She employs Julia Domna as a case study to explore the creation of ideology between the emperor and its subjects.

The image of Julia Domna, wife of Roman emperor Severus (192¿211), was ubiquitous in her time. Her visage could be found gracing everything from state-commissioned art to privately owned ivory dolls. The imperial empire equated her to the great mother goddess, Cybele, endowing her with an unprecedented power above other imperial women. In Maternal Megalomania, Julie Langford unmasks this maternal ideal as a campaign on the part of the administration to garner support for Severus and his sons.

Julia Domna accrued an impressive array of titles in her lifetime; most were concerned with maternity, whether it was the role of mother to her two sons (both future emperors) or as the metaphorical mother to the empire. In actuality, Julia Domna¿s life was punctuated by murder, civil war, adultery, and incest. Langford looks to numismatic, literary, and archaeological evidence to reconstruct the propaganda surrounding the empress. She explores how her image was tailored toward different populations, including the military, the Senate, and the general population, and applies the case of Julia Domna to a broader context regarding the relationship between the ruling class and its subjects.