Abstract

Abstract:

The Temple of Augustus in Ankara was built around 25 BCE. Although substantial parts remain and the monument holds the most complete version of Augustus's famous Res Gestae—the record of the emperor's deeds—it has received scant attention and never been properly restored. A main cause for its neglect, this essay argues, is the double executed in Rome, on scale 1:1, and displayed for the first time at a grand archaeological exhibition in 1911. The attention lavished on the plaster model, and the model's subsequent history of exhibitions and faux restorations, preempted the influence and significance that the Ankara original in other circumstances would have exerted. The aesthetic, political, and archaeological capital invested with the monument was transferred to the model in Rome although not a single stone was moved from Turkey. On its own terms, then, the Roman double played a part in the turbulent making of modern Italy. Its successive remountings as replica, reconstruction, and museum ultimately manifest a nation in search of itself.

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