The Favourites of the Emperor Honorius

In the years around 410, the Western Roman Empire was coming apart, and the man supposed to hold it together was the emperor Honorius, who had grown up more interested in his poultry than in his provinces. Waterhouse painted this in 1883 and built the whole scene around that contrast. Honorius sits low and absorbed, feeding pigeons scattered across the rug, while a cluster of advisers in pale robes waits off to one side, unable to reach him. There is an old story, passed down by the historian Procopius, that when a courtier told Honorius that Rome had perished, the emperor's first thought was for a favourite hen he had named Roma, and only relief followed when he learned it was merely the city. Waterhouse doesn't illustrate that line directly, but he catches its mood exactly. The gulf of empty floor between the ruler and the men who need him is the real subject here.