The most important sculpture image of the emperor is known as Augustus of Prima Porta. In a way that is strikingly reminiscent of Polycleitus’s en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polykleitos ‘Doryphorus,’ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doryphoros#:~:text=The%20Doryphoros%20(Greek%20%CE%94%CE%BF%CF%81%CF%85%CF%86%CF%8C%CF%81%CE%BF%CF%82%20Classical,balanced%20on%20his%20left%20shoulder. The greatness of the emperor is expressed through a godlike beauty that is at the same time physical and mental, as indicated by Augustus’s firm yet calm and confident demeanor – a demeanor to which a sp[ecial touch has been added: the raised arm typical of an orator. Why is the detail so important? To answer, we have to return against to the Greeks, who since the time of Homer, had always deemed oratory a political necessity, especially among military leaders, who in order to encourage their soldiers to face death with dignity, had to remind them of the eternal glory of their sacrifice would earn them. ~ Page 132
On March 17 (44 B.C.,) Caesar’s will ws unsealed and read aloud at Mark Antony’s home, the large villa that had once been Pomprey’s en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pompey and to which Antony had returned. Although Cleopatra had been in Rome in mid-September which Caesar composed that document, she figured nowhere in it. If she was disappointed she was not alone: it supported none of the nefarious motives attributed to Caesar. Rather the will read as one long rebuke to his assassins. He left the villa and grounds on which Cleopatra lives to the people of Rome. He bequeathed 75 drachmas to every adult Roman male in the city. He could not legally bequeath money to a foreigner and did not; he was hardly as tone-dead as he had appeared in his last months. He made no provision for or acknowledgment of Caesarion. In a move that tartled everyone, he made no provision either for Mark Antony, who had patently expected otherwise. Instead Caesar named Gaius Octavian, his eighteen-year-old grand-nephew en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus as his heir. Formally adopting the boy, he granted him three fourths of his fortune, and – more valuably – his name. Antony was appointed Octavian’s guardian, along with several of Cassars’s close associates, who happened also to be his assassins. ` Page 129
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Dinesh said:
Dinesh said: