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Dietrich Boschung
Art Bulletin, The, Dec, 1999 by John Poluni
Although known in very few replicas, as we might expect for this early period and limited geographic area, the Beziers-Spoleto and Lucus Feroniae groupings appear to be genuine types rather than subtypes of the Alcudia type. The earliest numismatic evidence, which Boschung might have utilized to greater effect, seems to bear out his hypothesis. The first numismatic portraits of Octavian, dating to 43 B.C.E., present a classicizing image of a boyish youth, in some cases with longish side-whiskers. [25] This image is so generalized and so unlike his portraiture in the round that we must conclude that it is only a symbolic portrait for a coinage that was created in great haste to pay his troops. These and subsequent issues present images of Octavian that are classicizing to a varying degree. This preference for a classicizing style in numismatic imagery is expressed also in the strongly classicizing physiognomic features of the Beziers-Spoleto type.
Although not noted by Boschung, the images of Octavian on the coinage minted by L. Livineius Regulus in 42 B.C.E. [26] are among the earliest to reflect what appear to be his real portrait features. These coin likenesses compare fairly well with the portrait from Beziers (cat. no. 2, pl. 3). Even the fringe of locks over the forehead of the Beziers head, when viewed in profile, and of the numismatic images appears to be comparable. [27] As also in the coin portraits, the preserved part of the hair of the reworked Beziers head [28] is in low relief and is generally more composed than the thicker, plastically carved locks of the head from Spoleto. In this respect, the hair of the Beziers head may more closely reflect the lost prototype, which, based on the coinage, may in fact have been a more classicizing image than Boschung believes. In both the Beziers and Spoleto portraits, strong classicizing traits are manifest in the smooth, idealized structure and planes of the face, which is only somewhat averted, unl ike the more dramatically turned head of the Alcudia type. Evident at this time in the late Republic are both classicizing and nonclassicizing (baroque) tendencies, as well as a combination of the two, in keeping with late Hellenistic classicizing trends in Greco-Roman Ideal-skulptur (nonclassicizing) and adaptations and in Roman portraiture.
Interestingly, Octavian's own literary and rhetorical style, which most likely followed that of Caesar, was of a simple, classicizing type, or what might be called neo-Attic. [29] This was a Roman version of the late Hellenistic Attic style, which in turn looked back to late Classical models. This personal style of Octavian stood in stark contrast to the florid, more exuberant Asiatic style of his chief rival, Marc Antony. [30] In the late Republic, literary and rhetorical styles could be highly politicized and exemplify an individual's character and virtue. It was not until the founding of the principate that Classicism came to be the Zeitstil, the dominant style of the day, commonly referred to as Augustan Classicism. [31] Indicating the power of the princeps's stylistic imprimatur, even the polemical debates between the "Atticists" and "Asianists," which had so characterized the last days of the Republic, simply disappeared.
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