Nerva ruled from September AD 96 to January 98. His short reign provided little public building and monumental art, and study of Nerva has been the province of the historian, who often relies on textual sources written after his death. History has judged Nerva as an emperor who lacked the respect of the Praetorians and armed forces, and who was vulnerable to coercion. The most complete record of state-sanctioned art from Nerva’s reign is his imperial coinage, frequently studied with historical hindsight and thus characterized as “hopeful,” “apologetic,” or otherwise relating the anxiety of the period. But art operated independently of later and biased historical texts, always presenting the living emperor in a positive light. This book reexamines Nerva’s imperial coinage in positivistic terms and relates imagery to contemporary poetry and panegyric, which praised the emperor. While the audiences at which images were directed included the emperor, attention to hoards and finds also indicates what visual messages were most important in Nerva’s reign and at what other groups in the Roman Empire they were directed. The relationship between the imagery and the rhetoric used by Frontinus, Martial, Tacitus, and Pliny to characterize Nerva and his reign allows reinvestigation of debate about the agency behind the creation of images on imperial coinage. Those in charge of the mint were close to the emperor’s inner circle and thus walked alongside prominent senatorial politicians and equestrians who wrote praise directed at the emperor; those men were in a position to visualize that praise.
The Colosseum is well understood as a dynastic monument that was key to the Flavian building programme and to Flavian ideology. From this point of view it has been approached as the fulfilment of Augustus's ambition for a large-scale amphitheatre, as serving to diminish Nero's memory as it was constructed on the atrium of his dismantled Golden House, and as a victory monument built with the spoils of the Jewish War. One important political aspect of this dynastic monument has been largely overlooked: its connection with emperor worship. Outside Rome, it is well known that amphitheatres served as a venue for the procession and placement of imperial cult images; in Rome, the Circus Maximus and the theatres were venues for the display of imperial images and attributes brought in during their respective pompae. Through the deployment of textual, topographical and visual evidence, this article demonstrates that the Colosseum also had a pulvinar that displayed images and attributes of the gods and divi brought in during the pompa. The location of the pulvinar and the mechanisms by which it was serviced are explored, as are the ideological implications of cultic activity in the Colosseum.Il Colosseo è considerato un monumento dinastico, chiave del programma edilizio e dell'ideologia flavia. Da questo punto di vista è stato considerato in molti modi: compimento del desiderio di Augusto di un anfiteatro di grandi dimensioni, o ancora la sua edificazione è stata letta come volontà di oblio di Nerone, essendo stato costruito sull'atrio della demolita Domus Aurea e anche come monumento legato alla vittoria di un evento bellico, costruito con le prede della guerra giudaica. Tuttavia un importante aspetto politico di questo monumento dinastico è stato * I am grateful to Kathleen Coleman for her comments and encouragement on an early manuscript.
Although Nerva’s reign is largely the province of historians, owing to the lack of state-sanctioned art from his short reign, his coinage is very diverse and has been an untapped resource for studying contemporary “self-representation” in this period. It is argued that the emperor did not necessarily formulate coin iconography or messaging, as often assumed, but that it was directed at him, as were contemporary panegyric and poetry. He was, however, not the only audience. Coins were used by people throughout Roman society and so deploying quantitative and finds-based methods informs what images played the biggest role in contemporary praise and rhetoric and, to some degree, at what populations they were targeted.
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