How do ancient (or contemporary) portraits display power? Why is that man (or less often woman) a ruler, and how can viewers (or readers), alone or in a crowd, tell that he represents something more than himself? He stands for something, literally in the case of ancient bronze or marble portrait statuary, signifier of a powerful office, and its individual holder, a basileus (‘king’) or an emperor. His power over me and mine is expressed in physical or literary form by the creation and circulation of his image(s), by their intrinsic attributes, materials or context. Images become powerful not just by their creation, but through contemporary social and political rules (or norms) of representation and by their reception. Mass media rely on specific associations in my (or our) culture, state and/or religion to convey not only a ruler's individual appearance and character, but also his office and its ideals, symbols and authority over me and us.
We here review three new books that consider these interlinked questions, we who are joint investigators with Estelle Strazdins of the Australian National University for Images of Power: Roman Mass Media and Imperial Cults, circa 69–450 ce (Australian Research Council Discovery Project DP240100112). The role played by ancient mass media, portraits and images in securing and sustaining imperial power is still understudied, from the Flavian Dynasty to Constantine, the Theodosians and beyond. Representations, receptions and especially mechanisms of the portraiture of power need to be better understood around the world, both by scholars and the wider public today. These centuries of ‘ancient’ history were formative for the development of the political and religious institutions that dominated the Roman empire and its successor states for over 1,500 years. Christianity grew intertwined with the office and imagery of the Roman emperor, so Roman mass media and their interrelated historical phenomena deserve closer study and better popular understanding. These books in different but fruitful ways all consider ancient ideals applied to rulers and their offices, from the Hellenistic era into the High Roman empire. We build on these insights, and those of other scholars, to ask what Christianity added to the mix of mass media, imperial cult and widely circulating portraits to produce such enduring images of power in the Roman empire.
From Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic monarchs to the Roman emperors studied in Chrysafis et al., culturally specific and religious ideals for moral and ethical behaviour of rulers were transmitted via imagery of personified virtues, such as Peace/Eirene (their focus), Mercy or Authority. These had developed from classical Greece and were inscribed, sculpted and transmitted to the public through statues, monuments, coins, inscriptions, speeches and public letters. Yet ancient sources for ‘bad’ emperors, such as Commodus, Nero or Caligula, when collected and studied, as Barrett and Yardley have done for the last one's short reign, give us just as valuable insights into those ideals of rulership alongside public, private and ‘literary’ responses when they are repeatedly violated.
Christoforou considers the imagery, and imaginary, of the emperor's office as combining statues and literature, virtues and monstrosities, from Augustus to the Severans. Such wide-reaching portrayals, all of which come under scrutiny in our project and these three books, can be described as forms of Roman ‘mass media’. Visual imagery of the cult and imperium of emperors displayed significant evolution from the first century of imperial Rome to the Christian transformation of the imperial cult in the fourth century. Once the Constantinian Pax of the Church was initiated, physical, representational and literary attributes of imperial power all became Christianised too by different ancient rulers, artists and authors, with far-reaching consequences for history and our media today. Thus, in this review article we trace the relevance of these new books to our project as well as to current scholarship more broadly.
Alexander III, his artists and his companions employed a wide range of strategies, followed by Rome over most of Asia, displaying his new imperial power via personal divinity, spear-won land and promoting him as a legitimate bringer of lasting peace. These attributes with accompanying imagery of monarchic power were explored in The Legitimation of Conquest: Monarchical Representation and the Art of Government in the Empire of Alexander the Great (edd. K. Trampedach and A. Meeus [2020]). This was the seventh volume in the series Studies in Ancient Monarchies. In that volume H.-J. Gehrke's chapter (pp. 319–23) was a strong statement of the ancient inclination to present Hellenistic monarchs foremost as bringers of military victory. The 2020 volume makes valuable prior reading for this ninth volume in the series, Friedenskultur(en) und monarchische Repräsentation in der Antike.
Its editors – Chrysafis, Hartmann, Schliephake and Weber – follow the representation of one particular virtue of ancient monarchs over time, that of the basileus eirenophylax, the Greek (or Roman) ‘king’ as ‘Guardian of (the) Peace’. Eirene or Pax along with ‘her’ safety, defence and presence was a potent attribute of state power in much ancient Mediterranean imagery, public duties and cult practices, from Aristophanes’ Peace and Kephisodotos’ ‘Peace, Mother of Wealth’ among the democrats of classical Athens to Augustus’ Ara pacis and Vespasian's Templum pacis. From the time of Constantine I onwards Christian emperors still emulated Augustus’ claim to be a bringer of peace, with fewer representations subduing enemies underfoot than in the first to third centuries and the gradual incorporation of some ideals drawn from Jesus’ teachings. The laurel wreath of Victoria and images of Winged Nike both remained potent symbols of imperial power and the strength of individual rulers to bring peace and publicise victory.
In their introduction (Chapter 1) Chrysafis et al. argue that recent research on ancient monarchy assumes that there was always a need for legitimisation of monarchical rule, entailing a constant pressure to prove oneself via military victories. For the period of Hellenistic kingship this assumption was examined by H.-J. Gehrke in ‘Der siegreiche König, Überlegungen zur hellenistischen Monarchie’ (Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 64 [1982], 247–77). While there is no doubt that Hellenistic kings portrayed themselves as exercising strong military power, not everyone agreed that this was (or even should be) the highest value for their monarchs. Polybius, for instance, declared peace to be the only good undisputedly valued by all people (Polyb. 4.74.3). The editors and authors of Basileus eirenophylax thus set out to reassess this assumption of constant pressure on ancient monarchs to prove themselves via military success, against a broad framework of monarchical self-portrayal in antiquity, from the Achaemenids to the early Middle Ages.
The essays thus cohere around a central question: whether war was conceptualised by or for rulers primarily as a means to establish peace or as a way to acquire material resources or to seek other goals. Rather than looking at the political practice of warfare, authors reflect (in German or English) on ancient representations of a monarch as guardian of the peace (basileus eirenophylax) and related concepts of ‘good’ or virtuous monarchy in texts and other media like epigraphy, coins and papyri.
Four studies consider imperial representations of peace and the king as a guarantor of peace, as expressed in Achaemenid (ancient Iranian) and ancient Egyptian material culture and related Greek and Jewish thought on the search for peace and ‘peace cultures’. Chrysafis's Chapter 5 surveys the development of the Greek basileus as ‘guardian of the peace’ in written sources from the fifth century bce to the reign of Philip II of Macedon, father of Alexander III, in the fourth century bce. These chapters set the scene for a focus on the legacy of Megas Alexandros and the values of ‘peace cultures’ of dynastic rule, which followed the expansion of Hellenic-ruled territories via Alexander's successful campaigns. This section includes Gehrke's reappraisal of his previous work, ‘Der siegreiche König – Revisited’ (Chapter 6). The focus of the next six chapters is on Hellenistic sources and rulers up to the first century ce. The following five chapters study Roman emperors and rulership from Augustus to Diocletian, via both buildings and texts, including ‘peace poetry’. The last section contains three chapters on the afterlife of these ideas in late antiquity from the fourth to the seventh centuries, and there is one final chapter on the reception of Roman imperial ideals of rule in early medieval Spain.
Several sub-questions are posed in the introduction (pp. 18–19), first concerning the weight that references to peace, concrete peace agreements/truces or defensive policies carried in the context of monarchical self-portrayals, especially in comparison with military victories. Secondly, the editors ask to what extent kings themselves were involved in peace negotiations. Thirdly, essays consider how peace was conceptualised, as the absence of war, the defence of existing possessions or as some sort of enforcement of hegemonic control, a God-given right of rule or a role as guarantor of normative justice. The editors also asked authors to consider how genres of texts or other cultural productions affected what demands were made on the ruler: what normative or philosophical texts circulated, what were the assumptions, demands and values of geographers, historians or biographers? Finally, did the material well-being of the state, the ruler or his people become associated more with (following on from) victory or the absence of war, i.e. did the acquisition of spoils and foreign wealth play an important role for royal self-representation? These questions give a welcome coherence to the chapters, often lacking in volumes of collected essays.
Other questions may occur to readers, however, such as which types of representation were concentrated in which realms and to which audiences they were designed to appeal. This last issue is difficult, as noted here in the case of Roman imperial coins (pp. 310–11). Also, why were there so few female rulers or women in positions of power, while the concepts of eirene and pax were often personified and depicted as mature, adult women? Source-analyses treat mainly male monarchs and role-models, with the exception of Ptolemaios I Soter's daughter Eirene (‘Peace’). The sole Byzantine woman to rule alone under the title of Basileus, a later Eirene (797–803, not studied in this volume), was responsible for the violent removal of her son, the young Constantine VI, from the throne in 797, but there was ample scope here for not just Livia or Cleopatra, but Seleucid queens, Zenobia or the Severan Augustae.
Overall, these essays successfully challenge assumptions by many previous scholars that ancient Mediterranean monarchies constantly needed to prove their legitimacy by military victories. Future work could test this hypothesis against other monarchies, for example ancient China or Sasanian Persia. However, it is enough that this volume extends the analysis of representations of kingship and peace-seeking beyond the Hellenistic period into late antiquity. Warfare and sources for military valour are examined in a broader historical context of many cultures that highly valued peace. This approach allows for an evaluation of the desired (and actual) results of a war or military campaign in a polity beyond monarchic self-representation. Chapters treat not just great dynasties established as a result of disputes over Alexander's legacy, when the model of a ‘victorious king’ had potent explanatory power, but long afterwards, as charismatic leadership and sole rule continued to develop and diverge in and around Rome right up into the early medieval era (Chapter 12).
This volume is enriched by ancient images that illustrate the concepts discussed, including coins, and concludes with a helpful index of ancient sources. There is a valuable range of material for those interested in the ancient ideals of sole rulership, and how some societies, including many Greek polities and the Roman empire, often legitimated sole rulership and rulers, on the grounds of seeking and keeping peace rather than through warfare.
The ideals, realities and above all expectations of sole rule in the early Roman empire after Augustus’ creation of the principate are best demonstrated by the sources for their first extensive violation. In The Emperor Caligula in the Ancient Sources Barrett and Yardley have done an excellent job in collecting and commenting on the literary and material evidence for the short but eventful reign of Augustus’ great-grandson Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus (r. 37–41), more often known by his nickname Caligula (‘Little Boots’). His peaceful succession as princeps at the death of his aging great-uncle Tiberius, despite some questions about Tiberius’ death, was at first perceived and displayed as a demonstration of the stability of the relatively new institution of the principate. His reign, however, while initially well-omened and celebrated in speeches, poetry and statuary, quickly took a turn towards the dramatic, becoming what not to do as a Roman emperor (with lessons for how his family, Senate and People should respond).
The Greek and Latin authors translated into English in this sourcebook almost universally remember ‘Gaius’ as a mad tyrant and treat his four years in power as a cautionary tale for readers to recoil from in horror and perhaps to learn from under subsequent emperors. However, the varied nature of these literary sources, few of which are contemporary, and all of which are hostile, make it difficult to assess their veracity. Moreover, until recently documentary and material evidence has been neglected in studies of Caligula, partly due to the obscurity and inaccessibility of such material.
Growth in scholarly attention for reception of all types of imperial representations, and especially those of ‘bad’ emperors like Nero or Caligula, is exemplified by Representing Rome's Emperors. Historical and Cultural Perspectives through Time (edd. C. Davenport and S. Malik [2024]), which deals with imperial portrayals in both texts and monuments, and their reception in works up to the twentieth century. E. Strazdins there focused on Greek provincial perspectives on Roman imperial images in the second century, especially Herodes Atticus’ estate (pp. 89–114). Malik also deepened the study of the legacy of the emperor Nero in the monograph The Nero-Antichrist: Founding and Fashioning a Paradigm (2020).
Barrett and Yardley contextualise Caligula's reign by first giving a narrative of the early principate from Augustus's rise to Caligula's unlikely ascent to power, culminating in his assassination. Each major event of his reign is introduced and punctuated by reference to a source contained in the book, making it easy for readers to follow up and read the textual witnesses. The authors also provide important context for students, the primary audience for this book, highlighting the care needed when encountering these ancient sources, managing their biases and accounting for chronological distance from the events discussed (pp. 7–8). A brief biography of the major ancient source authors is provided, giving important context (pp. 9–13).
While this anthology mostly consists of long-known literary sources, the authors importantly include an impressive selection of translated inscriptions and carefully chosen coins from the reign of Caligula. The coin illustrations helpfully include transcriptions of their Latin legends accompanied by translations as well as descriptions of the coin types. These inclusions transform this sourcebook into meaty material for understanding Gaius’ reign from a wide range of new perspectives, vital evidence for the ideals of imperial rule at an early stage in its development, and the responses of Romans near and far on their imperator.
The sources with introductions are organised according to the stages of Caligula's life, beginning with his family background in Chapter 1, tracing his familial connections to Augustus, originator of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, with his early years on campaign with Germanicus (when he was given his nickname by the troops). Each subsection is organised by major events and includes excerpts from various authors. A brief introductory section for each also highlights points of consensus and difference in this evidence, and suggests ways of managing disagreement between testimonia. Chapter 2 charts Caligula's youth, the machinations of Tiberius’ court and conspiracies around succession planning, with the eventual ascent of Caligula organised by Naevius Sutorius Macro in 37. Chapter 3 addresses the first year of Caligula's reign, which was advertised as a new beginning and seemingly greeted with hope and optimism far beyond Rome. Serious attention is given to the numismatic evidence of Caligula's messaging, in particular as regards his connections to his father Germanicus and the deified Augustus (p. 68), and his adoption by Tiberius. Epigraphic evidence, including provincial inscriptions and fragments from the Arval Brothers, are included to supplement the literary sources, and provide a diversity of sources for Caligula's swift ascent to power, acceptance by those outside of Rome and attempts to secure the legitimacy of his reign, especially over Tiberius Gemellus.
Chapter 4 moves on to the ‘change of tone’ that followed his severe illness later in 37 (p. 85). This debilitating illness (somewhat like Covid-19?) seems to have radically changed Caligula from a rather competent and reasonable young ruler into a paranoid tyrant, at least from the point of view of the sources. Whether due to (well-grounded) suspicions that he had been poisoned or physical and psychological aftereffects from the illness, or both, Caligula began to earn a reputation for extravagance beyond what was allowed to an emperor and first ran into problems with the Senate. This chapter provides a solid mix of literary sources, from contemporaries such as Philo and Seneca to later historians such as Josephus, Suetonius, Tacitus and (much later) Cassius Dio. These accounts are intermixed with inscriptions, as in the other chapters. Barrett and Yardley cut through ‘palace gossip’ when possible, but also highlight where impasses in the evidence just cannot be overcome.
Chapter 5 turns thematic to treat Caligula's personal life and personality. Caligula had pastimes of interest to ancient observers, and participants, as well as authors, who recorded his behaviour at public events, his love for the arts and patronage of the arena (or athletics), like paparazzi today, along with composing salacious accounts for their readers of his rumoured sexual debauchery. Caligula's dark sense of humour (following Tiberius and Augustus) is covered, but there is also a welcome and important extended discussion of the embassy of Philo of Alexandria to his court, and part one of Caligula's abuse of the Jewish community. His private life is juxtaposed in Chapter 6 with his public persona. Students of imperial media and projections of power will appreciate this section, which highlights his reputation for extravagance, cruelty and megalomania beyond Roman mores in the literary sources, but also does so in conversation with contemporary material culture. Direct evidence for Caligula's expressions of personal or familial divinity in provincial areas are brought together, including inscriptions from temples, evidence of priesthoods and abundant statue bases (pp. 149–51). The material evidence for perceptions of, and responses to, imperial imagery, coins and cults in the cities and provinces was a very important aspect of self-representation of the imperial persona, as shown by E. Strazdins (in Davenport and Malik [2024]) and Malik (2020).
Chapter 7 closes the thematic sections with Caligula's foreign exploits and treatment of Rome's neighbours: expansionist (and wholly traditional) ambitions to extend the empire in Western Europe and to the island of Britannia, as well as a complicated relationship with Jews in Rome, and around the eastern and Hellenic Empire. He demonstrated a close friendship with Herod Agrippa, but doled out abusive treatment to Jews in Alexandria, and Judaea. Chapter 8 concludes the collection with varied accounts of Caligula's assassination and gives important evidence for how far a princeps could go, and by whom and how he might be removed. The multiple parties at play and conflicting constituencies responding to the excesses of Gaius, their ‘ruler’, and deciding what was and was not acceptable, and when murder was needed, are well demonstrated by the assassination, and even more so by the ad-hoc way in which his ‘unsuitable’ disabled uncle Claudius was thrust onto the throne and supported.
Barrett and Yardley have composed a fine teaching text and a valuable resource for scholars. English translations of a wide range of sources are presented in a clear and organised manner, based on key themes and chronology; in addition to the texts and introductory paragraphs, the compilers provide a thorough commentary on these sources, with explanatory notes, word studies and references to current scholarship. Each chapter provides a starter bibliography for further reading, an excellent resource for students and teachers wishing to gain deeper insights and context. This is a commendable one-stop shop for sources on Caligula's reign by including documentary and numismatic evidence. It would have helped if there were images of the sites at which such material evidence was found. Photographs of several coins are included, but only one sketch is provided, for the Fasti of Ostia in the years 37 and 38 (p. 15). Even more images would have assisted in understanding how power was communicated visually by Caligula's ‘people’. Likewise, while the inclusion of coinage and epigraphy is a major benefit to this collection, it is still primarily a literary sourcebook, so even more coins and art historical or material examples from 37–41 ce would have bolstered the text's utility significantly, especially for scholars of imperial mass media.
Moving from the first century ce to the second and third, the third volume, Imagining the Roman Emperor. Perceptions of Rulers in the High Empire, asks: how was the princeps imagined or perceived by Romans living in an empire ruled by Augustus or one of his successors? In a revised version of his Oxford DPhil, Christoforou ranges across many virtues, vices, eras of Roman history, regions of the empire, temporal concepts and ancient texts that express perceptions of emperors and the Emperor. He discusses binaries in the perception of individual emperors, and the political and cultural ‘role’ of imperator/autokrator or sebastos. Some of his conclusions are very general, i.e. the Roman emperor symbolised different things to different people and was a ‘multifaceted’ (p. ix) man and God, human and embodied Republic, a cives and princeps. However, he also conducts a deep dive into five very useful themes or ideals of the imperial ‘image’ for writers, viewers and other Romans as expressed across time, space and (mostly) textual literary or epigraphic evidence. Any scholar interested in the representation and realities of Roman emperors and the imperial office will find something thought-provoking here.
The introduction and first chapter outline what readers will (and will not) find in this study. Christoforou's enquiry aims to reconcile some binaries in our evidence for ancient perceptions of the Roman emperor and emperors, but he is also comfortable with ascribing ‘uncertainties’ to ancient Romans. In this book he taps into Greek and Latin literature along with epigraphy and current Classics scholarship to explore five themes around how emperors and the emperorship were imagined. He searches out elite, near, far and popular perceptions expressed in texts, and less often imagery, places them in conversation with one another and asks what was politically resonant across the empire and what was written down in a wide array of texts. He agrees that Rome was politically an ‘acceptance’ system and that the Senate, People and military were the key constituencies for an emperor to acquire and maintain his (constitutionally vague but generally ‘accepted’) position at the top of the Roman res publica.
His focus on symbolic or philosophical themes, ideals or ideologies, and textual evidence, means that there is little iconography or discussion of the visual aspect of the activities, beliefs and perceptions of the imperial cult, or indeed religion of any sort, and not much about the army or military virtues either. Roman law and the ‘constitution’ are invoked and related to the themes, but the wide range of texts, locales and eras equal more focus on individual emperors such as Augustus, Vespasian or Hadrian, and less on what the majority of people held true in relation to the Emperor, his duties or his imagery of power as circulated in stone, gold or bronze.
The first theme is Justice, under which Christoforou gathers evidence for the emperor as a virtuous man displaying, deciding on and even defining iustitia and aequitas across his empire. This chapter sets the tone for the book as a whole, as a range of evidence and scholarly approaches is assembled and related to this theme, from honorific statues to the Roman ‘language of power’ in epigraphic, epistolary, historical and fictional texts. The emperor's physical image is an arbiter of justice and sometimes lends safety or asylum. However, citation of a letter of Fronto to Marcus Aurelius reminds readers not only that these images are ubiquitous, but also that they are protected by law and can be dangerous. Christoforou comments well on their range of quality, and use in law, but not their use for trials (and executions) of Christians, which will attract attention in our project. How did attitudes to imperial images, and imagery, change with trials of Christians or with the Christianisation of this imagery and trials for newly illegal practices such as blood sacrifice or ‘pagan’ religion?
Generosity, secondly, is similarly wide-ranging, with arguments for the importance of imperial collegiality and consensus-building, succession and inheritance (largely of the Domus Augusta), liberalitas and indulgentia. This chapter debates the role of imperial alimentary schemes for poor (or perhaps middle-class or even elite) Italian youths alongside the famous ‘bread and circuses’ offered in amphitheatres from Rome to Spain and Syria as part of imperial benefactions, patronage and other euergetism. The emperor was certainly associated with euergetism over centuries, though change over time, let alone the Tetrarchy or Christianity, is not a focus here.
Christoforou thirdly introduces an intriguing theme less often encountered in studies of the imperial office, the emperor as a Collector of Wonders, thaumata or mirabilia, and the emperor as a Wonder or even a Monster (teras). There are plenty of interesting examples collected here, but I am not sure that the Greek and Latin terms cited match up with one another or that the assemblage of physical, animal or human wonders at Rome was connected by most Romans with the imperial office rather than the emperor himself or another patron entirely. There is much of interest in the conception and realities of mirabilia in imperial Rome, but collecting and discussing wonders from the human, animal and natural worlds is a practice reaching back to before the Hellenistic empires and beyond Greek (or other) concepts of ‘wonders’ beyond known borders or human knowledge.
The concluding themes, Humour and Temporality, are also unexpected and, though abundant in interesting discussion, somewhat general as specific areas of perception of the imperator with continuities over time. Roman humour was absolutely a key cultural marker of the Roman empire and of all its public figures and political systems. It exerted great force against, and in the face of, much older traditions of Greek humour, not to mention Italian and other traditions. Yet a deeper dive into this process of the creation of Roman humour in the first (and even second) centuries bce could have helped to set authors as disparate as Suetonius, Phaedrus and the Historia Augusta in a more robust framework for characterising popular or elite imperial mockery and the emperors’ own displays of humour. Then comments on the emperors’ own senses of humour, especially in the historiographical tradition and the genre of Roman satire, might have come together into a clearer tradition uniting Augustus, Vespasian and Hadrian.
The final theme of Temporality also strains under the breadth of examples, since all human societies and rulers function in time, and the study of specifically Roman perceptions of time is a fertile area of current research. There are insights here into Roman thought worlds about the proper exercise of power, and the imagined place of the emperor in various past, present or future Golden (or inferior) ages, in Roman poetry, oratory and history (among other genres, but rarely the visual arts). It is hard to balance the specific, for example Virgil's poetry and Augustus’ Res gestae, with their legacies, and with perceptions of their own eras expressed by artists, authors and emperors of a century or two later.
However, the ambition of this chapter, and indeed this book as a whole, is laudable. Overall, it is also nicely written, well footnoted and beautifully edited. There is much to learn here about devotiones and the Sibylline Oracles, about the memory of imperial interactions encoded in oratorical exercises and the ways in which a wide range of Romans related to the idea of the emperor and to individual emperors in and outside of the city of Rome.
To sum up the contributions of these three volumes of different genres (collected essays, source book and monograph) to the representations of monarchic rulers from the fifth century bce to the third century ce is a challenge. Each makes an excellent contribution to the scholarship of (predominantly) ancient Greek and Roman literature, epigraphy, numismatic and other visual representations, and the ideology of the roles of the Hellenistic king and early to high Roman emperor. Each focuses on the personal virtues (or vices) of male, monarchic leaders, and how these impacted on their ability to deliver just and effective rule. These studies pave the way for our study, which is more intensely focussed on material sources and the development of mass media up to and under Christian emperors, from the fourth to fifth centuries ce. This work provides the methodological framework and historical precedent for the adaptation of earlier images and the rhetoric of monarchic rule, within the context of a new religion that imposed a newly defined set of virtues focused around delivering peace and showing mercy to the many subjects of Constantine's new empire of Greek East and Roman West combined.
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