Building alterities: the representation of captive population on trophies in the city of Rome

Abstract

Roman society used iconography to convey messages which responded to an ideology and to the legitimation of certain practices. In this line, the representation of trophies, whether in public architecture or in private productions, has the aim of reflecting Roman grandiosity. Nevertheless, those visual productions, that mainly since the imperial age include captive population, are also a testimony of the creation of difference, testimony of that other he or other she who, not being part society, must 'integrate' in it, although as an inferior and subordinated being. Of course, otherness is also created through discourses discernible in the literature, which are generated around the different populations and communities that eventually falling under Roman rule.