Roman Repraesentatio

A dual semantics in the term repraesentare captures both the rhetorical impact of "vividly recalling" and the economic impact of "immediately paying" and thus is a dynamic way of characterizing certain social and political acts referred to within Latin literature in connection with Cicero, Augustus, and the imperial household. A lexical correspondence between repraesentatio and the function of an effigy of the king (représentation) within the royal funeral of renaissance France cannot be used to claim a continuity with Roman imperial consecrations, but it may help to suggest why the Roman comparison was so evocative within French receptions of Latin texts.