Sacred Founders: Women, Men, and Gods in the Discourse of Imperial Founding, Rome through Early Byzantium by Diliana N. Angelova (review)

• Autores: Vasileios Marinis
• Localización: Journal of early Christian studies: Journal of the North American Patristic Society, ISSN 1067-6341, Nº. 4, 2017, págs. 639-640
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In a field that has, since the nineteenth century, been dominated by a partiality toward texts at the expense of any other kind of evidence, Angelova’s assertion that written material is “a category of statements, among others from different sources—visual, archaeological, architectural, and so forth—in a broader discourse” (262), though not exactly revolutionary, is commendable. Despite the numerous merits of Angelova’s study, her predilection for interpreting everything as connected to a founders discourse, often accompanied by cursory dismissals of the opinions of both contemporary scholars and ancient authors, is sometimes nettlesome and requires logical acrobatics that render some of her arguments unpersuasive (see, for example, the connection between Livia and Hersilia, 74–75). In some cases, what Angelova considers to be acts that elevate a figure to a sacred founder may be interpreted simply as the acts of imperial and aristocratic sponsorship of public buildings and the continuation of long established traditions (this is particularly evident in Chapter Five, “Constantine’s and Helena’s Legacy in the Organization of Public Space”).