The Imperator
The imperator is in extremely high relief (pls. 7–9). His head has been torn away, but as Tiberius is recognizably the triumphator on the other side of the cup, he can be identified in this companion panel with certainty—on BR I also each panel centers on the same person, Augustus. Tiberius wears
full Roman dress uniform: heavy boots (caligae ), greaves, a fitted body cuirass bordered with short tongues (pteryges ) over a tunic protected by a skirt of leather strips, a paludamentum draped from the shoulders. He balances a lance on his left shoulder; his right hand, now missing, would have held out a patera toward the foculus[6] to which he turns.
The figure type corresponds to that used for the cuirassed Octavian in the post-Actium CAESAR DIVI F. coin series: weight shift to the left, right foot trailing, lance on the left (weight-bearing) side, with a mantle draped from the shoulders to fall straight down behind the figure, leaving the right arm free for action—here a rhetorical gesture, on the cup a sacrificial act.[7] The coin type is acknowledged to depend on an actual cuirass statue (or statue series) erected for Octavian's Actian triumph;[8] it differs from the Primaporta Augustus (fig. 64), whose weight is on the right leg with an arm up on the "free" left side (and whose paludamentum is wrapped around the hips). The BR-Actian coin figure type surfaces again, for instance, for the (image of a) statue of Germanicus on a Caligulan dupondius commemorating his triumph of A.D. 17 (SIGNIS RECEPTIS DE VICTIS GERM),[9] a statue erected in connection with his triumph or with the triumphal monuments posthumously decreed him.
Kleiner felt that the BR sacrifice takes place outside of Rome, because Tiberius wears both "defensive" armor (lorica ) and "offensive" armor (spear) and would not have worn this particular combination in Rome.[10] No ancient evidence suggests that body armor was understood not to be a sign of aggressive power. In Roman art it seems to signify simply that someone is a man of war who can/did/will exert successful military force. Few cuirass statues survive from the capital to inform us of norms of accoutrement, but Augustus certainly placed cuirassed portrait statues in his Forum—spectacularly "offensive" was the armed Romulus carrying off the spolia opima, the focus of one of the two exedrae.[11] A statue erected in the Forum at Praeneste of M. Anicius, for events of 216 B.C. (siege of Casilinum), was cuirassed and togate (Livy 23.19.18); in this context, clearly, a cuirass simply designates a warrior (in contrast to the civilian toga).[12] Caesar must have been cuirassed in the portrait on the Rostra voted him in 46 B.C., showing him as a victorious siege breaker in a mural crown (Dio 44.4f.)—not a cuirass with defensive significance! There is rich documentation for cuirassed[13] and/or spear-bearing statues in Rome,[14] sometimes incorporated in battle groups.[15]
Kleiner also wished the BR II sacrifice to take lace in the field, to supply a pendant to BR I:2 (Drusus panel). Although the two scenes are palpably analogous, this analogy is structured by visual markers and by
basic iconographic and familial links. The cuirassed Tiberius corresponds to his brother imperator not only in status (general under Augustus' auspices ) but also visually. Each, in paludamentum and smooth cuirass, stands at the left of his panel and essentially makes an offering toward center right—Drusus offers the fruits of his success to Augustus; Tiberius makes a sacrificial offering to Jupiter Capitolinus. Augustus on BR I, in turn, is himself invested with the aura of Capitoline Jove, as in Ovid's grand climax to the Metamorphoses: "pater est et rector uterque" (15.860).