Abstract
The Roman Empire belongs to the most successful states in west European history. At its peak, it covered territory from southern Scotland to northern Mesopotamia; it also managed to keep together this area and its heterogeneous population without many notable rebellions for about five hundred years (ca 31 BC - AD 476). As modern scholarship has demonstrated, activities and representations of Roman emperors as focal points for Roman identity - i.e. the awareness of belonging to the empire, throughout Italy and the provinces - were crucial for holding together this empire. As such, Roman emperors and their representation are central topics of research into the Roman world. This project offers a radical new approach to the study of imperial representation by focusing on the development of modes in which emperors presented themselves and were presented through specific media over a long stretch of time. It will analyse the production and reception of emperors' images in relation to each other. Most current scholarly work looks at imperial representation within the reigns of individual emperors combining different types of sources to trace coherent frameworks. The proposed approach is to trace how one notion, that of lineage, developed and was made visible through central and provincial coinage, official proclamations, historical writing, and imperial artwork, from the reigns of the first emperor Augustus (31 BC - 14 AD) up to Constantine (AD 306 - 337). Lineage was central to Roman thinking and used by many emperors to legitimate their position. Proper ancestry supplied status. The place of lineage in imperial self-representation, however, shifted during the period under discussion. It can, furthermore, be traced verbally and iconographically, on different types of sources. Lineage is an important aspect of imperial representation which is ideally suited to be traced over a longer period of time. The length of the period in which developments are traced is unusual. More innovative even is the choice to trace developments within individual media. This makes it, firstly, possible to consider and separate the role and interests of 'senders' and 'receivers' of imperial images. Images on imperial coinage show preferences from the centre, whereas those on local coinage show what were perceived to be central preferences. Secondly, messages may have differentiated from one medium to another. By studying the different types of 'media' alongside one another, the project allows for a comparison of the way ancestry was presented in imperial representation over time. It is possible that notions of ancestry in coinage developed differently from the way imperial ancestry was portrayed over time in imperial artwork, or official proclamations. These developments may have been influenced by the medium through which they were transmitted. If so, this will have limited autonomy of the centre to 'produce' the image of individual emperors. The research may also make visible simultaneous changes of the way imperial ancestry was presented in different types of sources, demonstrating central involvement and addressing different audiences. This new approach thus makes visible the internal ideological 'discourse' of the main instruments through which imperial representation is researched. The hypothesis, finally, is that imperial representation was constructed in a dialogue between producers and receivers; the image of emperors was made with an audience in mind, and could change in reaction to the reception by that very audience.