Vittoria e memoria nel mondo romano: l’immaginario celebrativo e il panorama funerario

This article offers a concise overview of the visual and symbolic language of victory in the Roman world, tracing its development from archaic Italy to the early Empire and its diffusion into funerary contexts. It highlights how symbolic objects – arms, trophies, rostra, ritual implements – gradually evolved into an autonomous vocabulary of power, initially rooted in aristocratic ritual practices and later crystallized in public and private monumental art. The paper argues that the late Republican and Augustan periods played a crucial role in codifying this imagery, which became increasingly detached from specific historical events and instead served as a universal expression of Roman dominance and ideological consensus. In funerary monuments, these symbols functioned as durable markers of loyalty to the new imperial order, contributing to the creation of a shared, non-particularistic repertoire of collective memory. The study concludes that this symbolic system reshaped Roman urban and funerary landscapes, persisting – though with varying intensity – into Late Antiquity and ultimately merging with new Christian visual languages.