Dietrich Boschung

Type III (Boschung's Alcudia type, formerly the Actium/Octavian type; Fig. 3) was created as an even more evocative image that would both compensate for Octavian's youth and inexperience and better reflect his auctoritas. Type III may even have started out as a subtype of II but later replaced it as the main type. In Type III Octavian has a more simplified hairstyle with a reduction of the number of reverse-comma-shaped locks over the right temple and more agitated locks over the middle of the forehead. Although some have taken this as a reference to Alexander's famous upswept anastole, or upswelling, wave-like, hairdo, any such citation would only have been very indirect. The somewhat agitated locks were probably meant to portray Octavian as more of a man of action. This portrait became the image of choice for about a decade, lasting throughout the rest of the Triumviral period, for which reason it might also be called the Second Triumvir type.

Type IV (Boschung's Paris Louvre MA 1280 type, formerly the Forbes type; Fig. 4) logically followed Type III to satisfy a need for a new image of the leader after the end of the Civil War, a period that Octavian/Augustus wanted to put behind him. [47] Although not noted by Boschung, the pattern of locks at the back of the head of a Type III portrait in the Museo Capitolino in Rome (Stanza degli Imperatori, 2, cat. no. 23, pl. 14.2) is very similar to that of the Louvre MA 1280 head (cat. no. 4-4, pl. 37.2). This closeness helps establish a direct relationship between Types III and IV. This third type would have satisfied a need for a more mature image with a more classicizing, composed hairstyle, in preference to Octavian's more emotionally charged, though still somewhat classicizing image (Alcudia/Actium type), which had been so closely associated with the turmoil of the Second Triumviral period.

Type IV would have served not only to commemorate Augustus's triple triumph in 29 B.C.E., the year in which this type was most likely created, but also to celebrate the closing of the doors of Janus and the peace that Octavian had finally brought to the Roman world, an accomplishment of which he himself proudly boasts in his Res Gestae: "terra marique... parta victoriis pax" (Monumentum Ancyranum 13). Type IV might be called secondarily Augustus's "Triumphator" type. After his triple triumph in 29 B.C.E., he was never to celebrate another triumph, although he had the right to do so when those who served under his auspicia had successfully conducted a war for which a triumph could be voted by the Roman Senate. [48] An important head of Augustus in the Museo Capitolino reflecting this type (cat. no. 45, pl. 38) shows him wearing the corona civica with three gemstones, presumably one for each of his three victories. Even so, the prototype (Urbild) would have been created without the wreath, since any given type would have to serve for various kinds of images.

With the death of Antony and the end of the triumvirate, Octavian was in sole control of the government. He was now ready to turn his attention to stabilizing the political situation and creating a new constitution that would be acceptable to the majority of the Roman aristocrats. To celebrate the founding of a new form of government based on the principle of governance by a princeps, or "first citizen" as well as Octavian's assumption of his new name, "Augustus," with all of its sacral aura, a new ecumenical image was needed that was both retrospective and prospective: retrospective in that it invited comparison with the prototypical ideal of the Classical Greek past and prospective in that it reflected the optimism of the Augustan Principate and transformed Augustus into the new model of the heroic ideal. [49] Although Boschung sees this Type V (his Prima Porta type; Fig. 5) as becoming rather static and sterile as time went on, this view seems to me too modern. The very reason for the success of this type was its symbolic value: it became an icon for the stability and durability of the Augustan Principate. Because Type V initially seems to have celebrated Octavian's taking the new name Augustus and becoming princeps, it might be called secondarily the Princeps type.