Body Politics: Female Portraiture and Local Politics in the Roman Peloponnese

Abstract

Portraits of Roman women have generally been studied from the perspective of the imperial center, placing great emphasis on the women of the imperial family, yet local variations in portrait culture in Greece, including both text and image, paint a far more complex picture. This dissertation examines female honorific portraiture in Olympia, Corinth, and Sparta during the Roman period. I focus on local portrait cultures at each site, considering both portraits themselves and inscribed bases for honorific portraits in the creation and development of local practices and honorific politics surrounding portraiture. Throughout, I argue that female portrait culture at each site retained a strongly local character. The portrait cultures of each community were differentiated from one another and from the cities of Athens and Rome, which have traditionally dominated the scholarly discourse surrounding female portraits in Greece during Roman rule. Therefore, this dissertation engages with the scholarly discourse surrounding gender and status in the ancient world, as well as elite Greek identity under Roman rule, and the portrait cultures of the Roman world. I select a broad range of objects to examine, ranging in date from the Augustan period to the sixth century. In the discussion for each site, I consider the ways in which the local history and political situation of the site contributed to and was informed by the honorific politics that occurred within each community. I examine portraits of private individuals and members of the imperial family alike, paying close attention to the ways in which the treatment of private and imperial portraits differ within the honorific environment. Likewise, in considering the epigraphic evidence and portraiture, I evaluate the overall frequency of female portraits, the terms of honor, funding of monuments, display contexts, and other politically relevant factors. I conclude with a discussion of the major differences between each city and compare the patterns established for each community with the relevant evidence from Athens. Despite the great deal of visual similarity among Roman female portraits, there was no single model for how these objects functioned as public honors in Greek communities. Further, it is possible to discern major differences in the later phases of public female portraiture in the Peloponnese, as communities continued producing, displaying, or even readapting female portraits for different lengths of time and in response to varying social and political pressures.