| Abstrakt: |
Two sixth-century ivory panels, known as the Ivories of Ariadne, portray a Christian augusta as a partner to the emperor in the imperium and as a bearer of imperial power, breaking dramatically from earlier Roman tradition. This iconographic change can only be explained through a better understanding of the empress' place in the imperial ideology of sacred rule and the indebtedness of imperial iconography to the portrayal of Greco-Roman deities. I argue that before the Christianization of the Roman Empire, depictions of the empress responded to two central ideas about imperial power: the emperor was like a god, and his victory was the gift of a deity. During that time, an empress' standing was delineated visually through assimilation to mother-goddesses, deities of victory, or her symbolic motherhood of the troops. The new iconography of the fifth and the sixth centuries conveyed a more authoritative outlook for the empress and indicated an actual partnership in the imperium. In the Christian vision for empire and victory the augustus and the augusta participated as corulers. This change was legitimized in part by presenting Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, as partner to her son in the establishment of the Christian monarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
