Christoph Michels, Antoninus Pius und die Rollenbilder des römischen Princeps. Herrscherliches Handeln und seine Repräsentation in der Hohen Kaiserzeit (Klio. Beihefte, Neue Folge 30) Berlin 2018
In his book “Antoninus Pius und die Rollenbilder des römischen Princeps” which is based on the author’s habilitation treatise Christoph Michels examines the imperial representation during the reign of Antoninus Pius and its interrelations with the emperors’ policies. Michels’ study treats this topic comprehensively and deserves great credit for its elaborate methodology, which is based on a profound knowledge of the latest trends in the research on Imperial Rome, and for its refutation of the traditional opinion that Antoninus Pius stands out for his pacifist attitude.
Michels begins his introductory chapter with an overview of the scanty sources and the modern research on AntoninusPius. He criticizes that previous scholars were too much focused on the emperor’s character and tried to deduce his policies from his dispositions, e.g. his alleged humanitarian attitude. As Michels makes clear in a later part of the chapter, he wants to avoid this biographical interpretation of Pius’ rule by taking into account the underlying structures the political system of Imperial Rome was based on. The model he uses to describe these underlying structures is Egon Flaig’s “Akzeptanzssystem” which aims to explain the relationship between the emperor and three major groups in Roman society – the senate, the plebs urbana and the army. The basic idea is that the emperor had to meet the individualexpectations of each of these groups and that he had to create different personae or images of himself which incorporated the qualities expected by the respective social units.
Michels’ second chapter starts with an analysis of the beginning of Pius’ reign. The author emphasizes the “Akzeptanzdefizit” (p. 77) the emperor had to face after his accession because his reign was at first only regarded as a preliminary stopgap measure. Hereafter, Michels examines the images Pius sought to project of himself and his family in the next three chapters (chapters 3-5). These are followed by a short conclusion at the end of the monograph.
Chapter 3 examines the propagated image of the civilis princeps. Quite interestingly, Michels detects a certain ambivalence regarding Pius’ civic self-representation. On the one hand, the emperor tried to propagate a non-monarchic attitude and used calculated demonstrations of self-restraint to enhance his acceptance amongst the senatorial elite. On the other hand, Pius did not try to take measures against the slow but steady establishment of the Imperial court which contradicted the Republican image the first Roman princeps Augustus tried to give to the new system he had created.
The fourth chapter deals with the representation of the emperor’s family. One of Michels’ conclusions is that Pius sought to advertise his successor Marc Aurel in a comparatively modest way. This strategy corresponded to the image of the civilis and rather anti-monarchic princeps Pius promoted of himself. Nevertheless, the ambivalence between the emperor’s civic imago and his monarchic status is also reflected in his family’s representation since the divine status of his early deceased wife was extensively propagated. Michels points explicitly to the intense propagation of Faustina’sdivinity in the numismatic material and rightly concludes that this must be seen as an attempt to associate the emperor with the supernatural sphere.
Chapter 5, the last major chapter before the conclusion, is certainly the part that brings the most striking refutation of previous assumptions on Antoninus Pius since it shows that the general image of the pacifist emperor Pius does not hold against the historical evidence. On the contrary, Michels points out that there was military activity at almost all borders. Moreover, the military aspect was also part of the image the emperor wanted to project of himself. For example, he advertised the protection of the Roman borders in coins which propagated the installation of foreign rulers. Michels also mentions the abolishment of the ornamenta triumphalia in this context. These insignia were at first introduced by Augustus and served as a new, compensating honor for the elite of the empire who was no longer able to compete with the princeps and his family for military prestige. Michels is probably right to interpret their abolishment as an indication of a “Konzentration des militärischen und außenpolitischen Prestiges auf den Princeps” (p. 294). This shows once again that the idea of the pacifist emperor Pius has to be given up in favor of a more nuanced picture which also takes into account the important role military success used to play in the Roman culture.
Michels’ book is an erudite and highly reflected study and sheds new light on the Imperial self-representation in the second century. The book can be recommended to anyone interested in this fascinating period or the legitimation strategies of premodern monarchies.