Imperial Identities in the Roman World

Wouter Vanacker is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of History of Ghent University. His doctoral thesis focused on patterns of economic and political interaction between nomadic and sedentary communities in North Africa in the context of the Roman Empire. Currently, he studies long-term urbanisation trajectories in Africa during the imperial period. Arjan Zuiderhoek is Associate Professor of Ancient History at the Department of History of Ghent University. He is author of The Politics of Munificence in the Roman Empire: Citizens, Elites and Benefactors in Asia Minor (2009) and The Ancient City (2016). Alongside Paul Erdkamp and Koenraad Verboven, he is also editor of Ownership and Exploitation of Land and Natural Resources in the Roman World (2015).

Introduction: Imperial identities in the Roman world, Zuiderhoek and Vanacker /1. Between Greece and Rome: Forging a primordial identity for an imperial aristocracy, Hartmann / 2. Rituals of killing: Public punishment, munera and the dissemination of Roman values and ideology in the imperium Romanum, Hahn / 3. The war cry: Ritualized behaviour and Roman identity in ancient warfare, 200 BCE – 400 CE, Whately / 4. Uniting the army: The use of rituals commemorating Germanicus to create an imperial identity, McIntyre / 5. Joining the Empire: The imperial cult as a marker of a shared imperial identity, Madsen / 6. Promoting family, creating identity: Septimius Severus and the imperial family in the rituals of the ludi saeculares, Rantala / 7. Constructing a religious landscape: Terminalia, Fortuna Muliebris and the Augustan ager romanus, Beltrão da Rosa / 8. The monument of Roma and Augustus on the Athenian Acropolis: Imperial identities and local traditions, Morales / 9. Herodes Atticus, Memnon of Ethiopia and the Athenian ephebeia, Allen / 10. Roman influence on rituals of identification in Egypt, Depauw / 11. The imperial identity of senatorial rituals in Late Antiquity, Frenkel / Index.