Dr. David Gwynn

Sharing power has a long established tradition, not just in the Roman world, for this will lead to conflict attention.

Precisely.

So how are you going to express the harmony?

How are you going to build the ideology?

And that's what the propaganda machine is working towards.

So we have a number of panegyrics addressed to particularly actually Maximian because they survived in Latin.

but always addressing Maximian as part of a duo.

This idea of Jovius and Hercules, and the two Caesars take the same title as their senior.

So Constantius gets linked to Hercules, Galerius gets linked to Jupiter.

So it's binding them together.

but probably the single most famous example of the tetrarchic ideology you can still see today if you go to St.

Mark's Square in Venice.

It's fairly self-evident that's not where it was originally based, not least because Venice didn't matter in this period, but built into the wall of the church

is the famous porphyry group of all four tetrarchs.

Exactly.

Porphyry is a purple-tinged stone.

Purple's the imperial colour.

So porphyry is only used for imperial monuments, including sarcophagi.

But in this case, this is the finest single piece of porphyry sculpture.

So the stones from Egypt...