Precarious Divinity: The Roman Emperor's Self-Definition as God in Relation to Competing Strategies of Legitimising Herrschaft (20)

• Subject Area: Ancient History
• Term: from 2016 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 257731206

The sub-project will approach one of the central practices for the Roman Emperor to legitimate his Herrschaft, namely the divinity of the princeps, by systematically analysing all its conflicts and contradictions. The focus of work will be on the multilayered tensions, which from the beginning were crucial to the concept of the God-like emperor and changed during the first two centuries AD according to different contexts.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1167: Macht and Herrschaft – Premodern Configurations in a Transcultural Perspective
• Applicant Institution: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
• Project Head: Professor Dr. Konrad Vössing