Diliana Angelova's Sacred Founders is an original contribution to the study of Roman discourses about imperial power. Its main argument is that, from the time of Augustus onwards, Roman emperors and their wives were thought of (and presented themselves) as sacred founders, and that this concept played a key rôle in the way emperorship was understood and legitimized. ‘Founder’, here, refers both to concrete acts of benefactions, from building a bath to establishing a city, and to the frequent association of rulers with deities like Apollo, Venus, and later Christ and the Virgin Mary. The notion of founding underwent important changes from the time of Constantine and Helena onwards, as Christian principles gained prominence in imperial discourse. Although this central argument is not always convincing, the book deserves great praise for showing that empresses played an active and largely autonomous rôle in the public sphere, occupying a central place in Roman conceptions about imperial rule.

The book is divided into three parts, with a short introduction and a conclusion. Part One presents the central argument of the book, examining also its Hellenistic antecedents. The discussion is focused on the figures of Augustus and Livia, and how they were identified as founding figures through their monuments, benefactions and association with deities like Apollo, Romulus and Venus. A.’s sophisticated approach shows that the imperial image was a product of a constant dialogue between local communities and central authorities. As a result, our picture of Livia (and of imperial women) should be greatly reconsidered. Part Two explores how these ideas were redefined in Late Antiquity, focusing on the reign of Constantine and the rôle played by his mother Helena in it. Constantine was the founder of a new empire, whose ideological legitimation rested on a new religion. His mother played a crucial rôle in this process by founding churches and cities, and leading her son to conversion. Helena's actions had a direct impact on Rome and Constantinople both through her buildings and (in the case of the latter) by having monuments and public spaces named after her. Late antique empresses founded baths and churches, following their own agendas and displaying themselves as partners in ruling the empire. The final part of the book considers the rôle played by Christianity in reframing the traditional discourse of imperial foundation. A. explores the expectations of Christian writers as well as the actions of empresses, examining how emperorship was re-defined by a new emphasis on religious piety and the foundation of churches. Renewed interest in the Virgin Mary, affirmed as Theotokos at Ephesus in 431, mirrored the position of empresses in imperial discourse. A conclusion weaves these elements together, focusing on the analysis of the mosaic of Theodora in the church of S. Vitale in Ravenna.

A.’s central argument is not entirely convincing: the idea of sacred founding was certainly important, but it is not clear that it played a central rôle throughout imperial history. A broader discussion of imperial discourse, in this case, might have helped to put it in context. A. successfully shows that the identification of Augustus and Livia as sacred founders helped to consolidate their position in the empire, but later emperors and their wives are only occasionally brought into the picture. There were hostile reactions against this idea too, as in the case of Tiberius’ attitude towards his mother, but this is not considered properly. The emphasis on the imperial couple as a legitimizing device is not always satisfactory either. It is not clear how the relationship between Constantine and his mother replicated the relationship between Augustus and Livia, and the relative silence over Fausta (Constantine's wife) in our sources is left unexplained. Other female members of the imperial family are considered, like Anicia Juliana (225–32), and Galla Placidia is repeatedly cited as an example of an imperial founder — even though her marital history makes her a poor fit for the argument. Looking at benefactions and titles associated with empresses in a broader context would have strengthened the argument. Female patronage of civic structures has recently attracted great attention, and it is not clear that every building by empresses, especially of specific structures like baths or churches, should be seen as an instance of a founding discourse. Whilst the use of the title florentissima for honouring late antique empresses certainly connoted images of abundance, it followed the much more widespread use of florentissimus for emperors, a fact that suggests caution in seeing it as a ‘legacy of motherhood’ (239–40).

And yet, in spite of this criticism, A. successfully shows that empresses played a central rôle in the way imperial power was conceived and how it operated. By gendering imperial discourse (and the imperial office), she offers a much more complex picture of how power was conceived and legitimized in antiquity. The analysis of Livia's rôle in shaping a new imperial image, as well as the examination of Constantinople's urban plan as a product of the priorities of different Augustae are excellent examples of how much we have to gain from abandoning the male-dominated perspective of our literary sources. Sacred Founders is, in this sense, a much more valuable book than disagreements with its argument might suggest.