Power and Eroticism in Imperial Rome by Caroline Vout

206 PHOENIX only one to Tullia: in part, this is due to the important points made by Treggiari about Terentia and her relationship with Cicero. But despite Cicero's undeniable devotion to his daughter, we are not left with a very clear sense of what she was like as a human being. And this, at least in this reviewer's opinion, leads directly to the one major weakness of this book, Treggiari's purposeful reluctance to impose her own guesswork about the motivations and inner lives of her subjects on her readers. Her goal is for her readers "to know what can be known and to fill in the gaps by using their own imagination" (xii), and one cannot quibble about an author succeeding in what she sets out to do. But I cannot help feeling that Treggiari's informed speculation would have been well worth reading, and wishing that some happy medium could have been found between the imposition of an overriding (and unverifiable) set of authorial opinions and the occasionally bare narrative we have here. The background material provided may be enough to make the book useful to a general audience, although it will be especially interesting to anyone studying women in the Roman world, and especially women of senatorial families. And because it treats the women of his family as individuals, rather than as satellites of the great man, it should also be read by anyone working on Cicero's life. St. Hilda's College, Oxford Sarah T. Cohen Power and Eroticism in Imperial Rome. By Caroline Vout. Cambridge University Press. 2007. Pp. xiv, 285. This new book sets out to explore what representations of emperors' sex-lives accomplished for the producers and consumers of those representations, both at the time the texts or images were produced and to some extent ever after. Vout makes clear that her goal is not to reconstruct the actual details—i.e., she will not tell us why Antinous died or whether Augustus and Caligula really did seduce aristocratic women at dinner parties at which their husbands were present. Instead, she is interested in what is at stake in representing Antinous in certain ways (and places) and in what uses can be made of showing emperors as lovers. An introductory chapter ("The Erotics of Imperium") sets out her project, surveys the "penetration = power" model of Roman sexuality, and explains some of the ways in which sexualized images of the emperor might function. Emperors might benefit from sexual anecdotes that underline their virility, even when their actions seem improper by other standards. Even those emperors represented as engaging passively in sex with other men might benefit, since their ability to flout so basic a protocol of Roman sexuality might emphasize their position above social norms. The central question of the second chapter ("Romancing the Stone: The Story of Hadrian and Antinous") might be put simply as "Why was Antinous so special?" As Vout points out, other emperors had been said to have boyfriends, so what prompts the importance that Antinous assumes in Roman (even Christian) representation? It is crucial to understand, in .this context, how little we know about the visual representations of Antinous, numerous as they are: it is not true that Hadrian himself had them all set up, and we know that in some cases cities and towns, and perhaps private citizens as well, erected such statues. Similarly, the cult Antinous received in Mantinea and elsewhere, like BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 207 coins with his image, seems not to have begun in the imperial court, even if some hoped to win favor there. Vout's answer to the question of Antinous' ability to fascinate follows two essential lines. The first is that he gave viewers a way to think about themselves vis-à-vis the emperor. By gazing at his form one could put oneself in the place of the emperor whose lover he was; that is, one could love like Hadrian. Similarly, one could imagine oneself as a kind of Antinous, beloved of the emperor. The discussion of the Antinous statue from the Hadrianic baths at Leptis Magna is particularly interesting here. It seems to have been placed so that

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