The Alexander most visible to us today is one who was created and recreated in the Roman period. While Alexander’s presence in literature is strong enough that we can reasonably describe the trajectory of intellectual interest in Alexander during the Roman period, more difficult to pin down is the degree to which powerful Romans engaged in conscious imitatio or aemulatio Alexandri, which generally involves squaring literary hints with material evidence that does not always speak to us as directly as we would like it to. Without dismissing the world of ways in which various aspects of Alexander-myth may have been subtly exploited by powerful Romans, this paper charts a path between overly credulous and overly sceptical conclusions concerning individual Romans by taking an overview approach of imperial interest and tightening our definitions of ‘imitation’ or ‘emulation’ in the context of Romans and Alexander. I conclude that both imitatio and aemulatio look quite different at Rome than they do in the provincial east.

In this chapter, König examines an array of ‘literary interactions’ in Pliny’s 10th book of Letters. She draws particular attention to the book’s ‘heteroglossia’ – the multiplicity of linguistic registers and literary genres that it evokes and adopts – and she shows how that heteroglossia enables Pliny to accrue increasing authority and expertise as the book progresses. Starting with letters 10.1-14, she first explores intertexts between Pliny’s correspondence with Trajan and other close-contemporary literature (in particular, the Panegyricus and Frontinus’ De Aquis). Her focus then shifts to Pliny’s incorporation of a range of specialist discourses (architectural, religious, legal, financial, hydraulic, etc.) across the rest of the book, discourses which gradually flesh out his credentials as an administrator with the ability to command many different areas of government. She ends by exploring Pliny’s interaction with Trajan via an allusion to Pliny the Elder’s address to Titus at the start of his encyclopaedic Natural History. In drawing attention to the range and impact of different kinds of intertexts across Letters 10 – from specific textual allusions to generic interdiscursivity – she underlines what this seemingly ‘administrative’ correspondence can teach us about Roman reading and writing habits and the blurred boundary between ‘literary’ and non/less-‘literary’ texts.

This chapter moves from painting to ’practice’. A particularly striking example both of theatricalised domestic space and activity is seen in the layout and decoration of dining rooms (triclinia), and in the range of entertainments presented within them. We examine how, responding to changes in the political, cultural and economic conditions of Roman society during this period, these private triclinium spaces and their decorative schemes were often systematic adaptations drawing upon the continuously evolving public discourse generated by theatrical entertainments. The chapter describes the range and nature of presentations that took place within the house, primarily as part of the dinner entertainments. Our focus is upon the likely venues as well as the decor of these spaces, and how, in combination, they created highly theatricalised and richly suggestive settings for performance and its reception. We include a detailed case study of the Pompeian House of Marcus Lucretius, detailing how these elements have been synthesised through the deployment of a pervasive theatricalism to create a highly appropriate setting for visitors as they move through its various rooms and spaces

Chapter 2 is a prelude to the main account of reception but offers some analysis of the first great reference to Plutarch in the post-classical world in John of Salisbury’s Policraticus (c. 1159). Despite the apocryphal nature of John’s Plutarch, the association of Plutarch as tutor to the Emperor Trajan was a trope which provided greater weight to the authority of his writing in the subsequent history of political thought. In the latter part of this chapter, I give a brief synopsis of a few essays (“On Homer” and “On the Education of Children”) which are now deemed apocryphal but which for many early modern scholars formed a legitimate part of Plutarch’s corpus. I discuss how we should consider these texts in the context of a history of Plutarch reception. I also discuss briefly the development of scholarship on Plutarch in early Renaissance Italy.

It is greatly tempting to speak of a specifically ‘Trajanic’ moment in Alexander reception, as this is the only moment in Greek literature in which an ‘idealised Greek’ Alexander appears. This chapter concentrates on his unusual figuration as a philosopher by Dio Chrysostom and Plutarch, which is both decisively Hellenocentric and at the same time motivated by Trajan’s own profile as a philhellene who admired Alexander as a military hero. The uniqueness of this image is suggested by contrast with other near-contemporary texts that are decidedly philosophical – those of Musonius Rufus, Epictetus, Pseudo-Diogenes and Maximus of Tyre – but that either ignore Alexander or see him as a philosophical anti-type. Idealising Alexander required opportunity, which I suggest came quickly in the form of Trajan, was seized upon by a couple of experimentalists, and disappeared just as quickly, at least within secular literature.

Dio’s account of the second century AD, the ‘Antonine period’ broadly construed, has not received the same attention when compared with the better-preserved Julio-Claudian books or the exciting contemporary narrative of the Severan age. This chapter examines Dio’s portrayal of five second-century emperors: Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, Commodus and Pertinax. It focuses particularly on the role that military qualities (or lack thereof) played in the historian’s assessment of their character and reigns. In Dio’s view, the best emperors were not necessarily the best generals, but leaders who were able to maintain the frontiers in the face of foreign threats and kept the troops disciplined and ready for defence at all time. A good emperor should be an all-rounder, able to balance attention to military matters with concern for the civilian government of the empire. In the second-century narrative, it is Marcus Aurelius who best embodies these qualities.

Early attempts by Parthian rulers to take Babylon were short-lived, but in 141 BC they established their kingship by celebrating the New Year festival. Chronicles and astronomical diaries continued to be written. An independent ruler of Maysan in the Sealand, Hyspaosines, captured the port on the Tigris, took control of Bahrain and Failaka to control Gulf trade, and briefly claimed kingship of Babylon. He wrote in Aramaic. The Parthians regained control and rebuilt the Greek theatre. The old buildings and city plan continued to be in use, although the Summer Palace had been reroofed with terracotta tiles. New kinds of text were written on clay in cuneiform, astronomical science developed; an archive shows that temples were still active, and much older literature was still prized. Greek knowledge of the Epic of Creation was still alive in Athens from the time of Alexander until the sixth century AD. The cult of Bēl had spread west to Palmyra, to the Aegean island of Kos, and north to Edessa. In AD 116 Trajan visited the Summer Palace on a pilgrimage to the place where Alexander had died.

The defining verbal representation of Justinian’s bronze horseman was created by Prokopios. His Buildings (I.ii, I.x.5) is a multivalent text, which deserves both a greater consideration and a historiographic rehabilitation. While on the surface Buildings appears to flatter the emperor, I argue that the deeper narrative reveals strong elements of figured speech and safe criticism. Buildings is ekphrastic in certain aspects of form, but not in overall substance. Formal conformity with the genre constitutes a veil for criticism. Focusing on a close analysis of his representation of Justinian’s equestrian monument, I argue that Prokopios indicts Justinian on the charges of gigantomania and obliteration of the past. The bronze horseman features twice in Buildings – within the otherwise coherent cluster of Justinian’s church-building, and as the headlining sculpture in the section dedicated to Constantinople’s non-ecclesiastical monuments. This exceptional return to the bronze horseman is thus both notable and deliberate. The equestrian monument is the only sculptural monument of Buildings that merited a substantive description beyond a list-like entry.

This chapter examines monuments and objects depicting the Roman emperor as a violent agent of conquest which were produced in the eastern provinces during the first and second centuries CE. Imagery of the emperor subjugating and enslaving peoples and provinces could be found on large public buildings, such as the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias, as well as on statues, coins, and terracotta votives. The creators and patrons of these imperial representations were influenced both by local (Greek, Egyptian) and by Roman concepts of rulership and artistic traditions. This desire to depict the violent treatment of foreign peoples by Roman emperors demonstrates that eastern patrons and artists sought to identify themselves with the civilised world of Rome, rather than with the subjugated barbarian ‘other’. The Roman emperor was thus envisioned as a protector of his people, and a guarantor of their safety and security. But it is probable that these images also carried a more sinister message, reminding the emperor’s subjects that he could punish them as well.

Chapter 10 pursues Pliny’s project of Quintilianic ethopoeia further, showing how – against all expectations – the most intimate passages of the Institutio are integrated into his collection. We begin with Quintilian’s two ‘inner prefaces’, on his imperial appointment (Institutio 4.pr.) and the deaths of his wife and sons (Institutio 6.pr.): Pliny reworks the first in Epistles 2.9 (senatorial electioneering) and 8.4 (Rufus’ epic Dacian war), the second in Epistles 5.16 (laments for Minicia Marcella) – two remarkable transformations which also raise macrostructural questions about Pliny’s grand designs. The rest of the chapter is devoted to another touching moment, Quintilian’s closing reflections on the orator’s retirement (Institutio 12.11). A divided imitation across Epistles 3.1 and 9.3 – by way of an excursus on Pliny the Elder in Epistles 3.5 – takes us deep into the textualisation of life, death and posterity.