An Empire of Elites

Empire of Elites investigates the self-representation of the late Roman senatorial aristocracy in epigraphic evidence to illuminate the cultural, social, and political dynamics of the Later Roman Empire. In the Roman hierarchy, the senatorial order stood above all social strata. By examining aristocratic inscriptions and materiality—supplemented by art identified as senatorial and contextualized within contemporary literature—the study situates the self-image of the empire’s highest-ranking elites within the broader context of fourth-century imperial society.

Arguing that the ideological portrayals of the late antique aristocracy reflect an artistic perception of social totality in cultural form, the book moves beyond analyses of elite dominance in the imperial state to address wider cultural and social transformations as mediated through epigraphy and art. It explores how the late imperial rule transformed the role of senators in governance, drawing on archaeological, inscriptional, and textual evidence to reveal the political, social, and cultural impact of transregional senatorial officeholders. This study demonstrates how the integrated relationship between state and aristocracy shaped the administration and government of the empire, offering new insights into the interplay of power, representation, and culture in the late Roman world.

This book will appeal to scholars and students of Roman political and cultural history, administrative elites, institutional evolution, and the comparative study of pre-modern government. It will also be of interest to specialists in Latin and Greek epigraphy and literature, as well as late antique art, providing a multidisciplinary perspective on the social imagination and cultural expression of the late Roman aristocracy.

Author Biography

Mariana Bodnaruk is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of History of the University of Warsaw, Poland and a senior researcher at the Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication at the Art History Department of the Masaryk University in Brno, Czechia. They received a PhD in Medieval studies from the Central European University in Budapest in 2019. Their research was published in Journal of Epigraphic Studies, Journal of Late Antiquity, Antichthon, Phoenix, and Byzantinoslavica. Their research interests include epigraphy, art history, and hagiography of the medieval East Roman Empire, gender studies, queer and trans theory, and historical materialism.