Felix Michler

I am a doctoral student and assistant at the Chair of Roman History and Latin Epigraphy. While preparing my MA thesis on the emperor’s consulship (Kaiserkonsulat), I developed a more general interest in modes of symbolic communication in connection with issues of social status, title and (honorary) office. My ongoing dissertation project on ranks within Roman elites (2^nd to 4^th century AD) pursues these questions further.

Research Interests: Roman Imperial Period and Late Antiquity, Social History and Political Culture, History of Mentalities, Epigraphy, Documentary Papyrology (Petitions & Private Letters), Reception Studies (Classical Antiquity in Humanism, Education & Scholarship)

Current Research Project: Gradus dignitatis. Entwicklung, Repräsentation und Ideologie des Rangsystems der römischen Reichselite (2.-4. Jh.)

My research project traces the historical development, representation and ideological implications of the Roman imperial and early late antique hierarchy of grades of rank, their respective honorifics and corresponding privileges and obligations within the imperial elite. In addition to traditional dignitaries, I am also investigating the representation of women, liberti and Christians.

Drawing on different written sources – especially literary epistolography, historiography, legal texts; petitions and letters on papyrus; different epigraphical genres – as well as contemporary cultural theory, my dissertation intends to contribute to the understanding of construing and perpetuating social hierarchies and notions of dignitas in the Roman Empire.