Special Issue: Reshaping Rome: Space, Time, and Memory in the Augustan Transformation
Guest Editor: Beth Severy-Hoven
Severy, Beth. Introduction
Roman artistic works from the Augustan period begin to use the bodies of women, but also of men and children, to represent the empire as a household with Augustus as its head. Such representations manipulate developing metaphors of family loyalty and paternal control to express the transformative power of Augustus's imperial policies that made former enemies into subjects or cooperative participants in Roman society. The poetry of Ovid reveals the pervasiveness of this imagery and the range of interpretations placed upon it by a member of the elite now subject to an emperor.
Milnor, Kristina. Augustus, History, and the Landscape of the Law
One way in which Augustus both represented and attempted to effect his vision for the future of Rome was through the "social legislation" that regulated marriage and family life. This paper argues that authors such as Tacitus and Horace, who directly represent the Augustan laws, and Livy, who addresses the same issues in his reconstruction of the debate over the marriage ban in the Twelve Tables, see them as connected to ideological (re)formulations of both space and time. The metaphor of landscape, which is used repeatedly to represent the laws, is thus both an acceptance of and challenge to the terms of the new social landscape that was being drawn in Rome under Augustus.
Lesk, Alexandra L. "Caryatides probantur inter pauca operum": Pliny, Vitruvius, and the Semiotics of the Erechtheion Maidens at Rome
Copies of the maidens from the south porch of the Erechtheion on the Athenian Akropolis were employed extensively in Augustan monuments in Rome, most famously in the Forum of Augustus. This paper examines the origins of the conflation of Vitruvius's term "caryatid" and the Erechtheion maidens as well as the semiotics of their employment as part of Augustus's iconographic vocabulary of triumph. By using a contextualized diachronic approach to evidence and adopting Broucke's argument that the copies of the Erechtheion maidens found in 1952 at Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli were salvaged from the Domitianic Pantheon mentioned by Pliny as being "caryatids in a class of their own," this problematic conflation of terms can be traced back to the first century A.D.
Ramsby, Teresa R., Severy, Beth. Gender, Sex, and the Domestication of the Empire in Art of the Augustan Age
Roman artistic works from the Augustan period begin to use the bodies of women, but also of men and children, to represent the empire as a household with Augustus as its head. Such representations manipulate developing metaphors of family loyalty and paternal control to express the transformative power of Augustus's imperial policies that made former enemies into subjects or cooperative participants in Roman society. The poetry of Ovid reveals the pervasiveness of this imagery and the range of interpretations placed upon it by a member of the elite now subject to an emperor.
Orlin, Eric M. Augustan Religion and the Reshaping of Roman Memory
This paper argues that the Augustan period witnessed a dramatic reconception of Roman religion—a reconception that played a vital role in the emperor's efforts to create a unified sense of identity that included both Romans and Italians. Instead of a religion of place tied to specific historical developments, both Virgil in the Aeneid and Augustus in his rebuilding of the eighty-two temples emphasized religious practices ordained by a single authoritative figure and connected to pre-Roman Italy. The reconstruction program reshaped Roman memory as well as the physical city, because Roman temples served not only as religious sites, but also as monuments in which Roman memories and Roman history resided. This reordering of Roman topographical and chronological space thus linked Roman identity not to the history of expansionist Rome over the previous 500 years, but rather to Augustan Rome and its fuller inclusiveness of Italy.
Riggsby, Andrew M. Response
Articles available via Project Muse.
Guest Editor: Beth Severy-Hoven
Severy, Beth. Introduction
Roman artistic works from the Augustan period begin to use the bodies of women, but also of men and children, to represent the empire as a household with Augustus as its head. Such representations manipulate developing metaphors of family loyalty and paternal control to express the transformative power of Augustus's imperial policies that made former enemies into subjects or cooperative participants in Roman society. The poetry of Ovid reveals the pervasiveness of this imagery and the range of interpretations placed upon it by a member of the elite now subject to an emperor.
Milnor, Kristina. Augustus, History, and the Landscape of the Law
One way in which Augustus both represented and attempted to effect his vision for the future of Rome was through the "social legislation" that regulated marriage and family life. This paper argues that authors such as Tacitus and Horace, who directly represent the Augustan laws, and Livy, who addresses the same issues in his reconstruction of the debate over the marriage ban in the Twelve Tables, see them as connected to ideological (re)formulations of both space and time. The metaphor of landscape, which is used repeatedly to represent the laws, is thus both an acceptance of and challenge to the terms of the new social landscape that was being drawn in Rome under Augustus.
Lesk, Alexandra L. "Caryatides probantur inter pauca operum": Pliny, Vitruvius, and the Semiotics of the Erechtheion Maidens at Rome
Copies of the maidens from the south porch of the Erechtheion on the Athenian Akropolis were employed extensively in Augustan monuments in Rome, most famously in the Forum of Augustus. This paper examines the origins of the conflation of Vitruvius's term "caryatid" and the Erechtheion maidens as well as the semiotics of their employment as part of Augustus's iconographic vocabulary of triumph. By using a contextualized diachronic approach to evidence and adopting Broucke's argument that the copies of the Erechtheion maidens found in 1952 at Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli were salvaged from the Domitianic Pantheon mentioned by Pliny as being "caryatids in a class of their own," this problematic conflation of terms can be traced back to the first century A.D.
Ramsby, Teresa R., Severy, Beth. Gender, Sex, and the Domestication of the Empire in Art of the Augustan Age
Roman artistic works from the Augustan period begin to use the bodies of women, but also of men and children, to represent the empire as a household with Augustus as its head. Such representations manipulate developing metaphors of family loyalty and paternal control to express the transformative power of Augustus's imperial policies that made former enemies into subjects or cooperative participants in Roman society. The poetry of Ovid reveals the pervasiveness of this imagery and the range of interpretations placed upon it by a member of the elite now subject to an emperor.
Orlin, Eric M. Augustan Religion and the Reshaping of Roman Memory
This paper argues that the Augustan period witnessed a dramatic reconception of Roman religion—a reconception that played a vital role in the emperor's efforts to create a unified sense of identity that included both Romans and Italians. Instead of a religion of place tied to specific historical developments, both Virgil in the Aeneid and Augustus in his rebuilding of the eighty-two temples emphasized religious practices ordained by a single authoritative figure and connected to pre-Roman Italy. The reconstruction program reshaped Roman memory as well as the physical city, because Roman temples served not only as religious sites, but also as monuments in which Roman memories and Roman history resided. This reordering of Roman topographical and chronological space thus linked Roman identity not to the history of expansionist Rome over the previous 500 years, but rather to Augustan Rome and its fuller inclusiveness of Italy.
Riggsby, Andrew M. Response
Articles available via Project Muse.