The Beginnings of the Roman Empire in Contemporary Formats (I): Augustus in Comics

Abstract

This article is the first part of a more extensive piece of research on the presence of Emperor Augustus in different media and manifestations of the so-called popular culture, paying special attention to the different avatars of Augustus in comic and cinema. After an evaluation of the prominence and the survival of Augustus in the ideological and political domains, and a brief introduction to the study of the presence of the classical culture in contemporary massive consumption products, this paper studies some examples of appropriations of the Emperor in different creative formats (iconography, music, videogames), and it finally offers a prospect of the representations of Augustus in some historical comic books.