I shall be showing that it is not self-evident at all, and asking directly what these modern images of emperors were for. What did they mean to those who commissioned, bought or looked at them? Why did so many people in the West choose to recreate a series of emperors most of whom had such a strong reputation (even if an unreliable one) for immorality, cruelty, excess and misrule? Only in the case of one of Suetonius’s Twelve (that is, Vespasian) were there no rumours at all of death by assassination. Why then were they celebrated on the palace walls of modern dynasts? And why did they
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