Prof. Brandon Bourgeois (USC), "Why the Roman Imperial Accession Speech?"

Please join the Department of Classics for a Friday Research Talk with Prof. Brandon Bourgeois for his talk entitled, "Why the Roman Imperial Accession Speech?".

The accession speeches of new Roman emperors constituted a species of oratory that was commonplace in imperial transition and the polity’s rhythms of renewal. Despite or perhaps because of their reliability as political phenomena, detailed literary depictions of these addresses are relatively rare in our extant sources. Thus, the very existence of Roman imperial accession speeches in our sources calls for commentary. This talk unpacks the question posed by its title—“Why the Roman imperial accession speech?”—in three primary ways. First, why do depictions of Roman imperial accession speeches survive at all; that is, what historiographical or textual functions do these speeches serve when they happen to appear in our sources? Second, why did new emperors feel compelled to deliver these speeches; more specifically, what political functions did these introductory addresses serve for fledgling emperors? Finally, why study the accession speeches of emperors? In other words, what can we gain from viewing Roman history through the lens of imperial accessions and the speeches by which emperors introduced themselves to various segments of the citizen body?

Brandon Bourgeois is an Assistant Professor of Classics at University of Southern California. His research interests include Roman political, legal, and religious traditions from the late Republic to the late Roman empire/early Byzantium. He is currently working on his book project, Empire Beyond Brute Force: Roman Imperial Accession from the First to the Fourth Century AD.