The Ara Pacis is arguably the finest surviving visual representation of the multiple iconographic motifs employed by Augustus to express his political programme of reconciliation and rebirth after the decades of civil war which had plagued Rome. It is an extraordinary monument, profoundly modern but inextricably rooted in the archaic: an expression in stone of the multi-faceted and wildly sophisticated propagandistic programme which characterises Augustus’ forty year reign, and would echo for centuries after his death.
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