• Tuesday 18 March - Panel VII

Transcending Gender: Assimilation, Identity and Roman Imperial Portraits

Eric Varner

Recent work on the Colossus of Nero has questioned long held assumptions about theomorphic assimilation and imperial identity. Often interpreted as an intended representation of Nero in the guise of Sol Apollo, the Colossus may have been precisely the conceptual reverse, an image of the sun god with Neronian attributes. Thus, the Colossus can be read as a particularly imperial incarnation of the deity, Sol Augustus.

While such public linkages of gods and emperors are not surprising, assimilative images of deities imbued with individualized imperial physiognomy are not gender specific. Beginning with Augustus, male rulers and goddesses are also visually conjoined. A denarius from 13 B.C., depicts the goddess Diana with Augustus's masculine physiognomy (likely an evocation of Diana Augusta). Similarly, under Domitian, the emperor's patron goddess Minerva is depicted on three gems and a head in Budapest with Domitian's facial features. The Domitianic coinage also features a masculinized Vesta with the emperor's likeness. These transgendered representations continue into the third century as attested by numismatic representations of a specifically Gallienic Venus whose facial features are again those of the emperor and they suggest that both the power of the deity and that of the ruler continued to transcend traditional gender categories.

The admixture of political power and gender is also present in the numerous images of imperial women which have been intentionally masculinized or assimilated to their male counterparts. This phenomenon has Ptolemaic precedents, especially in the representations of Cleopatra I, II and III which combine heavy masculine facial features with the queens' characteristic Isis coiffures. In the late Republic, numismatic images of both Octavia and Cleopatra VII are rendered more male and assimilated to those of their consort Antony. Such assimilative strategies for representing imperial couples becomes commonplace during the imperial period .

Masculinity appears to be one visual pre-requisite for Roman ruler imagery. Severina is unique among Roman empresses, as she may actually have wielded imperial authority in her own right during a brief inter-regnum in A.D. 275 between the death of her husband Aurelian and the accession of his successor Probus. Severina carefully constructs a visual identity on her coins by juxtaposing her elaborate female Scheitelzopf hairstyle with her husband's hyper masculine facial features. Indeed, Severina's likenesses are among the most masculinized in the repertoire of female imperial portraits.

The visual and cultural dialogue, however, did not always privilege the masculine over the feminine. The feminized behavior or imagery of more transgressive rulers such as Julius Caesar, Caligula, Nero, Domitian, Commodus, and Elagabalus challenged traditional notions of power and expressed evolving constructs of imperial identity and concepts of empire. Even a "good" emperor, such as Marcus Aurelius, could be represented with a female body, as in a recycled portrait from Cyrene now in the British Museum. Ultimately, the mixture of human and divine, male and female in assimilative imperial portraits intentionally blurs traditional taxonomic categories and unequivocally asserts the transcendence of imperial authority over prescribed gender roles.

Classics Department, Emory University, N404G Callaway Center, Atlanta, Georgia 30322.

evarner@emory.edu