Senators process on the Ara Pacis

Many major Roman monuments, from the Ara Pacis to the Arch of Constantine, were commissioned and built not by the emperor, but by the senate. How does it affect how we interpret these commissions if we take them seriously as senatorial as well as imperial monuments? This lecture will look closely at imagery associated with the Roman senate, including depictions of senators themselves and the Genius Senatus, and explore how the Senate became a prominent patron of images in the city of Rome. 

Amy Russell is a Roman historian whose research interests include the political history and material culture of the Republic and early Empire. She was educated in Oxford and Berkeley and has lived and worked in Italy, the USA, and the UK. Her recent monograph, winner of the 2017 C.J. Goodwin Award of Merit, investigates the concept of public space and the construction and operation of the public/private divide in the Republican city of Rome. Her current project, funded by a two-year AHRC research grant, tackles the building activity of the imperial Senate and the contributions of multiple groups to the creation of imperial imagery and ideology. She also works on Republican political history, with ongoing interests in the tribunate of the plebs and the role of the populus; and the creation and use of imperial visual imagery at multiple social levels. 

Scheduled

ART 1.120