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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:
这尊头像制作于奥古斯都称帝后一至两年内。这尊比真人略大，充满了力量的头像将他塑造为一名勇士。尽管雕像在颈部折断，但其余部分的青铜仍状况良好。这副面容以不同的形式出现在罗马帝国的每一个城市里，为成千上万的公民所熟悉。这就是奥古斯都都希望自己留给百姓的形象。虽然他是个地道的罗马人，却希望百姓知道他也是希腊文化的继承者，功绩堪与亚历山大大帝比肩。罗马历史学家苏珊沃尔克解释道:
"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."
在成为地中海地区的君主，接受了新衔之后，奥古斯都需要一个全新的形象。他不能复制凯撒的头像，因为凯撒的肖像看起来就像个暴躁的罗马老头：骨瘦如柴兼又谢顶，采用了传统的罗马雕刻手法，完全未加美化，有损罗马君主的威名。而现在奥古斯都正在建立一个全新的政治系统，因此需要一个全新的与之相称的形象。他使用了自己三十多岁时的样貌，直到七十多岁去世时仍未变更。他的所有雕像都没有任何年龄的变化。
