Diocletian’s Victory Column: Megethos and the Rhetoric of Spectacular Disruption

Abstract

This essay explores how the powerful system of cultural references in the architecture of Alexandria is disrupted by Roman visual rhetoric. Specifically, the essay closely analyzes Diocletian’s Victory Column, a monument to the third-century Roman ruler who put down an Alexandrian uprising. The authors argue that Rome employed a visual rhetoric of spectacular disruption as a means to insert itself into the city’s historical identity even after its siege created widespread disease and starvation. The essay builds on the substantial scholarship on public memory by describing a kind of rhetoric that poses a political, existential challenge to a reigning cultural identity. As rhetorical scholars continue to study public memory and the persuasive powers of designed space, the concept of megethos appears to be uniquely and increasingly relevant.

Notes

¹ To this day, the column is often misleadingly called “Pompey’s Pillar.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jonathan Mark Balzotti

Jonathan Mark Balzotti is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602, USA. [email protected]

Richard Benjamin Crosby

Richard Benjamin Crosby is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011, USA. [email protected]