Julio-Claudian Emperors as Fathers and Sons

Abstract The Julio-Claudian family came to be represented as a dynasty in which members of the domus of Augustus (men and women, adults and children) were ideologically and iconographically important. This chapter examines two sets of representations within this wider web of relationships: the emperor as father and the emperor as son. It argues that potent and powerful images of the emperor as good father and dutiful son were central to the emerging language of power and legitimacy in the early Principate, but that they also prompted and informed a critical assessment of each of the Julio-Claudian emperors as ‘bad father’ and ‘bad son’. These representations of the emperor as father and as son drew on long-standing ideas about fathers and sons at Rome, but were given particular impetus at a time when the emperor was also being represented as father of all, pater patriae. Representing an emperor as a good or bad father, therefore, had implications for the community as a whole.