Herodes Atticus, Hadrian, and the Antonines: Mediating Power and Self-Promotion in Achaea through Public and Private Display

This chapter examines Herodes Atticus’ use of imperial images against the backdrop of his broader monumentalizing programme in Roman Greece. In particular, it draws out the implications of how Hadrian and Antinous, and Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus are represented and displayed in a series of portrait busts commissioned by Herodes and arranged in his private villa at Loukou-Eva Kynouria or in the public sanctuary of Nemesis at Rhamnous in Attica. These images are integrated into a broader visual, cultural, and historical programme that recasts the power relationships between Romans and Greeks in the eastern empire. The chapter argues that Herodes employs these portraits of contemporary emperors to assert his own centrality to the maintenance and mediation of Roman imperial power in the province of Achaea and that this message complements the contemporary promotion of Greek culture evident in the ‘Second Sophistic’ more broadly.