The Significance of Imagines

Abstract

Abstract WHY investigate Roman ancestor masks (imagines maiorum)? Or, to put it in a different way, why is the study of imagines of general interest to the student of Roman society and customs? An answer can be found in two ancient texts which reveal the role and significance of imagines in widely differing historical contexts. This chapter offers a reading of Sallust’s version (Jug. 85 = T66) of the speech that Marius delivered as consul in Io 7 BC, and of the senate’s decree condemning Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso in AD 20. Both sources provide explicit and complex evidence about ancestor masks. While showing a glimpse of the situation on two particularly dramatic occasions, these texts also have wide-reaching implications for everyday practices in politics, oratory, and the law. The two passages were written about 60 years apart, and shed light on both Republic and Principate. The information gleaned about the imagines shows two sides of the same coin. Sallust indicates what the imagines meant for a novus consul at his moment of triumph over the traditional office-holding families: the senate’s decree reveals their import for a distinguished nobilis, close to the family of the emperor, at his moment of ruin.