07 - Imperial imagery on Roman provincial coins: prototypes and derivations

This paper follows one of the main research strands of the ERC RESP project (The Roman Emperor Seen from the Provinces - GA 101002763), which investigates how Roman emperors were represented on visual media in the provinces, from Augustus to Diocletian.

The paper discusses the role of metropolitan models in the genesis and formation of the designs chosen to depict the emperor and the members of the imperial family in full-figure on Roman provincial coins. The adoption of imperial imagery in the provinces is a clear example of how local visual culture was influenced and reshaped by the introduction of Roman iconography; this example can be used as a case study on the reception and replication of Roman prototypes in the designs of civic coinages across the Mediterranean over time. Moreover, this case study offers the opportunity to investigate whether these prototypes were only copied or also altered and adapted to fit into different contexts.

This contribution gives an overview of the range of the full-figure imperial image in the coinage of the provincial cities and then examines one iconographic model in particular: the depiction of handshake scenes between members of the imperial family. The paper discusses the dependency of this imagery from Roman prototypes (especially the iconography of dextrarum iunctio), used on coins and on other visual media, as well as its possible contaminations with examples of similar coin designs borrowed from the Greek iconographic tradition. Since this imagery has the potential to convey the harmony both between the emperors themselves and between the emperor and local communities - as well as between the communities themselves, the case study gives insights into the political and ideological implications of how coin designs were chosen in the provincial world.

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Presenters

Dario Calomino, Università di Roma

  SCS-70