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It was a cult sustained by constant propaganda. All across Europe, towns were named after him. The modern Zaragoza is the city of Caesar Augustus, while Augsburg, Autun and Aosta all derive from Augustus. His head was on coins, and everywhere there were statues. But the British Museum's head is a head from no ordinary statue, it takes us into another story-one that shows a darker side of the Imperial narrative, for it tells us not only of Rome's might, but of the problems that threatened and occasionally overwhelmed it.
持續不斷的宣傳讓百姓保持著宗教般的狂熱。整個歐洲都有以他的名字命名的城鎮。現代的薩拉戈薩曾被叫做凱撒奧古斯都之城。奧格斯堡，歐坦和奧斯塔都是他名字的變體。他的頭像被印在硬幣上，雕像也隨處可見。但大英博物館所藏的這具頭像并非來自某座普通雕像，它涉及另一個故事，而這個故事向我們展現了帝國的陰暗面:在展現羅馬威儀的同時，它也揭開了籠罩在帝國頭上的陰影。
This head was once part of a complete statue that stood on Rome's most southerly frontier, on the border between modern Egypt and Sudan, probably in the town of Syene near Aswan. It's a region that has always been a geo-political fault line, where the Mediterranean world clashes with Africa. In 25 BC, so the writer Strabo tells us, an invading army from the Sudanese kingdom of Meroe, led by the fierce one-eyed queen Candace, captured a series of Roman forts and towns in southern Egypt. Candace and her army took our statue back to the city of Meroe and buried the severed head of the glorious Augustus beneath the steps of a temple dedicated to victory. It was a superbly calculated insult. From now on, everybody walking up the steps and into the temple would literally be crushing the Roman Emperor under their feet. And if you look closely again at the head, you can see tiny grains of sand from the African desert still embedded in the surface of the bronze - a badge of shame still visible on the glory of Rome.
這尊頭像來自曾佇立在羅馬國境最南端的一座全身像，位于今埃及與蘇丹之間，很可能就在阿斯旺附近的沙伊尼鎮。這里向來是國際地緣政治的斷層線，地中海文化與非洲文化在此短兵相接。根據作家斯特拉的描述，公元前25年，蘇丹麥羅埃王國的軍隊在強悍的獨眼女王坎迪斯的帶領下，攻占了埃及南部的數個羅馬城市。他們把雕像蘊含麥羅埃城，修建神廟慶祝勝利，并將偉大的奧古斯都的神圣頭顱埋在了神廟的臺階之下。這是一次極有預謀的侮辱。自此以后，每個踏上臺階，進入神廟的人，都將羅馬皇帝踩在自己的腳下。今天，如果你近距離觀察，還能看到青銅表明鑲嵌著來自非洲沙漠的細小沙粒。這是羅馬帝國榮耀之上的恥辱標記。
