Uploaded June 2025 | Updated September 2026, 4 hours ago
When Rome began deifying imperial women in 38 CE, sculptors developed new divinely inspired iconography for their portraits, drawing from depictions of goddesses, priestesses, and even sacrificial animals. They used agrarian symbols to emphasize fecundity and peacocks, linked to the god Juno, to signal their mode of ascension into the afterlife. These evocative sculpted portraits reveal imperial women’s dual roles as power brokers and fashion connoisseurs, not unlike contemporary women in politics.
Hear C. Brian Rose, James B. Pritchard Professor of Archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania and Peter C. Ferry Curator-in-Charge of the Mediterranean Section of the Penn Museum, discuss how the Roman Empire deified its empresses through divine iconography.
This program is generously sponsored by the Boshell Family Foundation.
When Rome began deifying imperial women in 38 CE, sculptors developed new divinely inspired iconography for their portraits, drawing from depictions of goddesses, priestesses, and even sacrificial animals. They used agrarian symbols to emphasize fecundity and peacocks, linked to the god Juno, to signal their mode of ascension into the afterlife. These evocative sculpted portraits reveal imperial women’s dual roles as power brokers and fashion connoisseurs, not unlike contemporary women in politics.
Hear C. Brian Rose, James B. Pritchard Professor of Archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania and Peter C. Ferry Curator-in-Charge of the Mediterranean Section of the Penn Museum, discuss how the Roman Empire deified its empresses through divine iconography.
This program is generously sponsored by the Boshell Family Foundation.
