ABSTRACT
The simple mention of the Roman Empire is sometimes enough to conjure up an image of something that is immensely stable. Hadrian’s Wall or a fort in the Jordanian desert may stand as images of all-encompassing power. The grandeur of the Colosseum, triumphal arches, or marble streets suggest stability and coherence. Such structures were intended to do precisely that. As early as the time of Tiberius we find monumental arches being placed so as to symbolize the capacity of Roman rule and the ability of Rome’s rulers to command respect all across the known world.1 There is little or no reason to think that either the rulers of the empire or the subjects with whom they communicated thought differently about this. The rhetoric deployed by a Roman senator, a Jewish historian, a Greek orator and the authors of oracular texts all offer views of what the empire looked like that accord with the monumentalized images of power that were constructed both by Rome’s rulers and by Rome’s subjects.2 On a personal level, the images of selfdefinition presented in sculpture, painting, and the other plastic arts suggest an ideology of aristocratic homogenization that spanned the empire.3
