Emperors in the Roman Empire would frequently manipulate their public image to convey their best aspects, whether fact or fantasized, and further their private imagery to cement private belief in himself as a righteous ruler, so much so that even they would fall into the deception themselves. The Emperor Augustus, known initially as Octavian, was well regarded as the ‘saviour of Rome’, the princeps that brought Rome into their golden age of prosperity and restored the Roman Republic, and as such he was often portrayed as something of a god among mortals, sent to help the Roman Empire in its time of need. His achievements many, the reorganisation of the coinage ‘into a single precious-metal currency system’ and in his actions taken to ‘defeat the men “who butchered my father”’, Augustus portrayed himself as if he were ‘executor of a divine mission’ and claimed that ‘he had found Rome a…