Senatorial Monuments: a new approach to the social dynamics of ideology formation in the Roman empire

罗马帝国产生了一系列充满活力和持久的图像，这些图像与帝国权力的意识形态主张有关，从硬币上的皇帝肖像到罗马本身的高耸寺庙，这些肖像流传到已知世界的每个角落。他们宣扬皇帝的荣耀：他的个人美德，他的王国的大小和财富，以及他的军队的可怕力量。然而，罗马帝国权力的形象和意识形态并不是由皇帝通过命令从上面强加的，而是在一个合作的、多层次的过程中演变而来的，这为罗马社会中的各种个人和团体留下了维护他们的代理权甚至抵抗的空间。通过聚集来自世界各地的专家，他们在古典文学的各个领域工作，讨论帝国意识形态是如何发展和运作的，该项目将开发新的方法和途径，而不是假设所有的帝国意识形态都是自上而下的宣传。其结果将是一个意识形态形成的模式，考虑到不同的社会群体如何描绘皇帝和皇权，创造和传播自己的身份和他们在帝国制度中的地位的概念，并对社会规模上的其他人传播的思想和形象作出反应。该项目将产生两个主要成果：一本载有应邀专家所作贡献的书，其中将概述新的模式，另一本扩大的案例研究，通过审查一个特定群体的贡献来检验新的模式。罗马的一些最具标志性的古迹仍然矗立在城市中，从Ara Pacis Augustae（Augustan和平祭坛）到图拉真圆柱到君士坦丁拱门，都与各个皇帝的名字有着不可磨灭的联系。但这三座纪念碑和其他许多类似的纪念碑并不是由以它们的名字纪念的皇帝建造的，而是由罗马元老院为纪念皇帝而建造的--学者们经常顺便注意到这一事实，但通常被认为是微不足道的。我的项目涵盖了从奥古斯都到君士坦丁大约300年的时间，建议对这些著名的古迹进行全面的重新评估。这将是第一个认真对待这一事实的人，他们是由参议院委托和资助的，并作为参议院向皇帝和更广泛的民众发出的信息。这些纪念碑是帝国权力如何被理解的重要证据，每一个都对帝国形象和意识形态做出了自己的贡献。和平祭坛上和平富足的意象是奥古斯都黄金时代意识形态的基石，在私人纪念碑中被广泛模仿;君士坦丁拱门上的铭文可能记录了基督教神第一次融入帝国权力的官方语言的时刻。元老院，而不是皇帝，控制着这些塑造形象和形成意识形态的关键时刻。重新审视罗马现存的元老院遗迹，将有助于我们更好地理解遗迹本身、帝国元老院及其与皇帝的关系，以及罗马帝国下的形象塑造和意识形态形成过程。

The Roman empire produced a vibrant and enduring set of images linked to ideological claims about imperial power, from the portraits of emperors on coins which reached every corner of the known world to the towering temples of Rome itself. They proclaimed the glory of the emperor: his personal virtues, the size and wealth of his realm, and the fearsome might of his armies. Yet the imagery and ideology of Roman imperial power was not imposed by the emperor by diktat from above, but evolved in a collaborative, multi-level process which left room for various individuals and groups within Roman society to assert their agency and even resistance. By gathering experts from around the world who work in all areas of Classics to debate how imperial ideology developed and functioned, the project will develop new methods and approaches which do not assume that all imperial ideology is top-down propaganda. The result will be a model of ideology formation which takes into account how different social groups portrayed the emperor and imperial power, created and propagated their own identities and conceptions of their place in the imperial system, and reacted to ideas and images disseminated by others both above and below them in the social scale. The project will produce two main results: a volume with contributions by the invited experts which will outline the new model, and an extended case study which will put it to the test by examining one particular group's contribution. Some of the most iconic monuments which still stand in the city of Rome, from the Ara Pacis Augustae (Altar of Augustan Peace) to Trajan's Column to the Arch of Constantine, are indelibly linked with the names of individual emperors. But these three monuments and many others like them were not built by the emperors whom their names memorialize, but by the Roman Senate in the emperors' honour - a fact often noted in passing by scholars but usually then dismissed as insignificant. My project, which covers a period of some 300 years from Augustus to Constantine, proposes to offer a complete re-evaluation of these well-known monuments. It will be the first to take seriously the fact that they were commissioned and funded by the Senate, and acted as messages from the Senate to both the emperor and the wider population. The monuments are important evidence for how imperial power was understood and each makes its own contribution to imperial imagery and ideology. The imagery of peaceful abundance on the Ara Pacis was a cornerstone of Augustus' Golden Age ideology and was widely imitated in private monuments; the inscription giving credit to an unspecified deity on the Arch of Constantine may document the moment when the Christian god was first integrated into the official language of imperial power. The Senate, not the emperor, controlled these pivotal moments of image-making and ideology formation. A reevaluation of Rome's surviving senatorial monuments will enhance our understanding of the monuments themselves, the imperial Senate and its relationship with the emperor, and the processes involved in image-making and ideology formation under the Roman empire.