Imperial identities in the Roman world / edited by Wouter Vanacker and Arjan Zuiderhoek.

Includes index.

Introduction: Imperial identities in the Roman world / Arjan Zuiderhoek & Wouter Vanacker -- Between Greece and Rome : forging a primordial identity for an imperial aristocracy / Andreas Hartmann -- Rituals of killing : public punishment, munera and the dissemination of Roman values and ideology in the Imperium Romanum / Johannes Hahn -- The war cry : ritualized behaviour and Roman identity in ancient warfare, 200 BCE-400 CE / Conor Whately -- Uniting the army : the use of rituals commemorating Germanicus to create an imperial identity / Gwynaeth McIntyre -- Joining the empire : the imperial cult as a marker of a shared imperial identity / Jesper Madsen -- Promoting family, creating identity : Septimius Severus and the imperial family in the rituals of the Ludi Saeculares / Jussi Rantala -- Constructing a religious landscape : Terminalia, Fortuna Muliebris and the Augustan Ager Romanus / Claudia Beltr�ao da Rosa -- The monument of Roma and Augustus on the Athenian Acropolis : imperial identities and local traditions / Fabio Augusto Morales -- Herodes Atticus, Memnon of Ethiopia and the Athenian Ephebeia / Joel Allen -- Roman influence on rituals of identification in Egypt / Mark Depauw -- The imperial identity of senatorial rituals in late antiquity / Luise Marion Frenkel.

"In recent years, the debate on Romanisation has often been framed in terms of identity, that is, how the expansion of empire impacted on the constructed or self-ascribed sense of belonging of its inhabitants. Research has often focused on the interaction between local identities and Roman ideology and practices, leading to the notion of a multicultural empire but this volume challenges this perspective by drawing attention to the processes of identity formation that contributed to an imperial identity, a sense of belonging to the political, social, cultural and religious structures of the empire. Instead of concentrating on politics and imperial administration, the volume studies the manifold ways in which people were ritually engaged in producing, consuming, organising, believing and worshipping that fitted the (changing) realities of empire, focusing on how individuals and groups tried to do things 'the right way,' the Greco-Roman imperial way. Given the deep cultural entrenchment of ritualistic practices, an imperial identity firmly grounded in such practices might well have been instrumental not just to the long-lasting stability of the Roman imperial order but also to the persistency of its ideals well into Christian late antiquity and post-Roman times"--Provided by publisher.