Abstract: The Lost Eagle: The untold story of the legionary
eagle on Rome's most famous statue Lecturer: Bridget Buxton The
Prima Porta Augustus is the most famous and recognized marble
statue from the Roman Empire, and a potent symbol of the triumph
of the West over the East. The statue's message is articulated
in detail through the central scene on the emperor's cuirass,
where a bearded barbarian returns the lost eagle standard of a
Roman legion to an armored figure. From the time of its
discovery in the nineteenth century, the scholarly consensus was
that the eagle depicted here represented one of the standards
lost to Parthia by Crassus and Mark Antony, and recovered by
Augustus in 20 BCE. Fooled by Augustus' own propaganda, moderns
have seen only what we expected to see, when in fact close
analysis of the cuirass proves that it does not reference the
so-called Parthian standards at all. In this illustrated lecture
we will explore the archaeological and historical evidence that
proves the Prima Porta stat