Colossal marble head of the emperor Augustus

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In 30 B.C., Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, grandnephew and heir to Julius Caesar, became master of the empire that Rome had amassed over the previous three centuries. Over the next forty-four years, he introduced institutions and an ideology that combined the traditions of republican Rome with the reality of kingship. A new type of leadership evolved in which Octavian officially relinquished command of the state to the Senate and the people while actually retaining effective power through a network of offices, privileges, and control over the army. In 27 B.C., after this restoration of the republic, the Senate conferred on Octavian the honorific title of Augustus, an adjective with connotations of dignity, stateliness, even holiness.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than thirty thousand works ranging in date from the Neolithic period (ca. 4500 B.C.) to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312. It includes the art of many cultures and is among the most comprehensive in North America. The geographic regions represented are Greece and Italy, but not as delimited by modern political frontiers: Greek colonies were established around the Mediterranean basin and on the shores of the Black Sea, and Cyprus became increasingly Hellenized. For Roman art, the geographical limits coincide with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The department also exhibits the art of prehistoric Greece (Helladic, Cycladic, and Minoan) and pre-Roman art of Italic peoples, notably the Etruscans.

Metropolitan Museum of Art