Importance of Being Gorgeous

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Presss Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. In this book, Susanna Elm radically changes our understanding of imperial rule in the later Roman Empire. As she shows, the so-called eastern decadence of the Emperor Theodosius and his successors was in fact a calculated revolution in masculinity and the representation of imperial power. Here, the emperors hard yet soft, mature yet youthfully gorgeous beauty was central. Because the Theodosian emperors were divinegods one could seeso was their beauty: their manliness was the face and body of God. The emperors gorgeousness, their sparkling regalia, how they wished their bodies to be seen by their elite subjectswho authored the texts on which Elms analysis is basedwere as important as laws, taxes, and armies. Theirvir-ness strategically deployed male same-sex erotic desire to enhance the unity of the realm in times of tension, incorporate the signifying potency of child emperors, and create a flexible yet stable model of Christian sovereignty.