![]() ![]() This article seeks to address the question how the Tetrarchic system of four rulers could be presented as legitimate in a society that had never seen this political constellation before. Roman emperorship is therefore shown to be a constant process of construction within genres of communication, representation, and public symbolism. The construction of imperial ancestry was constrained by the local expectations of how a ruler should present himself, and standardization over time of the images and languages that could be employed in the 'media' at imperial disposal. Some messages resonated outside the centre but only when they were made explicit and fitted local practice and the discourse of the medium. Imperial ancestry is defined through various parallel developments at Rome and in the provinces. The importance of local notions and traditions in the choice of local representations of imperial ancestry are emphasized, revealing that there was no monopoly on image-forming by the Roman centre and far less interaction between central and local imagery than is commonly held. The volume explores how the different media in use sent out different messages. ![]() Looking beyond individual rulers, Hekster evaluates evidence over an extended period of time and differentiates between various types of sources, such as inscriptions, sculpture, architecture, literary text, and particularly central coinage, which forms the most convenient source material for a modern reconstruction of Roman representations over a prolonged period of time. Emperors and Ancestors is the first systematic analysis of the different ways in which imperial lineage was represented in the various 'media' through which images of emperors could be transmitted. Ancestry played a continuous role in the construction and portrayal of Roman emperorship in the first three centuries AD.
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