the early empire Related: Revision Notes - An Empire Across Three Con...
The Early Empire
Imperial Sculpture in the Early Roman Empire
Augustan art served a vital visual means to promote the legitimacy of Augustus’ power, and the techniques he employed were incorporated into the propaganda of later emperors.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Key Points
The intricate and deliberate iconography of Ara Pacis Augustae promotes religious piety, fertility, and the flourishing of the empire under Augustus.
Augustus abandoned the veristic portraiture of the Roman Republic in favor of creating an image of a forever-youthful emperor. His imperial portraits often promoted his piety and military accomplishments.
Augustus’s successor, Tiberius, and the penultimate Julio-Claudian emperor Claudius, employed the attributes of eternal youthfulness and prowess in their political portraiture as a measure of political promotion.
Key Terms
meander: A decorative border constructed from a continuous line, shaped into a repeated motif.
lictors: The bodyguards for a magistrate in the Republican Rome and emperors during Imperial Rome. They carried fasces, a bundle of wooden rods with an axe, which symbolized the power of the magistrate or emperor.
cuirass: A metal breastplate that serves as armor.
pomerium: The sacred boundary around a city that marked the city’s urban, legal, and religious limits. No armies were allowed within this boundary.
register: A vertical level in a work that consists of several levels, especially where the levels are clearly separated by lines.