Description
Book SynopsisHow Romans used the world of the house to interpret and interrogate the role of the emperor. The Julio-Claudian dynasty, beginning with the rise of Augustus in the late first century BCE and ending with the death of Nero in 68 CE, was the first ruling family of the Roman Empire. Elite Romans had always used domestic space to assert and promote their authority, but what was different about the emperor's house? In The Ruler's House, Harriet Fertik considers how the emperor's household and the space he called home shaped Roman conceptions of power and one-man rule. While previous studies of power and privacy in Julio-Claudian Rome have emphasized the emperor's intrusions into the private lives of his fellow elites, this book focuses on Roman ideas of the ruler's lack of privacy. Fertik argues that houses were spaces that Romans used to contest power and to confront the contingency of their own and others' claims to rule. Describing how the Julio-Claudian period provoked anxieties not on
Trade ReviewFertik's study offers many such insights....[Her] writing is always clear, her literary analyses are always convincing....This book makes an important contribution to our understanding of Julio-Claudian Rome.
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GnomonTable of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1 Playing House: New Families and New Rulers in Lucan's Bellum Civile
Chapter 2 Contest and Control in the Emperor's House
Chapter 3 Where to See the Emperor: Augustus and Nero in Rome
Chapter 4 Exposing the Ruler: Seneca on Visibility and Complicity
Chapter 5 Interdependence and Intimacy: Power at Home in Roman Pompeii
Chapter 6 Bathing, Dining, and Digesting with the Ruler
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
