The Sea Coast Echo

FIND LIKENESS OF AUGUSTUS
Archaeologist Discovers Splendid Statue of Roman Emperor at Tivoli.

LIFELIKE STUDY BY ARTIST
Valuable Addition to Portraits of Roman Emperors and Is Only One Extant Done During Emperor's Life.

Rome.—Tivoli, that lovely little city perched above Rome, called Tibur by the ancient Romans, has just given to the archaeological world two new art treasures—an augusteum, or hall, and a splendid head of Emperor Augustus.

Prof. Alessio Valle, one of the archaeologists who have made Tivoli a special study, long believed that Tivoli should reveal an ancient hall of importance, considering the flourishing state of the city in Roman days. He began to dig near a newly discovered weights and measures office, also dating from the Roman empire, thinking that the public weights and measures must surely be near some important hall.

He was not mistaken. He has opened up a hall with a Roman pavement of white and green marble which looks as if it were put down this morning, so fresh is it, and the statue of Augustus, broken but with the head intact, as the picture shows, with the lifelike lines cut out of the marble by some unknown sculptor of evident genius.

The statue is a likeness of Augustus when he had grown old. An inscription underneath it, which dedicates the statue to the gods, "for the happy return in good health of our Augustus Caesar," proves it was done during the famous emperor's lifetime, a votive offering to the gods by a loyal Tivoli citizen who signs himself M. Veranus Diifilus. The same man gave the public weights and measures to the city.

History lets us date this statue between B. C. 31 and A. D. 14, when Emperor Augustus died near Naples, aged seventy-six. Experts say the face is the face of a man of fifty. In the worn lines, the ill-tempered mouth, its upward twist at the left side, we have no flattering picture of the great emperor, but a lifelike study by an artist who dared to cut his statue as he saw the human model.

For this reason, and because of its surely being done in Augustus' lifetime, it is a very valuable addition to the collection of portraits of the Roman emperors, and probably the only one extant of Augustus done during his lifetime.

The figure, which originally sat on the pedestal at the head of the hall, is graceful, as Suetonius, that gossipy historian from whom scribes have learned nearly all they know about the Roman emperors, told us, saying:

"He was a very graceful person through all the stages of life, though he was very careless in his dress and would set several barbers to work upon his hair together, and would sometimes clip and sometimes shave his beard, and at the same time would be reading or writing."

Augustus, though emperor, called himself a democrat and, says Suetonius, "always abhorred the title of lord as a scandalous affront."

He tells us, too, that the emperor caught cold easily and wore woolen underwear in winter, "with a thick wool toga."

This broken statue, with the base on which it stood, unearthed after so long, bridges the gulf of centuries and brings one of the greatest rulers the world ever saw very near.