Corpus imperii: verbal and visual figurations of the Roman ‘body politic’

Abstract

This article examines the political metaphor of the body in ancient Roman words and images. The verbal metaphor of the ‘body of state’ (corpus rei publicae) gained particular rhetorical currency in the late Roman Republic; likewise, following Augustus’ rise to power in the later first century bc, related ideas about the corpus imperii (‘body of empire’) played a critical role in legitimising a system of effective one-man imperial rule. But how did this discursive verbal figure relate to the material bodies of Roman visual culture? The recourse to the body as political metaphor, it is argued, revolutionised the workings of Roman figurative imagery; by extension, the search for appropriate visual forms in which to render Augustus’ own body fleshed out discursive political ideas concerning the Augustan figurative corpus imperii. To understand how the figure of the body was rendered into political metaphor in Late Republican/ Early Imperial Rome, no less than how that political metaphor was turned back into iconic figurative form, therefore requires working across visual and verbal categories. No less importantly, it means tackling larger questions about how words and images construct ideas about the body in at once related and different ways.