There has been abundant discussion since antiquity regarding the intended message(s) of Augustan iconography and how the princeps constructed public opinion about his own image. Nandini Pandey's work seeks to explore iconography from the other side, that of its viewership, to show how meaning elicited from imperial imagery was necessarily a collaborative effort on the part of both author and audience. To do so, P. examines the poetic responses of Augustan authors, primarily Vergil, Propertius and Ovid, to prominent visual symbols of the Principate. She argues that these responses shed light on the significance of the role of audience interpretation in judging imperial iconography and authority, marking the poets and their audiences as ‘co-creators of empire’ (240), whose independent dialogue about images traditionally viewed as vehicles for imperial control recasts them ‘as instruments by which the poets and their readers reasserted their own critical authority over empire’ (5).
The first chapter introduces the study's main arguments. P. also deftly reviews the previous scholarship of philologists, archaeologists and art historians (most notably Paul Zanker's seminal 1987 Augustus und die Macht der Bilder) in relation to hers. One possible addition to an otherwise thorough bibliography is K. S. Lamp's A City of Marble (2013) on verbal and visual rhetoric in ancient Rome (a 2011 article of Lamp is cited). Lamp's discussion of Augustan myth and authority as seen through the Ara Pacis reflects upon a monument which P., perhaps surprisingly, mentions but does not examine in her study. However, literary representations of the Ara Pacis are few, one of which falls in Augustus’ own Res Gestae (Mon. Anc. 12; also Ov. Fast. 1.709–22), so that may help to explain the omission.
Each main chapter is comprised of a diachronic examination, considering both literary and material representations, of an Augustan ‘icon’. Ch. 2's focus on the sidus Iulium reveals the multitude of hermeneutic approaches in reading an image, which can change over time and with further evidence. Augustus has been attributed a large retroactive role in manipulating popular opinion about the comet's meaning, by which he claimed his father's (and implicitly his own) divinity. Through discussion of contemporary coinage and poetic passages (from Vergil, Horace, Propertius, Ovid and Manilius), P. shows that many auctores in fact played a role in constructing the meaning(s) of the sidus Iulium and that it served as a symbol through which questioning and critique of Augustus’ dominion could continue under the Principate.
Ch. 3 highlights poetic treatments of the Palatine complex. Often viewed as part of an early triumphalist phase of the princeps’ self-representation, this space is used by Propertius and Ovid to explore the voices silenced in Augustus’ alleged consensus universorum, thereby upending imperial semiotics to create their own counter-space for free thought. P. suggests here, and elsewhere in the book, that the poets stress interpretive libertas in evaluating the poems and the images to which they respond, attempting to free Augustan signs from any intended significations and enabling a type of civic participation at a time when other freedoms and rights had been lost. Ch. 4 considers the Forum Augustum and the princeps’ overarching desire to order space and time, through which he could propagate and celebrate Roman imperial expansion. In P.'s view, the aposiopetic nature of the poetic responses to this topographical site (Verg. Aen. 6; Ovid, Ars am.1) underscores the omissions inherent in imperial representations of world domination, from maps to architecture, and encourages readers to judge Augustus’ (re)presentation of history and ‘reality’ for themselves.
Representation and its dissociation from reality also emerge in ch. 5, which concerns (re)creations of the triumph. Vergil, Gallus, Propertius and especially Ovid turn to triumphal imagery, often imagining fictional triumphs, to emphasise the reliance of the princeps and of empire upon representation, both in Rome and abroad. Of course, as P. points out, the poets are fully aware of their own similar dependence on representation and audience support. The acts of reading and interpreting, whether poem or imperial image, become political actions, drawing the empire together across space and time through the creation of an ‘empire of the imagination’ (239). The last chapter concludes the study with the afterlife of Augustus through his funeral procession and the Res Gestae, and reiterates the book's objectives.
P.'s work is an excellent addition to the study of Augustan iconography and poetics, offering many original, insightful readings of well-studied texts. The prose is rich and the editing exemplary; I found three minor errors: politic[al] (82), beli[e]ves (124), and gener is accidentally defined as ‘son-in-law’ (155). The book provides enough context to reach non-specialists, as well as thorough interaction with previous scholarship and a re-visioning of traditional perspectives to intrigue classicists and ‘scholars-in-training’ (33). P.'s reframing of imperial iconography will also be of interest to art historians and archaeologists. At times, the restatement of certain main points throughout the book verges upon overstatement, but I remain convinced by P.'s arguments. Perhaps P. recognises that some readers may only skim a chapter or two, rather than read the entire book (though I would encourage the latter).
P. also highlights the modern importance of the lessons explored in her book, which are timely in light of current political milieus and the ascension of social media, where celebrities and ordinary people continuously hone their virtual image(s), both visually and verbally. With P. behooving today's audiences to read critically (254), the notoriety and significance many public figures achieve, rightful or not, still, ultimately, falls upon us.
