THE PUBLIC IMAGE OF THE SEVERAN WOMEN

2011 ◽  
Vol 79 ◽  
pp. 241-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clare Rowan

Coinage remains one of the best resources from which to gain an insight into the public image of empresses in the Roman Empire. This article employs a quantitative approach to the coinage of the Severan women, utilizing coin hoards to gain an idea of the frequency of particular coin types. The result offers a nuanced and contextual assessment of the differing public images of the Severan empresses and their role within wider Severan ideology. Evidence is presented to suggest that in this period there was one workshop at the mint dedicated to striking coins for the empresses. The Severan women played a key connective role in the dynasty, a position communicated publicly through their respective numismatic images. By examining the dynasty as a whole, subtle changes in image from empress to empress and from reign to reign can be identified. During the reign of Elagabalus, the divergence in imagery between Julia Soaemias and Julia Maesa is so great that we can perhaps see the influence of these women on their own numismatic image.

Author(s):  
James Bailey

This book presents a detailed critical analysis of a period of significant formal and thematic innovation in Muriel Spark’s literary career. Spanning the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s, it identifies formative instances of literary experimentation in texts including The Comforters, The Driver’s Seat and The Public Image, with an emphasis on metafiction and the influence of the nouveau roman. As the first critical study to draw extensively on Spark’s vast archives of correspondence, manuscripts and research, it provides a unique insight into the social contexts and personal concerns that dictated her fiction. Offering a distinctive reappraisal of Spark’s fiction, the book challenges the rigid critical framework that has long been applied to her writing. In doing so, it interrogates how Spark’s literary innovations work to facilitate moments of subversive satire and gendered social critique. As well as presenting nuanced re-readings major works like The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, it draws unprecedented attention to lesser-discussed texts such as her only stage play, Doctors of Philosophy, and early short stories.


Author(s):  
Edmund Thomas

Architectural symbolism explains monumentality for only a small number of religious or imperial buildings, in their representations of the divine and the cosmic, or their insinuation of the semi-divine nature of the emperor. But for the majority of patrons of public buildings under the Roman Empire monumentality was not tied to such concepts, but was expressed on a more human level. Architecture contributed to the public image of individual patrons in the same way as did other ‘status symbols’. A Roman aristocrat’s house was a public monument; by contrast, the house of a disgraced man was destroyed. In what follows, I shall argue that the forms of architecture used in public as well as private buildings played an important role in promoting an owner’s social identity, and that they did so because of the ideas they embodied. For Seneca, the squared stone construction of the villa of Scipio Africanus at Liternum, with ‘towers raised on all sides to defend it’, was a physical embodiment of the idea that ‘a man’s home is his castle’. In the same way, the frequent mosaic pattern in private houses at Pompeii and other Roman colonies, especially in southern Gaul and northern Italy, of a labyrinth set within a walled circuit (Fig. 72), had a metaphoric purpose: it signalled that the house was both exclusive and impregnable, the work of a Daedalus-like master architect, and, as the aedificatio of the owner, a statement of his social rank. Because such a mosaic pattern could only be fully comprehended from the top of the building, preferably a high one, it had an inherent association with monumental architecture. Cicero chose a portico on his estates for its ‘dignity’ and a vault for its honour, while the younger Pliny in his villas at Laurentum and Tusci relished forms that he had ‘begun [himself ] or, if already begun, brought to completion and thoroughly adorned’; they included a white marble stibadium, a ‘tetrastyle’ arbour of cipollino columns, and a topiary of box which, like a monumental inscription, spelled his name and that of his architect.


PMLA ◽  
1961 ◽  
Vol 76 (4-Part1) ◽  
pp. 367-372
Author(s):  
Robert H. Ross

Modern scholars of the Restoration stage have been content largely to overlook the career of Samuel Sandford, the famous actor of villain parts. What little information is available on Sandford is widely scattered, but the few facts that can be assembled deserve careful attention. Because he was an actor of some eminence in his age his career is interesting per se. More important, from almost the beginning of his career in 1661 to the end around 1700, Sandford was typed in the public consciousness almost exclusively as an actor of villains. And so an analysis of his career not only affords some insight into the process by which a Restoration actor became typed but also permits several interesting speculations concerning the influence exerted by the audience over the Restoration stage. My purpose, therefore, is twofold. First, I shall examine why Sandford became typed; and I shall suggest that this occurred primarily because Sandford's personal appearance and histrionic techniques suited his audience's preconceptions of stage villainy. Secondly, I shall examine the results which ensued from Sandford's being typed. And I shall make two additional suggestions: that after the public image of Sandford as villain had become established, stage managers found it difficult, though not impossible, to cast him for parts which violated that image; and that playwrights, too, not only succumbed to the public stereotype but took advantage of it by writing into new plays villain parts tailored even to Sandford's personal appearance.


2020 ◽  
pp. 46-76
Author(s):  
Steven M. Ortiz

This chapter explores how wives of male professional athletes confront the challenges of public life and their attempts to avoid damaging the public image of the husband and his sport organization. The concept of image work is used to examine how they try to manage their physical appearance and conduct, and the concepts of game etiquette and quasi-celebrityhood help us to understand how they use the unwritten rules to perform public roles. The chapter provides insight into the responsibilities of being married to public figures or celebrities. It describes how the women learn diplomacy, how they come to terms with and negotiate a secondhand identity, how they interact with enthusiastic fans seeking autographs or other personal contact with their husbands, and how they otherwise struggle to establish and maintain personal and public boundaries while their husbands are involved in a highly visible career.


2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Colby Doyle ◽  
Matthew Gaudet ◽  
Dominic Lay ◽  
Amber McLeod ◽  
Robert Schaeffer

The primary goal of this research is to identify and examine the components of responsible drinking advertisements. We will examine industry and government related advertisements as we try to understand one of our major questions: does the source influence the validity of the message? The next group of major questions that we will be looking to answer is how are the vague quantifiers used in responsible drinking campaigns interpreted by the public?  How many drinks do people consider “too much?” What does “drink responsibly” really mean? The third major question is whether or not an individual’s current consumption patterns of alcohol have any effect on how individuals assess responsible drinking campaigns. Our qualitative research has indicated that social influences can be strongly related with drinking patterns; this will be further examined in our quantitative research. Also, we will be looking into some of the psychology behind industry and government sponsored advertisements as well as gathering and interpreting information from a sample of our target demographic. Our target demographic consists of both male and females between the ages 18-24. Our literature review and qualitative analysis gave us good insight into some of the potential answers to our questions. We will use these potential answers from our previous research to guide us as we attempt to conduct conclusive research based on a sample data of 169 individuals. Our findings will aid us in developing conclusions and recommendations for Alberta Health Services.


1995 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Oldroyd

Previous authors have argued that Roman coinage was used as an instrument of financial control rather than simply as a means for the state to make payments, without assessing the accounting implications. The article reviews the literary and epigraphic evidence of the public expenditure accounts surrounding the Roman monetary system in the first century AD. This area has been neglected by accounting historians. Although the scope of the accounts supports the proposition that they were used for financial control, the impetus for keeping those accounts originally came from the emperor's public expenditure commitments. This suggests that financial control may have been encouraged by the financial planning that arose out of the exigencies of funding public expenditure. In this way these two aspects of monetary policy can be reconciled.


Author(s):  
Andrew M. Yuengert

Although most economists are skeptical of or puzzled by the Catholic concept of the common good, a rejection of the economic approach as inimical to the common good would be hasty and counterproductive. Economic analysis can enrich the common good tradition in four ways. First, economics embodies a deep respect for economic agency and for the effects of policy and institutions on individual agents. Second, economics offers a rich literature on the nature of unplanned order and how it might be shaped by policy. Third, economics offers insight into the public and private provision of various kinds of goods (private, public, common pool resources). Fourth, recent work on the development and logic of institutions and norms emphasizes sustainability rooted in the good of the individual.


Author(s):  
Samuel Llano

This chapter presents an account of the San Bernardino band as the public facade of that workhouse. The image of children who had been picked up from the streets, disciplined, and taught to play an instrument as they marched across the city in uniform helped broadcast the message that the municipal institutions of social aid were contributing to the regeneration of society. This image contrasted with the regime of discipline and punishment inside the workhouse and thus helped to legitimize the workhouse’s public image. The privatization of social aid from the 1850s meant that the San Bernardino band engaged with a growing range of institutions and social groups and carried out an equally broad range of social services. It was thus able to serve as the extension through which Madrid’s authorities could gain greater intimacy with certain population sectors, particularly with the working classes.


Author(s):  
Edmund Thomas

The quality of "monumentality" is attributed to the buildings of few historical epochs or cultures more frequently or consistently than to those of the Roman Empire. It is this quality that has helped to make them enduring models for builders of later periods. This extensively illustrated book, the first full-length study of the concept of monumentality in Classical Antiquity, asks what it is that the notion encompasses and how significant it was for the Romans themselves in molding their individual or collective aspirations and identities. Although no single word existed in antiquity for the qualities that modern authors regard as making up that term, its Latin derivation--from monumentum, "a monument"--attests plainly to the presence of the concept in the mentalities of ancient Romans, and the development of that notion through the Roman era laid the foundation for the classical ideal of monumentality, which reached a height in early modern Europe. This book is also the first full-length study of architecture in the Antonine Age--when it is generally agreed the Roman Empire was at its height. By exploring the public architecture of Roman Italy and both Western and Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire from the point of view of the benefactors who funded such buildings, the architects who designed them, and the public who used and experienced them, Edmund Thomas analyzes the reasons why Roman builders sought to construct monumental buildings and uncovers the close link between architectural monumentality and the identity and ideology of the Roman Empire itself.


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