The Public Image of Licinius I: Portrait Sculpture and Imperial Ideology in the Early Fourth Century

Abstract

Ancient history, it could be said, is composed of long and broad bands of unchanging social and political culture, punctuated in the upper levels by periods of upheaval and re-orientation. Ancient art works document and make visible both aspects: numbing continuity and static production on the one hand and sudden shifts and sharp turns in representation on the other. This paper takes as an example one of those periods of highly-charged visual re-orientation, the early fourth century A.D., and is intended as an alternative to the discussion and explanation of ancient images in this period in terms of artistic and formal processes. It aims to set an unusual and fat-faced late antique portrait (Pl. I) in its proper context alongside the thin-faced portraits of a better known figure (Pl. XII), and looks at the wider implications of this for the interpretation of imperial portrait sculpture as a significant expression of political ideology. The leanfaced man is Constantine, the other it will be argued is Licinius.