ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at a number of ways in which political considerations were drawn on to support artistic preferences through the middle decades. Augustan enthusiasm and tributes to British liberty did appear incongruously together in many panegyrical contexts, but the general pattern was towards increasingly harsh judgements of Augustus. Much comment on Augustus, on Augustan politics and on Augustan art that has been presented as evidence of a comprehensive “attitude” suffers dilution in its own context. Mere disapproval of Augustus did not diminish the interest of writers in that Blackwellian “concurrence of causes” that produced Augustan art, or in the possibility of reproducing some elements from it in Britain. There were numerous attempts to rescue Augustan art from its unfortunate political associations and even to use the Augustan experience to vindicate a whole range of “gross, local prejudice” on the benefits of freedom for the arts.
