[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review]
Discussions of how individuals relate to autocratic power have gained prominence in recent times. One need only search in “The Conversation,” “Newsroom,” or opinion pieces in media outlets to see how individuals, actions, or events might be compared to Rome’s imperial past.[1] Last year’s TikTok, “How often do you think about the Roman empire?” trend exemplified how Rome continues to captivate popular audiences. The volume under review is a welcome addition to the academic conversation. A conference at the University of Queensland in 2017 initiated the project and further contributions were solicited to expand the coverage, evidence, and approaches. The 2016 Brexit “Yes” vote and the election of Donald Trump as US President loomed large over the discussions then, and, given this 2024 publication date, similar issues and a second Trump presidency will likely be present in the minds of this volume’s readership. As Davenport and Malik state in the introduction, “And so it was that Roman emperors were suddenly in vogue again” (p. 1). Rome’s ability to capture the public imagination provides an excellent opportunity for scholars of antiquity to explore the changing representations of the emperor, both during his own lifetime and throughout history.
This volume traces representations of emperors from the early first to the twenty-first century CE. It explores their spread throughout most of the globe, although discussions largely focus on European and European-colonized regions – the significance of which Penelope Goodman discusses in Chapter 11. This immense scope means that the volume’s contributions can only provide a snapshot into a particular emperor, type of evidence, time period, or geographical region. The editors’ introduction and epilogue provide excellent framing and structure for the wide-ranging contributions, drawing together many of the key themes and ideas presented throughout. The introduction clearly defines what this volume is and what it is not, justifying its parameters and encouraging future study in areas that could not be included. Likewise, I too cannot cover each of the chapters in detail but instead will present how the chapters contribute to the themes and aims of the volume and showcase the value of such wide-ranging and ambitious projects in today’s scholarly landscape.
The volume progresses through the case studies chronologically. Chapters 2 through 4 focus on the first and second centuries CE. They explore how space (Ch. 2), familial connections and language (Ch. 3), and monuments and statuary (Ch. 4) created, reinforced, and in some cases manipulated and undermined imperial power. Ash uses proxemics to demonstrate how Tacitus presents Rome’s most notoriously reclusive emperor as being incompetent in his use of space, through both excessive proximity and excessive distance. Cowan’s chapter examines how Julio-Claudian imperial images can be constructed in familiar terms, examining the significance of terminology, such as pater patriae, paterfamilias, divi filius, pater exercituum, castrorum filius, and the like. It explores the presentation of emperors as either good or failed fathers/sons in a range of contemporary literary sources and in other sources, such as Suetonius, written a couple of generations later. Strazdins’ contribution shifts the focus away from the emperor to how a wealthy and influential individual – Herodes Atticus – could use statues of the emperor and other physical monuments for his own self-promotion and to both reinforce and undermine imperial power outside of Rome. Each of these contributions explores how particular individuals, both the emperors and those interacting with them, construct a particular image of imperial power to reinforce their own positions. They highlight the role that self-fashioning plays in the creation and development of imperial representations.
Chapter 5 serves as a transition chapter, addressing many of the concepts presented in Chapters 4 and 6 while progressing the overall discussion into late antiquity. Grig’s focus is on the bottom-up visual presentation of imperial power, exploring how individuals engaged with the image of the emperor in their daily lives. This chapter covers a range of evidence, from dessert moulds and lamps to ceramic stamps, paintings, and statues, and stresses both the importance of the generic image of the emperor (it did not really matter what a specific emperor actually looked like; what mattered was the image of power) and the role that satire played in the construction of emperors’ representations. McEvoy analyzes the various representations of Theodosius II in Chapter 6. This chapter examines how the actions and visual representation of the ideal late Roman emperor were superimposed on the baby Theodosius II and replicated for a number of child-emperor regimes from the late fourth century until the mid-fifth. In each case, emperors continued to be represented as soldier-emperors and displayed the range of expected virtues even though they themselves were not old enough to lead armies into battle. Chapters 5 and 6 demonstrate that over time, the image of the emperor became more about the position as a symbol of power rather than an accurate portrayal of the particular individual who occupied it. Chapter 7 serves as an excellent conclusion to this first half of the volume as it explores the significance of historiography, the development of political identity, and the legacy of the res publica in terms of political legitimacy. Bjornlie examines how Jordanes’ Getica and Historia Romana present the Gothic invasions and the tyranny of the emperors in order to suggest that it was the so-called barbarian kings of the west who were the legitimate successors and virtuous protectors of Rome’s power and the res publica. Bjornlie provides an excellent analysis of how key themes related to Roman imperial power such as tyranny, familial discord, so-called barbarian threats, and Hellenization permeate literary discussions presenting Rome’s earliest history to the fifth century and play an integral role in Rome’s self-fashioning and political identity.
Chapters 8 through 10 shift the discussion from more contemporary sources to how imperial representations were received and adapted over time. Chapter 8 serves as another transition chapter, exploring the positive and negative portrayals of Justinian and Theodora produced during their lifetimes and in the later periods up to the sixteenth century. Carlà-Uhink discusses the significance of “lost” and “rediscovered texts” in terms of the development of emperors’ representations over time. The chapter highlights how particular representations may be shaped by an emperor’s (and the author’s) theological leanings, thus contributing to our understanding of the fracturing of Christian communities in the centuries following Justinian’s death. Chapter 9 explores the humanists’ presentation of the Roman empire and encourages the reader to consider the role periodization plays in reconstructions of the past. Muecke analyzes the work of Biondo to consider how ideas of empire and the idealization of Roman institutions permeate the fifteenth century. This chapter builds on the question of sources presented in Chapter 8, and considers how the availability of particular primary-source evidence and lack of what we would now argue as key texts (such as Books 1-6 of Tacitus’ Annales and Augustus’ Res Gestae) impact how scholars perceived and presented the early imperial period. Chapter 10 brings the reader into the eighteenth century with Montesquieu’s Considerations and discusses how that text investigates the relationship between the Roman past and European present (namely life under Louis XIV) by asking questions about republicanism, imperialism, and universal monarchy. Malik shows how particular authors, although familiar with the ancient sources, can distort, omit, and misrepresent them to further their own perrspectives. These three chapters bridge the gap from antiquity to the nineteenth century and introduce some of the texts that heavily influenced key texts for our discipline, thereby demonstrating their impact for present-day studies of antiquity.
The final two chapters bring us close to the present day. Chapter 11 discusses how Augustus became the “Father of Europe.” Goodman makes an excellent case for how Europe as both a cultural identity and a geographical marker was heavily indebted to the various communities and groups of the seventeenth-nineteenth centuries who sought to present themselves as the legitimate heirs of Rome (and Greece). The maps included in this chapter serve as an excellent visualization of how the bimillennial events for both Augustus’ birth (1938) and death (2014) were largely centred on European and British communities and colonies, thereby highlighting the continued legacy of European self-identification as inheritors of antiquity. The final chapter shifts the focus to a refashioning of Julius Caesar and Augustus in twentieth-century historical fiction. Scourfield examines two such novels to consider the relationship between fictionality and historicity. Just like their historical counterparts, a book about emperors is a book about power. Moreover, each of these novels is a product of its time and can give us a sense of how authors and readers in the twentieth century viewed the legacy and persistence of these “Great Men of History.”
The wide-ranging nature of such a volume means that it is impossible to cover every aspect of the representation of emperors and imperial power through time, yet the editors have done excellent work to ensure that there is something for everyone. Some chapters deal with particular literary texts, others on material remains. Some explore how emperors were represented by contemporary or near-contemporary sources, while others seek to trace larger patterns of changes in the image of an emperor over time. What draws the volume together is how each chapter explores the harnessing of imperial power for contemporary audiences, whether they were living under a particular emperor or not. Whether through official historical and artistic channels, popular tales and folk history, or even historical fiction, all these sources intentionally create a particular type of representation of the emperors for their audiences.
From a production and readability standpoint, the volume is well-produced with no glaring formatting, grammatical, or typographical errors. Images are used sparingly but provide helpful visuals supporting the argument where present. Each chapter is self-contained; notes are provided as footnotes and a bibliography is included at the end, with a full citation for the chapter on the first page. This means that readers can choose to read specific chapters in isolation and instructors can set particular chapters as readings for classes with ease. The volume does reward those who read it in its entirety as many of the key themes and topics are approached from a number of perspectives, types of evidence, and time periods, thereby showcasing how ubiquitous images of emperors were (and are!) as well as the significant role that representations play in the self-fashioning and self-identity of those who tell the stories of the powerful.
Emperors continue to be good to think with. They could be heroes or villains (or both) depending on who is telling the story and for what purpose. This volume encourages us to consider where certain narratives and traditions about the emperor originate and what purpose they serve. As our world grapples with the rise of autocratic rulers and threats to democratic institutions, the contents of this volume encourage readers to consider what types of stories about emperors and imperial power persist. It also challenges us all to consider how we approach the representations of emperors in the primary source texts in the twenty-first century and to question the extent to which we too are influenced by the multitude of other representations of the emperors that have developed in the intervening years.
Authors and Titles
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- Introduction (Caillan Davenport and Shushma Malik)
- Tiberius in Space: Proxemics and the Portrayal of the Princeps (Rhiannon Ash)
- Julio-Claudian Emperors as Fathers and Sons (Eleanor Cowan)
- Herodes Atticus, Hadrian, and the Antonines: Mediating Power and Self-Promotion in Achaea through Public and Private Display (Estelle Strazdins)
- Looking for Representations of Emperors in Late Antique Popular Culture (Lucy Grig)
- Educating Theodosius II: Theodosian Child-Emperors and the Manipulation of the Imperial Image (Meaghan McEvoy)
- Jordanes and the End of the Roman Empire (Shane Bjornlie)
- ‘Per voler del primo amor ch’i’ sento’: Justinian and Theodora from the Sixth to Sixteenth Centuries (Filippo Carlà-Uhink)
- The Humanists and the Emperors: The Case of Biondo Flavio (1392-1463) (Frances Muecke)
- Roman Emperors in Montesquieu’s Considerations (Shushma Malik)
- Retrospective Parentage: Augustus as a Father of Europe (Penelope J. Goodman)
- Fictions of Power: Thornton Wilder’s The Ides of March and John Williams’s Augustus (J.H.D. Scourfield)
- Epilogue: Towards a Methodology of Representation (Caillan Davenport and Shushma Malik)
Notes
Reviewer note: For full disclosure, I participated in “The Once and Future Kings” conference held at the University of Queensland in 2017, where six of the chapters in this volume were first presented.
[1] Davenport and Malik reference several of these in their introduction, but also see https://theconversation.com/us-election-how-trumps-speeches-echo-roman-rhetoric-and-style-from-2-000-years-ago-235618 (discussing Trump’s rhetorical strategies) and https://mashable.com/article/mark-zuckerberg-augustus-caesar-comparison and https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/sep/28/mark-zuckeberg-revamps-public-image-style for discussions of Mark Zuckerberg’s obsession with Augustus and classical antiquity in general.