Contents

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter I
2. Foreword V
3. Contents VII
4. List of Figures XI
5. Introduction: How to Make Rome? Words, Narratives and Rituals in the Shaping of the Roman Empire 1
6. Part I: The Performative Power of Words: Imperial Power, Law and Political Ritual
7. The Words of the Senate in Empire-Building and Its Interaction with Local Communities: Discourse and Performance 11
8. An Empire of Letters and the Power of Presence: Rethinking the Constitutive Performances of Imperial Power and Law 29
9. Units of Rule in Roman Legislation 47
10. Staging the Prince’s Words: Performativity and Political Ritual in the First Three Centuries of the Principate 59
11. Words of the Lord: The ethne and Hadrianus Augustus Restitutor 87
12. The Leagues and the Territorial Administration of the Roman Empire by Means of Imperial Letters 111
13. Part II: Empire-Building in the Literary Sources: Rhetoric, Sophist and Historiography
14. The Message of the Second Sophistic (from Dio of Prusa and Plutarch) 127
15. Aelius Aristides’ Speech Regarding Rome: Epideictic Rhetoric and Ideological Negotiation 137
16. Subabsurda Roma: A View of the Roman Imperial State Through the Lens of the Historia Augusta 153
17. Narratives of Failure: The Botched Campaigns Against Hatra in Roman Historiography 175
18. Part III: The Performative Power of Rituals: Traditional Religion, Imperial Rituals and New Religious Discourses on the Empire
19. Animal Sacrifice as Normative Cult Practice in the Roman Empire 199
20. Rituals that Built the Empire: sunthusia oikoumenes 213
21. Greek Games for a Roman Emperor: Augustus and the Power of Greek Festivals 227
22. The Construction of Imperial Narratives Through Virtues 245
23. Imperial Cult Narratives: The Case of Hispania 263
24. Words and Rituals for the Dead: Hadrian Among Hellenic Heroes 281
25. Part IV: Empire-Building in a Provincial Setting: Local Discourses and Imperial Dynamisms
26. Placing Epiros in the Emperor’s Narrative: Local Initiative and Provincial Discourse at the Time of Hadrian 301
27. Hadrian’s Policy in Jerusalem and Underlying Imperial Discourses 319
28. Imperial Power and the Cities: The Hadrianic Narrative of Italica 339
29. List of Contributors 351
30. Index of Literary Sources
31. Index of Epigraphic Sources
32. Index Personae
33. Index of Places