Roman history

Abstract

The figure of the Roman emperor – ubiquitous yet ever-elusive – remains the flame to which Roman historians are ever drawn. And Fergus Millar's The Emperor in the Roman World remains the yardstick against which all subsequent efforts are judged, and with which they are all inevitably in dialogue. That is true too of Caesar Rules, the major new offering from Olivier Hekster, a one-time doctoral student of Millar's, and now one of the leading contenders for his crown. Hekster's core interest is what the emperor was; in particular, how this institution could survive and adapt to changing circumstances despite the fact that formally it did not exist, certainly was not defined, and practically existed in a society antithetical on principle to both monarchy and change. Hekster finds the key for this long-worried lock in ‘the presentation and perception of power’ (10), and in particular the expectations – from all sides, and at all times – that both consolidated and constrained emperors’ authority. To demonstrate this he conceives a largely unprecedented ambition in this context: to consider source material in all media from the late Republic to the reign of Justinian.