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Explores how artists and patrons at all social levels helped form and evolve the visual language of the Roman Empire.
List of contents
1. Introduction: Imperial imagery and the Role of Social Dynamics Monica Hellström and Amy Russell; 2. The Altars of the Lares Augusti: A View from the Streets of Augustan Iconography Amy Russell; 3. Modelling the Emperor: Representations of Power, Empire, and Dynasty among Eastern Client Kings Julia Wilker; 4. Pvblica Nvmina: Conspicuously Consuming the Imperial Image at Tomis Nandini B. Pandey; 5. Roman Emperors, Conquest, and Violence: Images from the Eastern Provinces Caillan Davenport; 6. Court Politics and Imperial Imagery in the Roman Principate Benjamin Kelly; 7. Local Aspirations and Statues of Emperors in Roman North Africa Monica Hellström; 8. The Altar of P. Perelius Hedulus in Carthage and the Social Aspects of Provincial Image-Making Megan Goldman-Petri; 9. Imagines et tituli: Epigraphic Evidence of Imperial Imagery in Meeting-Places of Roman Professional corpora Nicolas Tran; 10. The Imperial Image in Media of Mechanical Reproduction: The Tokens of Rome Clare Rowan; 11. When was an Imperial Image? Some Reflections on Roman Art and Imagery Olivier Hekster.
About the author
Amy Russell is an Assistant Professor of Classics at Brown University. Until 2020 she was an Associate Professor of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University. Her research interests include the political history and topography of the Republic and early Empire. Her first book, The Politics of Public Space in Republican Rome (Cambridge, 2015), winner of the 2017 C.J. Goodwin Award of Merit, investigates the concept of public space and the construction and operation of the public/private divide in the Republican city of Rome. Other research projects tackle the building activity of the imperial Senate and the contributions of multiple groups to the creation of imperial imagery and ideology. She also works on Republican political history, with ongoing interests in the tribunate of the plebs and the role of the populus and the interactions between scholarship written in German and the Anglophone world. In 2018 she was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize.Monica Hellström is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University. She works on society and culture in the high and late Roman imperial periods, with a particular interest in visual culture. She has held the Fondazione Famiglia Rausing fellowship at the Swedish Institute in Rome. Her publications range from studies on historiography to church architecture, with current research topics including the communications and monumental output of the imperial government, inscriptions in North Africa, and the arts, social dynamics, and architecture of the city of Rome.
Summary
The visual language of the Roman Empire was remarkably consistent. These images were made, used, and reinterpreted at all social levels, and often for local purposes. From a historical and archaeological perspective, this book explores the visual contribution of ordinary people across Rome's empire.
