The Poetics of Power: Latin Poetic Responses to Early Imperial Iconography by Nandini B. Pandey

The University of Adelaide (founded 1874) is a third oldest university in Australia. It has 23 collections that represent the wide range of its academic research across the arts and the sciences. A central challenge in utilizing these collections is the absence of a comprehensively representative museum. We have developed awareness of the university’s collections through strategic public programs of focused exhibitions, discussion forums and partnership events in a variety of locations. From 2004, the first year of Art & Heritage Collections operations, this program has enhanced key university activities while proving to be of significant interest to the general public. Our core audience at the outset was principally staff with an interest in culture. Students have been harder to entice, but we now attract a growing number – mostly higher degree candidates. The university community has thus provided an engaged audience for events. Further, university staff have come forward as volunteers within Art & Heritage Collections programs, their knowledge of the university proving to be a particular asset. The cycle of staff / audience member / volunteer has proved to be a particularly productive if unexpected aspect of our activities, significantly complementing our wider community outreach. Introduction Founded in 1874 – the third oldest university in Australia – the University of Adelaide has a significant reputation to uphold. The colony of South Australia was founded according to Enlightenment principles and in consonance with this the university has tended to pursue a socially progressive agenda, including for example, the awarding of degrees to women (from 1880) and more latterly reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. An important thread of concern throughout the university’s history has been the fostering of connections between the university and the wider community. This legacy underpins the establishment of the Art & Heritage Collections branch at the university. Established in 2004, with approximately 25 years gap since the previous collection manager was (briefly) employed, yawning gaps were obvious in terms of both collection management practice and public profile. A key challenge is that the university holds some 23 specialized collections but has no central museum, and that even those few collections housed in a museum-like space, are not resourced to present themselves to the broader public as a museum. Leaving 23 collections out on the limb is a significant deficit in marketing to any community. The beginnings The University of Adelaide had no profile to speak of on the collections front in 2004. This was a dilemma for our area as it meant there had been no audience for art and cultural events from within the university, and without a focus of a museum style space, cultural/collection activities had no regularly identifiable location. Art & Heritage Collections devised a cultural program which initially was principally supported only by internal audience – the staff. This internal audience was gathered through personal networks as

Article Nandini B. Pandey, The Poetics of Power in Augustan Rome. Latin Poetic Responses to Early Imperial Iconography, Cambridge (Cambridge University Press) 2018, XIII, 312 S., ISBN 978-1-108-42265-9 (geb.), £ 75,– was published on November 30, 2021 in the journal Klio (volume 103, issue 2).

The Imperial Palaces on the Palatine Hill: Architecture as a Reflection of Social Practices and Imperial Authority

Erratum to: “Receptor chemistry towards the third millennium”: [Farmaco 55 (2000) 69–75

Research on the remains of the monumental city center of Aphrodisias has been ongoing for over a century. After an Italian mission began here in 1937,1 work was intensified from 1961 under the direction of K. T. Erim of New York University and has continued since 1990 under R. R. R. Smith.2 While many of the projects have yielded results for the High Imperial, late-antique and Byzantine periods, our knowledge of the Late Hellenistic and Early Imperial monuments outside the temple area remains scant. The layout of urban spaces such as the Agora or the “South Pool Complex” is owed to the Early Imperial period and mostly saw only minor changes.3 But while the general urban plan persisted, the Late Hellenistic and Early Imperial buildings were often replaced or remodelled as the urban space was transformed. This is particularly true for the area north of the Agora and south of the Temple of Aphrodite (fig. 1). This paper intends to re-assess our evidence for the function of this space in the Early Imperial period.

Phaedrus wrote two fables featuring Roman emperors. In Fable 2.5 we find Emperor Tiberius giving a busybody his deserved come-uppance, and in Fable 3.10 Augustus miraculously solves a murder-suicide case. Yet couched among so many of Phaedrus’ fables that criticize authority figures, these positive portrayals of the emperors come as a surprise to the reader and present a significant problem of interpretation. In exploring the different possible readings of the two poems, this paper follows Phaedrus through a complex interpretive maze and shows how the fabulist’s own self-portrayal intersects with and colors his portrayal of the first two Roman emperors.

This paper focuses on the interaction of Roman moral discourse and autonomous female voices in the Argonautica and Ovid's Heroides. It argues that Valerius' heroines use the moral language of the Heroides to reflect on the function of traditional language. By assigning culturally encoded roles to themselves and one another, these heroines present the audience with alternative versions of their stories that undermine the very terms they employ: they thus enact the problems inherent in using the language of the past to interpret the present. The cultural vocabulary that authorizes their voices to an internal audience presents a serious threat to the community, when coming from the mouths of marginalized characters. In illustrating the slippage between the roles of wife, witch, heroine and whore, Valerius invites his audience to consider the function of tradition, both social and literary, as a lens through which to understand the present.

Helena was born in humble circumstances likely in Drepanum c. 248/9. In the early 270s she met the future Constantius I (Chlorus). Out of the relationship Constantine (the future emperor, ‘the Great’) was born c. 272/3. When Constantine became emperor in 306, she may have come to live at the imperial court in Trier. After 312 she lived in Rome at the Palatium Sessorianum. In Rome she embodied imperial authority and acted as Constantine’s delegate. In 317 she received the honorary title of nobilissima femina, and in 324 the title of Augusta. After the celebration of Constantine’s Vicennalia in Rome in 326, she went on a tour through the eastern provinces of the empire. Based on Eusebius’s account, her journey has often been interpreted as a pilgrimage. More likely, it was a diplomatic and political mission to gain the support of the Constantinian regime. She died in 328/9 and was buried in Rome in the mausoleum next to Ss. Marcellino e Pietri at the Via Labicana. Helena acquired fame by an act for which she was not responsible: the discovery of the True Cross. The supposed Cross was found in Jerusalem during Constantine’s reign c. 330, but its discovery was only attributed to Helena at the end of the 4th century. The legend of Helena’s discovery of the Cross spread rapidly in various versions. It is through this myth that Helena remained known and became a role model for later Byzantine and western medieval empresses and queens.

The article examines the intersection of social hierarchy, captivity, and divine symbolism through the legend of Emperor Marcian (r. 450–457) as narrated by Procopius of Caesarea (6th c), Evagrius Svholasticus (6th c.), and Theophanes the Confessor (8th-9th c.). While generally, the social status of prisoners of war in Byzantium and among its adversaries largely determined their treatment and future fate, the case of Marcian represents a paradox. According to the narrative, the future emperor was captured as a low-ranking soldier by the Vandal king Gaiseric, but spared after a prophetic omen foretelling his rise to the throne: as an eagle shaded him from the sun. The study argues that this legend should be understood as a Byzantine tradition aimed at legitimizing Marcian’s unexpected rise to power following the death of Theodosius II in 450 CE through divine signs. In particular, the eagle signifies a protective and providential intervention, marking Marcian as divinely chosen for imperial authority. Captivity, in this context, functions as a ritual of divine selection and salvation, echoing the biblical motif of the righteous sufferer whose temporary imprisonment becomes a sign of divine election and future glorification, as in the cases of Joseph in Egypt or Daniel in Babylon.

The series of Camerino Symposia present the most recent knowledge and discoveries in the growing field of drug-receptor interactions and the design and mechanisms of drug action. Lead discovery, G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) and polypharmacology were the general subjects covered in this Tripartite European Meeting in Medicinal Chemistry chaired by Mario Giannella (University of Camerino, Italy). Specifically, the meeting focused on the selection criteria and application of computational methods and stem cell technology in/to lead discovery, as well as providing an update on targeting GPCRs. In addition, the importance of polypharmacology in drug discovery for many GPCRs was widely highlighted. Approximately 110 participants in an international audience composed principally of chemists, biochemists and pharmacologists spent the 5 days of the conference in the eye-catching medieval setting of the University of Camerino and enjoyed both the scientific and cultural programs.

Staging the Silk Road Journey Abroad: The Case of Dunhuang Performative Arts

This chapter looks into the formation of Constantinople after emperor Constantine rededicated the city of Byzantion to himself and the Fortune of Rome. It details how Constantinople was created between 324 and 330 through a series of arcane Roman rites. Moreover, Christian writers labeled Constantine as "the Great" while becoming a paragon of imperial rule for future emperors. The chapter then references Roman history, wherein mobility and inclusiveness were values embedded in the earliest layers of Rome's legend. It notes the Roman empire achieved a level of homogeneity after the Patriarchate was ended by the imperial authorities by the fourth century.

It has long been proven that some rulers of the Hellenistic, Late Roman Republic and early Imperial period used the cult of Dionysus to legitimise their political authority. The research to date focuses on the most explicit examples, usually related either to the title Neos Dionysos used as a means of self-identification (e.g. Mark Antony, Ptolemy XII, Mithridates VI), or to the idea of associating the imperial family (domus divina) with the figure of Dionysus (the Severan dynasty). This chapter aims to draw attention to three poorly investigated cases in which the figure of Dionysus was used to legitimise the imperial authority: Caligula, Domitian and Hadrian. The chapter proceeds to examine the idea of the rulers’ self-identification with the figure of Dionysus and debates some Dionysiac aspects of imperial religious policy between the time of the Late Roman Republic and the period of the Nerva-Antonine Dynasty.

El objetivo de este documento, es presentar resultados de un estudio en curso, comenzando con el análisis de la cortina externa en ladrillos de los muros Aurelianos. Como metodología de estudio, las capas de ladrillos fueron inspeccionadas a través de muestras de sus superficies, seleccionando partes de 1x1m2 dibujados en CAD, utilizando fotos sin distorsión. Dichas muestras, fueron medidas en detalle, para generar análisis de estadísticas cuantitativas de los elementos constituyentes de éstas cortinas, para obtener standars, que pueden describir sus características. En esta primera fase, tratamos de comparar algunas de los más importantes fabricantes de ladrillos imperiales, cada una con características especificas. El muestrario ha cubierto extensivamente los muros aurelianos, concentrándose en los periodos de Aureliano y Honorio. Luego, fueron estudiadas paredes de ladrillos de edificios de época neroniana, frente al valle del Coliseo; subestructuras de las termas de Trajano; sectores de la Domus Tiberiana, en dirección a la falda norte del Palatino.

This study aims to evaluate the impact of the Ethnographic Museums and Itorero ry’Igihugu on Rwanda’s international standing, guided by Soft Power Theory and Cultural Exchange Theory. Specifically, it examines how these institutions act as conduits for cultural diplomacy and project Rwanda’s unique narrative both locally and globally. Additionally, the study explores their role in reinforcing Rwanda’s cultural identity and assesses their impact on international relations, shaping Rwanda’s image abroad and supporting its diplomatic endeavors. The research employed a qualitative case study approach, focusing on qualitative data. The overall target population consisted of museum personnel, government officials, local community members, and visitors. Data were collected from a sample of 60 participants, including museum personnel and visitors (12), government officials in charge of cultural affairs (8), and local community members (40). Snowball and convenience sampling techniques were utilized to ensure representation from key groups involved in Rwanda’s cultural and diplomatic sectors. Data collection methods included semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders, participant observations at museum exhibits and Itorero ry’Igihugu ceremonies, and document analysis of museum records and official publications. Data were analyzed using a combination of thematic analysis for qualitative data and descriptive statistics for quantitative data to identify patterns and trends in the findings. Key findings indicate that the Ethnographic Museums and Itorero ry’Igihugu significantly contribute to cultural diplomacy by fostering a positive national identity and enhancing Rwanda’s visibility on the global stage. These institutions serve as platforms for intercultural exchange, reinforcing Rwanda’s image as a country rich in culture and history, while also playing a role in nation-building through the preservation of cultural values. In conclusion, the study underscores the importance of cultural institutions in projecting national identity and promoting diplomacy. The findings suggest that Rwanda’s international presence can be further enhanced through greater investment in cultural diplomacy programs, particularly in promoting the Itorero ry’Igihugu’s values globally. Recommendations include developing strategic partnerships with international cultural organizations and expanding the global reach of Rwanda's museums through digital platforms to attract a wider international audience.