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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.
持续不断的宣传让百姓保持着宗教般的狂热。整个欧洲都有以他的名字命名的城镇。现代的萨拉戈萨曾被叫做凯撒奥古斯都之城。奥格斯堡，欧坦和奥斯塔都是他名字的变体。他的头像被印在硬币上，雕像也随处可见。但大英博物馆所藏的这具头像并非来自某座普通雕像，它涉及另一个故事，而这个故事向我们展现了帝国的阴暗面:在展现罗马威仪的同时，它也揭开了笼罩在帝国头上的阴影。
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.
这尊头像来自曾伫立在罗马国境最南端的一座全身像，位于今埃及与苏丹之间，很可能就在阿斯旺附近的沙伊尼镇。这里向来是国际地缘政治的断层线，地中海文化与非洲文化在此短兵相接。根据作家斯特拉的描述，公元前25年，苏丹麦罗埃王国的军队在强悍的独眼女王坎迪斯的带领下，攻占了埃及南部的数个罗马城市。他们把雕像蕴含麦罗埃城，修建神庙庆祝胜利，并将伟大的奥古斯都的神圣头颅埋在了神庙的台阶之下。这是一次极有预谋的侮辱。自此以后，每个踏上台阶，进入神庙的人，都将罗马皇帝踩在自己的脚下。今天，如果你近距离观察，还能看到青铜表明镶嵌着来自非洲沙漠的细小沙粒。这是罗马帝国荣耀之上的耻辱标记。
