The Prince's Costume. Living and behaving like a sovereign in ancient Rome from Augustus to Constantine.

This book studies the development of an archetype, that of the prince, from Augustus to Constantine. Gradually, a sort of "costume" was imagined that one had to wear in order to appear legitimate and to deserve to be among the "good princes." This archetype corresponded to constraints and expectations that one had to conform to and which were supposed to counterbalance the legally founded omnipotence of the prince. We can evoke with regard to the prince a persona , that is, a theatrical character, a role that he must adopt and play before an audience that is the judge. In a certain way, the prince was led to internalize norms of which he was not necessarily the author, and his behavior was subject to validation by the populations of the empire. The development of these norms owes much to the largely experimental context (despite a rhetoric largely anchored in the past) which presided over the beginnings of the Principate and the slow evolution of a regime of a monarchical nature towards a fully monarchical regime where the person of the prince was very gradually erased, without ever having been completely so, behind the function.