The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus

Series

• Thomas Spencer Jerome Lectures

"Art and architecture are mirrors of a society. They reflect the state of its values, especially in times of crisis or transition." Upon this premise Paul Zanker builds an interpretation of Augustan art as a visual language that both expressed and furthered the transformation of Roman society during the rule of Augustus Caesar. The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus illustrates how the establishment of monarchy under Augustus Caesar led to the creation of a new system of visual imagery that reflects the consciousness of this transitional age.

"...Paul Zanker's new book is outstanding. It can be welcomed without exaggeration as the most significant contribution to the understanding of Augustan Rome since The Roman Revolution."
—Journal of Roman Studies

Praise / Awards

• "...masterly in its grasp of the evidence, instructive in the range and quality of the illustrations, and challenging and provocative in its overall theme and interpretation."
  —The Classical Review
• "Elegant simplicity and creative redundancy are surely the hallmarks of Augustan art, symptomatic of its pervasive atticism, on one hand, and of its affective character as visual rhetoric, on the other. Both have been superbly illuminated by Paul Zanker in what must be considered a truly iconological study of Roman art in its most creative phase, the saeculum augustum."
  —The Art Bulletin
• "In this most impressive volume, Zanker brilliantly controls and organizes a wealth of disparate material so as to provide a coherent, plausible, and readable account...[an] admirable book."
  —Classical World