accession Number:21.88.94
[Until 1921, with Ettore Jandolo, Rome]; acquired in 1921, purchased from E. Jandolo.
Robinson, David Moore. 1926. "Two New Heads of Augustus." American Journal of Archaeology, 30(2): p. 127.
Richter, Gisela M. A. and Christine Alexander. 1939. Augustan Art: An Exhibition Commemorating the Bimillennium of the Birth of Augustus. p. 6, fig. 18, New York: Marchbanks Press.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1940. "A Rearrangement of Roman Portraits." Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 35(10): p. 201.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1941. Roman Portraits, Vol. 1. no. 8, p. 2, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1948. Roman Portraits, 2nd edn. no. 16, p. ii, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Vierneisel, Klaus von and Prof. Paul Zanker. 1979. Die Bildnisse des Augustus: Herrscherbild und Politik im kaiserlichen Rom : Sonderausstellung der Glyptothek und des Museums für Abgüsse Klassischer Bildwerke, München. pp. 66–67, Munich: Staatliche Antikensammlung und Glyptothek.
Hausmann, Ulrich. 1981. "Zur Typologie und Ideologie des Augustusporträts." Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt: Geschichte und Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung, Pt. 2, Principat, Künste, Vol. 12, H. Temporini and W. Haase, eds. no. no. 3, p. 583 n. 260, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co.
Zanker, Paul. 1983. "Provinzielle Kaiserportrats. Zur Rezeption der Selbstdarstellung des Princeps." Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, München, Philosophisch-historische Klasse: Abhandlungen, 90. p. 35, München: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften.
Boschung, Dietrich. 1993. Die Bildnisse des Augustus. cat. no. 18, pp. 15–18, 55, 75, 116, pl. 23 ns. 95–96, 103, 397, 497, Berlin: Gebr. Mann.
Zanker, Paul. 2016. Roman Portraits: Sculptures in Stone and Bronze in the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. no. 17, pp. 11, 56–57, 68–69, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Zanker, Paul, Seán Hemingway, Christopher S. Lightfoot, and Joan R. Mertens. 2019. Roman Art : A Guide through the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Collection. no. 150, pp. 302–304, New York: Scala Publishers.
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The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than 30,000 works ranging in date from the Neolithic period to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312.
