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Olivier Hekster. Emperors and Ancestors: Roman Rulers and the Constraints of Tradition. Oxford Studies in Ancient Culture and Representation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. xxv, 395, 109 figures, 5 tables. $135.00. ISBN 978-0-19-873682-0.
Augustus insisted that he had restored the Roman Republic. This claim created a difficult balancing act, because in the Republic dynastic inheritance of political offices had been restricted. Even though the sons of great families had advantages of wealth, reputation, and connections, they still had to earn offices as candidates in annual elections. In contrast, Augustus and subsequent emperors repeatedly emphasized both their dynastic legitimacy and the entitlement of their sons. Hereditary succession marked an important distinction between the elections of the Republic and the monarchy of emperorship.
Olivier Hekster's book is a wide-ranging overview of the use of lineage in order to justify dynastic succession during the three centuries from Augustus to Constantine. His survey emphasizes representations of emperors, both their own attempts to publicize their qualifications for rule on coins and in official pronouncements, and the responses of their subjects in panegyrics and honorific monuments. In his formulation, "The emperor was . . . what people expected their emperor to be" (323). After the reign of Augustus, people apparently preferred their emperors to be, or to appear to be, dynastic heirs.
Augustus struggled with the dilemma. Because there was not...