Status Updates From Caesar Rules: The Emperor i...

Civic role: avoid appearing too monarchical, senatorial imagery/petitions and laws.
Combining roles: importance mos maiorum, pattern of established behaviour.
3. Being around the emperor: notion of an accepted inner circle.
Senators and bishops: independent power base, of high symbolic value. Different spatial distribution.

Playing imperial roles: the tension between standardised components of emperorship and variation.
Military role: the emperor is the supreme commander, however if didn't lead the army, some compensations had to be made (divine victory/false triumph/presentation)
Religious role: from power from being PM to PM directly being associated with the emperor; problem divinity of emperor with Christianity.

The biggest problem of dress: the emperor needs to stand out, but an elaborate costume is negatively connected to kingship. The evolution of purple offered a solution. Crowns became standardised as they started to denote imperial power. The sceptre was a universal symbol of divine power, first from the gods and later from God.

Introduction: the roman ‘emperor’ doesn’t exist, the tension lays with force of tradition and the need for innovation to fulfil expectations.

1. They can’t appear too regal, because kings were despised from tradition (Rome’s kings), gradually it was more accepted though.
Titles gradually changed too: Republican rhetoric > autocratic
Appearance carried connotations, choice for depiction also defined