An important part of Horace’s project in the odes was to use his poetic skills to celebrate Augustus, and to contribute to consolidating his standing in Roman society as an object of supreme veneration and deference. Hear an early example of a poem of fulsome praise for the first Emperor from the first book of Odes in Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.

The magnificent “Blacas” cameo, named after a previous possessor, was probably made soon after Augustus’s death and is in the collection of the British Museum.

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