Take any typical Greek portrait as an illustration—the bust of “Pericles,” in the Elgin Room at the British Museum, for instance. Compare it with the “Julius Cæsar” in the same collection. We see Pericles in the perfection of physical force and mental energy. The ruler of Athens is more than a man. He is an epitome of all that a Greek would be. There is no attempt at characterization. The suggestion of voluptuousness in the lips, which heightens the work so much, is really not an individual trait. It is rather an Hellenic characteristic. It is part of an effort to express a type. But the Roman sculptor of the “Julius Cæsar” never dreamt of embodying a whole race in a single portrait—a philosophy in a statue. He was content to give expression to the man before him. For this very reason the finest Roman portraits possess a vigorous vitality which an Hellenic portrait study lacks. As Pater expressed it: “The seeking of the type in the individual, the abstraction of all that because of its nature endures but for a moment, this involves loss of expression.” That is why the “Pericles” is the portrait of a fifth-century Athenian and the Roman work is the portrait of Julius Cæsar. Exactly the same must be said of the great statue of “Augustus addressing his Soldiers,” in the Vatican. Compared with the “Phocion,” the “Augustus” is a carefully individualized character-study. The tendency is not, however, carried to the extreme limit attained in later Roman sculpture. The artist evidently hesitates to break entirely with the idealistic method of the Hellenes. He willingly sacrifices the chance of creating an eternal type, symbolizing the idea of Roman imperialism incarnated in the first Emperor, preferring to convey the impression of life-like portraiture. But he shows an ideal Augustus. The statue does not convey the sensation of a moment of time—good, bad or indifferent—captured and fixed for ever, which is so characteristic of Roman portraits during the next century or two. For this reason there is much to be said in favour of the view which regards Augustan Rome as the last Hellenistic centre. It is still an artist who is Greek at heart who is at work. But he differs from his predecessors inasmuch as he is striving to give his Roman patrons a thrill which they will feel to be national—to be truly Roman.