In the Introduction, I referenced a coin minted under the emperor Titus (Fig. E.1). On one side appeared the figure of the emperor sitting amid a heap of weapons, a reference to his roles in the Jewish War, the capture of Jerusalem, and the construction of the building depicted on the coin’s opposite side, the Flavian Amphitheater. The coin adopts an unusual perspective, showing the Colosseum’s façade while also permitting a glimpse into the building. We spy the columns tracing the uppermost reaches of the interior and a few heads peeping out between them. Lower down two more rings of spectators are visible, the lower one pierced by an entrance and split into wedges by staircases. When we last examined the coin, we remarked about how only one individual appeared – the emperor – while everyone else was merely an undifferentiated head.

This chapter imagines Flavia’s experience of visiting Rome’s principal sanctuary of Isis, the Iseum Campense. It weighs the impact of the space’s architecture, artwork, and rituals and the community that Flavia found there.

This chapter traces the travels of Flavius’ sculpture from Rome, via Paris and New York, to Indianapolis. The artwork’s movements reflect changing historical tides, and also took on different meanings as it passed through each context and historical moment.

As part of an “object biography” of Flavius’ sculpture, this chapter traces reactions to its discovery and subsequent exhibition in the Palazzo Barberini, which raises issues related to the collecting of ancient art in Early Modern Rome and the sculpture’s role in presenting the Barberini family and its history to visitors to the palace.

This chapter takes stock of Flavius’ worldview as presented by his funerary ensemble, noting especially the close nexus of dining, death, and philosophy. Since Flavius’ outlook contrasts with Flavia’s potential beliefs as an adherent of Isis, the chapter assesses the phenomenon of “mixed marriages” in the Roman world.

This chapter reconstructs Flavius Agricola’s life and analyzes his self-presentation across a variety of different lines: the poetic form and references within his verse epitaph, his representation as a reclining diner, the apparent disjuncture between his youthful physique and older face, and the vessel he cradles in his hand.

This chapter considers the experience of visitors to Flavius’ tomb after his death, particularly as they drank alongside Flavius while he was portrayed doing the same.

Of the fifteen lines of Flavius Agricola’s epitaph, seven grant a subbiography of his wife of thirty years, Flavia Primitiva, and her son, Aurelius Primitivus. This chapter considers Flavia’s characterization, particularly as a chaste worshipper of the Egyptian goddess Isis, and weighs the potential appeal of this cult.

Imperial gardens in ancient Rome and China were as much a physical arrangement of place as they were discursive realms, evoking imagination and invective alike. Starting from semantic observations on ancient Latin and Chinese terminologies, Wentian Fu explores the divergent contexts and concepts of imperial gardens in each culture. The first section traces the respective origins: while inextricably intertwined with ideas of visibility, citizenship, and republican traditions in Rome, the chapter argues for a conspicuous absence of those vectors in China prior to Western Han traditions. The analysis of odes from the Book of Songs reveals, on the contrary, close connections with the power-invested charge of palatial structures. In the second section, the author showcases how Roman aristocratic gardens evolved over time from aristocratic domains into imperial properties, dynamically growing in size and scope. The gardens in Nero’s Golden House, which are given exemplary consideration, both resembled and reversed the order of human spheres and nature. In doing so, they paralleled Shanglin Park and the Jianzhang Palace outside of Chang’an: the chapter explains how those sites were critical to the emperor’s pursuit of immortality. In the concluding section, Fu fully capitalizes on his findings, immersing the argument in the ambiguities of imperial gardens both as seductive spaces of transgression, indulgence, and debauchery, and as role model instantiations of good governance.