Statues in the Empire

Abstract

Abstract There is hardly any need to justify this study’s focus on the city of Rome, for the capital of the Empire was in so many respects a social and cultural reference point, the centre of power (in Bianchi Bandinelli’s phrase) and the place with which many of our literary sources at least are frequently preoccupied, whether explicitly or not. Yet in certain respects these terms are problematic. To call Rome the ‘focus’ is to suggest that it was surrounded by an expansive Imperial society that was essentially similar even if it receives less detailed scrutiny both here and in extant ancient writings. At the same time, to call the city a centre of power or influence is perhaps to imply that Roman society was not homogeneous and that the veneer of Roman Imperial culture concealed fissures—that there was something other than metropolitan culture upon which the capital’s ‘inXuence’ might be detected.