Direzione della Collana Semata e Signa n. 7 di Mariangela Puglisi, I seggi imperiali. Studi di iconografia monetale romana

Taking for granted the value of studying coin iconography and the influence, whether direct or indirect, of the political authority on typological choices, the author examined the various kinds of seats appearing on Roman coins both as a main type and as a secondary element. It was analysed the iconographic development of living or historical characters, appearing in pairs on one side of a coin or on both sides not only as seated figures, but also as portraits or whole figures, beginning with Roman-Republican coinage. Thanks to a diachronic examination on Roman coinage, and thanks to a wide comparison of all the documents collected, she has identified some main iconic schemes, clear iconographical topoi, often with variants, but generally embodying different nuances of the idea of power expressed by the politic symbology of the seat. They were in constant evolution from the subsellia through sellae curules to the solium, and always very frequent throughout the Empire, being so effective in representing the power of the authority in its various forms according to changing ideologies. In the codification of the majority of these coin images, a fundamental role was played by Augustus, who, deriving signs and symbols both from the Hellenistic world and from the Republican imagery, readapted them to the new reality of the Principatus, with the consequence that many of his typological choices became iconographical topoi.