Dissertation by Sam Heijnen
The Roman Empire was one of the largest empires the world has ever seen. For a long period of his... more The Roman Empire was one of the largest empires the world has ever seen. For a long period of history, one man stood at the head of this enormous political entity: the Roman emperor. Since the majority of the inhabitants of the Roman Empire would never get to see the emperor in person, portraits of the emperors, carved from marble or cast in bronze, played a crucial role as proxies. They offered the emperor the possibility to advertise aspects of his rule and provided local communities with the opportunity to express their loyalty to the emperor.
Portraying Change analyzes the use of imperial portraits in formulating changes in imperial leadership. It discusses the creation of official portrait types, the decision to present the emperor in a certain type of attire, and the choice to place the statue or bust of the emperor in a certain display environment. It argues that, on all three levels, traditional modes of representation were crucial in formulating changes in imperial leadership. The book also includes a catalogue of more than 2000 imperial portraits that were collected for the purposes of this study.
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Published articles by Sam Heijnen
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Trajan's status as a model emperor is perhaps most famously expressed in Eutropius' catchphrase "... more Trajan's status as a model emperor is perhaps most famously expressed in Eutropius' catchphrase "More fortunate than Augustus, better than Trajan" (Eutr. Brev. 8.5.3). Modern scholarship has similarly stressed Trajan's exemplary status, assuming that Trajan's virtues were already a point of departure by which to measure second-and third-century emperors. This article challenges that notion; it argues that Trajan's status as a model emperor was a late-antique literary construct. Trajan only entered the repertoire of exemplary emperors during the course of the fourth century to become the model emperor in the very latefourth-and early-fifth century. This development depended on the historical context and ideological demands, as well as on the availability of the then-existing material discussing and depicting the historical Trajan.
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This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license.
Portraits of... more This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license.
Portraits of the Roman emperors have been a focal point in the study of the ancient world. However, questions on how this medium developed over time and/or how perceptions of the emperor changed over more than four centuries of imperial rule, are constrained by the availability and accessibility of the material. This article introduces the Roman Imperial Portraits Dataset (ripd) to allow researchers to study the portraiture of Roman emperors through a more quantitative approach (). The dataset has systematically brought together more than 2,100 extant (i.e. published) portraits of the Roman emperors into a single dataset that can be used for further study. The article also introduces a web application with the aim to allow researchers and interested parties to work with the data(set) in an user-friendly manner.
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Portraits of Roman emperors are traditionally recognised by their unique coiffure patterns, a met... more Portraits of Roman emperors are traditionally recognised by their unique coiffure patterns, a method that runs the risk of ignoring portraits that do not cohere to the standardised image of the emperor. This article investigates whether it is possible to recognise and distinguish emperors using the facial features of their portraits. By using a technique called transfer learning, it utilises existing deep-learning facial recognition models, augmented with images of Roman imperial portraits, to provide a new empirical foothold in the debate of Roman emperor recognition. The results of the experiments demonstrate that by only a limited amount of training, such a so-called "pre-trained" model (i.e., InceptionResnet-V1) is able to correctly classify most images in the dataset of Roman emperors. As such, this article has made a first step towards applying facial recognition models to the study of ancient imperial portraiture.
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Statues of the Roman emperor and of his family members were usually set up together in groups, to... more Statues of the Roman emperor and of his family members were usually set up together in groups, to which new statues were often added over time. This article shows that the iconography and style of new additions to imperial statue groups in the Greek East were regularly influenced by statues already present in the intended display environment. This phenomenon not only attests to the existence of a local field of references for sponsors and workshops to tap into, but it also hints at the deliberate use of honorific statuary by communities to shape a narrative of local identity mediated around the person of the emperor.
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, Archäologischer Anzeiger 2020, 162-170., 2020
Presentation of a portrait of Alexander Severus in Delft, The Netherlands, after the publication ... more Presentation of a portrait of Alexander Severus in Delft, The Netherlands, after the publication brought over on loan to the State Museum of Antiquities at Leiden
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10.2143/BAB.96.0.3289464, 2021
In 1850, a marble statue of a Roman emperor was found on the estuary of the river Albegna, in the... more In 1850, a marble statue of a Roman emperor was found on the estuary of the river Albegna, in the area of Forte delle Saline, nearby the village of Albinia (Orbetello, Tuscany). After its discovery, the statue was transferred to the villa of the Grand Duke of Tuscany in Alberese, nearby Grosseto, where it is still conserved today. A study of the statue was first published in the 1980s by Giulio Ciampoltrini. Although the statue has been sporadically mentioned in archaeological and historical publications, it is still relatively unknown. In this article, we present a detailed description of the statue accompanied by new photographical documentation, as well as a biography of the object’s modern history. Our aim is not to offer a new interpretation on the identity of the subject, but to draw attention to some aspects that have hitherto gone unnoticed in archaeological publications.
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Hadrian is the first emperor to be almost exclusively represented in military costume in survivin... more Hadrian is the first emperor to be almost exclusively represented in military costume in surviving sculpture. In this paper, it is argued that this development can be linked to the changing military role of the emperor in this period: from conqueror to protector. This theory is substantiated by a series of statues that employ a traditional, military motif to anchor events relating to Hadrian’s new foreign policy. Such depictions promoted the virtus of Hadrian not by referring to victories abroad but by highlighting his ability to maintain peace. This reading may provide us with a different lens to look at the military-styled images of Hadrian.
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Klio, 2019
This article seeks to address the question how the Tetrarchic system of four rulers could be pres... more This article seeks to address the question how the Tetrarchic system of four rulers could be presented as legitimate in a society that had never seen this political constellation before. What were the different modes of presenting Tetrarchic rule and how did they help in making the new system acceptable? The article argues that new power structures needed to be formulated in familiar terms, not only for the rulers to legitimate their position, but also for the ruled to understand such new systems. As a result, imperial messages during the Tetrarchic period were strongly influenced by traditional modes of representation from earlier periods. Traditions which were inherent in specific media and locations were determining factors for the way in which a new political system could be presented. The result was a much less coherent ideological Tetrarchic message than is often assumed. The image of group identity was regularly lost in a more complex and messy mode of formulating power. The new and innovative aspects of a collegiate rule by four emperors was less important than linking the power of those rulers to what was traditionally expected of the portrayal of Roman emperorship.
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The early Augustan Age witnessed an increase in building activities and overall interest in mainl... more The early Augustan Age witnessed an increase in building activities and overall interest in mainland Greece which has primarily been understood from the perspective of Roman appropriation of Greek culture, or from that of local Greek independence and “re-Hellenization.” Taking late Republican Athens as an extensive case study, this article shows that, when moving beyond either a top-down or bottom-up vision, developments in the late Republican and early Augustan Age can be properly contextualized as being part of a continuous strategy of Roman leaders and the Athenian elite to negotiate power and influence within a shared field of references.
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This article deals with self-representation of Maxentius, who ruled over Italy and North Africa b... more This article deals with self-representation of Maxentius, who ruled over Italy and North Africa between 306 and 312. It focuses on the imagery and language that was distributed through coins and portraits during Maxentius’ reign, as well as their reception under Constantine immediately after the Battle of the Milvian Bridge (312). It argues that Maxentius revitalized the tradition of a princeps at Rome in order to play upon sentiments of neglect felt at Rome and the time. In coinage, this was most explicitly done through the unprecedented use of the princeps title on the obverse, which initially may have caused a misunderstanding in the more distant parts of the Maxentian realm. The idea of the princeps was captivated in portraiture through visual similarities with revered emperors, especially with Trajan, and through insertion of Maxentius’ portraits in traditional togate capite velato. When Constantine defeated Maxentius in 312, he took over some of the imagery and language that had been employed by his deceased adversary. Constantine, too, presented himself as a princeps. This not only shows that Maxentius’ representational strategies had been effective, but also brings to light how Constantine managed to deal with the memory of someone who had been one of Rome’s greatest benefactors.
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Datasets by Sam Heijnen
The figure presented here includes the total number of sculptural portraits of Roman emperors (mo... more The figure presented here includes the total number of sculptural portraits of Roman emperors (mostly carved from marble or casted in bronze) that were collected for the purposes of analyzing the representation of Roman emperors in freestanding sculpture. PhD dissertation: The Representation of Roman Emperors in Freestanding Sculpture (ca. 50 BC - ca. 400 AD).
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The dataset presented here includes sculptural portraits of Roman emperors (mostly carved from ma... more The dataset presented here includes sculptural portraits of Roman emperors (mostly carved from marble or casted in bronze) that were collected for the purposes of analyzing the representation of Roman emperors in freestanding sculpture as part of the NWO funded research project "Constraints and Tradition: Roman Power in Changing Societies" (2017-2021). The dataset consists of processed data. Entries in the dataset were collected using museum catalogues and archaeological/art-historical reports. The dataset includes portrait heads (when applicable: together with their accompanying body and base) and provides detailed information on their provenance, formal features, iconography, context.
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Book chapters by Sam Heijnen
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Dissertation by Sam Heijnen
Portraying Change analyzes the use of imperial portraits in formulating changes in imperial leadership. It discusses the creation of official portrait types, the decision to present the emperor in a certain type of attire, and the choice to place the statue or bust of the emperor in a certain display environment. It argues that, on all three levels, traditional modes of representation were crucial in formulating changes in imperial leadership. The book also includes a catalogue of more than 2000 imperial portraits that were collected for the purposes of this study.
Published articles by Sam Heijnen
Portraits of the Roman emperors have been a focal point in the study of the ancient world. However, questions on how this medium developed over time and/or how perceptions of the emperor changed over more than four centuries of imperial rule, are constrained by the availability and accessibility of the material. This article introduces the Roman Imperial Portraits Dataset (ripd) to allow researchers to study the portraiture of Roman emperors through a more quantitative approach (). The dataset has systematically brought together more than 2,100 extant (i.e. published) portraits of the Roman emperors into a single dataset that can be used for further study. The article also introduces a web application with the aim to allow researchers and interested parties to work with the data(set) in an user-friendly manner.
Datasets by Sam Heijnen
Book chapters by Sam Heijnen
Portraying Change analyzes the use of imperial portraits in formulating changes in imperial leadership. It discusses the creation of official portrait types, the decision to present the emperor in a certain type of attire, and the choice to place the statue or bust of the emperor in a certain display environment. It argues that, on all three levels, traditional modes of representation were crucial in formulating changes in imperial leadership. The book also includes a catalogue of more than 2000 imperial portraits that were collected for the purposes of this study.
Portraits of the Roman emperors have been a focal point in the study of the ancient world. However, questions on how this medium developed over time and/or how perceptions of the emperor changed over more than four centuries of imperial rule, are constrained by the availability and accessibility of the material. This article introduces the Roman Imperial Portraits Dataset (ripd) to allow researchers to study the portraiture of Roman emperors through a more quantitative approach (). The dataset has systematically brought together more than 2,100 extant (i.e. published) portraits of the Roman emperors into a single dataset that can be used for further study. The article also introduces a web application with the aim to allow researchers and interested parties to work with the data(set) in an user-friendly manner.