The introduction examines the pre-history of the elegiac ideal of a life of love. Although Latin love elegy and tender depictions of lovers in Roman wall painting may be described as Augustan phenomena, their roots lay in the ethical and aesthetic transformations that marked the Republican era. From the construction of luxury villas along the Italian coast to the emergence of a more personal style of poetry, we see in this period a new valuation of private life and a growing concern with individual experience among Rome’s aristocracy. Catullus’ poems to Lesbia represent the apogee of this turn toward the intimate and the private. In his verses we see for the first time the fusion of domus (home) and amor (erotic passion) – concepts long seen as mutually exclusive. Catullus’ domestication of erotic passion thus prefigures the elegists’ rejection of Augustan morality and their own construction of an alternative worldview. The poets’ witty appropriation of familial and marital terms also points to the codification of amatory experience in Roman literature and, later, in art. In both images and texts, erotic tenderness manifests itself through a series of metonymies that render love an experience that can be recognized, learned, remembered, and recounted.

This paper examines the Gens Augusta altar from Carthage dedicated by P. Perelius Hedulus, which is often said to replicate an image panel from the Ara Pacis, in order to understand the mechanisms by which imperial images were reproduced across the empire. Where conventional models have focused simply on image correspondence, I trace the movement of artists, architectural materials, religious concepts, and ideological knowledge in order to map out the diverse and distributed networks by which images circulated in the Roman empire. In so doing, the paper upends our traditional models that see Rome as a source of images that are then reproduced on the imperial periphery. Rather than a straightforward example of replication, I argue that the altar had no direct relationship to a particular Roman model, contending instead that the images on this altar were designed in Carthage and reflect the interplay between local social dynamics and imperial ideology.

A small group of altars to the Lares Augusti, set up by the vicomagistri of Rome’s urban neighbourhoods in the Augustan period, provides examples of imperial imagery produced by patrons of low social status. Their decoration shows the early effects of new Augustan motifs, but they are not merely examples of imagery trickling down from an original, central prototype. The patrons of these altars adapted and even invented images to express their relationship with the princeps for a local audience, and for viewers the altars were themselves sources of imagery, no less ‘official’ than any other source.

Imperial images have been at the heart of historical debates on Roman history for several decades. This paper reflects on the historiographical context in which these debates took place, focusing on two debates in classical studies: the discussion about ‘propaganda’, which highlights the transmission of ideology (how and why imagery was communicated), and the debate about agency (who was communicating with whom). In many ways, this volume, with its emphasis on the social dynamics of imagery, places itself in that debate. Yet, the two larger historiographical debates should themselves be contextualised, as they were heavily influenced by contemporary politics and by the introduction of two major concepts in the social sciences: ‘framing’ and ‘agenda setting’. Political and academic contexts have consistently influenced the study of Roman imperial images. It may be useful to make the importance of ‘contexts’ – geographical and chronological – more explicit. An imperial image is always an image, but only in certain contexts will it have functioned as an imperial image. It may be worthwhile to focus less on what an image is and more on how and when images function in certain ways.

This chapter argues that client kings played a significant, even leading role in disseminating the images associated with the princeps and the imperium Romanum at the outskirts of the empire. Dependent rulers faced a unique challenge, as they had to pay homage to the emperor as the superior authority while maintaining and communicating their own royal prestige and local legitimacy. In the context of these intricate dynamics, client kings developed a mode of representation that reflected their authority as well as the superiority of the emperor. To this end, they adopted and adapted models from the centre of the empire for their own purposes, turning modes of imperial representation into a shared idiom of power. However, the hierarchy between emperor and dependent ruler always remained clear and was reinforced through the imperial cult. Instead of undercutting the local legitimacy of client kings, the reverence of an even higher authority, elevated beyond mortality, was used to strengthen the position of dependent rulers whose power relied on the centre’s approval.

This chapter focuses on occupational associations from Rome, Ostia, and other great harbours of the Roman west during the second and the early third century, and explores how these groups, rooted in the middling social categories, used, reacted to, and even created imperial imagery and ideology. Members of these communities met in meeting places where imperial imagery was omnipresent. Imperial imagines were a part of the decorative schemes of places where feasts and rituals celebrated the majesty of the domus Augusta. These objects fostered the politicisation of lower classes, spreading ideological conceptions of the central power and, at the same time, expressed adherence to the imperium. Associations expressed deference towards imperial power with several goals in mind. One part of their motivation was not political or ideological, but social. They aimed to appear to be honourable communities, respected because of their official recognition and their integration into civic life. The wealthiest members encouraged their peers to express loyalty towards imperial power, because political loyalism belonged to a specific habitus expected of candidates for social and civic climbing.

This piece explores what the representation of the emperor on lead tokens can reveal about the dynamics of imperial ideology formation. In particular, I explore what effect mass (re)production had on the imperial image in the Roman world. Although representations of the emperor on large media and in important locations were often tightly controlled, on small media that were mass-produced, the image of the emperor escaped the control of the imperial authorities. Paradoxically, this meant that the imperial image increased in power, gathering innumerable associations and meanings as a ‘shared’ image. Allowing the inhabitants of the Roman Empire to be co-creators of imperial ideology meant that ultimately a more personalised, and thus more powerful, connection to the emperor was generated.

The introductory chapter explores the methodology of approaching imperial imagery, from definitions and categorisations to modes of analysis. Defining imperial imagery as imagery that relates to imperial power, the authors reject universal models that purport to encompass all aspects of the production and use of such images in favour of context-based approaches which focus on the ways in which they became embedded in local image systems. The authors single out social dynamics, a term borrowed from economics, sociology, and psychology indicating how large-scale phenomena are the sum of many individual interactions. Social dynamics gives a way to understand how and why imperial imagery was created and used in Roman society at all levels. Imperial imagery had roles to play beyond the emperor’s own sphere, and he was often neither its author nor its audience; instead, individuals used imperial images to communicate with their immediate neighbours, geographically and socially. Multiple users and viewers across the spatial and social spectrums of the empire (and beyond) brought their own experiences to imperial images, and to understand them, we must analyse them in their local contexts.

Ovid’s Epistulae ex Ponto 2.8 commemorates the exiled poet’s receipt of a gift of silver images of the Caesars from Rome. This paper argues, with reference to Augustan coinage and Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism, that the poem deconstructs Romans’ self-subjugation to imperial iconography and highlights their role in vesting it with power. Through comic deployment of the pathetic fallacy via a naïve narrative persona, Ovid shows how, from a provincial perspective, the emperor's numen might really appear to reside in his image, placing the emperor literally in his subjects’ hands. Pont. 2.8 therefore comments more generally on the interpretive possibilities, social practices, and psychology surrounding Roman imperial images, locating their power in plural, subjective, democratic acts of creative consumption.

The practice in provincial towns of raising statues to emperors is often interpreted as a mode of communication between emperors and subjects, whether as top-down distribution of imperial ideology or as from-below declarations of loyalty to the regime. This chapter explores ways in which imperial statues communicated vertically, on the initiative of locals and with local aims. Using inscribed statue bases from Roman North Africa, it describes how imperial honorific monuments were exploited for the career purposes of local elites, and accompanied significant advancements by both individuals and communities. Imperial monuments and priesthoods became indispensable tokens of local standing, displaying and confirming the local powers that be. They were consequently much desired, and access to them could be opened or closed as it suited the aims of the imperial administration. Both locals and emperors could thus exploit the imperial image – the one for their potency, the other for how demand for them fuelled local peer-to-peer competition – but without communicating directly through them.

This chapter examines monuments and objects depicting the Roman emperor as a violent agent of conquest which were produced in the eastern provinces during the first and second centuries CE. Imagery of the emperor subjugating and enslaving peoples and provinces could be found on large public buildings, such as the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias, as well as on statues, coins, and terracotta votives. The creators and patrons of these imperial representations were influenced both by local (Greek, Egyptian) and by Roman concepts of rulership and artistic traditions. This desire to depict the violent treatment of foreign peoples by Roman emperors demonstrates that eastern patrons and artists sought to identify themselves with the civilised world of Rome, rather than with the subjugated barbarian ‘other’. The Roman emperor was thus envisioned as a protector of his people, and a guarantor of their safety and security. But it is probable that these images also carried a more sinister message, reminding the emperor’s subjects that he could punish them as well.