This study symbolizes the world peace established by Caesar Augustus (63 B.C.-A.D.14) just before Christ's birth. The emperor, surrounded by intellectuals and statesmen, sits atop a dais and touches the shoulder of the personification of Rome. The Nativity scene in the foreground illustrates the coincidental moment of world peace under Augustus when Christ was born.
In 1852, Jean-Léon Gérôme received a state commission to paint a large mural of an allegorical subject of his choosing. Gérôme perhaps sought to flatter Emperor Napoléon III (1808-1873), whose government commissioned the final painting and who was identified by his propagandists as a "new Augustus".
