History & The Arts
The many guises of the emperor Augustus
...Scots or the kimono for the Japanese today. This is why the poet Virgil called the Romans ‘the masters of the world, the toga-clad race (gens togata)’ (Aeneid 1.281–2). Third, the toga symbolised civic duty and Republican egalitarianism. During the Republic, all Roman citizens, rich or poor, were theoretically equal in the eyes of the law. (No matter that in reality...