The dating of a magnificent sculpture of Rome’s first emperor, known as the Augustus of Prima Porta, is widely contested.

It is thought to be a marble copy of a possible bronze original.

This original, along with other high honors, is devoted to Augustus by the Senate in 20 BCE and set up in a public place.

Up until this time Augustus has lived modestly, but the fact that the statue was found in his wife's villa shows that he was thoroughly pleased with it.

It is also contested that this particular sculpture is a reworking in marble of a bronze original, possibly a gift from Tiberius Caesar to his mother Livia (since it was found in her villa Ad Gallinas Albas in the vicinity of the ninth marker of the via Flaminia, and close to a late Imperial gate called Prima Porta) after Augustus' death and in honor of the woman who had campaigned so long for him to become the next Caesar.

This would explain the divine references to Augustus in the piece, notably his being barefoot, the standard representation of gods or heroes in classical iconography.

Also, the reliefs in the cuirass depict the retrieval of Crassus' standards captured by the Parthians, an event in which the young Tiberius himself took a part, serving as intermediary with the Parthian king, in the act that is shown in the central scene of the armor, possibly his grandest service to his adopted father Augustus.

With the introduction of Tiberius as the figure responsible for the retrieval of the standards, he associates himself with Augustus, the emperor and the new god, as Augustus himself had done previously with Julius Caesar.

Under this hypothesis, the dating of the statue can be placed during the first years of Tiberius' reign as emperor.