ROME: FROM EMPERORS TO POPES

All Roman emperors, starting with Augustus and including the disastrous Nero and Domitian, used the city of Rome as a backdrop of their image making. The result was a Rome dominated by monuments constructed by emperors, both public monuments celebrating their power as well as imperial palaces. 

But while ancient Rome was a city of splendour, most of its inhabitants lived in relative squalour. Impossibly tall apartment blocks which threatened collapse, an overwhelmed sewage system and a polluted River Tiber which flooded periodically, made the every day lives of ordinary Romans precarious. Considering these difficult living conditions and that ancient Rome was a city of more than a million people, one can see how Roman emperors were perennially worried about unrest and the mobs rioting. It is no wonder, then, that emperors spent fortunes on offering the plebs Romana distractions, from magnificent bath complexes to mind boggling spectacles, as well as ensuring a constant supply of food. As Juvenal says in his Satire 10, people were all too easily made happy if they were offered bread and circuses.

Central to Imperial imagery and to Rome’s image of itself as being founded by Romulus, the son of Mars, religion has always been important to the Eternal City. Senate meetings had to take place in temples and successful generals celebrated their triumphs by erecting temples in honour of gods who helped them. In the imperial period, emperors associated themselves with gods, such as Augustus who built a temple to Apollo next to his house on the Palatine, and Nero who donned locks which made him resemble Apollo, the god of music. All of this was to change when Constantine passed the edict of Milan which legalised Christianity. Yet the transformation of Rome from the capital of the empire to the Holy See was sporadic as mythology was central to Classical literature and erudition.

The title Pontifex Maximus, an ancient Roman priesthood which became part of the titulature of Roman emperors starting with Augustus, began to be formally applied to Popes in the Renaissance, at a time when Italy, and Rome in particular, began to emulate its ancient antecedents. The use of this title inevitably gave the Pope the aura of a Roman emperor, something which is evident in the dedicatory inscriptions to the many churches and public monuments which testify to the munificence of the Pontifex Maximus. Like Roman emperors, Popes shaped the Eternal City moulding it to suit their images. In common with its ancient counterpart, Renaissance Rome, in particular, was the battle ground for a number of Papal Families who competed with one another for grandeur and power.

Lasting 60 minutes and followed by 30 minutes of Q&A. Small groups with maximum 15 participants to ensure maximum interaction.

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