n sculpture remained totally in the service of the imperium, as if anything else were possible at the time. One of the best examples of this sort of imperial propaganda is the Ara Pietatis Augustae (Figure 4; Strong Plate 57), an imperial altar modeled after the Ara Pacis erected by Augustus between 13 and 9 B.C. The Ara Pietatis, considered to be the most important historical monument of the Julio-Claudian period, was authorized by the servile Senate in A.D. 22 to commemorate the recovery of the Empress Livia from a serious illness, but was not completed until the reign of Claudius. It stood by the Via Flaminia near the modern church of S. Maria in Via Lata (Strong 62). It was apparently intended to further the imperial cult of the Divine Emperor. It is this ôidolatryö directed toward the emperor that Christians (and Jews) specifically rejected, and that thus became the major reason for their proscription and persecution during the next three and a half centuries, until the emperors threw in the towel and turned the empire over to the administrati
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