Power and eroticism in Imperial Rome Book

Vout is concerned here not so much with the relationships between emperors and the objects of their desire (Hadrian and Antinous, Nero and Sporus) but with the way those relations are described and the meanings they might have within the context of the `cult' of empire. Sex and the erotic are used, then, as the vocabulary to interrogate empire.

Particularly interesting is her investigation of the statues of Antinous, the Hellenised boy lover of Hadrian, and the way these images might provoke a spectrum of desires and viewing points in their audiences.

This is modern classical scholarship at its best, and intersects nicely with the work being done by people like John Clarke, Alison Sharrock and Jas Elsner on the `gaze' and Roman ways of seeing.