Urban Spatiality, Honorific Statuary, and the Celebration of Aristocratic Power in the Late Roman Empire
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2025 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | ANTICHTHON |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| web | https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antichthon/article/urban-spatiality-honorific-statuary-and-the-celebration-of-aristocratic-power-in-the-late-roman-empire/9AE6924423064AB6F8CB5FA2C3F33BE9 |
| Doi | https://doi.org/10.1017/ann.2025.10019 |
| Keywords | epigraphy; Roman statues; late antiquity; late Roman Empire; senatorial aristocracy; spatial turn; honorific monuments |
| Description | This article explores literary records of the fourth-century senatorial dedications that illustrate the perception of inscribed monuments in variegated spatial contexts. It offers considerations about literary reflections of material conditions in which late antique statues were set, staged, and perceived, their interaction with urban and domestic contexts, accessibility, and ways in which their mise-en-sc & egrave;ne had an impact on an onlooker. Late antique and middle Byzantine patrographic attestations highlight the pleasure experienced by viewing inscribed monuments in city fora. I argue that literary accounts of statue and epigraphic representations of the senatorial aristocracy mediate the phenomenon of the expansion of new, spatially mobile elites. I examine literary descriptions of (1) statuary set up for senatorial office-holders; (2) dedications for emperors and other recipients awarded by senatorial officials; (3) statue monuments erected by senates. I conclude with an elaboration on what different media genres, as mediating structures by which aristocracy and rulers articulated their interaction, reveal about members of the senatorial order fashioning their relationship with the imperial court and the broader public. The elusive traces in late antique and medieval literary reports furnish fragments of historical evidence of how the memory of individual senators was constructed, reshaped, and perceived. |