Notes · Classical CivilisationUK · A-Levels

Imperial Image

Imperial Image is one of the four Culture and the Arts options (Component 2), studying how the first Roman emperor, Augustus, crafted and projected his public image to legitimise a new kind of power. This topic teaches the whole option: the political problem the image was designed to solve; the channels through which it was projected - coinage and the written word (the Res Gestae), portrait and relief sculpture (the Prima Porta statue, the Ara Pacis), the great building programme, and the poetry of the Augustan circle; and the debate over how far this coordinated self-presentation should be called propaganda. It teaches the works accurately by name and models how to analyse literary, visual and material sources together for the messages they carry.

5 sections~26 min reading time2 competenciesLevel Foundation 1 · Standard 3 · Advanced 1

T·0444 / 10

Exam profile

AO1 · Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the media of the imperial image and their Augustan contextAO2 · Analyse and interpret literary, visual and material sources for the messages they project, developing a substantiated response

Operators:analyseinterpretevaluateexplaincomparediscuss

basic level

AS-Level covers a defined selection of the sources; the analytical demands are the same.

higher level

The full A-Level requires secure knowledge of the prescribed literary and visual/material sources, with sustained analysis of both.

Depth

Text

Contents · 5 sections

Imperial Image

Augustus and the making of an image#

FoundationOCR H408 Component 2 (Imperial Image: context)DfE GCE Classical Civilisation subject content

The channels of the imperial image

Fig. 1The imperial image was projected through many channels - coins, sculpture, buildings, poetry and public acts - all sounding the same core messages.

This option studies how the first Roman emperor built and broadcast his public image, and it must begin with the political problem that image was designed to solve. The man later known as Augustus began as Octavian, the young great-nephew and adopted heir of Julius Caesar, and rose to sole power through the violence of civil war, defeating his last rival, Mark Antony (allied with Cleopatra of Egypt), at the naval battle of Actium in 31 BC. He was now, in reality, the master of the Roman world. But Rome had expelled its kings centuries before and had just fought a series of wars against would-be autocrats; open monarchy was hated, and Caesar had been murdered for seeming to reach for it. Augustus's problem was how to keep supreme power without appearing to hold it.

His solution, from 27 BC, was to dress sole rule in the clothes of the restored Republic. In a carefully staged settlement he claimed to have handed the state back to the Senate and people - res publica restituta, the Republic restored - and in return received honours, provinces and, crucially, a new honorific name: Augustus, meaning something like the revered or consecrated one. He preferred the title princeps, first citizen, presenting himself not as a king but as the leading servant of a free Republic, first among equals. The reality was a monarchy in all but name; the presentation was of traditional Republican liberty preserved. This gap between the reality of power and its careful presentation is the heart of the whole option.

Because his position rested on this fiction, Augustus needed constantly to legitimise it, and he did so through a sustained, coherent projection of a public image across every available medium. Coins, statues, buildings, inscriptions, public ceremonies and the work of poets all carried a consistent set of messages designed to make his rule look natural, traditional and beneficial. The consistency of these themes across such different media is one of the most striking features of the age, and it is what allows us to speak of an imperial image at all: a deliberate, recognisable self-presentation reaching every level of society, from the coins in a soldier's purse to the marble monuments of the capital.

The messages themselves are a manageable set, and knowing them lets you read any Augustan source. Above all the image projected peace - the Pax Augusta, the end of a century of civil bloodshed and the promise of security and order. Alongside peace came the claim of restoration and tradition (the old Republic and its values preserved, not overthrown); piety, a revival of Roman religion and Augustus's own devotion to the gods; victory, over foreign enemies and the forces of disorder; the promise of a new golden age of prosperity and moral renewal; and the suggestion of divine favour and even divine descent, since the Julian family claimed descent from Venus. Almost every Augustan work can be read as sounding one or more of these notes.

A note of caution belongs at the outset. It is easy to imagine a single controlling propaganda ministry issuing orders, but the evidence does not support so simple a picture, and the strongest answers avoid it. Much of the image was projected by others - by the Senate voting honours, by cities and individuals across the empire, by poets working within a circle of patronage rather than to dictation - and it drew on genuine relief at the end of the wars and on values many Romans shared. The image was coordinated and unmistakable, but it was a shared ideology broadcast through many hands, not necessarily a centrally scripted campaign. Holding this in mind keeps your analysis of the sources historically honest.

Worked example

Why Augustus needed an image

Explain the situation that made the crafting of an imperial image necessary.

The reality of power
After defeating Antony at Actium in 31 BC, Octavian held sole power over the Roman world through military victory in civil war.
The political danger
Rome hated kings and had just killed Julius Caesar for seeming to want monarchy; open autocracy was intolerable and dangerous.
The presented solution
From 27 BC he claimed to restore the Republic, took the name Augustus and the title princeps, presenting his rule as traditional and free.
The role of the image
Because that presentation was a fiction over real sole power, it had to be sustained and legitimised through a constant projection of a favourable public image.

Result: Sole power won in civil war, in a state that would not tolerate a king, forced Augustus to disguise monarchy as the restored Republic - and to sustain that disguise through the deliberate crafting of his imperial image.

Typical mistakes

Assuming a single centralised propaganda machine; the image was coordinated but broadcast through many hands and drew on shared values.
Treating Augustus as an open monarch, missing the careful Republican presentation (princeps, restored Republic) that was the point of the image.

Active revision

Explain why Augustus needed to craft a public image, and list the core messages that image projected; then note one reason to be cautious about calling it simple propaganda.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: OCR AS and A Level Classical Civilisation (H008, H408) specification (OCR (Oxford Cambridge and RSA))

Coinage and the written word#

StandardOCR H408 Component 2 (Imperial Image: coins and text)DfE GCE Classical Civilisation subject content

The messages of the imperial image

Fig. 2The recurring messages that the coins, texts, sculpture and buildings all sound - the shared vocabulary of the Augustan image.

Coinage was the mass medium of the ancient world, and it is a central kind of material source for this option. Coins circulated everywhere and were handled by everyone, so a message struck on a coin reached the whole population, from the capital to the frontier. Each coin carried both an image (a type) and a legend (words), and the Roman authorities used these to broadcast the emperor's face and his chosen themes. Augustus's coins bear his portrait - itself a way of making his features familiar across the empire - and pair it with types and slogans celebrating the messages of his rule. Analysing a coin means reading image and legend together for the claim they make.

The themes on the coins are exactly those of the wider image. Some celebrate military victory and conquest: coins mark the capture of Egypt after Actium, and others advertise the recovery in 20 BC of the Roman standards lost to the Parthians - a diplomatic success presented as a triumph of Roman honour. Others project peace, piety and the restoration of the Republic, or display symbols of Augustus's status and divine associations. Because the state controlled what appeared on the coinage, these little objects are a precious record of what the regime wished to say about itself, distributed in millions to every hand in the empire.

The most remarkable written source is the Res Gestae Divi Augusti, the Deeds of the Divine Augustus - a first-person account of his own achievements that Augustus composed to be published after his death and inscribed in bronze and stone across the empire. The fullest surviving copy was carved on the walls of a temple at Ancyra (modern Ankara), which is why it is sometimes called the Monumentum Ancyranum. In it Augustus lists his offices, honours, victories, benefactions and public works, all in his own carefully chosen words. It is a masterpiece of self-presentation, and it lets us hear the image in the emperor's own voice.

What the Res Gestae emphasises is deeply revealing, and it repays close analysis. Augustus stresses that he restored the Republic and repeatedly declined excessive powers and honours offered to him - dictatorship, perpetual consulship, kingship - presenting himself as a modest servant of the state rather than an autocrat. He dwells on his generosity to the people and the soldiers, his building and restoration of temples, his victories and the peace he brought, and his unmatched auctoritas (personal authority and prestige) while insisting he held no more official power than his colleagues. The document is entirely truthful in its individual facts and entirely selective in what it includes and how it frames it - a model of how the image worked by careful emphasis rather than outright lie.

The titles Augustus took and refused belong to the same strategy of the word. He accepted the revered name Augustus and the modest princeps but pointedly avoided rex (king) and, after an early period, dictator; late in life he received the honorific pater patriae, father of the country, which cast his rule as a paternal care for Rome rather than a domination of it. Every title, like every coin legend and every line of the Res Gestae, was chosen to present enormous power as traditional, restrained and benevolent. Analysing the coinage and the written word together shows the image being built out of controlled, repeated language and imagery, aimed at every level of Roman society.

Worked example

Reading the Res Gestae

Analyse how the Res Gestae presents Augustus's power.

The claim of restoration
Augustus states that he restored the Republic and handed the state back to Senate and people, framing his rule as a return to tradition.
The refused honours
He stresses the excessive powers and titles he declined - dictatorship, perpetual consulship - presenting himself as modest and law-abiding.
Benefaction and peace
He catalogues his gifts to people and soldiers, his temples and public works, and the peace and victories he brought - a record of service.
Truth and selection
Each fact is accurate, but the choice and framing are entirely his own, so the document persuades by emphasis rather than by lying - the image at work in words.

Result: The Res Gestae presents Augustus as a modest restorer and benefactor of a free Republic by truthful but highly selective emphasis, a model of how the imperial image worked through controlled self-presentation.

Typical mistakes

Treating coins as merely economic objects rather than as deliberate carriers of political messages to the whole population.
Reading the Res Gestae as neutral autobiography rather than as a carefully framed act of self-presentation.

Active revision

Analyse a coin type or a passage of the Res Gestae for the message it projects; explain how image, legend or word is used to present Augustus's power as traditional and beneficial.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for classical civilisation (Department for Education)

Sculpture and the body of the princeps#

StandardOCR H408 Component 2 (Imperial Image: sculpture)DfE GCE Classical Civilisation subject content

Reading the Prima Porta Augustus

Fig. 3How the Prima Porta statue encodes the image: each feature of the work makes a distinct political or religious claim.

Sculpture was one of the most powerful vehicles of the image, and the portraits and reliefs of Augustus are key visual sources for this option (studied from the works themselves, not reproduced here). The single most famous statue is the Prima Porta Augustus, a larger-than-life marble figure of the emperor found at a villa of his wife Livia. It is a masterpiece of controlled meaning: almost every feature carries a message, and analysing it - reading the pose, the face, the costume and the details for what they claim - is exactly the skill the option demands. It shows how the abstract themes of the image were made concrete and monumental in the body of the emperor himself.

The portrait head is the key to the whole. Augustus is shown as an idealised, calm and youthful man, handsome and serene, in a manner that consciously imitates the great Classical Greek sculpture of the fifth century BC - the balanced, idealised body of works like Polykleitos's Doryphoros. Strikingly, Augustus is never shown ageing: portraits made throughout his long life keep him eternally young, an image of timeless authority rather than a record of a real, ageing man. This idealisation borrows the prestige and perfection of classical Greek art and lends the emperor an air of superhuman, unchanging calm - a body fit to embody a new golden age.

The costume and pose of the Prima Porta statue make political claims. Augustus stands in the pose of a general or orator addressing his troops, one arm raised, presenting himself as a leader and commander. He wears a decorated military breastplate (cuirass), and at its centre is carved the return of the Roman standards by the Parthians - the diplomatic success of 20 BC - framed by figures of the sky, the earth and the gods, so that a specific Roman triumph is set within a cosmic order of divinely sanctioned peace. At his feet a small Cupid rides a dolphin, an allusion to the goddess Venus, from whom the Julian family claimed descent - a quiet assertion of divine ancestry. Even his bare feet follow a convention used for gods and heroes.

The other great sculptural source is the Ara Pacis Augustae, the Altar of Augustan Peace, voted by the Senate and consecrated in 9 BC. It is a marble altar enclosed by walls carved in relief, and it gathers the messages of the image into one monument. Along the walls a solemn procession of the imperial family and officials moves in ordered dignity - an image of a united dynasty and of a pious state at prayer. Allegorical panels show a serene female figure amid abundant fruits, children and animals, an image of peace, fertility and prosperity; and mythological panels link Augustus to Rome's origins, showing Aeneas performing a sacrifice (the model of pietas) and referring to Romulus. Peace, piety, plenty, dynasty and Rome's sacred origins are all bound together in stone.

For analysis, the lesson of the sculpture is that visual form is argument. The idealised youth claims timeless, godlike authority; the classical style claims the prestige of Greek perfection; the breastplate turns a diplomatic deal into cosmic, divinely favoured victory-as-peace; the Cupid claims descent from Venus; the Ara Pacis binds the emperor to peace, piety, fertility and the dynasty. None of this is stated in words, yet all of it is unmistakably said. When you analyse an Augustan sculpture, work through its features one by one, asking what each claims, and you turn a description of a statue into an interpretation of the image - precisely the AO2 work the option rewards.

Worked example

Analysing the Prima Porta breastplate

Explain how the breastplate of the Prima Porta statue works as image-making.

Identify the scene
At the centre of the cuirass a Parthian returns a Roman military standard - the recovery of the standards lost years before, achieved by diplomacy in 20 BC.
Note the framing
The scene is surrounded by personifications of the sky, the earth and deities, setting this one event within a cosmic order.
Read the transformation
A negotiated diplomatic settlement is thus presented as a divinely sanctioned Roman victory that restores honour and brings ordered peace.
State the effect
The breastplate turns a specific success into a timeless, cosmic claim of victory-as-peace under Augustus - a message made in sculpted form, not words.

Result: The breastplate elevates the diplomatic return of the standards into a divinely favoured victory that restores Roman honour and brings cosmic peace, showing how sculpture argued the image in visual terms.

Typical mistakes

Describing the statues' appearance without analysing what each feature claims (treating the idealised youth or the breastplate as mere decoration).
Assuming the portraits are realistic likenesses, missing the deliberate, ageless idealisation modelled on classical Greek art.

Active revision

Analyse the Prima Porta Augustus as a piece of image-making: take four features and explain the political or religious message each conveys.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: OCR AS and A Level Classical Civilisation (H008, H408) specification (OCR (Oxford Cambridge and RSA))

Architecture and the city of marble#

StandardOCR H408 Component 2 (Imperial Image: architecture)DfE GCE Classical Civilisation subject content

The Augustan building programme

Fig. 4The building programme grouped by the messages it projected: piety, victory and dynasty, and benefaction - each monument an argument in stone.

Building was one of the grandest and most public expressions of the image, and Augustus transformed the physical city of Rome as a permanent statement of his rule. The biographer Suetonius famously reported his boast that he had found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble - and while the phrase is a summary rather than a literal account, it captures a real programme of monumental construction and restoration. Buildings are the most durable and conspicuous of media: a temple or a forum stands before the whole city for centuries, associating the emperor's name with grandeur, piety and benefaction every day. Analysing Augustan architecture means reading these monuments for the messages built into them.

Religion and piety were central to the programme. Augustus restored a great many temples that had fallen into neglect during the civil wars, presenting himself as the pious rebuilder of Roman religion and, with it, of traditional Roman values. He built a splendid Temple of Apollo on the Palatine hill, beside his own house - Apollo being his patron god, credited with helping him to victory at Actium - so that his residence stood next to a great temple, quietly linking the emperor with the god. The restoration and building of temples cast Augustus as the devout guardian of Rome's relationship with the gods, the very embodiment of pietas.

Other monuments made claims about victory, dynasty and Rome's history. The Forum of Augustus, a grand new public square, was dominated by the Temple of Mars Ultor - Mars the Avenger - which commemorated the avenging of Julius Caesar's murder and Rome's military triumphs; its colonnades displayed statues of the great men of Roman history and of the ancestors of the Julian family, so that visitors read Augustus as the climax of Rome's whole heroic past. The Mausoleum of Augustus, an enormous dynastic tomb built early in his career, proclaimed the permanence of his family and its place at the centre of Rome. Each building tied the emperor to a message: piety, vengeance and victory, dynastic legitimacy, the grandeur of Rome.

The programme also served the people directly, and this benefaction was itself part of the image. Augustus and his associates provided or restored the practical fabric of the city - aqueducts and water supply, roads, a fire service, theatres and public spaces - improving daily life and advertising the emperor's care for the population. The Res Gestae dwells proudly on this building and giving. Public generosity on this scale bound the people to the regime and presented the emperor as the benefactor and father of the city, translating the abstract claim of paternal care (pater patriae) into visible amenities that everyone used.

For analysis, the key point is that Augustan architecture is argument in stone, and each monument should be read for its message and its placement. The restored temples and the Palatine Apollo argue piety and divine favour; the Forum of Augustus and its Temple of Mars Ultor argue victory, vengeance for Caesar and the dynasty's place at the summit of Roman history; the Mausoleum argues permanence; the aqueducts and public works argue benefaction. Their scale and marble grandeur argue the wealth, order and confidence of the new age. When you analyse an Augustan building, ask what it was for, whom it honoured, where it stood and what it claimed - and the architecture becomes, like the coins and the statues, a legible part of the imperial image.

Worked example

The Forum of Augustus as image-making

Explain how the Forum of Augustus and its temple projected the image.

The temple and its dedication
The forum was dominated by the Temple of Mars Ultor, Mars the Avenger, commemorating the avenging of Julius Caesar's murder and Rome's military triumphs.
The statue programme
Its colonnades displayed statues of the great men of Rome's past and of the Julian ancestors, placing Augustus's family within the whole sweep of Roman history.
The messages combined
Together these argue victory and vengeance, piety toward Mars, and the dynasty's place as the culmination of Rome's heroic past.
The medium's power
As a permanent, monumental public space, the forum broadcast these claims to every visitor, day after day, in marble grandeur.

Result: The Forum of Augustus fused victory, vengeance for Caesar, piety and dynastic legitimacy into a single monumental space, showing how architecture argued the image permanently and publicly.

Typical mistakes

Listing Augustan buildings without analysing the specific message each carried (piety, victory, dynasty, benefaction).
Taking the brick-to-marble boast as a literal, complete account rather than a memorable summary of a real programme.

Active revision

Take one Augustan monument (the Temple of Mars Ultor and the Forum of Augustus, the Palatine Apollo, or the Mausoleum) and analyse what message its function, placement and grandeur were designed to project.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for classical civilisation (Department for Education)

Poetry, patronage and legacy#

AdvancedOCR H408 Component 2 (Imperial Image: poetry and patronage)DfE GCE Classical Civilisation subject content

Literary patronage and the image

Fig. 5How patronage fed the image: Maecenas's circle of poets gave the regime's themes the dignity of high poetry - though the poets kept their independence and depth.

Literature was the subtlest medium of the image, and it worked through patronage rather than command. At the centre was Maecenas, a close friend and cultural adviser of Augustus, who gathered and supported a brilliant circle of poets, most famously Virgil and Horace. Patronage of this kind gave poets security and standing, and it encouraged (without simply dictating) work that reflected the values and ambitions of the new regime. The poetry of the Augustan age is among the greatest in Latin, and much of it sounds the themes of the image - Rome's destiny, peace, the golden age, moral and religious renewal - so that the regime's ideology was carried in works of lasting literary art.

The examples are central to the wider study of the classical world. Virgil's Aeneid, studied in this very qualification, gives Rome a foundation epic in which the whole of history bends toward Augustus and his peace, presenting the emperor as the fulfilment of a destiny willed by fate and the gods. Horace, in his Odes and elsewhere, celebrates the peace and stability of the age and its moral revival, and he was commissioned to write the Carmen Saeculare, a hymn performed by a choir of children at the Secular Games of 17 BC - a great state religious festival staged to mark the dawning of a new age. In such works the messages of the image are given the dignity and permanence of high poetry.

But the relationship between poet and regime was more complex than simple propaganda, and this is a point for careful evaluation. The Augustan poets were not paid mouthpieces reciting a script; they were independent artists working within a culture of patronage and shared relief at the end of the wars. Their work often celebrates the regime sincerely, but it can also be oblique, qualified or ambivalent: the Aeneid, for all its glorification of Rome, dwells on the human cost of empire and ends on a disturbing note, and other poems register unease or reserve. Reading the poetry as image-making must therefore be balanced by recognising its independence and its depth - the strongest answers weigh both.

The image outlived Augustus and became a lasting institution, which is part of its significance. In the provinces especially, the emperor came to be worshipped: temples, altars and priesthoods of the imperial cult honoured Augustus (in his lifetime often alongside the goddess Roma, and after his death as a god in his own right, divus Augustus, formally deified by the Senate). This cult, growing partly from below as cities competed to honour the emperor, spread his image and bound the empire's loyalty to his person and his successors. The whole model of Augustan self-presentation - the coins, the statues, the buildings, the pious and peaceful image - became the template that later emperors imitated for centuries.

For the exam, the culminating question is how to judge the image as a whole, and propaganda is a term to be used with care. The modern word suggests centralised, cynical manipulation, and that fits the Augustan image imperfectly: the projection was coordinated and unmistakable, but it was carried through many hands, drew on genuine values and relief, and produced works of real art and sincere feeling as well as calculated persuasion. The fairest judgement is that Augustus mastered the projection of a coherent political ideology across every medium of his world - a supremely successful shaping of how power was seen - while recognising that this shaping was neither wholly cynical nor wholly centralised. Holding that balance is the mark of a strong, historically honest response to the option.

Worked example

Was the imperial image propaganda?

Evaluate whether the Augustan image is best described as propaganda.

The case for
The image was coordinated and unmistakable, sounding the same messages across coins, statues, buildings and poetry to legitimise sole power - persuasion by design.
The case against
Yet it was carried through many hands - the Senate, provincial cities, independent poets - and drew on real relief at the end of civil war and on values many Romans shared.
The quality of the sources
It produced genuine art and sincere feeling, not mere slogans; the Aeneid even questions the cost of empire, which propaganda would not.
The balanced judgement
Augustus supremely shaped how his power was seen, but the shaping was neither wholly cynical nor wholly centralised - propaganda fits only with these qualifications.

Result: The image is best judged as a masterful, coordinated projection of a partly shared ideology across every medium - propaganda in effect, but broadcast through many hands and carrying genuine art, so the modern term fits only with care.

Typical mistakes

Treating the Augustan poets as paid propagandists reciting a script, missing their independence, artistry and moments of ambivalence.
Using propaganda uncritically, as if the image were a wholly centralised, cynical campaign rather than a coordinated projection of a partly shared ideology.

Active revision

Evaluate how far the imperial image should be called propaganda. Weigh its coordination and effectiveness against its many hands, shared values and genuine art, and reach a substantiated judgement.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for classical civilisation (Department for Education)

References & sources

Sources

OCR (Oxford Cambridge and RSA)

OCR AS and A Level Classical Civilisation (H008, H408) specification

Department for Education

GCE AS and A level subject content for classical civilisation

Imperial Image

5 sections~26 min reading time2 competenciesLevel Foundation 1 · Standard 3 · Advanced 1

Imperial Image

Key points

Why Augustus needed an image

Key points

Reading the Res Gestae

Key points

Analysing the Prima Porta breastplate

Key points

The Forum of Augustus as image-making

Key points

Was the imperial image propaganda?

Sources

Imperial Image

Key points

Why Augustus needed an image

Key points

Reading the Res Gestae

Key points

Analysing the Prima Porta breastplate

Key points

The Forum of Augustus as image-making

Key points

Was the imperial image propaganda?

Sources