Bust of “Gaius Julius Caesar”, cast art as a museum replica

Roman art is primarily defined by the fusion of Italic and Greek-Hellenistic elements. In architecture, pragmatic considerations serving the expansion of the empire and political factors were paramount. In the sacred sphere, the early temples of Rome followed the Italic-Etruscan type. Roman secular structures, such as bridges, harbors, aqueducts, walls, gates, and so on, were of far greater importance. With Augustus's redesign of the Roman Forum and the subsequent redesign of the Forum of Augustus, the significance of the ancient city centers changed. They were transformed into large, enclosed open spaces. Axial symmetry, oriented towards a podium temple, is characteristic of this period. Under the reign of Emperor Augustus, temples and theaters were built in the "Eternal City," their rounded, dynamic forms increasingly departing from the rectilinear forms of their Greek models.