Product Description

This book offers the first comprehensive study of the funerary monuments made for the Roman emperors. These monuments, which include the Mausoleum of Augustus, Trajan's Column, and the Column of Marcus Aurelius, are among the best known and most extensively excavated and documented structures of Roman antiquity. Because of their diversity of forms and decorative programs, however, they have been examined in isolation from one another and from a limited number of perspectives. In this study, Penelope J. E. Davies examines these commemorative arches, obelisks and other types of architecture with a view to determining the political or ritual motivations behind their designs. She demonstrates that these monuments served a dual role, as memorials to the dead and as accession monuments that would guarantee dynastic continuity for the monarchy on the precarious occasion of the emperor's death.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3420239 in Books
• Published on: 2000-08-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

Review
'This concise and lucidly written book is a very valuable new contribution to the studies of Roman imperial cult, political propaganda, and topography ...'. Susan Wood, Oakland University

'... stimulating and well-written ... Davies has performed a signal service in making us look with new eyes at a number of long familiar monuments. On this she must be warmly congratulated.' The Burlington Magazine

'... imaginatively interprets the experience and effect of these monuments and restores them to their settings.' Mortality

About the Author
PENELOPE J. E. DAVIES is Associate Professor of Roman Art and Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin. Her book Death and the Emperor was first published by Cambridge University Press in 2000. It won the Vasari Award, sponsored by the Dallas Museum of Art.