Devastation

The destruction of populations and human landscapes and the Roman imperial project

Datos Bibliográficos

ID20046618
AutoresMyles Lavan (0000-0001-8290-7893, University of St Andrews, autor de correspondencia)
Año2020
Fecha de publicación2020-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoCHAPTER
RevistaReconsidering Roman power (SOURCE_BOOK)
EditorialPublications de l’École française de Rome (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.4000/books.efr.4875
OpenAlexW3023398322
ISBN9782728314119
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas3
Referencias citadas30

This paper explores how the violence that Roman forces deployed against enemy and rebel populations was represented in Roman culture. Although the imperial elite did not think that they engaged in mass destruction widely or indiscriminately, they regarded the capacity to destroy human populations and their landscapes as an essential aspect of Roman power. Long after the period of rapid expansion in the late Republic, a language of erasure (verbs such as deleo, excido, tollo and uasto) remained an essential part of the lexicon of aristocratic achievement and good government, its connotations of ameliorative action euphemising the violence it described. In the visual sphere, images of Roman soldiers torching enemy settlements and barbarian families atomised through slaughter and enslavement were elevated into symbols of the enduring triumph of the imperial order against the enemies that threatened it. The paper traces the connections between the iconography of devastation on the columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, the language of erasure in Roman public discourse and the idea of annihilating whole peoples. The goal is to elucidate the verbal and visual tropes that elevated mass destruction by representing it as part of a larger imperial project

Ancient history · Art · Barbarian · Elite · Literature · Political science · Politics · Principate · Roman art · Roman Empire · Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History · Classical Antiquity Studies · Historical and Architectural Studies · History · Law