Building Praise: Augustan Rome and Epideictic

In this essay, I examine two epideictic artifacts from the Roman Principate, The Res Gestae Divi Augusti and the summi viri, arguing Augustus used them to reshape the model of a good leader, in part, by emphasizing contributing to the built environment of the city. Additionally, the public and visua...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inAdvances in the history of rhetoric Vol. 22; no. 2; pp. 153 - 166
Main Author Lamp, Kathleen S.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Taylor & Francis Group 04.05.2019
Routledge
Subjects
General Interest
History
Philosophy
Technology
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Summary:In this essay, I examine two epideictic artifacts from the Roman Principate, The Res Gestae Divi Augusti and the summi viri, arguing Augustus used them to reshape the model of a good leader, in part, by emphasizing contributing to the built environment of the city. Additionally, the public and visual nature of these artifacts made them highly accessible to those outside of the Roman elite, who may have sought social mobility through the imperial bureaucracy allowing for more diverse participation in the Roman government. I close by considering the influence of classical exemplars on U.S. civic spaces.
ISSN:1536-2426
1936-0835
DOI:10.1080/15362426.2019.1618054