Uploaded August 2021 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago

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Mary Beard, Cambridge University. This six-part lecture series examines the continuing engagement throughout history with images of Roman emperors and its impact on Western visual art and culture.

In this first lecture, originally delivered at the National Gallery of Art on March 27, 2011, the esteemed classicist and professor Mary Beard introduces the prejudices, conventions, and disagreements that underlie the identification and reception of Roman imperial portraits beginning with Julius Caesar.

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