Description
The Statue of Caesar Augustus Octavian is a bronze copy of the Augustus of Prima Porta, the portrait of the first Roman emperor now in the Vatican Museums. Rome gave it to Brindisi in 1935, for the bimillennium of Augustus and to recall the ancient bond between the two cities.
The emperor, standing, raises his right arm: the gesture of someone calling for silence before addressing the soldiers. He wears a cuirass decorated in relief over a short military tunic, with the paludamentum, the general's cloak, around his hips.
At the center of the cuirass, according to the most common reading, a Parthian king hands back to a Roman the standards of the lost legions. Augustus is barefoot, like the gods and heroes; in his left hand he once held a spear, which is now missing.
The original, in white marble and about two meters tall, was found in 1863 at Prima Porta, just outside Rome, in the villa of Livia, Augustus's wife. It was probably itself a copy of a lost bronze.
The emperor, standing, raises his right arm: the gesture of someone calling for silence before addressing the soldiers. He wears a cuirass decorated in relief over a short military tunic, with the paludamentum, the general's cloak, around his hips.
At the center of the cuirass, according to the most common reading, a Parthian king hands back to a Roman the standards of the lost legions. Augustus is barefoot, like the gods and heroes; in his left hand he once held a spear, which is now missing.
The original, in white marble and about two meters tall, was found in 1863 at Prima Porta, just outside Rome, in the villa of Livia, Augustus's wife. It was probably itself a copy of a lost bronze.