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English Pages 183 [184] Year 2024
Alyson Roy Empire of Images
Appearances – Studies in Visual Research
Edited by Tim Allender, Inés Dussel, Ian Grosvenor and Karin Priem
Vol. 5
Alyson Roy
Empire of Images
Visualizing the Conquered in the Roman Republic
ISBN 978-3-11-132534-7 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-132663-4 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-132762-4 ISSN 2628-1740 Library of Congress Control Number: 2023949891 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover image: clu/DigitalVision Vectors/Getty Images Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com
To Mom. You never got the chance to see me pursue my dreams, but your influence is present in everything that I am. I miss you.
Acknowledgments I am deeply indebted to so many people for helping me on this journey. I would like to thank Sandra Joshel, Joel Walker, Eric Orlin, and Adam Warren at the University of Washington for their dissertation mentorship. Sandra, I hope in this book that you can see the results of your dedication to helping me become a better writer and researcher. I would also like to thank the College of Letters, Arts, and Social Sciences at the University of Idaho and the Idaho Humanities Council for their generous financial support of this project. Thank you to my editor, Rabea Rittgerodt, and her team, for shepherding this book project through to its conclusion. And my sincere thanks to the numerous colleagues and anonymous reviewers who diligently worked through my book and provided critical insights. I must also acknowledge Fernando Lozano at the Universidad de Sevilla for offering me last-minute workspace and library access, as well as much-needed support and encouragement over the summer. I would also like to acknowledge Roger Ulrich for his help in tracking down image rights, and Michael Taylor for offering support and advice. And a heartfelt thank you to all the museums which provided image rights for this book. Thank you as well to my colleagues at the National Endowment for the Humanities Institute on the Performance of Roman Comedy in Summer 2023. Alison Futtrell, S.B. Breitenfeld, Anise Strong, Cassandra Tran, Allie Pohler, Mary McAvoy, T.H.M. Gellar-Goad, and Christopher Polt all pushed me to think about my work in a much broader, performative social context. The Institute was an incredibly thought-provoking, generative experience that I will never forget. I also cannot neglect my wonderful friends and family. My dear friends Julie Osborn and Rebecca Scofield spent countless hours reading chapters about a subject that their American-history hearts were deeply disinterested in, much to their chagrin, and yet friendship trumped the desire to sleep through reading my chapters and their feedback was invaluable. And thank you to Sheena Himes, Christine Olson, Stefanie Ramirez, Ashley Kerr, and Katie Huntley for your support and cheerleading through this process. Lastly, I want to acknowledge my parents, Rob and Ruth, who always encouraged me. While I do not remember exactly when I chose to pursue Roman history, watching my mother share her passion for ancient history with her fifth-grade students was deeply influential. Her Egyptian, Greek, and Roman classroom decorations now sit in my office and continue to engage and inspire students, just as she would have wanted.
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Contents Acknowledgments List of Figures Maps
VII XI
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Introduction
1
Chapter 1 Visualizing Empire: Conquest Imagery in the Gallic Provinces 13 1.1 Hellenistic Origins of Gallic Stereotypes 14 1.2 Coinage and Conquest Imagery 20 1.3 Gaul as Captive: The Role of the Gaul in Roman Visual Culture 1.4 Conquest Imagery and Gallic Self-Representation 37 1.5 Conclusion 47
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Chapter 2 Coining an Image: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Language of Power in Roman Iberia 49 2.1 The Conquest Experience in Roman Hispania 51 2.2 Coins as Cultural Memory 57 2.3 Embracing Commensuration: Inter-Cultural Messaging on Coins 66 2.4 Entangled Coin Imagery After the Sertorian War 77 2.5 Conclusion 84 Chapter 3 Rome and the Greek East: Overwriting and Cowriting Conquest 86 3.1 Roman Revisions: Monumental Interventions in Hellenistic Commemorative Landscapes 89 3.2 Roman Monetary Interventions in the Hellenistic World 97 3.3 Despoliation as Overwriting: Hellenistic Plunder in Roman Contexts 104 3.4 Roman and Greek Cowriting 107 3.5 Conclusion 113 Chapter 4 Conquest Kitsch: Moving Iconography from Public to Consumer Contexts 4.1 Purchasing Prestige: Elite Competition and Monumentality 116 4.2 Conquest and Domestic Spectacle: Luxury Consumption as Elite SelfExpression 121
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4.3
Conquest Connoisseurs: Performing Status and Identity with Conquest Iconography 124 The Fashion for Barbarians: From Literal Reflections to Metaphorical Interpretations 127 Conclusion 133
4.4 4.5 Conclusion
Bibliography Index
161
135 141
List of Figures Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 1.1 Fig. 1.2
Fig. 1.3
Fig. 1.4 Fig. 1.5 Fig. 1.6
Fig. 1.7 Fig. 1.8
Fig. 1.9
Fig. 1.10
Fig. 1.11
Fig. 1.12
Fig. 1.13
Faliscan Vase from Civita Castellana (Italy), fourth century BCE. Image courtesy of the Louvre, Département des Antiquités grecques, étrusques et romaines, inv. no. Cp12834. The Louvre requested the addition of a hyperlink as part of their attribution: https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010265486# 3 First-century BCE triumphal frieze from the Temple of Apollo Sosianus in Rome. Centrale Montemartini Museum, Rome. Image courtesy of the Soprintendenza Capitolina – Foto in Comune 5 The Dying Gaul. Capitoline Museums, Rome, inv. no. MC 0747. Image courtesy of the Soprintendenza Capitolina - Foto in Comune 15 Fragment from the Civitalba frieze. Museo Nazionale della Marche, Ancona. Image courtesy of the Museo Archeological Nazionale delle Marche (Ancona) with concession from the Ministero della Cultura - Direzione regionale Musei Marche 20 Top: RRC 281/1. Denarius minted by M. Furius Philus (119 BCE). Image courtesy of the American Numismatic Society, inv. no.1944.100.561. Bottom: RRC 282/1. Denarius minted by Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus, M. Aemilius Scaurus, and L. Licinius Crassus (118 BCE). Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, no. FRBNF41977810 26 RRC 319/1. Denarius minted in Rome by Q. Minucius Thermus (103 BCE). Image courtesy of the American Numismatic Society, inv. no.1987.26.42 28 RRC 326/2. Denarius minted by C. Fundanius (101 BCE). Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, no. FRBNF41986186 30 Bronze statue of a bound captive (late first century BCE). Musée de l’Arles Antique, inv. no RHO.2007.06.1962. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, under Creative Commons License, with permission of the Musée de l’Arles Antique ©Rémi Bénali 31 RRC 415/1. Denarius minted by L. Aemilius Lepidus Paullus (62 BCE). Image courtesy of the American Numismatic Society, inv. no. 1896.7.90 33 Top: RRC 448/2. Denarius minted by L. Hostilius Saserna (48 BCE). Image courtesy of the American Numismatic Society, inv. no. 1937.158.248. Bottom: RRC 448/3. Denarius minted by L. Hostilius Saserna (48 BCE). Image courtesy of the American Numismatic Society, inv. no. 1973.999.10 34 Top: RRC 452/5. Denarius minted by Caesar (48/47 BCE). Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, no. FRBNF41987482. Bottom: RRC 468/1. Denarius minted by Julius Caesar (46/45 BCE). Image courtesy of the American Numismatic Society, inv. no. 1937.158.278 35 Marble relief panel from the triumphal arch at Glanum (St. Rémy-de-Provence). Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, under Creative Commons License. Original photo by Carole Raddato 37 Interior panel from the Gundestrup cauldron (c. second century BCE to first century CE). Image courtesy of The National Museum of Denmark, CC BY-SA, photograph by Roberto Fortuna and Kira Ursem. National Museum of Denmark 39 Left: Severed head from Entremont. Right: Line drawing of seated warrior with severed heads from Entremont, Musée Granet, Aix-en-Provence. Imagery courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, under Creative Commons License Photograph by Finiskov 41 Top: Gallic gold quarter stater of the Veneti (second century BCE). Image courtesy of the Ambiani Digital Database, inv. no. 1887.A.223. Bottom: Gallic silver denarius of the Bituriges Cubes. Image courtesy of the Ambiani Digital Database, inv. no. 1887. A.144 42
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List of Figures
Fig. 1.14 Top: RRC 286/1. Denarius minted by M. Sergius Silus (116/115 BCE). Image courtesy of the American Numismatic Society, inv. no. 1941.131.92. Bottom: Gallic denarius of unknown origin imitating the denarius of M. Sergius Silus. Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, no. FRBNF44809083 45 Fig. 1.15 Silver coin of the Aedui (50s BCE). Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, no. 1889.5038 46 Fig. 1.16 Bronze coin minted in Antipolis. Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, no. FRBNF44800602 47 Fig. 2.1 RRC 234/1. Denarius minted by Ti. Veturius (137 BCE). Image courtesy of the American Numismatic Society, inv. no. 1944.100.374 59 Fig. 2.2 RRC 365/1a. Denarius minted by C. Valerius Flaccus (82 BCE). Image courtesy of the American Numismatic Society, inv. no. 1896.7.72 62 Fig. 2.3 Top: RRC 469/1d. Denarius minted by M. Publicius and Pompey the Younger (46/45 BCE). Image courtesy of the American Numismatic Society, inv. no. 1896.7.106. Bottom: RRC 470/1b. Denarius minted by M. Minatius Sabinus and Pompey the Younger (46/45 BCE). Image courtesy of the American Numismatic Society, inv. no. 2012.34.17 64 Fig. 2.4 Top: RPC I, 1–4. Bronze dupondius from an uncertain mint in northwest Spain (c. 27 BCE). Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, no. FRBNF41858381. Bottom: Lusitanian warrior statue, National Archaeological Museum, Lisbon. Image Courtesy of National Archaeological Museum, Lisbon, Direção-Geral do Património Cultural /Arquivo e Documentação Fotográfica. Photographer José Pessoa, 1992 68 Fig. 2.5 Top: Iberian denarius minted at Turiaso (c. 200–27 BCE). Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, no. FRBNF41770781. Bottom: Iberian bronze coin minted at Iltirta (80–72 BCE). Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, no. FRBNF41740393 74 Fig. 2.6 Top: Iberian bronze unit minted at Segobriga (c. 120–80 BCE). Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, no. FRBNF41749107. Bottom: Augustan-era bronze as from Segobriga (c. 36–14 BCE). Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, no. FRBNF41749110 79 Fig. 2.7 Top: Iberian denarius minted at Bolskan (80–72 BCE). Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, no. FRBNF41750028. Bottom: Augustan-era bronze as from Osca (Bolskan). Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, no. FRBNF41835597 81 Fig. 2.8 Left: Late third-century BCE bas relief of Minerva with a shield that has a wolf’s head in the center. From Tarraco, Spain. Image courtesy of the DAI Madrid, inv. no. 1188750. Right: The so-called Tivissa plate, a patera with a wolf’s head in the central boss, dated to the first half of the second century BCE. Image courtesy of the Museu d’Arqueologia de Catalunya, inv. no. MAC BCN-019445 83 Fig. 2.9 Bronze as from Ilerda (Iltirta). Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, no. FRBNF41740397 83 Fig. 3.1 South frieze of Aemilius Paullus’ monument in Delphi. Image courtesy of DAI Munich, inv. no. 1215418 arachne.dainst.org/entity/437046; Photographer H. Kähler 91 Fig. 3.2 Top: Athenian New Style Tetradrachm of L. Cornelius Sulla (86–84 BCE). Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, no. FRBNF41815049. Bottom: Denarius of L. Cornelius Sulla (84/83 BCE). Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, no. FRBNF41981862 94 Fig. 3.3 Stater of T. Quinctius Flamininus (196 BCE). Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, no. FRBNF41836185 99
List of Figures
Fig. 3.4 Fig. 3.5 Fig. 3.6
Fig. 4.1
Fig. 4.2
Fig. 4.3 Fig. 4.4
Fig. 4.5 Fig. 4.6
Tetradrachm minted in Athens (89/8 BCE). Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, no. FRBNF41815021 102 RRC 263/1a. Denarius minted by M. Caecilius Metellus (127 BCE). Image courtesy of the American Numismatic Society, inv. no.1937.158.615 103 Left: Claudius subduing the personified Britannia. From the south portico of the Sebasteion, in Aphrodisias. Right: Nero subduing the personified Armenia. From the south portico of the Sebasteion, in Aphrodisias. Images courtesy of New York University Excavations at Aphrodisias (G. Petruccioli) 111 Second Style stucco weapons frieze, Villa dei Papiri. Image courtesy of Herculaneum in Pictures, photo by Michael Binns. With permission from the Ministero della Cultura – Parco Archeologico di Ercolano 127 Terracotta relief depicting a trophy, a bound male prisoner, and a veiled female prisoner. Image courtesy of the Ministero della cultura – Museo Nazionale Romano, photographer Giorgio Carnel e Luciano Mandato 128 Glass intaglio (first century BCE–second century CE). Image © of The Trustees of the British Museum, inv. no. 1814.0704.2515 130 Clay relief found on the Via Cassia (c. mid-to-late first century BCE or early first century CE). Image courtesy of the Ministero della cultura – Museo Nazionale Romano, photographer Giorgio Carnel e Luciano Mandato 131 Convex oval brown paste intaglio (c. second–first century BCE). Image © of The Trustees of the British Museum, inv. no. 1814.0704.2656 132 Terracotta lamp (c. early first century CE). Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Helmut Nickel, in memory of Lothar Ismail Tell, 2017; inv. no. 2017.452 132
Maps Map 1 Map 2 Map 3
Map of Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul. Image by Erin Greb Cartography Map of the Iberian Peninsula. Image by Erin Greb Cartography XVI Map of the Greek Peninsula. Image by Erin Greb Cartography XVII
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Map 1: Map of Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul with relevant cities. Map illustrated by Erin Greb Cartography. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111326634-205
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Map 2: Map of the Iberian Peninsula with relevant cities. Map illustrated by Erin Greb Cartography.
Maps
Map 3: Map of the Greek Peninsula with relevant cities. Map illustrated by Erin Greb Cartography.
XVII
Introduction The Roman Republic was intensely preoccupied with war; its political infrastructure and its elite social expectations were inextricably bound up in martial performance. Even the urban space had links to both military necessity and militaristic rituals and performances.1 It should come as no surprise, therefore, that martial prowess was a common theme in ancient Roman visual culture. Images of conquest spoke to how the Romans saw themselves and how they conceptualized conquered peoples within a growing imperial community in the Middle and Late Republic (c. 250–50 BCE).2 Conquest imagery allowed the Romans to visualize their empire and to render permanent and accessible their perceptions of Roman power. Such power was evident in the depictions of captured enemies, bound and forced into subdued positions; in the dynamic battle scenes reverberating with the clash of sword against shield as the Romans and their foes writhe across sculptural friezes; and especially in the trophies bedecked with the plundered weaponry of conquered foes. As such images suggest, conquest and subjugation were deeply embedded in Republican Roman identity, particularly for those of equestrian and senatorial rank.3 Reflecting on the distant past, Roman writers of the late Republic saw their history as one shaped by expansion and a destiny to rule over others, encapsulated in the oftquoted phrase from Vergil’s Aeneid: “I have given [them] rule without end” (imperium sine fine dedi).4 That worldview is reflected in an archaeological record of frequent warfare, beginning in the fourth century BCE when the Romans extended their power in the Italian Peninsula. While that conquest critically influenced Rome’s conquest mentality, particularly in the manpower it provided, Roman identity faced significant challenges once it expanded beyond the Peninsula.5 With the Punic Wars, the Romans
For example, the dedication of temples to fulfill battlefield vows, the early function of the Campus Martius as a place for the army to gather, and the religious rituals and ritual spaces tied to beginning and ending military campaigns, such as the Salian priests. Unless otherwise noted, all dates are BCE. The periodization of “middle” and “late” republic is arbitrary and somewhat muddled in current scholarship (see Flower 2010). I generally define the middle Republic as the period from roughly the First Punic War (264–241 BCE) to the mid-second century BCE, and the late Republic from roughly the mid-second century BCE to Octavian’s victory at Actium in 31 BCE. Senatorial rank included those families who had an ancestor who had reached the consulship and those who were actively enrolled in the Senate. For more on Roman social classes and status, see: Beck et al. (2011) (consulship); Davenport (2019) (equestrians); Noy (2018) (plebs Romana); Sumi (2005) (performance), among many others. Vergil Aen. 1.254–356, a pronouncement of Jupiter. This is not to say that the conquest of Italy did not challenge Roman identity; it certainly pitted the Romans against other Italic peoples and facilitated cultural syncretism, but longstanding cultural interactions buffered the Romans against cultural dissonances, which was not always the case during https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111326634-001
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faced truly foreign cultures, which catalyzed an ongoing process of defining what it meant to be Roman, as both an empire and an identity.6 The Middle Republic was a period of dynamic change on multiple fronts. The Second Punic War (218–202 BCE) spurred new cultural negotiations since it drew the Romans into ongoing conflicts across the Mediterranean, including in the Iberian Peninsula, Cisalpine Gaul, and the Greek Peninsula. The war therefore functions as a useful starting point for an exploration of how images of power coalesced into a visual language that perpetuated a cultural narrative of what it meant to be, and to become, Roman. The themes portrayed through conquest imagery suggest that the Romans, like many imperial powers, defined what it meant to be Roman by defining what it meant not to be Roman – that is, to be subject to Roman authority. The Second Punic War had far-reaching consequences not only for the development of Rome as a Mediterranean superpower but also for identity formation. Hundreds of thousands of captured and enslaved foreigners arrived in Italy, bringing with them diverse languages, new cults, artistic skills, and, unintentionally, challenges to Roman identity.7 The war against Hannibal also required protracted investment in overseas military action that continued after Hannibal’s defeat. The Romans embroiled themselves in conflicts that shifted from proxies to full-fledged wars for much of the second century BCE.8 Those wars kept the Romans overseas in one conflict or another for most of the Republican period and fundamentally reshaped Roman society. The third- and secondcentury BCE plays of Plautus and Terence, for example, reflect this dynamic change. From characters such as the clever slave or the soldier to the settings and the plots, Roman conquest and its impact are inextricable from Roman comedy.9 Even as the
overseas conquest. For more on Roman expansion in Italy and its impact on Roman culture, see Bradley et al. (2007); Bradley and Farney (2018); Bernard et al. (2023); Lomas (2017). The Punic Wars refers to the three wars waged between Rome and Carthage and their allies. The First Punic War lasted from 264 to 241 BCE, the Second, against Hannibal, from 218 to 202 BCE, and the Third from 149 to 146 BCE, which culminated in the destruction of Carthage by Scipio Aemilianus. Wickham (2014). This was not a new situation since Greek and Phoenician colonization in the archaic period had created similar encounters thanks to the movement of people (Demetriou 2012: 4). For more on the evolution of Roman religion in the Middle Republic, see Padilla Peralta (2020). Richlin (2018a,b) and others have argued that war enslavement brought numerous artisans, skilled laborers, doctors, actors, and other professionals to Rome. This is also the period in which the Romans began to mint their own coins prolifically. For examples of recent work on the development of Roman coinage, see: Bernard (2018a); Burnett (2012). For more on the Roman economy in the Middle Republic, see Bernard (2018b). Rosenstein (2012): 176. Leigh (2004): 1–23; 57–97. There are even explicit references to conquest within Plautus’ plays, including to the Boii, in Captivi (Plaut. Capt. 885û90), which was likely performed after Scipio Nasica’s triumph in 191 BCE over the Boii. That boia meant both a Boian lady and a slave collar was a clear innuendo referencing the enslavement of Boian war captives after the Battle of Mutina in 193. The entire plot of Captivi is, of course, an explicit reference to conquest and its ramifications.
Introduction
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Roman soldier played a vital role in Roman expansion, he too was fundamentally altered by conquest. Much of the weaponry that for modern audiences connotes Roman soldiers was adapted from foreign cultures. The Romans adopted numerous elements of EtruscoCeltic military equipment – such as mail armor, the scutum shield, and the Montefortino helmet – but did so in a conscious way that met the needs of Roman military strategy.10 Consequently, in the third century BCE, the Roman panoply so closely resembled that of their Gallic enemies that the Roman soldier could be visually ambiguous when depicting celtomachia (wars against Celts) and its cultural cachet could even be critiqued.11 We can see elements of that ambiguity in a fourth-century BCE Faliscan vase from Civita Castellana in Latium, north of Rome (Fig. 1). The vase depicts three warriors engaged in combat. Two are identifiable as Celtic/Gallic by their nudity and, with the figure on the left, by the “wild” Gallic hair. The figure on the far right, whom they are in the act of killing, is presumed to be an Italian. He carries a small oval shield not quite visible from this perspective, and is wearing a Montefortino helmet. If the victim’s Ital-
Fig. 1: Faliscan Vase from Civita Castellana (Italy), fourth century BCE. The figure on the left and the central figure are Gallic warriors, denoted by the wild, curly hair of the man on the left, and by the nudity of both figures. The man they are killing on the right is likely an Italian wearing a Montefortino helmet. This image, a reverse celtomachia, was produced in Latium just north of Rome in a period when the Romans had already begun adopting the style of shield that the two “barbarians” carry here, suggesting a potential critique of the adoption of the Celtic panoply. Image courtesy of the Louvre, Département des Antiquités grecques, étrusques et romaines, inv. no. Cp12834.
As Taylor (2020: 48) noted, the Romans adopted Celtic military equipment “that fitted with their own idiosyncratic tactics.” The Romans did not, for example, adopt the characteristic La Tène sword and in fact mocked their perceived – from Roman eyes – ineffectiveness in combat (Pol. 2.33.2–6). For more on celtomachia, see Holliday (1994).
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ian identity is correct, this image is a play on the traditional celtomachia, with the Gallic warriors, bearing shields that at that time the Romans also carried, defeating an Italian (Roman), rather than the typical Roman triumph over Gallic “barbarians.” At the same time, this image is remarkably ambiguous. It is not entirely clear if the victim is Italian, although the potential meaning behind having two perceived barbarians defeat a warrior ostensibly representing Rome and its allies is significant. There is remarkable overlap in depictions of Roman and Celtic or Iberian warriors in the late fourth and third centuries BCE.12 The heroic warriors depicted at Entremont (Chapter 1), for example, wear the same mail armor that Romans wore, and thus it is only their possession of severed heads that identify them as non-Roman.13 A third- to first-century BCE warrior from Osuna (modern Spain) reflects the same ambiguity, with the falcata sword acting as the main ethnic marker for an Iberian warrior.14 Such ambiguity seems a marked contrast to the triumphal procession on the much later Temple of Apollo Sosianus in Rome (Fig. 2), which encapsulates the grandiose narrative of Roman power that most modern audiences expect.15 Like many Roman temples, the decoration of the Temple of Apollo was decidedly oriented toward memorializing Roman martial prowess.16 Combining a fifth-century BCE Amazonomachy pediment seized from a Greek temple with a triumphal relief scene, the temple is often understood as an archetype of victory imagery.17 The triumphal scene depicts men carrying a litter upon which a Roman trophy is affixed. Tied to the base of that trophy are two captives, one of
See, for example, Steuer (2006). Though the Romans were not entirely exempt from such martial practices. The Osuna relief (Museo Arqueólogico Nacional de Madrid, inv. no. 38424) is part of a larger monument depicting a group in different moments of some form of ritual, with ritualized combat playing out between two young men, along with processions and musicians. The hairstyle, clothing, and the falcata are all that designate this as an Iberian monument rather than a Roman monument. Situated adjacent to the Circus Flaminius, the second-century BCE Temple of Apollo Medicus, more often called Apollo Sosianus (Plin. NH 13.53, 36.28), was embellished and rededicated by C. Sosius (cos. 32 BCE) to celebrate his victory in Judaea in 34 BCE, though the refurbishment probably was not completed until the 20s BCE. The temple’s later date is presumed on stylistic grounds (La Rocca 1985; Orlin 2016: 127) and contravenes earlier arguments that the initially pro-Antony Sosius employed anti-Augustan visual propaganda in the temple’s decoration (Orlin 2016: 127). Though, Sosius did skirt a potentially dangerous line by issuing coins that celebrated his own achievements, as symbolized by a mannequin trophy (RPC 1 1290–3). It referenced Sosius’ achievements, but Orlin and others argue that it took on a decidedly Augustan scheme, and Augustus likely had some input on the project. The Temple of Apollo Sosianus was in the southern Campus Martius, an area heavily rebuilt to reflect Augustan visual propaganda. That Augustus at least signed off on the project seems likely (Orlin 2016: 124–132). Orlin sees the reconstruction of this region as a “coherent programme of renewal” (2016: 132). Even the column capitals were carved with mannequin trophies embedded in the traditional Corinthian foliage (Orlin 2016: 130). And La Rocca (1985: 89–92) argued that the Amazonomachy could be read in traditional fashion as a victory of Greeks over Amazons and as an allegory for the recent Roman victory over Egypt and its female pharaoh, Cleopatra (Kellum 1997: 163; Orlin 2016: 129–130).
Introduction
5
whom is visually coded as non-Roman, if his bound hands were not a strong enough indicator, thanks to his beard. The procession is accompanied by musicians and the sacrificial animals who will honor the gods at the end of the triumphal parade. Yet this image is also ambiguous, deploying generic references to triumph that could narrate Sosianus’ triumph over Judaea or could suggest Octavian’s Gallic triumph. The relief represents what had by the late first century BCE become a stock representation of Roman victory: a trophy paired with captives, devoid of any markers to designate a specific victory. Many scholars utilize this image as an archetypal case study for Roman conquest imagery, but it deserves some reconsideration.18
Fig. 2: From the first-century BCE Temple of Apollo Sosianus in Rome. The relief depicts bound captives on a triumphal litter huddled at the base of a Roman trophy. The beard on the captive on the left signifies his foreignness, and the artist has taken the time to carve their faces to show pain, discomfort, and fear. Centrale Montemartini Museum, Rome. the Soprintendenza Capitolina - Foto in Comune.
Understanding this as a generic representation of victory for Roman audiences takes for granted the development of a coherent visual system for conquest imagery that would allow such images to be readable. Yet, in simply assuming the existence of a coherent visual system without investigating its origins and development, one unintentionally privileges the Augustan adaptations of that system. The Sosianus frieze reflects the centurieslong process of image production that developed conterminously with Roman expansion. Without the dynamic changes of the Middle Republic, which cemented Rome as an expansionist power and both challenged and solidified their methods of self-representation, such archetypal imagery would not be as legible. The imperial imagery of the Augustan period crystalized through protracted martial engagement with foreign enemies but also through prolonged interaction with foreign technology, imagery, and material cultures. The long process of cultural and martial engagement that shaped Roman conquest imagery in the Republican period remains understudied, and too often the imagery is assessed without considering how such imagery became legible for a general Roman audience. For
Zanker, for example, referred to the Temple’s decoration as “not the result of a gradual development [in the Augustan era], but rather the product of a set ideology . . . ” (1988: 69). The stock nature of the image is intimated in Östenberg’s statement that it “exhibits rather non-specific excerpts of triumph” (2009: 146).
6
Introduction
the generic triumphal reference of the Sosianus frieze to be coherent the audience would need to have encountered numerous such images before. This is particularly true if one reads the Sosianus frieze as a reference not to Sosianus’ triumph but to Augustus’ Gallic triumph, for that would require a significant degree of inference.19 To understand how the above images became intelligible to Roman audiences, Empire of Images explores the coalescence of a series of image-types that became encoded in the language of Roman power between roughly 218 BCE (Second Punic War) and 19 BCE and the end of Cantabrian Wars, which brought the last region of the Iberian Peninsula fully under Roman authority. The book extends beyond the boundaries of the Republic in order to draw in critical extant examples of how Roman conquest imagery became a shared visual language that intertwined imperial communities to such a degree that without written attribution, it is often difficult to determine the ethnic identity of the patron or owner. Image-types such as the trophy or the bound captive were invested with authority through complex interactions between Rome and foreign peoples during the process of Roman territorial expansion in the period under study. While these Republican-era visual tropes, reflecting individual elite achievements, were later supplanted by the emperor, they did not disappear. Rather, they were a frequent conduit for expressing the emperor’s power and legitimacy. Much like poetry and panegyrics, they sang the praises of Roman emperors, even when divorced from the living memory of the peoples and places that shaped their images. For example, the carnyx, a Gallic war trumpet, was such a lasting metaphor for Roman victory that it continued to appear on Roman coins and in other contexts as a stand-in for subjugated enemies hundreds of years after the initial conquest over Gallic peoples.20 These image-types consequently remain a critical component of how we interpret Roman visual culture across time and space. To illustrate how these icons came to represent Roman power not just for elite Romans but for subject peoples, later Roman communities, and even modern audiences, one must examine numerous media, including sculpture, monuments, and wall decoration, as well as more mobile objects such as coins, intaglios, and lamps. By tracking image-types through specific case-study regions, it becomes clear that local experiences – in the wars of conquest, in military occupation, in trade, in administration, etcetera – shaped how and why certain image-types developed. Östenberg (2009): 146; though it must be noted that Östenberg does not commit to this interpretation but rather presents it as one potential reading of the ambiguous image. For example, the carnyx, usually coupled with a mannequin trophy or at least a shield, appeared on coins intermittently in the late Republic and early Empire, such as a few coin series of Julius Caesar (e.g., ANS 1944.100.3292) but also appeared as late as the second century CE, on a gold aureus series minted under Marcus Aurelius (e.g., BM 1867.0101.721). Of course, the Roman tendency to conflate Germans and Gallic peoples likely played a role in the carnyx’s appearance on Marcus Aurelius’ coinage since he campaigned against the Marcomanni. We can also see the carnyx on Trajan’s column and on an altar to Jupiter Heliopolitanus in Nîmes, among others. For more on the carnyx, see Hunter (2001), (2009a,b), Swan (2018).
Introduction
7
Many of the iconic image-types that came to typify Roman conquest imagery drew inspiration from image-types across the Mediterranean and Near East.21 It is unsurprising that the Romans, who were highly syncretic in other cultural facets, would borrow from other visual cultures.22 Yet at the same time, the Romans were actively expanding, and therefore their engagement with other visual cultures often occurred within the scope of conquest. Consequently, the development of conquest imagery occurred in a sort of liminal space, where the Romans borrowed from other cultures while simultaneously conquering them. This seems to have resulted in some cognitive dissonance, where the Romans were unsure how to frame their relationship with a culture that was simultaneously their subject and a source of cultural inspiration. Their relationship with Greece is the most studied example of this dissonance. To explore this complex and ongoing negotiation with Roman images of power, Empire of Images traces the development and diffusion of conquest imagery through three regions: the Gallic provinces (Map 1), the Iberian provinces (Map 2), and the wider Greek Peninsula (Map 3), specifically Greece and Macedonia. These three regions best represent the liminality of Roman conquest imagery because first, they were the first regions outside of the Italian Peninsula to be subjugated to Roman authority. And second, Roman interactions with these regions’ peoples occurred before the Romans had a concrete visual ideology, and they were therefore deeply influential in the development of the programmatic visual language that came to define the Roman Empire. These three provinces by no means represent a fully holistic approach to understanding the role of the provinces in the development of Roman conquest imagery. Asia Minor, Africa, the Germanic provinces, and Britain were also profoundly influential. It is, of course, an almost impossible task to cover the breadth of the Roman Empire in the Republican period in a single, coherent monograph. By taking a narrow case study approach, this book offers a tight analysis of some of the earliest developments in Roman imperial imagery and offers avenues for further research on Republican visual culture. Yet even beyond that, these other provinces are excluded because, while influential, their influence was mediated by previous interaction with the three case-study regions studied here. Essentially, the Gauls, Iberians, and Greeks/Macedonians became a sort of lens through which the Romans viewed all other cultures. We can, therefore, see elements of Roman projections of those core regions in the later imagery produced in Asia Minor, Africa, or Britain. The Gallic captive, for example, was the captive, and all other Roman captive imagery in some way referenced the “original.” Therefore, to truly understand Roman conquest imagery regardless of which province one studies, it is critical
The Romans utilized image-types that were also present in Hellenistic, Akkadian, Egyptian, Assyrian, and Persian iconography, among others. For Greek and Hellenistic influences, see: E. Hall (1989, 1993); Hölscher (2003); Kinnee (2018); Papini (2016); Rice (1993); Strootman (2004); Swain (1996); Vlassopoulos (2013). For Near Eastern and Egyptian precedents, see Collins (2014); Foster (2016); Fowler and Hekster (2005); E.S. Hall (1986); Root (1979). For example, their religious syncretism. See Padilla Peralta (2020).
8
Introduction
first to establish how the two Gallic provinces the Iberian Peninsula, and Greece and Macedonia influenced the Roman language of power in the first place. As stated above, Roman conquest imagery was somewhat liminal. While it could be highly evocative in framing Roman victory, it was also decidedly ambiguous. That ambiguity was critical to the success of this visual language. The persistence of visual markers from other cultures, such as the Gallic or Macedonian shield or the Iberian falcata, in the Roman visual language subjected Roman imagery to multiple readings. Therein lay the utility of Roman imagery as a mediator within first the conquest process and then later the development of an imperial community. Both Romans and their subjects could read these images but read them in their own idiosyncratic ways. As such, it is critical to analyze visual tropes through the lens of entanglement. Entanglement emphasizes that objects and images can accrue meaning, symbolism, and value as they move through different hands.23 This process of commensuration illuminates the cross-cultural encounters between objects and images and between locals and Romans in the Republican period. Building on the work of previous scholars, Empire of Images conceptualizes the development of image-types as an ongoing process in which Romans and locals continually, though often unconsciously, negotiated over the style and use of conquest imagery.24 Since much of the onus to produce conquest imagery – whether monumental or small-scale – fell on local artisans, it is logical that their own style would infuse their interpretation of their customer’s demands. Conquest imagery took on decidedly local flavor, while also remaining recognizable across territorial boundaries. Consequently, objects we may see as quintessentially Roman took on new meanings in regional contexts, but also became more ambiguous as they encountered diverse social relationships and worldviews.25 So, for example, a Roman coin depicting a warrior who holds a severed head might at first seem an unambiguous assertion of Roman dominance, but the value placed on severed heads in some local cultures meant that such imagery would always be open to different interpretations – not Roman dominion, for example, but rather local warrior prowess.26 And, as stated previously, the fact that Roman soldiers would have closely resembled Gallic warriors in their military equipment added to the ambiguity.27 Ultimately, this very ambiguity popularized conquest imagery and encoded it as a critical element of how the Romans imagined their power and their empire, and framed how conquered local populations responded to it. Thomas (1991). See also Dietler (2010); Cassibry (2016); Hodder (2012); Versluys (2014); Rowan (2016a). Equally important is the concept of commensuration, as theorized by Comaroff and Comaroff (2005). Especially Ferris (2000); Jiménez (2016); Pandey (2018, 2020); Rowan (2016a, b); Woolf (1998); Welch (2006); Yarrow (2018); and the contributors to Russell and Hellström (2020). For Roman iconography more broadly, see the contributors to Cline and Elkins (2022). Scott and Webster (2003). Here I reference RRC 286/1, a denarius issued by M. Sergius Silus in 116/15 BCE. It has the head of Roma on the obverse (front) and a horseman holding a sword and severed had on the reverse (back) (ANS 1941.131.92). See Chapter 1. For more on the image of the Celtic warrior in coin iconography, see Hunter (2005).
Introduction
9
The Romans, for example, often overlaid their own symbols of power onto objects or spaces that had meaning for local peoples, creating a series of entanglements. Preoccupied with articulating their martial supremacy, Romans frequently disrupted visual landscapes in the areas they conquered, inserting themselves into existing imageworlds. For example, when L. Aemilius Paullus (cos. 168 BCE) defeated Perseus of Macedon, he coopted Perseus’ new honorific monument in the sanctuary city of Delphi.28 Paullus employed Greek artisans to adapt the relief scene and recast it to star Paullus as the victor, notably over the man to whom the monument was originally dedicated.29 Paullus also had a Latin inscription added to the base proclaiming his conquest. These revisions produced an entangled life history, in which the monument needed to still reflect its original intentions as a monument to Perseus because that imbued Paullus’ newly inscribed victory with greater meaning. In this way, the Romans revised existing monuments or objects, either by removing them to a new, more overtly Roman space and adding a triumphal inscription to it, typically through the triumphal parade, or they reinscribed an existing monument or monumental space to broadcast their achievements. We see numerous examples of this practice, from the destruction of resistant towns and the insertion of Roman colonies into local populations – destroying local image-cultures and stamping new Roman iconography onto the space – to the appropriation and reuse of imagery, objects, and local monuments to convey Roman authority. Entanglement and commensuration are not new concepts, and overlap with other popular terms in classical studies such as acculturation and synoecism.30 This book embraces entanglement and commensuration as the most effective for capturing the nuances of how these visual representations functioned as modes of communication between discrete cultures. Two linguistic terms, overwriting and cowriting, help illustrate the entangled history of Roman image-types. Overwriting elucidates the aggressive Roman practice of inserting their visual vocabulary into conquered spaces, regardless of whether local peoples understand their messaging. Overwriting is a conversation about Roman power aimed primarily at fellow Romans and reflects the imposition of visual communication on subject peoples. It also, consequently, reaffirms state power
Discussed in Chapter 3. For a detailed study of the battle iconography on Aemilius Paullus’ Delphi monument, see Taylor (2016). Kuttner (2004): 361. Kuttner noted that while the combination of an elevated column and a bronze equestrian statue with a Latin inscription had no parallel in the Greek world, the Attalids had analogous plinth monuments at Delphi and Athens, so “the genre of plinth monuments seems a RomanAttalid symbiosis.” The past few decades of scholarship have generated diverse terminology for articulating the relationship between Rome and its subject peoples with respect to cultural development. Acculturation, synoecism, creolage, and other similar terms all help underscore the importance of local agency in crosscultural interaction. I rely on entanglement, commensuration, overwriting, and cowriting to emphasize the communicative and often ambiguous nature of cross-cultural material interactions. For recent work on cross-cultural interaction, see Häussler (2013a, b); Häussler and Webster (2020); Webster (2001).
10
Introduction
even if intended to commemorate an individual. Cowriting, on the other hand, was a form of communication that allowed the Romans to convey their power in ways that could be reinterpreted in non-Roman contexts, creating space for multiple forms of communication, between Romans and local peoples, and within local communities. It was a more adaptable visual language that non-Romans, particularly elites, quickly reinterpreted in their own vernacular forms of communication and commemoration. Such linguistic terminology is fruitful because Roman imagery was ultimately, a visual language and therefore had a discernible grammar, vocabulary, and syntax.31 There was a set of structural rules (grammar) that governed the choice of image (vocabulary) and the arrangement of those images to tell a story (syntax). Arms reliefs like the one from Pietrabbondante (Molise, Italy) demonstrate how the visual grammar functioned. The relief has three stacked shields (vocabulary) – potentially Gallic, Macedonian, and Iberian – slightly behind (syntax) a Roman panoply, which holds another shield. To the right of the panoply is a ship’s prow (rostra).32 The vocabulary and syntax in this relief combine to tell a story of both subject and conqueror. One can read a wealth of “linguistic” information from this simple frieze, and using linguistic terminology captures the idea that the Romans were producing conquest imagery to communicate. Even if their intended audience was initially limited to fellow Romans who “spoke” their language, they both drew on existing visual vocabulary and created a syntax for conveying power that was deployed at the local level mostly by elites. This was not, however, a language that was readable exclusively to those elites. Thus, the first three chapters privilege forms of image production that required wealth. And then Chapter 4 examines how the vocabulary of conquest imagery expanded to include more inexpensive and therefore more accessible forms of production such as terracotta, glass, or paste intaglios and the reuse of existing objects. This spread the use of conquest imagery both geographically and hierarchically, allowing more people to “speak” the language. Consequently, a linguistic metaphor is a useful way to think about the relationship between the Romans and locals in the provinces in contributing to a shared visual language of power. In practice, overwriting and cowriting overlap because objects were circulated and consumed differently and by varied audiences across the empire. Because Romans and indigenous peoples alike were engaging with an iconographic language that held meaning not only to them but also to contemporary and past Mediterranean and Near Eastern cultures, overwriting and cowriting were not
The appeal and applicability of linguistic metaphors can be traced back to Tonio Hölscher’s work, which systematically traced visual codes in Republican art that denoted virtues, such as Fortuna, Pietas, Virtus, or Honos, and that he argued were intended to be legible, at least to an insider group. See Hölscher (1980): 273–279, (1982): 271–274. For his idea of an “Insider-Kunst,” see (1984): 16. DAI Rom Inst. Neg. 75.2648. The choice of weapons suggests an Augustan date for the relief referencing Augustus’ Alpine and Cantabrian Wars, plus a Macedonian shield alluding to Actium, while avoiding overt reference to the civil war. For more on this shield, see Polito (2012).
Introduction
11
chronologically distinct or mutually exclusive. The Romans routinely inserted themselves into conquered landscapes while local peoples and Italian immigrants were also cowriting in the same region.33 What is woven through all three of these terms is the idea of commensuration. These were ongoing processes in which Romans and locals continually, though often unconsciously, negotiated over the style and use of conquest imagery. Since much of the onus to produce conquest imagery – whether monumental or small-scale – fell on local artisans, it is logical that they would mediate their understanding of their customer’s demands through stylistic methods with which they were familiar. Consequently, conquest imagery took on decidedly local flavor, while also remaining recognizable across territorial boundaries. The story of the Roman visual language of power unfolds in roughly the chronological order of Roman conquest, beginning in northern Italy and following Roman expansion into subsequent provinces. Chapter 1 examines conquest imagery in the two Gallic provinces of Cisalpine Gaul (northern Italy) and Transalpine Gaul (southern France). While most scholarship treats Transalpine and Cisalpine Gaul separately, it is critical to study both provinces together to understand how Gallic imagery proliferated in Roman visual culture, especially since Roman, and Greek, ethnographic stereotyping rarely distinguished between Gallic peoples.34 Notably, more than for any other ethnic group, Romans used coins and trophies to depict Gauls in various poses of subjugation. Gallic weaponry was also displayed as the spoils of war and visually stood in for enslaved Gallic bodies. Chapter 2 turns to the Iberian Peninsula and the provinces of Hispania Citerior (Nearer Spain) and Hispania Ulterior (Farther Spain). Because it took 200 years to fully subjugate the peninsula, we can trace the long-term development of imagery there in a way that is rarely replicable elsewhere. The Sertorian War (82–72 BCE) and subsequent civil wars offer a unique glimpse into potential ideological components of Roman coins, as both sides in these wars invested powerful symbolic authority in the coins they minted.35 By tracing iconographic shifts through internal and civil wars, this chapter reveals how Roman iconography responded to local situations, navigating the complex process of consolidating Roman hegemony in the Peninsula. Chapter 3 traces Roman and Greek visual interactions through the process of overwriting and cowriting in the Greek East, questioning and adding complexity to the idea that Greeks under Roman rule were perpetually engaging in a type of nostalgia referred to as “defensive Hellenism.”36 Much as with their western peers, the people of the Greek
Augustus’ monuments at La Turbie in southern France and at Nikopolis in Ambracia are excellent examples of how overwriting could occur simultaneously with cowriting since both regions produced significant examples of cowriting in the same period. See Ibarra (2009); Picard (1957). Ando (2016); Ebel (1976). Laignoux (2020), for example, argued that coin iconography played a vital role in civil war discourses in the late Republic. Whitmarsh (2015): 49.
12
Introduction
East adapted to Roman visual interventions while also developing methods of conveying prestige that allowed for commensuration between visual systems. In the Greek world, images of power often united the mythological stories that underpinned a Greek city’s identity with references to Roman colonization and Roman citizen-settlers. In doing so, the iconography of the Republican period catalyzed the commensuration between Greek and Roman visual culture that predominated in the first two centuries CE. Finally, Chapter 4 analyzes the appearance of conquest imagery in domestic and commercial contexts in the late first century BCE and the first century CE as an expression of cultural identity. This chapter provides a critical piece of the puzzle: how this shared Roman visual language became something a person in Gaul or Hispania or Greece or Asia Minor or Africa would want to reference in the decoration of their home or in communicating their prestige through public works projects or personal objects. The martial images that dominated Republican contexts, such as the mannequin trophy, were in the transition from Republic to Empire distilled into metaphors, becoming symbols of power and virility that were no longer rooted explicitly in conquest. Bridging geographic region and chronological scope, Empire of Images contributes to an ever-growing literature about cultural exchange across borders and in conquered landscapes. By understanding the nuances of Roman image production, we can more readily understand how the shift in power from Republic to autocracy necessitated the development of new image-types that Paul Zanker famously understood as an Augustan revolution. While imperial image production broadened to incorporate values vested in the person of the emperor, it rested on the centuries-old semiotic system for visualizing elite ideals. Consequently, imperial imagery cannot be understood fully without examining the long-standing Republican antecedents. The Roman cultural values that were concretized through protracted conquest and settlement of the provinces in the Republican period were central to how the later emperors and Roman elites understood and conveyed power. Roman cultural values, as well as their imagery, often derived meaning through performance and projection.37 In other words, it is difficult to understand imperial imagery without understanding the visual performance of power in the Republic; without the Republican precedent, we cannot appreciate how Augustus and his successors framed imperial values.
We can see the thread of performance and projection in the idea of symbolic or cultural capital. See Hölkeskamp (2010); Hölscher (2018); Pollini (2012).
Chapter 1 Visualizing Empire: Conquest Imagery in the Gallic Provinces One of the most influential moments in the development of the Roman visual language of power occurred not in Italy but in Greece. The Hellenistic kingdoms in the Greek Peninsula and Asia Minor suffered numerous incursions in the third century at the hands of Gallic peoples they called Galatians, including the terrifying sack of Delphi in 279 BCE.38 Spurred perhaps by a need to reframe those events, Greek writers of the late third century BCE crafted an enduring vision of the “barbaric enemy” that essentially pitted perceived civilization versus perceived barbarism, building off their earlier stereotypes for non-Greeks. Contemporarily, the Romans were fighting their first wars of conquest against Gallic peoples in northern Italy. From the earliest stages of the Roman conquest of Gallic territory, Roman interactions with Gallic peoples were filtered through Hellenic ethnographic visions of the Celtic barbarian.39 While their visions overlapped, the Romans and the Greeks also situated Gallic peoples within their own idiosyncratic cultural frameworks, resulting in different uses of Gallic peoples within their visual languages of power. These differences make clear that the Roman vision of the Gallic enemy, while influenced by the Greek model, was also identifiably Roman and not simply a wholesale adoption of the Greek model. The Roman vocabulary for communicating victory over Gallic peoples rested on a set of image-types developed through extensive military and cultural engagement with both the Macedonians (and later Greeks), with whom they were also at war, and with Gallic peoples in the valleys in northern Italy just south of the Alps, a region that would later become the province of Cisalpine Gaul.40 Roman interaction with both Greek ethnographic stereotypes of Gallic peoples and Gallic peoples themselves was for much of the third century BCE mediated through warfare. Roman representations of Gallic peoples, consequently, employed a martial vocabulary that used Gallic weapons as markers of Gallic identity. The Greco-Roman Gallic warrior was wild, ferocious, long-haired and mustachioed, naked, and armed with the military implements that
Indeed, even the name for the Gallic chief who purportedly sacked Rome, Brennus, was borrowed from the Greek stories of the sack of Delphi (Williams 2001: 166). The Greek word for these people was keltoi, while the Latin was galli. Galatian was used to denote Gauls in Asia Minor. Because my focus is the Romans, I overwhelmingly use the word Gallic, but the two terms are intertwined and interchangeable, thanks to the overlap between Roman and Greek interpretations of their Gallic enemies. The Romans alternately reduced Gallic peoples to a monolithic culture or subdivided them into groups that did not map onto their identities. Within Roman visual culture, Gallic peoples are presented as a single ethnic group, and therefore I typically refer to them as Gallic peoples, or use the term Gallic, except where the Romans themselves specify a particular group. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111326634-002
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Chapter 1 Visualizing Empire: Conquest Imagery in the Gallic Provinces
marked his ethnic background and his role in the “civilized” imagination: his shield, his war trumpet (carnyx), and his torque. It is the translation of this ethnic stereotype into a visual vocabulary that ultimately underscored the conquest imagery that is the focus of this chapter. To trace how Romano-Hellenic stereotype of the wild Gaul became the foundation for a broader visual language of power that elite Romans – and effectively the Roman state itself – utilized to articulate their subjugation of barbarian enemies, it is necessary first to examine the Hellenic origins of the ethnic stereotype. And while that Hellenic model played a critical role in the development of Rome’s Gallic image-types, so too did prolonged interaction in both war and administration with local peoples in the two Gallic provinces. The chapter therefore turns to the origins of Gallic stereotypes before tracing the development of Gallic image-types in Roman visual culture into the first century BCE. It is essential to investigate how Gallic self-representation interacted with and influenced Roman image-types of the barbarian Gaul as well as the standardized image of the Roman soldier that drew heavily on Gallic military technology. This is particularly true because the Romans tended to reduce Gallic peoples to a monolithic ethnic representation that did not map onto existing identities, or account for the individuation within Gallic self-representation. The chapter therefore concludes with a brief exploration of the endurance of the Roman vision of the Gallic warrior in post-Republican imagery.
1.1 Hellenistic Origins of Gallic Stereotypes The Hellenic model for the barbarian Gaul is perhaps best conveyed by the monument that Attalus I, king of Pergamum, created between 233 and 223 BCE to memorialize his victory over the Galatians in Asia Minor.41 Attalus’ monument presented his victory as the pivotal moment that drove back the Galatians and ended their incursions. Due to the ongoing conflict between Hellenistic powers in this period, it was imperative that Attalus secure his spot in both succession and cultural memory, which he did by casting himself in the role of defender of civilization against the barbarous Celts.42 His vision
These events happened in two separate waves. First, the Galatians, taking advantage of a dynastic dispute in Macedonia, invaded in 279, during which they sacked Delphi and killed the current, albeit disputed, Macedonian king, Ptolemy Keraunos, in battle before they were eventually driven out by Antigonus Gonatas in 277. This was a huge boon to his reputation and allowed him to claim the Macedonian throne soon after (Ptolemy: Diod. Sic. 22.3; Gonatas: Just. 25.1.2–10; 2.1–7; Diog. Laert. 2.141). The Galatians then moved to Asia Minor, where they intermittently raided and served as mercenaries, until their battle against Attalus I in the 230s (OGIS 273). Attalus was not a direct heir of his predecessor, Eumenes I, so he was also keen to cement his legitimacy (Strab. 13.4.2). We know about this battle through Attalus’ monumental inscriptions (esp. OGIS 269; 276; see also Errington 2008: 124).
1.1 Hellenistic Origins of Gallic Stereotypes
15
also helped cement Pergamum’s independence and his own royal title.43 Beyond its success as an imagined history, Attalus’ monument fundamentally affected how Gallic peoples were understood.44 While there are no extant examples of the original victory monument, scholars are confident that some of them survived through Roman copies.45 One of the most famous of those Roman copies, and one that is emblematic of Hellenistic visual stereotypes of Gallic warriors, is the Dying Gaul (Fig. 1.1).46 With both this statue and another Roman copy of one of Attalus’ originals, the Ludovisi Gaul, we can see how Attalus’ artists sculpted a narrative pitting civilization against barbarism, while also suggesting deep respect for the enemy’s heroism.47 Seated with
Fig. 1.1: The Dying Gaul. Part of a larger sculptural group, this statue portrays a wounded Celtic warrior, identified by his torque, grimacing in pain while braced over his fallen weapons. It embodies Greek perceptions of the heroic barbarian that typified their representations of Celts. The statue is a Roman copy of a Hellenistic original from the Attalid monument, c. 230–220 BCE. Image courtesy of the Soprintendenza - Foto in Comune, inv. no. MC 0747.
Pol. 18.41.7–8; Strabo 13.4.2. His success is also evident in Pausanias’ proclamation that Attalus’ victory was prophesized (Paus. 10.15.2–3). Parts of the foundations and the inscriptions do survive, especially the long base with its dedicatory inscription (Pollitt 1986: 85). I borrow the idea of imagined history, or invented tradition, from Hölkeskamp (2016: 186), who used it to discuss invented genealogies on Roman coins. The prototype for this statue was likely part of the monumental statue group Attalus I of Pergamum commissioned c. 230–220 BCE to commemorate his victory over the Galatians. Another well-known statue from this group is the Ludovisi Gaul (see Marvin 2002: 205–223). While these statues reproduced Hellenistic visual stereotypes, the Ludovisi and Portonaccio sarcophagi are prime examples of the fusion of Greek and Roman visual stereotypes about Gauls, blending battle and death scenes with Roman trophies and, particularly in the case of the Portonaccio sarcophagus (Museo Nazionale Romano, MNR Cat. I, 8: 177–88, no. IV), captives chained at the base of those trophies. The Louvre owns another Roman copy of an ex-voto statue, this one of Attalus II from c. 160–150 BCE. It depicts a Galatian on one knee, a wound visible in his thigh, though his pose is unreliable due to later restoration (inv. no. MR 133).
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Chapter 1 Visualizing Empire: Conquest Imagery in the Gallic Provinces
his weight on his right leg, this Gallic warrior braces his left hand on his knee, as if attempting to stand, the muscles of his right arm straining against the ground to lift him. The viewer’s attention is drawn to the stab wound in the warrior’s ribs; the marble was carefully chiseled to look like dripping blood, and the veins in his arms stand out, emphasizing his physique. His gaze is downcast, drawing the eye to the wild hair that signals his barbaric origins. This statue emphasizes the ethnic origins, and therefore barbaric nature, of this warrior more than the battle itself. His ethnicity is defined by his chunky hair and mustache, the torque around his neck, and the weapons over which he has fallen. Together, these complete the picture of a ferocious barbarian enemy.48 Yet, he is also heroic, and his facial features and position evoke fear, empathy, and respect simultaneously. This heroic portrayal of a defeated enemy was new in Hellenistic art, and it bolstered Attalus’s own achievements, since he had, clearly, defeated a noble foe.49 Indeed, the statue group reflected the impression that the Gauls made on Attalus: in the moment of their defeat, they chose suicide over captivity and enslavement.50 The narrative of civilization versus barbarism implied through Attalus’ monument drew on a long-standing Greek practice of ascribing environmental factors to the differences in human behavior and culture.51 These environmental explanations were usually coupled with value judgments that allowed the Greeks and later the Romans to draw comparisons between barbarism and civilization that, as one would expect, cast themselves in a better light.52 Furthermore, these labels were always applied uniformly to the group, creating artificial categories for cultural groups that need not map onto that group’s self-perception.53 Greek ethnographic theories both influenced and reified the Roman system of categorizing difference, descent, and reputation that also structured Roman interactions with Italic peoples from at least the third century BCE, but which accelerated in the first century BCE with the Social War (90–81 BCE) and extensions of citizenship. Within this system, Romans and Italians alike negotiated their identities and their perceptions of others.
Pollitt noted that the sword along with the shield and trumpet on which the warrior rests were restored but may well have been on the original monument (1986: 86). For more on Roman representations of barbarians, see Woolf (2011a, b). Pollitt (1986: 86–87). Ibid.: 86. Environmental theories for human development began in roughly the fifth century BCE with the Greeks’ interactions with the Persians. and were pervasive in both Greek and Latin literature (Isaac 2004: 56). Isaac (2004: 56–74) analyzed the environmental theories and their long-term influence on Western culture, particularly in how they shaped value judgments about eastern cultures. Isaac noted that hair color but also skin color, figured into judgments about good versus bad character, and peoples such as the Gauls were identified as fighters because they “are light and blonde or ruddy” (2004: 65). Isaac (2004: 68–9, 74). This identification is likely a later marker added based on experience fighting against Celtic peoples.
1.1 Hellenistic Origins of Gallic Stereotypes
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Roman and Italic peoples drew on mythic genealogies to bolster their status and did not hesitate to invoke positive stereotypes placed upon them by others when needed.54 This ongoing identity negotiation took place against the backdrop of Rome’s aggressive wars of expansion first in Italy, then in Cisalpine Gaul and beyond. Furthermore, the Romans framed their interaction with Gallic peoples as a mirror of the Greek experience, with their ultimate victory coming after a terrible crisis that could have led to their destruction. According to the Roman narrative, Rome faced one of its greatest existential crises in the late fourth century BCE when the Senones defeated the Romans in battle at the Allia River and sacked the city, the first time this had ever occurred. For later Roman writers, the defeat both evoked the Galatian sack of Delphi and cemented the Gauls in Roman minds as terrifying enemies: wild, fierce, and unpredictable. The subsequent Roman belligerence against Gallic peoples in northern Italy in the 280s BCE was something the Romans could frame as a response to this initial crisis, and therefore a defensive response rather than an act of overt aggression. In this period, the Romans waged war with intermittent success against a Gallic confederation including the Senones, Boii, and Insubres.55 It is important to note that Roman interaction with Gallic peoples in this period predated Rome’s entry into the Punic Wars in 264, and in fact more closely coincided with the Galatian sack of Delphi in 279, which facilitated the mirrored Roman-Greek narrative of first destruction then victory over Gallic peoples. The First Punic War (264–241 BCE), however, forced Roman attention to Carthage, but they returned to their conquest of northern Italy in 240, immediately after the end of the First Punic War, which underscores their ultimate intention to conquer the region. Their initial reengagement was not especially successful, and was ultimately postponed until the Gallic Wars of 225–222. At this point, the Romans focused their full strategic attention on the conquest of Cisalpine Gaul, culminating in the victory at Clastidium in 222, marked in dramatic fashion by the consul M. Claudius Marcellus killing the Gallic leader Viridomarus in single combat, earning the spolia opima.56 Of course, the arrival of Hannibal in 218 and the beginning of the Second Punic War once again disrupted Roman expansion into Cisalpine Gaul, and it would not become an official province until the first century BCE.
Farney (2007: 191). These invented traditions fall under the category of kinship diplomacy. Such examples of kinship diplomacy were common in the ancient world, especially as Greek colonization spread Greek mythology around the Mediterranean and many cities constructed genealogies that tied them to Greek heroes. See, for example, Patterson (2010: 1–21). See also Jones (1999: 81–93), for kinship diplomacy in the Roman Republic. The Romans and Gallic confederation traded victories in this period, with the Romans emerging victorious at Sentinum in 295 at the end of the Third Samnite War, where the Senones had joined forces with the Samnites; the Gallic confederation successfully besieged Arretium in 284, and then the Romans soundly defeated the Senones in 283 at Picenum and established the colony of Sena Gallica, which functioned as a stronghold for later Roman advances against the Gauls (see Silani 2020). Pol. 2.27–31.3 briefly narrates this early period of Roman-Gallic interaction. For Marcellus’ spolia opima, see Plut. Marc. 30.
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In other words, early Roman interactions with Gallic peoples occurred within the context of a broader expansionist moment when the Romans were extending their reach across the Mediterranean world. In some sense, therefore, it is natural that Roman interpretations of the Gallic enemy both responded to and infused their interactions with other conquered peoples. Roman conquest from the First Punic War was rarely conducted in isolation, but rather part of wars on multiple fronts against multiple ethnic groups. While Rome ultimately emerged victorious from the Gallic wars, their experiences had solidified image of the terror Gallicus.57 Rome’s image of the barbarian Gauls centered on their warlike tendencies, emphasizing their contradictory characteristics as both noble and worthy foes and wild, fickle, barbaric enemies. They occupied a liminal space between civilized and barbarian. We can see this imagined Gaul clearly in a second-century BCE terracotta pediment frieze from Civitalba, near Ancona on the eastern coast of Picenum in northern Italy. This region was, in the fourth and third century BCE, the heart of Senones territory. From this region, the Senones, according to Livy, made frequent raids into Latium, then Campania and Apulia.58 The region around Civitalba was also a crossroad for cultural exchange between the Gauls, Greeks, Umbrians, Etruscans, Italians, and Romans.59 Therefore, when we view the Civitalba frieze, we must understand it not only as artwork intended for a Roman patron who would have been well aware of the region’s history with Gallic peoples, but also as the result of entanglement between diverse cultural influences in the region. The frieze pictured in Fig. 1.2 shows Gallic raiders caught in the act of despoiling a temple, being driven back by fierce goddesses. The two Gauls pictured have long, curly hair, and curving mustaches. They are naked except for their sword belts, their military cloaks, and the torques around their necks. Each holds a rectangular shield that underscores their ethnicity, though as mentioned previously, that shield had considerable overlap with the Roman panoply and thus the torques, wild hair, and mustaches are critical to code them as Gallic. They are almost tripping over a phiale and an amphora, fruits of their raid dropped as they are forced to flee.60
Polybius (2.21.9), writing about a century later, acknowledged that the Gauls went to war against Rome because they feared that the Romans wanted to expel or exterminate them. He also proclaimed that the resurgence of Gallic hostility was due to a younger generation that did not know strife, and thus reiterated his representation of the Gallic peoples as defined by their warlike tendencies. One should note, though, that anti-Roman sentiments were not universal among the peoples of northern Italy, and the various Gallic tribes were not the only ones who lived in the region. The Veneti (local Italic) and the Cenomani (Gallic) supported Rome and worked to impede the Gauls marshaled against Rome (Pol. 2.23.1–5). See Gabba (1984: 210), Häussler (2013a: 18), and Kent (2018: 261). For ancient references to the terror Gallici, see Livy 10.26.13; Pol. 2.13.5–7, 21.6ff, 23.7ff; Just. Epit. 24.4.6–7, 25.2.9–10. Livy 7.9.1–2. Holliday (2009: 23). Cassibry (2017: 14–15).
1.1 Hellenistic Origins of Gallic Stereotypes
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These Gallic warriors turn back to look at a goddess - alternatively identified as Latona, Athena Pronaos, and Hecate. In the full bottom register of this pedimental scene, the goddess strides forward, forcing another Gallic raider to fall to his knees in panic, his plundered phiale abandoned on the ground.61 Carrying on to the right, another Gaul flees the goddess, almost crashing into the team of horses driven by his compatriot, who is possibly their leader. In his desperation to escape, the Gallic charioteer tramples one of his comrades underneath his horses. The last grouping on the right contains a Gallic warrior carrying his wounded or dead peer, chased by Artemis in her characteristic boots and chiton. Behind Artemis is a final Gaul dressed in animal pelts who has managed to hold on to his plundered vase as he flees horsemen enhancing the drama of the scene. The top register of the pediment as it is displayed today contains a Dionysiac scene that, with its expectations of frenzied and uncontrolled action, seems to enhance the interpretation of this scene as one of Gallic barbarism.62 The frieze was discovered unfinished in a terracotta workshop, so it remains uncertain whether the Dionysiac scene was part of the same structure.63 That they are despoiling a sanctuary, as is made evident in the phiales and amphoras that were common tools in religious practice, served to add an accusation of impiety to the Gauls’ perceived barbarism. Yet, these Gallic raiders have also failed, which was another element of Roman literary stereotypes; Gallic armies were terrifying but ill-prepared to capitalize on their victories.64 The Civitalba frieze was part of a wider dissemination in the fourth to second century BCE of representations of battles, both mythical and historical, with Gallic peoples. In Italy, such imagery seems to have originated in the earliest phases of Gallic migrations into Italy, though in that early phase most Italic celtomachia scenes were from funerary contexts.65 The Civitalba frieze also demonstrates the influence of Hellenistic, and particularly Pergamene, artistic traditions on Italic art, thus tying the frieze back to the Hellenic influence on Roman ethnographic representations of Gallic peoples.66 Considering the early second century BCE date of the Civitalba frieze, that Pergamene influence was also more direct, since the Romans had begun their expansion into Asia Minor in the 190s as they fought against the Seleucid king Antiochus III. Indeed, Pergamum and the Gauls became deeply intertwined for the Romans in the early 180s, since Pergamum allied with Rome in the wars that led to the triumphs of L. Cornelius Scipio over Antiochus in 189 and of Cn. Manlius Vulso over the Galatians in 189, purportedly because the Galatians served as mercenaries for Antiochus.67
Holliday (2009: 23). Holliday (2009: 25). Ibid.: 29–30. Pol. 2.21.3–9. Holliday (2009: 31). Ibid.: 31–33. Val. Max. 3.5.1, 6.1 ext. 2. For Gallic involvement in the war with Antiochus, see Livy 38.17.
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Fig. 1.2: Fragments from the second-century BCE Civitalba frieze depicting Gallic warriors fleeing the wrath of two goddesses as they attempt to plunder a sanctuary. Their impiety is highlighted by the spoils they drop as they flee. Image courtesy of the Museo Archeological Nazionale delle Marche (Ancona) with concession from the Ministero della Cultura - Direzione regionale Musei Marche.
The Civitalba frieze and other Italic celtomachia helped encode the Gallic warrior in Roman visual culture in the late third and mainly second century BCE. However, the production of Gallic imagery within the Roman visual language of power increased significantly during the conquest of Transalpine Gaul in the last quarter of the second century BCE, in part because Gallic imagery began to appear on Roman coins. By the late Republic and early Imperial period, references to defeated Gauls could be found on everything from public monuments to private homes and tombs, and to small, portable objects like intaglios and lamps. Consequently, the image of the defeated Gaul and his weaponry shaped how Romans visualized their triumph over barbarians, and, ultimately, how they envisioned their empire.
1.2 Coinage and Conquest Imagery One of the most enduring contributions the Romans made to Mediterranean-wide conceptions of power was to place conquest imagery on their coins, which subsequently moved throughout and even beyond the Roman Empire. Coins, therefore, represent one of the most critical forms of evidence for conquest imagery in the Republican period. Coins are, of course, much more than simply platforms for the dissemination of Roman imagery, and because coin analysis is built on a deep field of research, I must briefly clarify my own approach. Many numismatic studies rest on arguments regarding coin distri-
1.2 Coinage and Conquest Imagery
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bution, typography, finds and hoard inventories, and die studies; from these foundations, they often draw on art-historical paradigms to assess coin iconography.68 While I do make use of such evidence, particularly when hypothesizing on the degree to which local peoples may have encountered certain image-types, I lean more heavily on the art-historical and historical perspective, situating the coins I discuss within a wider process of image production in which the Romans created stylized representations of conquest that could simultaneously evoke specific victories and speak to victory more generally.69 Coins become particularly relevant as a platform for Roman conquest imagery when the Romans entered southern France (Transalpine Gaul) in the late second century BCE. While the campaigns in Cisalpine Gaul helped shape the literary tropes of the wild, fickle, ferocious Gallic warrior of Greco-Roman celtomachia, the Roman conquest of Transalpine Gaul coincided with a fundamental change in coin production. This was the so-called iconographic shift of the 130s BCE when annually elected moneyers began to produce diverse, variable coin images.70 As part of this shift, coin iconography became intertwined with elite self-fashioning, offering a platform for the celebration of individual, family, and state achievements.71 In this period, coin iconog-
For a brief overview of the approaches, see DeRose Evans (2013). For coin circulation in the Celtic world, see Gruel and Wigg-Wolf (2013). This is not a new approach. Scholars such as Elkins and Krmnicek (2014), Elkins (2015), Kemmers (2016), Yarrow (2018), and Rowan (2014a, 2016a, 2019) have championed such methodologies, and I rely heavily on their work. The question of contemporary audience and the readability of their images is one that must also be considered. For coinage, this is a question that is not easily answerable given their widespread diffusion, and it can be almost as complicated for other artistic media. Woytek (2018: 356), for example, argued that the ubiquity of coins meant that we cannot assume users took a special look at any given coin’s image. As such, I often can do no more than speculate as to how non-Roman audiences understood these image-types. In some cases, however, we can see what might be classed as cultural reception, in the use of Roman conquest image-types by non-Romans. In other words, how non-Romans used conquest iconography offers insight into how they understood the imagery. I pay particular attention to such cases, arguing that they illustrate both how non-Romans internalized the Roman language of power, and how that visual language came to represent power for people living outside Rome. Meadows and Williams (2001) and Meadows (2018). Meadows and Williams: 38–39. While this was a remarkable shift, coin iconography merely joined a wider tradition of elite memorialization, for example in manubial temples, the decoration of private homes, and ancestor masks. See Welch (2006) for the “booty mentality” that connected conquest with commemoration and see Flower (1996) for ancestor masks. This shift also coincided with significant political turmoil in Rome. This was the period when the Gracchi were attempting their reforms and paying for those attempts with their lives. The extreme heterogeneity of Roman coin image-types after the mid-130s is often seen as paralleling the increasingly disparate interests of Roman elites (Woytek 2018: 362). Wiseman and Crawford also proposed that the introduction of new coin types stemmed from the Lex Gabinia of 139 BCE, which allowed for voting by secret ballot. This made garnering political support more challenging, and the suggestion is that coin imagery provided a new platform for advertising elite achievement to influence elections (Wiseman 1971: 148–149; Crawford 1974: 728). Others have critiqued this theory as an oversimplification (Meadows and Williams 2001: 39–41); Woytek suggested that the law might have at least played a minor role (2018: 364–365).
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Chapter 1 Visualizing Empire: Conquest Imagery in the Gallic Provinces
raphy frequently blurred the boundaries between personal and political motifs.72 This iconographic revolution was a boon to Gallic motifs in Roman coinage, as moneyers were keen to celebrate contemporary and familial achievements with respect to Gallic subjugation. The first denarii with Gallic images, as we will see, were minted in Rome and Narbo a little over a decade after the iconographic revolution, to celebrate the triumphs of the initial phase of Transalpine Gaul’s conquest. With coin images now celebrating Roman victories in Gaul, Gallic subjugation permanently entered Roman visual culture.73 As we will see, such coinage began to frame Gallic identity first around weaponry the Romans associated with Gallic warriors, but second, and perhaps more importantly, around the subordination of those objects – and therefore the Gauls they represented – to Roman power through trophies and other Roman symbols.74 While fixed monuments remained an important platform for narrating conquest, coinage and other small finds offered a significantly wider audience for that story. They rendered imagery mobile and transformed the ephemeral moment of the triumphal parade into a permanent, mobile representation of Roman dominion, and coins especially added new ethnic markers to Rome’s repertoire of conquest imagery, particularly the subdued and bound captive. Conquest was a contributing factor to the revolutionary shift in Roman coin iconography attributed to the 130s BCE.75 And the denarius itself, the denomination most closely tied to conquest imagery in the Republic, was itself introduced during Roman expansion, in 211 BCE during the Second Punic War. Coinage was inextricably intertwined with conquest. In this period, coin imagery became incredibly dynamic and flexible, reflecting events, memories, and concepts important to the moneyers who controlled the design.76 Coin iconography also shifted toward recent events, allowing individual moneyers to highlight the fame and military achievements of their ancestors.77 Because imperium and martial prowess were so fundamental to Roman elite power, it is easy to understand why coin iconography bore images connected to conquest.78
Woytek (2018: 362–363). As we will see, Gallic subjugation appeared on numerous denarii, especially those minted in honor of Caesar’s campaign and on monuments such as the arches in Carpentras, Glanum, and elsewhere. This process of exploiting Gallic symbols to represent Roman victory began with the denarius series produced in the wake of the conquests of Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus and Q. Fabius Maximus in 119/118, which celebrated their victories in Transalpine Gaul. These denarius series, RRC 281/1 and 282/ 1, are discussed below. Meadows and Williams (2001: 38) referred to this moment as a “paradigm shift,” in which the Romans abandoned the relative continuity of coinage they had maintained, for the denarius at least, since c. 211 BCE when the denomination was introduced. Meadows and Williams (2001: 38). Though Woytek (2022: 319) stated that Roman coin typology in the third century BCE was also highly variable, the coinage mainly employed Hellenistic imagery. Fuchs (1969: 7). For example, prior to this period, the Romans generally did not strike coins with images of foreigners, even those they conquered. It was most common to depict deities on both obverse and reverse
1.3 Gaul as Captive: The Role of the Gaul in Roman Visual Culture
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In fact, the iconographic shift of the mid-second century BCE coincided with significant cultural changes associated with memorialization and monumentalization.79 In this period, the fruits of military expansion reshaped Roman cultural values.80 One consequence of this shift was that depictions of Gallic peoples became a highly reproduced element of the visual communication of Roman achievement. Therefore, understanding how the Romans depicted Gauls and the messages those images conveyed is critical.
1.3 Gaul as Captive: The Role of the Gaul in Roman Visual Culture Gallic peoples were the subject of both fear and fascination in the Greco-Roman world. From the perspective of Greek and Roman writers, these fierce warriors earned the epithet terror Gallicus.81 But while Greek visual and literary tropes about Gallic peoples profoundly influenced Roman stereotypes, when those stereotypes were rendered visually, the Romans tended to emphasize the moments after defeat, and typically without the pathos of Greek sculpture. Gallic stereotypes coalesced into two broad categories of visual representation: synecdochic portraits where weaponry
(Woytek 2015: 105–106). Roma and the Dioscuri were, for example, the only images on denarii for around twenty years during and after the Second Punic War, a period when the Romans minted a lot of coins (Woytek 2022: 320). Roma was essentially the only obverse type until the second half of the second century BCE (Woytek 2022: 320). And assessing the preceding period, most scholars agree that Roman coin production initially imitated Greek coinage and continued to borrow Greek styles on their coinage until the Second Punic War. There is still debate about the iconographic significance of Rome’s earliest silver coins, though, as Woytek argued, it is likely their content is Roman (Woytek 2022: 317). See also Burnett (1987: 15–16). Meadows and Williams (2001). Hölscher (2018) explored the Roman cultural values that tended to percolate into visual culture, especially dignitas (rank, reputation) and auctoritas (authority). He emphasized that the Romans liked to visualize their “world rule,” and consequently their right to rule, through monuments and mobile objects that imagined individual and state achievements and dominion over others (2018: 89–94). See also Welch (2006) and Loar et al. (2018) for the impact of expansion, and the consequent plunder, on Roman cultural values. And while not explicitly connected to the question of cultural values, the iconography of Roman bronze ingots, its earliest form of currency, often utilized military iconography (RRC 7–8, for example, had oval shields). As Woytek noted, it is tempting to read these ingots as “a medium for the distribution of booty acquired in battles,” but it remains entirely speculation (2022: 319). Nevertheless, the martial imagery reflects how highly militarized Roman society was. And indeed, when the Romans introduced the denarius and its fractions, the initial image-types were patriotic (Woytek 2022: 320). While the exact phrase terror Gallicus does not appear until the Historia Augusta (Prob. 28.1.5), it was likely built on the longstanding cultural fear of Gallic peoples. Ancient writers often ascribed words such as metus (‘fear’; Cic. Ad. Att. I.19.2), tumultus (‘uprising, disturbance’; Livy 7.9.6–7; 8.20.2–3; 9.29.3; 10.10.12; 38.17.6; 31.10.1–2; 31.48.7; 45.19.3), or φόβον (‘fear’, ‘to strike terror’; Plut. Marc. 3–4, Cam. 41.6) to Gallic peoples. Indeed, Livy asserted that only the rumor (fama) of a Gallic uprising (tumultu) was enough to merit the appointment of a dictator (8.17.6–7). Kerremans (2016) explored how tumultus may have formed an actual legal mechanism for crisis management, spurred by fear of Gallic (and later Cimbric) invasion.
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Chapter 1 Visualizing Empire: Conquest Imagery in the Gallic Provinces
stood in for individuals; and captives, often bound or mourning, subordinated to markers of Roman power.82 These two categories shaped the wider Roman visual language for portraying conquered peoples. To establish how Gallic peoples came to bear the burden of projecting Roman ideological representations of power, we must first explore the different genres of visual stereotypes, then trace the appearance of those stereotypes across monuments and coins to reveal how conquest experience, elite representation, and political necessity influenced the production of Gallic images. Through their representation of Gallic enemies, the Romans highlighted different elements of power. First, the mannequin trophy, rooted in the much-earlier Greek battlefield victory marker, embodied the celebratory and religious elements of the triumphal parade.83 Second, the captive who symbolized the moments after Roman victory, when war prisoners were rounded up, bound, and either sold into slavery or paraded in Roman triumphs and then sold or killed. And third, arms friezes and battle scenes emphasized Roman martial supremacy. These types of images appeared on monuments, on coins, in private homes, in funerary reliefs, and even on consumer goods such as rings or lamps. The trophy was typically comprised of two rough-hewn logs tied in a T-shape and decorated with captured weaponry and other military equipment. The trophy might stand on its own as a representation of Roman victory, or it might serve as a prop for displaying captives. These captives were often nude and were bound with their hands behind their backs or chained to the trophy. They were often paired with seated, clothed, female captives posed in a position to evoke mourning. Gallic-style weapons often decorated the mannequin trophy to emphasize the subjugation of the captive warriors, and the warriors’ nudity underscored their subjugation and purported barbarism.84 Weaponry represented an ethnic marker for Gallic warriors and shields were often employed in numerous visual genres, such as the detailed portrayal of captured military equipment in arms friezes and battle scenes. Increasingly, the Romans used military equipment as a synecdoche for the captured Gallic warrior. This was part of a larger trend beginning in the second century BCE of utilizing conquered peoples’ accoutrements as a cultural symbol to articulate Roman power. For example, the triskeles represented Sicily, either a crocodile or hippopotamus stood in for Egypt, the Bacchic
For the bound captive as a symbol of enslavement, see Jackson (2005). Kinnee situated the origins of the Greek trophy with the development of the hoplite phalanx (2018: 1–2) but traced its symbolic use to evoke martial prowess to the fourth century BCE. There is, however, no universal agreement on the social meaning of trophies. Rabe (2008) argued that Greek trophies were associated with aretē (‘manly prowess’); Meineck and Konstan (2014) argued for a psychological function related to battle trauma, while Kinnee (2018) attributed several factors to the purpose of these mannequin trophies, from victory marker to a performance of power to a magical talisman. For more on these debates, see Fischer (2012), Höck (2012), and Trundle (2013). There is of course some ambiguity to equating nudity to barbarism in Greco-Roman art, as the Greeks also employed nudity for mythical heroes in gigantomachies and Amazonomachies, such as on the battle frieze from the Siphnian treasury in Delphi. Amazonomachies were also widely copied by the Romans, creating further visual ambiguity.
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cultic symbol of a basket with snakes (cista mystica) represented Asia, and the Armenian tiara with a quiver of arrows represented Armenia.85 More than for any other region, though, Roman depictions referencing Gaul remained static, and they ultimately became a standardized representation of Roman victory over barbarians.86 While the Roman visual lexicon was complex and diverse, certain symbols permeate much of the extant examples of conquest imagery, allowing us to trace the coalescence and interplay between these images. Examining images as they moved around the empire reveals a remarkable continuity in design and meaning that affirms how much certain objects or symbols signaled the ethnic background of conquered peoples. As one might expect, Roman victory was by necessity paired with someone else’s defeat. Consequently, when these images appeared in conquered provinces, they served as a visual reminder of ancestral humiliation.87 Yet, such imagery also connoted power, and many Gallic elites found it useful to incorporate Roman imagery into their existing methods of conveying status and authority to those below them in the social hierarchy. There seems to have been little cognitive dissonance by the late first century BCE for local peoples in using images that once signified their own subjugation, as we can see in the locally produced monuments in Glanum which invoked standard Roman conquest imagery.88 That adaptation of conquest imagery in local contexts suggests that perhaps conquest imagery was widespread enough that local peoples internalized such images through long-term exposure. And indeed, Roman representations of Gallic peoples diffused across the western provinces beginning in the late-second century BCE, when the conquest of Transalpine Gaul reinvigorated Roman interest in the Gallic stereotypes that had percolated in Italy since the prior century. It is to that imagery that we now turn to trace chronologically the consolidation of visual tropes about Gallic peoples. The coins minted after the Gallic triumphs of Q. Fabius Maximus and Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus in 119/118 BCE laid the foundation for the Gallic warrior’s position in the Roman language of power by exploiting the recent diversification of coin iconography. The denarii minted to celebrate these triumphs contained the first identifiable depictions of defeated enemies.89 The coinage signaled the ethnic origin of those defeated enemies
Vitale (2017: 183). See also Wilson (2000) for the symbolism of the triskeles. Sicily and Africa were among the earliest provinces to be personified as a female. Vitale argued that the coin of Mn. Aquillius (RRC 401/1; ANS 1937.158.147) from 71 BCE depicts a warrior, likely Aquillius himself, standing over a slouched woman on her knees, whom Vitale asserted is Sicily (2017: 184–185). The cista mystica was originally a Pergamene symbol which the Romans borrowed to personify Asia (2017: 206–209). Woytek (2015: 108–109) argued that the uniformity of Roman representations of Gallic peoples stemmed mainly from the similar physiognomic characteristics of Gallic/Celtic warriors from the Roman perspective. Ferris (2011: 190). See also Roy 2022. Kleiner (1973: 388). Discussed further in Chapter 4. Only one coin depicting a probable defeated enemy predated these, RRC 232/1 (ANS 1948.19.8) from 138 BCE minted by Cn. Gellius in Rome. It bears the helmeted head of Roma on the obverse, and an
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Chapter 1 Visualizing Empire: Conquest Imagery in the Gallic Provinces
through their instruments of war.90 The first denarius, RRC 281/1, minted in Rome by M. Furius Philus in 119 BCE, likely commemorated Q. Fabius Maximus’ triumph.91 It depicts the goddess Roma crowning a trophy that is topped with a boar’s -head helmet,
Fig. 1.3: Top: RRC 281/1, a denarius minted in Rome in 119 BCE by M. Furius Philus. Obverse: Laureate head of Janus with the moneyer’s name. Reverse: The patron goddess Roma crowning a trophy bedecked with Gallic shields, a horned helmet, and carnyces, along with Roma’s name and the moneyer’s name. Image courtesy of the American Numismatic Society, inv. no. 1944.100.561. Bottom: RRC 282/1, a denarius minted in Narbo in 118 BCE. Obverse: Helmeted head of Roma, along with Roma’s name and that of the moneyer. Reverse: Nude barbarian warrior on biga with a carnyx propped up behind his shield and the moneyer’s names below. Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, no. FRBNF41977810.
unidentified warrior, possibly the god Mars, on the reverse holding a shield in his left hand and a captive with his right hand. It is particularly interesting that Gallic weaponry came to signal Gallic subjugation so overtly, since the Romans adapted their own armor and weaponry from Celtic antecedents. For more on the Roman panoply, see Taylor (2020). ANS 1944.100.561.
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and holding a Gallic shield, with two more Gallic shields and two war trumpets (carnyces) at the trophy’s base on the coin’s reverse (Fig. 1.3, top).92 Here, military equipment served as a synecdoche for the now enslaved Gallic warriors.93 The emphasis on military equipment carried over onto the imagery of the second denarius, RRC 282/1, produced in 118 BCE to commemorate the triumph of Q. Fabius Maximus’ consular colleague, Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus. Minted in the newly founded colony of Narbo, in southern France, by another Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus, along with M. Aurelius Scaurus, and L. Licinius Crassus, it portrays a naked, bearded warrior (Fig. 1.3, bottom).94 His horses galloping, the warrior hurls a spear from his chariot (biga), his long hair flowing behind him. His carnyx is propped up next to him and his shield rests in front, protecting his bare torso. This pose drew on established iconography of Roman gods and goddesses holding or hurling an array of objects from chariots, including the frequent coin type of the goddess Victory driving a biga.95 The Narbo denarius was a remarkable anomaly among Roman coin images, in that it portrayed a Gallic warrior during an attack rather than at the moment of defeat. Its uniqueness may be due to the local production of these coins and could suggest a sensitivity to local populations. The image’s ambiguity could allow it to code Roman or Gallic depending on the cultural perceptions of the viewer. The coin series was also a huge distribution, suggesting perhaps a significant monetary investment in the foundation of the colony in 118.96 In addition to such references to defeated – and captured and paraded – Gallic warriors Roman coinage of the second century BCE also employed scenes of battle as references to Gallic victories, particularly to celebrate individual family achievements. RRC 319/1, a denarius minted in Rome by Q. Minucius Thermus in 103 BCE, for example, shows a Roman soldier fighting a barbarian soldier to protect a fallen comrade
Gallic imagery, indeed, any martial imagery, overwhelmingly appeared on the reverse, or back, of Roman coins. The obverse of Roman coins typically was reserved for gods and goddesses for most of the Republican period, though from the 130s BCE, coin iconography became quite diverse, and while deities remain the most common obverse image, other portraits did begin to appear. Woytek (2015: 110). ANS 1937.158.621. There is some debate over the identification of the barbarian figure. Crawford (1974: 299) and Woytek (2015: 109) agreed that it portrays a Gaul but disagreed on whether the figure is the Arverni chieftain Bituitus. Woytek argued that the coin referred more broadly to Roman successes in Transalpine Gaul. For example, RRC 244/1 (134 BCE; ANS 1948.19.12) depicts Mars in a quadriga (four-horse chariot) holding a spear, shield, and trophy. RRC 271/1 (125 BCE; 1944.100.539) shows Jupiter in a quadriga holding a spear and thunderbolt. According to Garnsey, Crawford argued that approximately 9 million denarii were struck in this issue, based on an estimate of 305 dies used for the issue, with roughly 30,000 coins per die (Garnsey 1988: 121). Recent die studies through the Roman Republican Die Project (RRDP) have suggested a range between just under 10 million and up to 11.55 million coins produced if there are roughly 30,000 coins per die, since the RRDP formula projects a die count of between 358 and 362 (Carbone and Yarrow 2019: 15, Tables 1–3).
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Fig. 1.4: RRC 319/1, a denarius minted by Q. Minucius Thermus in Rome, 103 BCE. Obverse: Helmeted head of Mars. Reverse: Roman soldier fighting a barbarian to protect his fallen comrade and a legend with the moneyer’s name. Image courtesy of the American Numismatic Society, inv. no. 1987.26.42.
on the reverse (Fig. 1.4).97 The barbarian is identifiable once again by his military equipment, in this case a horned helmet and a smaller round shield.98 The Roman soldier has his sword raised, ready to attack the barbarian, who is positioned similarly. The fallen comrade is in a pseudo-kneeling position, his sword stretched behind him and only his shield offering any protection against the barbarian. This coin honored the moneyer’s ancestor who, as proconsul in 191–190, campaigned against the Ligurians in northwest Italy and earned the civic crown (corona civica) by saving the life of a fellow citizen in battle. The intertwining of imagery evoking both past interactions with the Gauls and present anxieties over the Cimbri and the Teutones reflects how Gallic imagery need not be connected to any particular tribe or event, as the imagery spoke more to Roman ideas about subduing barbarians than to anything about the Gallic peoples themselves.99 The coin comprises 9.3% of the Idanha-a-Velha (Portugal) hoard in Lusitania, which dates to 100 BCE, in the middle of Roman war against the Lusitanians.100 It’s presence in this hoard demonstrates that these coins were produced and moved quickly, and had at least the potential to reach a wide audience. The wars against the Cimbri and Teutones reinvigorated Roman visual stereotypes, and the coins produced in the wake of these wars introduced more overt displays of Gallic subjugation. The emphasis placed on enemy subjugation in this imagery stemmed from renewed Roman fears of a Gallic invasion, as many Gallic peoples were swept up
ANS 1987.26.42. For Gallic horned helmets on Roman coins, see Zawadzka (2009). Krebs (2011) suggested that Roman anxiety about Gallic threats was revived in the campaigns against the Cimbri and Teutones, even though these were Germanic tribes. Lockyear (2007: 77).
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in the Cimbrian War. The Cimbric invasion even spurred a revision to the standard story of the Gallic sack of Rome in 390 BCE, placing the blame on a Helvetian Gaul, since the Helvetii allied with the Cimbri.101 Caesar would later capitalize on the fear spawned by the Cimbric invasion to bolster support for his invasion of Gaul.102 The massive defeat the Romans suffered at Arausio in 105 BCE renewed longstanding fears about the Gallic “menace.” Livy claimed that the Romans lost 80,000 men and 40,000 servants and attendants in that defeat.103 The battle also saw one of the consuls, Cn. Mallius, lose two of his sons, and his legate, M. Aemilius Scaurus, was captured and executed by the Cimbrian chieftain, Boiorix.104 Sallust, reflecting on the loss at Arausio, stated that “the terror of this had made all Italy tremble . . . with the Gauls they fought for life and not for glory.”105 Marius ultimately defeated the Teutones at Aquae Sextiae in 102 BCE and staved off any Gallic invasion.106 Livy alleged that Marius killed an absurdly high number of Teutones – 200,000 – and captured 90,000.107 Roman fears over Gallic threats led to intensive troop levies, and contributed to the rapid growth in coin production in the second century BCE.108 The loss also caused significant domestic repercussions. In the year following the disaster, the tribune L. Cassius Longinus passed a law that proclaimed any who were stripped of their imperium by the people would be expelled from the Senate, and Q. Servilius Caepio (procos. 105), blamed for the disaster, was the law’s first victim.109 Another commander who had lost to the Cimbri back in 109, M. Junius Silanus, was also prosecuted under this new law but acquitted.110 In 103, Caepio then faced a treason charge and in a violent meeting of the assembly in which rocks were thrown, two tribunes, Saturninus and Norbanus, managed to force Caepio into exile. His fellow commander Cn. Mallius, who had also been responsible for Arausio, also became a target of Saturninus and joined Caepio in exile.111 It should also be noted that Saturninus, an ally of Marius, was the tribune leading the charge against the losers of Arausio. Roman rhetoric of the period reinforces how terrifying the Gauls were to the Romans and helps explain why the Gauls were a frequent theme on Roman coins. From the second century BCE on, Roman coinage increasingly celebrated contemporary events
Williams (2001: 108). Ibid.: 123. Livy Per. 67.1–2. Ibid. Sallust Iug. 114.2. Livy (Per. 68.5) noted that Marius postponed his triumph over the Teutones to defeat the Cimbri. Livy Per. 68.3. Von Reden (2012: 267–268) postulated that Roman coin production quadrupled in the second half of the second century BCE and argued that the Roman army and its associated demand for soldiers’ pay and labor to construct infrastructure was the primary catalyst for coin production in this period. Auct. Ad. Herenn. 1.24; Cic. De Or. 2.124, 197. Cic. Corn. 2, fr. 7; Ascon. 80–81 C. Cic. De Orat. 2.125. See also Osgood (2018: 70–71).
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Fig. 1.5: RRC 326/2, a quinarius minted in Rome in 101 BCE by C. Fundanius. Obverse: Bust of Jupiter. Reverse: Victory crowns a trophy with a wreath. At the base of the trophy, a Gallic captive kneels with his hands bound behind his back, with a legend denoting the moneyer. Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, no. FRBNF41986186.
rather than the long-distant achievements of ancestors, and consequently the timing of the Cimbric invasion contributed to the widespread dissemination of its iconography.112 RRC 326/2, a quinarius, minted in Rome by C. Fundanius in 101 BCE has the goddess Victory looming above a Gallic captive kneeling on one leg with his hands bound behind his back (Fig. 1.5). A horned helmet sits atop the trophy before which the captive kneels, and a carnyx sits next to him, resting against the trophy. While it is difficult to discern the captive’s features, he seems to have the long hair that the Romans associated with Gallic men.113 The obeisant pose of the kneeling captive introduced in this period likely responded in part to the fear evoked by the Cimbric invasion and the loss at Arausio.114 Gallic captive imagery developed in a broader context of depicting captives in Roman visual culture, present on arches and other monuments, coins, and occasionally as freestanding sculptures. In many cases, the captives had stylistic similarities, suggesting the popularization of an image-types for portraying captive foreign men. One freestanding example of this style is a bronze statue found in the Rhône River at Arles in 2007 dated to the last quarter of the first century BCE (Fig. 1.6).115 The statue is of a naked captive, kneeling with his hands bound behind his back. Like the Dying Gaul of Attalus I’s Woytek (2015: 105). Marius’ triumph was evoked in the denarius Fundanius issued that same year (RRC 326/1). The coin likely depicted either Marius or his young son, who rode in the triumphal chariot with him (Crawford 1974: 328). RRC 332/1a (ANS 1987.26.48) minted by T. Cloelius in 98 BCE echoed Fundanius’ reverse image. Cassibry (2020: 61). Cassibry noted that the dating is made on technical and iconographic grounds but remains hypothetical. If the dating is correct, the statue could be associated with some form of public display stemming from the refoundation of Arelate (Arles) as a colony by Julius Caesar in 46 BCE. Arelate was rewarded for siding with Caesar against Pompey, unlike its neighbor, Massalia, which sided with Pompey, forcing Caesar to send his lieutenant, C. Trebonius, to besiege the city in 49
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monument, the captive’s nudity may have been intended to indicate his heroism and worthiness as an enemy.116 A hole in his left knee indicates he likely once knelt on some form of base. His face is tilted up, as if looking at an invisible captor, his teeth bared in a grimace, and his body position is one a person cannot hold naturally.117 Marks on the captive’s back suggest there may have been some sort of cloak affixed originally. The captive’s ethnicity is ultimately ambiguous, though beards were often used to mark Rome’s enemies. But that ambiguity in and of itself is notable and the statue stylistically echoes other extant portraits from Arles, none of which contain overt ethnic stereotypes suggesting conformity to a preferred local style.118 While he has somewhat longer hair, he does not have the torque or shield that so often denote Gallic enemies. Yet his pose so closely mirrors other portrayals of captive enemies that his captivity feels more certain,
Fig. 1.6: Bronze statue of a bound captive from the late first century BCE in the Musée départemental de l’Arles antique, Arles, accession no. RHO.2007.06.1962. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, under Creative Commons license with permission of the Musée de l’Arles Antique ©Rémi Bénali.
BCE. See Caes. Bell. Civ. 2.1–2.16; Strab. 4.1. Caesar punished the city by awarding its territorial possessions to Arelate, and then settled his sixth legion in the new colony’s territory. Cassibry (2020: 62). Cassibry noted the spinal dislocation on the statue’s back, arguing that the human body cannot hold this position (2020: 62). Cassibry (2020: 68).
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even if his ethnicity is not. The captivity of barbarians – whom one can assume were likely defeated in battle – was an important form of artistic representation in the iconography of power that paralleled that of other ancient imperial cultures, and therefore the Arelate statue could easily have drawn on wider traditions beyond Roman for inspiration.119 A similar marble statue of a bearded barbarian prisoner dated to 10 BCE, identified by Hélène Walter as a fragment from a monumental fountain consecrated to Hercules Victor in Glanum, rests in the same kneeling position, naked but for a cloak, hands bound behind him.120 As with the Rhône bronze, the ethnic origin of the Glanum barbarian prisoner is uncertain, but both portraits post-date stylistically similar coin images, suggesting that the icon of the bound, kneeling captive was popular throughout the late second and early first century BCE. In both cases, if locally produced, these statues suggest that Gallic peoples were far from uniformly antagonistic against the Romans and experienced little cognitive dissonance in using images of captives, and possibly specifically Gallic captives, to celebrate their new colonial status. By the 60s BCE, the Romans had fully embraced the kneeling captive as a symbol of barbarian subjugation. That barbarism is especially evident when contrasted with the depiction of captive Hellenistic or client kings. Take, for instance, RRC 415/1, a denarius minted in Rome in 62 BCE by L. Aemilius Lepidus Paullus (Fig. 1.7).121 The coin’s reverse represented the defeat, capture, and parading of the Macedonian king Perseus in the triumph of the consul L. Aemilius Paullus in 168 by pairing the captive Perseus and his two sons next to a looming Roman trophy. While the captive status of Perseus and his sons is clearly emphasized, the moneyer portrayed the kings in their royal dress. This depiction is a clear indication that while Perseus was a defeated enemy, he was not a barbarian like male Gallic captives, who were routinely portrayed naked and disheveled. The stark contrast between these depictions underscores how much posture, nudity, and the accoutrements of war signaled Gallic defeat. As one might expect, it was the Gallic image that came to denote Roman victory in broad strokes, rather than the image of a defeated Hellenistic king. With Caesar’s war in Gaul, the captive returned to the stage, so to speak. From carnyces to shields to bearded warriors to trophies, Caesar’s coinage evoked every part of the process of conquering, subjugating, and displaying Gallic captives.122 The overt Captive imagery was by no means exclusively Roman. War captives were depicted in Egyptian, Assyrian, and Persian art, among others, though often in narrative scenes that accompanied battle imagery. For example, bound captives decorate Seti I’s Hypostyle Hall in Karnak, the Lachish relief of Sennacherib, and the Behistun relief of Darius I, to name a few limited examples. Walter (1993: 15). Salviat argued that the Glanum prisoner must be a Gaul. His assertion is based in part on the oblong shield next to the prisoner (1977: 20–21). Charles-Picard argued for a Pergamene influence on the portrayal of the Glanum statue (1957: 198–200), and Walter did not commit to an ethnic interpretation (1993: 15–17). See also Cassibry (2020: 65–66). Discussed further in Chapter 3 (ANS 1937.158.186). See also Vitale (2017: 286–287). This is also true of Caesar’s epigraphy; see Riggsby (2006). Woytek argued that it was not until the beginning of Caesar’s civil war that Gallic conquest became the subject of Roman coin imagery (2003:
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Fig. 1.7: RRC 415/1, a denarius minted in Rome by L. Aemilius Lepidus Paullus in 62 BCE with the legend “Paullus Lepida Concordia.” Obverse: Head of Concordia wearing a veil. Reverse: Trophy with togate figure of L. Aemilius Paullus on the right. On the left are the captives Perseus and his two sons, with a legend indicating the image celebrates Paullus’ third triumph. Image courtesy of the American Numismatic Society, inv. no. 1896.7.90.
representation of subjugation on Caesar’s coinage seems particularly evocative considering that Caesar’s campaign was credited with the deaths of upward of a million Gallic people, with another million sold into slavery.123 The high quality of the coin dies also meant that the images were rendered more clearly than on previous coins. Among the most evocative conquest images were those minted by the Caesarian L. Hostilius Saserna in 48 BCE. Saserna issued three denarius types. The first, RRC 448/1, shows a female head wearing an oak wreath on the obverse (front) and Victory holding a small trophy on the reverse (back), and was intended to commemorate the capture of Massalia the previous year.124 The second, RRC 448/2, offered an even more expressive retelling of Caesar’s conquest (Fig. 1.8, top).125 The obverse has a bearded Gallic warrior with a long mustache, his wild hair fanning out behind him, and a torque around his neck; a small Gallic shield is positioned behind the bust to emphasize his ethnic origins.126 The coin’s reverse is of a chariot driver spurring on his horses while a Gallic warrior faces backward in the chariot, holding his shield in one hand and throwing his spear with the other. Saserna’s final denarius, RRC 448/3, depicts a female captive on the ob-
135). While I understand his point in terms of more overt propaganda, I argue that Gallic conquest had already by Caesar’s period become an important symbolic reference within Roman coin iconography. Plut. Caes. 15.5; App. Gall. 4.1.2. Raaflaub noted that with modern estimates of Gaul’s total population, this casualty rate would be about 16–25% of the population (2021: 56). Woytek (2003: 135). RRC 448/2a was also minted in 48 BCE. Woytek (2015: 109) suggested that the pitted clothing the Gaul wears might be chainmail. See also Vitale (2017: 221).
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Fig. 1.8: Top: RRC 448/2, a denarius minted in 48 BCE by L. Hostilius Saserna. Obverse: Bust of a Gallic warrior with a shield behind him. Reverse: Gallic warrior in a chariot facing backward holding a shield in one hand while hurling his spear with the other, along with the moneyer’s name. Image courtesy of the American Numismatic Society, inv. no. 1937.158.248. Bottom: RRC 448/3, a denarius minted in 48 BCE by L. Hostilius Saserna. Obverse: A female Gallic captive, whose ethnicity is referenced with the carnyx just behind her head. Reverse: Artemis holding a spear with her right hand on a stag, along with the moneyer’s name. Image courtesy of the American Numismatic Society, inv. no. 1973.999.10.
verse, her long unbound hair almost mimicking a typical veil (Fig. 1.8, bottom).127 The carnyx behind her head signals her Gallic identity. The goddess Artemis, representing the city of Massalia, is on the reverse, holding a spear and placing her right hand on a stag. This was among the first coins to represent a captive woman, foreshadowing the role they would play in the Roman visual language in the imperial period, where women often personified conquered provinces. Like his predecessors, Caesar emphasized his victories in Gaul with trophies, shields, and carnyces. Two elements of Caesar’s Gallic iconography became canonical: the bound and seated captive, and the captive female.128 The seated male captive is evi-
ANS 1899.40.6. Woytek argued that one could trace a line directly from Caesar’s portrayals of captives to similar images from Judaea, Germany, and Armenia (2015: 109–110).
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Fig. 1.9: Top: RRC 452/5, a denarius minted by Julius Caesar in Rome in 48/47 BCE. Obverse: Female head wearing oak wreath and diadem. Reverse: Trophy with Gallic shield and carnyx. Below sits a bearded captive, head contorted to look up at the trophy, hands bound behind his back. Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, no. FRBNF41987482. Bottom: RRC 468/1, a denarius minted by Julius Caesar while in Hispania in 46/45 BCE. Obverse: Head of Venus, wearing a diadem, with Cupid behind her. Reverse: Roman trophy with a shield and carnyx in each hand and capped by a horned helmet. Beneath the trophy sit two captives, a female (left) and a male (right). Image courtesy of the American Numismatic Society, inv. no. 1937.158.278.
dent on RRC 452/5, a denarius minted in Rome in 48/47 BCE, which elaborated upon the Gallic-warrior-as-captive-subject motif introduced over 70 years earlier (Fig. 1.9, top). Caesar’s coin shows the bound captive seated with his legs contorted, his hands bound behind his back, a torque or chain around his neck. His head is twisted back over his right shoulder in an uncomfortable position so he can look at a trophy decorated with a captured Gallic shield and carnyx. For Caesar, embroiled in a civil war, emphasizing his Gallic victories bolstered his claims to power. This was particularly important since, as a combatant in a civil war, his legal and political status were contested, but he could still rely on the resonance of his Gallic victories to rally support.129
For more on how Caesar used both image and text to bolster his power, see Riggsby (2006).
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In RRC 468/1, another denarius, a seated and mourning female captive (Fig. 1.9, bottom) joins the male captive.130 The trophy at the image’s center holds Gallic shields, spears, and carnyces on either side and is surmounted by a horned helmet.131 At the base of the trophy, directly underneath each shield, are two captives. The captive on the right is seated with his hands bound behind his back and his face upturned toward the trophy. The second captive is a woman, who rests her head in her unbound hands. These two Caesarian coins offer the most pointed images of Gallic subjugation: the male captive visually acknowledges the trophy marking his defeat, while the woman buries her head in her hands, signaling both grief and shame. Caesar’s depiction of Gallic captives deeply influenced imperial-era portrayals of captive barbarians.132 We can see echoes of Caesar’s depictions in the monumental arch at Glanum (St. Rémy-de-Provence), for example. Glanum chose Caesar’s side in the civil war and later received a Roman colony in the Augustan period. The arch was constructed in the early first century CE to commemorate Glanum’s colonial status.133 Four panels depicting captive Gauls – each pairing a man and a woman – surround the columns that framed the arch. Each captive’s chains are carved in detail, making their enslavement highly visible. In one panel, the woman looks down and away from the trophy to which she is bound. In another panel, the female prisoner is seated on top of captured weaponry, mirroring the pose of the goddess Roma seated on piles of captured weaponry that was common on Roman coins (Fig. 1.10).134 A carnyx rests upside down, prominent among the pieces of weaponry upon which the captive woman sits. The arches at Carpentras and Arausio (Orange), both in southern France, as well as Augustus’ victory monument at La Turbie, have similar imagery.135 Driven by conquest experience, Gallic peoples became an influential representation of Roman dominion that reverberated far beyond the Gallic provinces. The tro-
From an uncertain mint, likely minted while Caesar was on campaign in Hispania in 46/45 BCE. Vitale noted that the oval shields on RRC 468/1 paralleled the Galatian shield on Ptolemaic coinage, which may have referenced a Ptolemaic victory over Gallic peoples (2017: 222). Mattingly (1960: 78) and Sydenham (1976: 168) speculated that the female figure was meant to be Gallia. Vitale emphasized that male and female captives, both together and separate, reflected how the Romans conceptualized Gallic peoples (2017: 223–224). For example, Trajan copied Caesar’s Gallic trophy and captives almost exactly in one of his coin series (RIC2, 267, n. 324–325). Gros (1979: 55–83). The image derived from portrayals of Aetolia seated on captured arms (e.g., silver tetradrachm from 278–220 BCE; ANS 1944.100.19483). Augustus’ victory monument at La Turbie depicted two mannequin trophies, each with a man and woman beneath. The men are bound with their hands behind their backs, while the women have their hands in their laps, which Ferris (2011: 189–190) suggested meant that they too were bound. The fragmentary trophy at Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges also depicts captives, though, those captives were paired with personifications of subjugated peoples, namely Gauls and Iberians, which was unusual (Ferris 2000: 41–44, 2011: 190). For more on portrayals of Gallic barbarians on monuments in Gaul, see Walter (1993).
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Fig. 1.10: Relief panel from the arch at Glanum (St. Rémy-de-Provence). This panel depicts a man with a woman seated on a pile of captured weaponry. The chains that bind the man’s hands are easy to discern. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, under Creative Commons license. Photo by Carole Raddato.
phies on Trajan’s Column, for example, represent his victory over Dacians, another La Tène culture, by using what were to the Romans Gallic visual markers, especially shields and carnyces. It is unsurprising that the Gallic captive became a common trope in the Roman visual language of power, especially considering Rome’s longstanding fascination and discomfort with Gallic warriors. Gallic instruments of war were imbued with semantic power in Rome’s visual language. Yet they also held significant cultural value among Gallic peoples themselves. Roman depictions of Gallic weapons and captives drew their symbolic authority from the very fact that Gallic warriors relied so heavily on them and prized them within their own prestige system. We cannot, therefore, overlook the influence that Gallic self-representation had on Roman conquest imagery. At the same time, Gallic peoples increasingly confronted a visual language that centralized their own symbols, easing the process by which Gallic peoples became cowriters, drawing from, and contributing to a shared visual language of power that incorporated representations of their own ancestral conquest.
1.4 Conquest Imagery and Gallic Self-Representation Part of the cultural capital in Roman depictions of Gallic warriors and captives stemmed from the fact that Romans essentially revised existing Gallic symbols. But this was more than just borrowing symbols to signal the ethnicity of the defeated. These symbols were central to Gallic social identity, and by coopting them, Romans
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could make powerful statements about their own supremacy.136 Indeed, this cooptation seems at first glance to have served as an additional layer of conquest, in this case a visual conquest. However, we must not assume that Roman imagery entirely subsumed Gallic. Rather, first century BCE imagery suggests an ongoing dialogue between Roman and Gallic martial representations. The starting point for understanding the interplay between Gallic and Roman iconography is the instruments of war that littered Roman depictions of Gallic captives. Warrior imagery also had cultural value for Gallic peoples, and we see the very instruments of war that the Romans used to signal Gallic defeat employed as celebrations of Gallic identity in their own visual culture, such as on the roughly secondcentury BCE Gundestrup cauldron (Fig. 1.11).137 In this interior panel consisting of two registers separated by a floral motif, the top register depicts four Gallic horsemen wearing what appears to be mail armor and each bearing a distinctive decorative helmet - horns, a boar, a bird, and a half-wheel. Beneath them a wolf leaps in front of six foot soldiers, each in armor and carrying their distinctive shields and spears. They seem to have stylized hair. Behind them an armored soldier with a sword and a boar’s-head helmet leads three men blowing carnyces, above which floats a snake. The scene is capped by a larger-than-life, possibly divine figure dropping a human figure into what appears to be a cauldron. Scholars have speculated that the divine figure indicates this panel illustrates a post-victory sacrifice of war captives.138 The similarity between Gallic soldiers in Gallic and Roman imagey suggests that the Romans crafted their own representations out of traditional Gallic symbols that reverberated with generations of cultural symbolism. Gallic weaponry was inherently ambiguous in regions where both Gallic and Roman iconography were present because the Romans adapted La Tène weaponry beginning in the fourth century BCE. Therefore, Roman iconography attempting to illustrate a Gallic enemy had to encode “barbarian” markers more overtly into the image, to be certain that it would not be
For more on Gallic society, urbanism, and cultural interaction, see Py (2012). Feugère and Py (2011) catalogued the coins found in Transalpine Gaul, and especially at specific Gallic sites. Their catalogue suggests a regional circulation for most coins, of both Roman and Gallic or other coins (such as Iberian or Greek). See also Nash (1978). The panel depicted here is C6574. The cauldron is dated to c. the second century BCE to the first century CE using metallurgical analysis. There is still some debate about the origin of the Gundestrup cauldron and whether it is Thracian or more broadly Balkans in origin, or came from closer to its find spot, in Denmark. Olmsted (2001: 58–60), for example, argued for a northern Gallic origin. See Nielsen et al. (2005: 1–58) and Hachmann (1990: 565–903). The sacrifice of enemy dead was a common tenet in Gallic society, as archaeological evidence of sacrificial pits filled with human bones suggests. One example is the second-century BCE sanctuary at Gourney-sur-Aronde, where scholars have suggested that weapons trophies were mounted on poles around an inner sacrificial pit, and that the complex’s road was framed by a gate with human and bull skulls mounted on it (Brunaux 1995: 59). See also Brunaux (2018).
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Fig. 1.11: Interior panel from the Gundestrup cauldron, c. second century BCE to first century CE. This cauldron suggests that the Romans borrowed from Gallic self-representation to depict conquered Gallic peoples. Image courtesy of the National Museum of Denmark, CC BY-SA, photograph by Roberto Fortuna and Kira Ursem.
confused with a Roman soldier using the same weapons. Nudity, beards, and torques in Roman art helped establish the barbarian origin of otherwise ambiguous portraits. Gallic elites folded Roman iconography into their existing prestige system as another tool in a wider visual system that conveyed status and ensured the loyalty of their subordinates.139 As both visual cultures prized weaponry as a status marker, Gallic and Roman imagery became entangled on the monuments and coins depicting battles and conquest scenes. In Glanum, for example, there is little iconographic difference between conquest imagery produced for Roman or Gallic patrons.140 Both employed defeated or captive barbarians as a sign of power.
Their increasing service in Roman armies likely meant they understood that coinage essentially paid for Roman imperial expansion. Furthermore, we see the importance of the bond between Gallic chieftains and subordinates play out in myriad ways, from striking coins with the names of local chieftains to the social rituals surrounding sanctuary sites where warriors gathered. For more on the development and complexity of Gallic war bands, see Steuer (2006). Feasting and consumption also played a critical role in Gallic elite social ritual, which also influenced their adaptation of Roman visual culture (Luley 2014). For the interplay between Gallic and Roman imagery, see Creighton (2005). Creighton (2009) also explored Herod’s adaptation of Roman imagery, showing that the cultural borrowing of Roman imagery as a means of localized elite self-representation was not limited to the west. Discussed further in Chapter 4.
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This entanglement is also evident in the coinage that local chieftains produced, which blended elements of Roman conquest imagery into representations of local power.141 The most overt example of the visual dialogue between Gallic and Roman iconography is severed head imagery.142 Severed heads held both martial and ritual significance among many Gallic communities, with both literary and archaeological evidence attesting to the practice in the third through early first century BCE.143 Human skulls or representations of severed heads formed part of the ritual and commemorative landscape in these cultures, so their appearance on Gallic coins or other media is unsurprising. Indeed, certain resonant images could move from medium to medium as they accrued cultural value.144 Severed heads appear in multiple genres in Gallic visual culture, including plaster severed heads used as an accessory to warrior statues, in columns with either embedded skulls or depictions of skulls, and in sculptural friezes. The Salluvian oppidum of Entremont, in southern France, is particularly rich with severed head imagery.145 Incised lintels with decorative heads have been found, along with a relief of a Gallic horseman with a severed head mounted on his horse’s breastplate that has survived as part of a series of severed head images that formed part of a portico or gallery.146 Freestanding representations, such as those below, were also part of the repertoire (Fig. 1.12, left and right).147 The first is a severed head with deep-set, closed eyes (Fig. 1.12, left). The viewer can just make out the fingers of a hand holding up the head in the upper left. The second is a reconstruction of a statue of a helmeted warrior with a collection of six severed heads arrayed in front of him, his hands resting on two of the heads and with another decorating his cuirass (Fig. 1.12, right). At least 20 actual decapitated heads were also found near the portico, suggesting the representations of severed heads were
Rowan (2016a: 34) argued that “an object may be re-valued, re-imbued with (differing) meaning, re-appropriated, or even reincarnated,” and not just by local peoples but in different mediums and contexts as well. We in fact see that Roman coins depicting Gallic defeat were used as molds for glass paste intaglios by non-elites in the Republican period to signal their status (Yarrow 2018). These are discussed in Chapter 4. See also Olmstead (2001). Headhunting was a well-attested practice in Iron Age Europe, particularly among Gallic cultures. The practice terrified Romans but was common in other cultures. See Armit (2017: 122; 173–195). For some of the difficulties of interpreting the severed head iconography from Gallic sites, see Rousseau (2012). For archaeological examples, see Armit (2012: 104–222). Rowan (2016a: 34). Cassibry (2017: 19–21). See Armit (2012: 184–187). Armit (2012) argued that heads such as those in the Entremont warrior statue were intended to be read as severed and were part of the wider iconography of severed heads among some late Iron Age populations in Western Europe, in particular. The seated warrior statue also resembles the seated figure in the Gundestrup cauldron. Brunaux (2012: 114–16) also read the statuary group and the individual head at Entremont as illustrating severed heads.
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Fig. 1.12: Left: Representation of a severed head from Entremont, with a hand holding the head. Right: Seated warrior with a collection of six severed heads. The style of the warrior matches warrior imagery found at other sites, including outside of southern France, suggesting a supra-regional connection between warrior prowess and headhunting. Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, under Creative Commons license with permission of the Musée de l’Arles Antique ©Rémi Bénali.
enhanced with trophies of decapitated heads, a decorative scheme mirrored at other Gallic sanctuary sites such as Roquepertuse and Nages.148 Severed heads also made their way onto Gallic gold and silver coins by at least the second century BCE, particularly in central Gaul. On coinage of the Veneti (Loire Valley), what may be severed heads appear as if floating, tethered to a central, possibly heroic, figure (Fig. 1.13, top).149 This floating head type evoked the ritual significance of severed head trophies, and, according to John Creighton, reflected altered states of consciousness, representing, sometimes abstractly, a sort of sacral kingship.150 The Pictones,
Brunaux (2012: 108), Brunaux (2018), and Lescure (1995: 75–84). For the decapitated heads at Entremont, see Frakes (2005: 171). For a catalogue of the head iconography at Roquepertuse, see Gruat et al. (2011). Allen (1980: 135) argued that the floating heads represented severed head trophies. Creighton (2000: 40–45). Creighton noted that Gallic leaders had to exert their will in numerous ways, such as maintaining a war band (2000: 14) distributing social payments to followers (2000: 41). He concluded that gold was particularly useful to Gallic leaders, stating that: “the second century BC must have seen a remarkable transformation in the outward display and articulation of authority; and the sudden arrival of gold, with its manifestations in coinage, gold thread and torcs, clearly associated this yellow-gold colour with power” (2000: 41). In response to Allen’s argument that the Veneti coin (Fig. 1.13,
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Fig. 1.13: Top: Gallic gold quarter -stater of the Veneti, second century BCE. Obverse: A central male head, possibly a heroic figure, with beads leading out to what may be severed heads. Reverse: A rider on a human-headed horse jumping over a winged figure. The rider holds a stimulus ending in a fringed vexillum, or standard. Image courtesy of the Ambiani Digital Database, inv. no. 1887.A.223. Bottom: Gallic silver denarius of the Bituriges Cubes, in Central Gaul. Obverse: A male head. Reverse: A horseman turning back to the left and holding a shield in his right hand and the reins in his left. Below the horse is a severed head. Image courtesy of the Ambiani Digital Database, inv. no. 1887.A.144.
also in the Loire Valley, circulated similar coins with a human-headed horse and a severed head between the horse’s hooves.151 Such imagery was not limited to the Loire Valley; the Bituriges Cubes, from central Gaul, portrayed a horseman holding an oblong shield, with the severed head beneath the horse (Fig. 1.13, bottom). The practice terrified the Romans, and Gallic headhunting featured in Roman literature, where it was used to underscore Gallic barbarism. Livy, for example, de-
top) illustrates severed heads, Creighton suggested alternatively that the coins might be intended to represent an individual’s ability to leave their body during a trance to enter the spirit world (2000: 45). Inv. no. 1887.A.157, from www.ambiani.fr, the Ambiani online database.
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scribed the defeat and death of the praetor L. Postumius Albinus (pr. 216 BCE), who fell in battle to the Gallic Boii: The Boii stripped his body of its spoils and cut off the head, and carried them in triumph to their most sacred temples. They cleaned the skull according to custom and gilded the scalp with gold; it was then used as a vessel for libations. spolia corporis caputque praecisum ducis Boii ouantes templo quod sanctissimum est apud eos intulere. purgato inde capite, ut mos iis est, caluam auro caelauere, idque sacrum uas iis erat quo sollemnibus libarent poculumque idem sacerdoti esset ac templi antistitibus.152
Diodorus Siculus, on the other hand, stressed that Gallic peoples affixed their trophy skulls to their houses as a form of booty.153 Combined with engraved severed heads and other statues, it made for a haunting welcome to the Roman invaders.154 Romans may not have encountered many Gallic severed head coins, but they certainly knew of Gallic practices and would have encountered the imagery in Gallic oppida like Entremont during the initial conquest of Transalpine Gaul.155 Of course, the Romans were not themselves exempt from the practice of taking heads, despite the social taboos against it.156 While severed heads percolated through Roman literature in the Republican period, they only appeared on one Roman coin, RRC 286/1, a denarius of M. Sergius Silus (Fig. 1.14, top). Minted in Rome in 116/115 BCE, two years after the founding of the colony at Narbo, and in the wake of at least three successive triumphs over Gallic peoples in both Transalpine and Cisalpine Gaul, Silus’ coin circulated during a historical moment when Gallic warriors were prominent in the minds of everyday Romans.157 The reverse has a horseman rearing back, one hand on the reins, the other holding both a short sword and what appears to be a severed head.
Livy 23.24.11–12. For other examples of Gallic headhunting, see Polybius 3.67.3 and Livy 7.39.1, 10.26. Brunaux noted, however, that for the Romans the actual act of decapitating a defeated enemy was not transgressive. Roman sources tended to present it more as a matter of fact, unlike Greek sources, which wholeheartedly condemned it (2012: 108). In fact, the Romans themselves occasionally engaged in the practice, such as in the famous case of Manlius Torquatus (Livy 7.10.10–11). And during Caesar’s conquest of Transalpine Gaul, Labienus was reputed to have requested and received the head of his enemy, Indutiomar (Caes. B.C. 5.58.6). Diod. 14.115.5. We do see lintels with niches thought to be for human skulls, though such lintels are overwhelmingly from public contexts, such as in Roquepertuse, or another found in Glanum. Diod. 5.29. Strabo added that Gallic peoples also affixed skulls to places of worship (4.4.5). Cranial boxes for holding severed heads are also found in Gallic houses, such as at Montmartin (Oise) (Brunaux 2012: 112). See also Brunaux (1997: 208–210) and Gruat et al. (2023). Though it should be noted that coinage was a usual form of plunder, so at least some Roman soldiers could have encountered severed head coins during the campaigns in 124–120 BCE. For Greek and Roman attitudes toward decapitation, see Mendoza (2023). Q. Fabius Maximus Allobrogicus and Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus celebrated triumphs in 119/118 BCE over the Arverni and Allobroges in central Gaul; Q. Marcius Rex celebrated a triumph over the Stoeni in Liguria in Cisalpine Gaul in 117 BCE, and M. Aemilius Scaurus celebrated a triumph over the Carni in 115 BCE.
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Many of the extant examples of this coin have enough detail to show that the head is Gallic.158 Depicting a horseman holding a Gallic severed head suggests a clear invocation, and blatant reversal, of the severed head imagery for which Gallic peoples were so well-known. Both Roman and Greek audiences would understand the implicit hierarchy represented through the choice of hairstyle for the severed head, as such hairstyles were common stereotypes of barbarians. Republican-era monuments privileged captives and trophies, making this an unusual scene. Severed heads would, however, return to Roman iconography on the columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, but in both cases were used to emphasize Roman violence toward their defeated enemies.159 The relative rarity of this coin image might suggest that it had negligible impact on Gallic peoples.160 Yet, the coin was apparently well known enough that decades later an unknown Gallic mint copied Silus’ coin (Fig. 1.14, bottom). Using either hubbing or molds, which mirrors the original image, the reverse of the Gallic denarius copies the reverse of Silus’ coin.161 Since most Gallic imitations of Roman denarii date to the second quarter of the first century BCE through the late first century BCE, the existence of this coin suggests that Silus’ original coin may still have been in circulation. The incorporation of Roman conquest imagery onto local coinage reflects the power that conquest imagery had in conveying status and authority.162 Gallic denarii coopted Roman imagery to reify Gallic social relationships through coinage, connecting the images to individual leaders through the names of chieftains etched on the coins. From at least the mid-first century BCE, Gallic peoples used Roman symbols both as expressions of anti-Roman sentiment and as expressions of their own participation in the wider Roman community. Paired together, these Gallic-produced images reveal the profound influence of the Roman language of power. The fact that these coins were particularly prominent during and after Caesar’s wars suggests that coins were vital to marshaling armies on both sides, and that coinage played a role in the redistribution of power in the wake of Caesar’s conquest.163
Yarrow (2021: 54). Ferris (2011: 197). Silus’ coin did appear in Roman hoards in regions with prolonged Italo-Roman interaction, including in 46 of RRCH’s 87 datable hoards in Cisalpine Gaul (52.8%), and nine of the 21 datable hoards in Transalpine Gaul and Gallia Comata (42.8%). But, for comparison, the coin only appears in one of the eight datable hoards in Greece (12.5%). It is present in 44 of the 85 evaluated coin hoards in the rest of Italy (51.7%), and 11 of 25 datable hoards (that include denarii) in the Iberian Peninsula (44%). The obverse is not an imitation of Silus’ coin, but rather of RRC 273/1 minted by Q. Fabius Labeo (124 BCE), whose name is apparent on the imitation. For messages on Roman coins and coins as a form of communication, see Levick (1999) and Noreña (2011a). For interpretations of imperial coin messaging, see Noreña (2011b) and Rowan (2012). Rowan (2019) and Williamson (2005) assessed the role coinage played in facilitating imperialism, power, and identity. Rowan (2016b) also explored the representation of empire more broadly. Wigg-Wolf (2018: 144–145).
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Fig. 1.14: Top: RRC 286/1, a denarius minted in 116/115 BCE by M. Sergius Silus. Obverse: Helmeted head of Roma, with a legend including Roma’s name and the abbreviation for ex senatus consulto, ‘by decree of the senate.’ Reverse: A horseman holding a sword and a severed head in his left hand. Image courtesy of the American Numismatic Society, inv. no. 1941.131.92. Bottom: Gallic denarius of unknown origin imitating the denarius of M. Sergius Silus. Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, no. FRBNF44809083.
Furthermore, the entanglement of Gallic and Roman imagery on coins minted in opposition to Rome indicates that these symbols advertised power and could be used potentially to critique Roman authority. A silver coin minted in the 50s BCE by the Aeduan leader Dumnorix reveals how local leaders could adapt or invert Roman imagery to suit their own needs (Fig. 1.15). The obverse is a bust of Dumnorix, who represented an anti-Roman faction within the Aedui, a people long loyal to Rome.164 The coin’s reverse hybridizes Roman and Gallic representations by depicting a Gallic warrior in armor holding a sword, a boar’s head standard, a carnyx, and a severed head.165 While we will never know for certain, the appearance of the carnyx suggests At the time the coin was minted, Dumnorix’s brother, Divitiacus, ruled the Aedui. See Cassibry (2017: 7). Brunaux noted that the combination of the military standard in one hand and the severed head in the other demonstrated that capturing an enemy’s skull was the prerogative of a great warrior (2012: 108–109).
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Fig. 1.15: Silver coin of the Aedui, 50s BCE. Obverse: Bust of Dumnorix with his name. Reverse: A Gallic warrior with a carnyx, boar standard, and severed head on the reverse and his name again. Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, inv. no. 1889.5038.
the purposeful reclaiming of a Gallic symbol that had come to connote Roman victory over Gallic peoples. The blend of Gallic and Roman iconography to represent antiRoman sentiment during Caesar’s conquest of the region demonstrates how thoroughly internalized Roman images of power had become in the Gallic provinces.166 What is hopefully clear from examples such as these two coins, as well as from the locally produced sculptures and reliefs mentioned in this chapter, is that Gallic peoples were far from a monolith, even if the Romans tended to depict them as such.167 Their responses to Roman expansion were not uniform. Dumnorix’s case demonstrates that imagery could be deployed to resist Roman authority, but other Gallic peoples utilized Roman iconography to express their loyalty to Rome during the civil war between Pompey and Caesar. Antipolis (Antibes), for example, chose to support Caesar, which ultimately protected it against reprisals unlike its neighbor Massalia, which was punished.168 To commemorate its good fortune, Antipolis minted a series of bronze coins beginning in 44/43 BCE to celebrate its loyalty to Caesar, and through Caesar, to Rome (Fig. 1.16).169 The obverse of these coins has a bust of Venus, while the reverse shows Victory crowning a trophy. The reverse image was a clear invocation of Roman iconography. Dumnorix himself proved to be enough of a threat that Caesar first tried to deport him and then had him murdered (Caes. Bell. Gal. 5.7). For example, we can see the regional use of coins in both Gallic provinces. See Feugère and Py (2011) and Koczwara (2017). Massalia was unfortunate to become a battleground between Pompey and Caesar and was besieged by Caesarian forces in 49 BCE. Upon its defeat, Caesar allowed it to retain nominal autonomy, but Massalia was forced to cede much of its territory to Caesar. For an account of the siege, see Caes. B.C. 2.1–2.16. Caesar besieged Massalia with the aid of another pro-Caesarian Gallic city, Arelate (Arles), which he also rewarded with a Roman colony, Colonia Julia Paterna Arelate Sextanorum, and included in its colony land seized from Massalia (Kleiner 1973: 383).
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Fig. 1.16: Bronze coin minted in Antipolis, modern Antibes in southern France. Obverse: Bust of Venus. Reverse: Victory crowning a trophy with the city’s name in the legend. Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, no. FRBNF44800602.
What had been a symbol of Antipolis’ subjugation by Roman hands was now used to celebrate its civic pride and new municipal status. Interestingly, the people of Antipolis seem to have adapted Roman symbols to be more generic. The trophy depicted on this coin was stripped of the carnyces, Gallic shields, and horned helmets that had typified so many trophies on Roman coins. While a dubious claim at best, it is tempting to read this as a consciously selective use of Roman imagery to adduce Antipolis’ claims of loyalty to a man who had so recently ravaged Gaul.
1.5 Conclusion The adaptation of Roman imagery discussed above demonstrates the complexity of Gallic responses to Roman expansion. Roman imagery was not received or imitated in a uniform way across the Gallic world, nor was any other foreign imagery, such as Greek. The individual choices that cities or elites made often reflected the nuances of their relationships with Rome. As we have seen, the Roman conquest of Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul transpired through battles, colonies, and Roman political maneuvering, but also echoed through visual media. Gallic warriors became a central feature of how Roman magistrates and generals celebrated their own achievements, one genre of a much wider lexicon of elite self-expression. Conquered peoples routinely navigated a complex visual landscape, in which they were both captive and consumer.170 Imagine, for example, a first-century CE local elite in the process of building a lavish townhouse in Vasio (Vaison-la-Romaine), in southern Gaul. He might go to a local artist to commission some statues in a Roman style, perhaps even some statues that Ferris (2011: 190).
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drew on Roman images of power. He might then pay for these statues in Roman denarii struck with images of his ancestors’ subjugation. His fellow elite in Glanum, another Gallo-Roman city, might do the same and, while on his way, pass by the monumental arch that depicted Gallic captives in poses of defeat. While speculative, these vignettes illustrate how complex the experience of Roman visual culture could be for a non-Roman elite, a complexity that we should always keep in mind when studying local uses of conquest imagery. Glanum, in fact, represents many of the many overlapping elements of overwriting and cowriting that occurred in the Gallic provinces. A stronghold of the Salluvii with both Greek and Roman cultural influences, Glanum ultimately embraced Roman visual culture, and enmeshed both Roman and locally produced conquest imagery in their monuments. Similarly, the association between Gallic instruments of war and Roman victory became so internalized that in the late first century CE, a Roman centurion named C. Julius Tiberinus dedicated a shrine to Jupiter Heliopolitanus and Nemausus (patron god of Nîmes).171 Tiberinus chose to have his altar decorated not only with the iconography of Jupiter Heliopolitanus but also with a Gallic shield and a carnyx. Yet, Tiberinus was not from Gaul, but from Lebanon. Both Tiberinus’ altar and Glanum’s monuments utilized the now-standard symbols connoting Gallic ethnicity: trophies, weapons, and captive bodies. That both local peoples and foreigners employed these icons demonstrates the degree to which conquest imagery had become synonymous with victory and power, untethered from any specific Gallic defeat. Rather, they were highly recognizable representations of imperialist power and communal identity.
Häussler and Webster (2020: 11–13).
Chapter 2 Coining an Image: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Language of Power in Roman Iberia Like their neighbors to the north, the Romans saw the peoples of the Iberian Peninsula as barbarous, fierce, cunning, and fickle.172 Such descriptors helped explain to Roman audiences why it took them 200 years to complete their conquest of the peninsula. Yet, despite the difficulties they faced, the Romans never centralized Iberian peoples as an ethnic trope in Roman visual culture the way they did their Gallic neighbors. Iberian peoples did occasionally creep into Roman imagery, particularly through the personification of Hispania, but despite the shared literary topoi, they never captured Roman visual interest as Gallic peoples did. One of the few monuments to represent them, and more specifically Hispania, was the triumphal monument in Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges, but this is a rare example.173 Those limited extant personifications do not have the clear ethnic physiognomic markers that the Gallic personifications did. Their weaponry, however, particularly their shields, did enter Roman visual culture, but rarely coupled with Roman trophies. Perhaps this was because Iberian peoples never figured prominently in the Greek ethnography upon which the Romans relied so heavily for their initial portrayals of Gallic warriors. This is not to say, however, that the conquest experience in the Iberian Peninsula did not influence Roman visual culture. While they did not become a full-fledged visual stereotype, Iberian peoples were just as influential on Roman coinage and helped centralize coin iconography as a medium for commensuration between local and Roman identity. The Iberian Peninsula (Map 2) is thus a helpful case study to track the process of commensuration, particularly the use of coded symbols that could be read ambiguously as either Roman or Iberian. Prolonged military and cultural engagement solidified Roman perceptions of Iberian peoples, yet also intertwined their iconographies, creating a visual ambiguity that facilitated the integration of their societies. The Iberian Peninsula was home to a diverse range of ethnic, cultural, and linguistic groups, which meant that as Roman power and Roman iconography spread in the Peninsula, it encountered visual cultures shaped by indigenous, Punic, Greek, and Celtic influences.174 These were all cultures with which the Romans engaged in prolonged wars,
See for example Cic. Q. Fr. 1.1.27; Catullus 37.20, 39.17–21. Walter (1993: 37–38). Though, as with Gallic peoples, the Romans imposed macro-ethnic identities on Iberian peoples, lumping disparate groups under convenient labels. For example, the label “Celtiberian” encompassed the Arevaci, Belli, Lusoni, and Titi, and they would not have referred to themselves as Celtiberians (Pina Polo 2011: 50). The same was true of other macro-ethnic identities, such as the Cantabri, Asturii, and Galaici. As Pina Polo noted, however, while we do not know why the Romans grouped people thusly, we cannot assume it was because they did not understand the cultures they encountered. It is entirely possible there was some purpose, perhaps administrative, for doing so (2011: 50). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111326634-003
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further intertwining their iconographies. And considering that Roman coin iconography was itself the product of entanglement with other iconographic vocabularies, this made for a rich blend of visual traditions. In this chapter I focus predominantly on coinage, first and foremost because the iconographic flexibility of Roman coins made them an ideal medium for commensuration. Second, because of intense Roman economic investment, there are numerous hoards that provide data on the types of coin imagery present in the Peninsula.175 There were, for example, comparatively more hoards in the Iberian Peninsula in the period 124–92 BCE than there were in Italy.176 This offers an opportunity to gauge what types of coins were issued from Hispanic mints or ended up in the region for myriad reasons. We can use that data to extrapolate what coin types were present in Roman Hispania at a given time. And, of course, coins are one of the better-preserved visual mediums and therefore comprise a significant portion of extant conquest iconography from the Republican period. Lastly some Iberian cities were already minting their own coins before the arrival of the Romans.177 This inevitably entangled Roman and Iberian iconography and influenced how Roman communication via coinage was received and understood by local peoples. Since Iberian peoples were rarely portrayed on Roman monuments, at least on those that survive, coin iconography presents the best opportunity to reconstruct how Iberian peoples featured in the language of power. The commensuration of Roman and Iberian coin images was part of a larger process through which, as we have seen in the Gallic provinces, the Romans narrated key moments in the conquest of the peninsula to their peers, rendering their military successes a permanent part of Roman cultural memory. Thus, while a particular coin image might not have meant much to an Iberian viewer, collectively they helped communicate and strengthen Roman hegemony.178 This long-term form of mass communication centralized coinage as a symbol of authority and as an expression of identity. It
Or at least within a specific hoard. The presence of coins in hoards does not necessarily equate to a wider circulation, but it tells us that at least one coin of that type was present in the region. Hoards are problematic for analyzing circulation in part because of the unknown duration of an individual coin’s circulation (Mairat et al. 2022: 14). Republican coins, for example, circulated well into the imperial period, perhaps even into the third century CE (Woytek 2022). And fewer in the Peninsula in the period 91–79 than in Italy (Lockyear 2007: 34). All the hoards with 30 or more denarii in them in the period 124–92 date to 115–100 (Lockyear 2007: 37), a period when the Romans were heavily involved in the mining regions in the southern peninsula. Though as Ripollès noted, these were mostly limited to individual towns in coastal regions (2005: 79–80). He also suggested that coin production may have begun due to Iberian mercenaries serving in Sicily (2005: 80). Ripollès and others have seen the increase in coin production during and after the Second Punic War as the result of Roman manipulation (2005: 80). See also Villaronga (1983). Noreña (2011b: 197). He also argued (2011b: 18) that coins were a critical means of expressing Roman cultural values, though they were more effective as a “long-term diffusion” of imperial ideals rather than a short-term attempt to sway an audience. Similarly, Clare Rowan (2016a: 50) stated that coins were “utilized to great effect in order to communicate and/or negotiate Roman hegemony.”
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could also, as we will see, be a conduit for the expression of anti-Roman or rebellious sentiment. The Roman conquest of Hispania established two foundational understandings: first, how fundamental the region was to Roman power, and second, how much it became equated with rebellion. Hispania was a place in which Roman armies lost as much, or more, than they won. These losses help contextualize the role that Roman coins played as expressions of both cultural memory and invented – or perhaps aspirational – tradition.179 This is nowhere more evident than in the coinage produced during the two Roman civil wars that were fought in Iberian territory: the Sertorian War (82–72 BCE) and the war between the Caesarians and the Pompeians (48–45 BCE). These wars engendered significant financial emergencies, so the coin output produced by both sides in each of these wars offers a rare glimpse into both coin production during moments of crisis and the use of iconography to underscore power and bolster morale on both sides of the campaigns.180 By tracing coins as storehouses of memory and as entangled objects, this chapter will demonstrate how coinage became a platform through which rebellion and civil war were communicated and redressed. And once the threat of civil war had passed, coinage became a means through which Roman hegemony could be rearticulated.
2.1 The Conquest Experience in Roman Hispania The association of the Iberian Peninsula with rebellion began almost from the moment the Romans arrived in the region during the Second Punic War (218–202 BCE). In 211 BCE, two Roman armies were disastrously defeated and their generals P. Cornelius Scipio and his brother Cn. Cornelius Scipio were killed.181 In his narrative of the events, Livy was quick to point to Celtiberian perfidy as the root cause of these disasters. Carthaginian generals had bribed the Celtiberians to abandon their Roman allies on the eve of battle, leaving the two Roman armies unprepared to defend against the joint forces of the Carthaginians and their Iberian and Numidian allies. For the Romans, who framed their arrival in the peninsula around aiding their beleaguered ally, Saguntum, this defection must have been especially galling.182 Two years later, in 209 BCE, P. Cornelius Scipio the Younger, who would later earn the moniker Africanus, besieged and captured the Cartha Hölkeskamp (2016: 186). He emphasized that coin iconography expressed both how the Romans remembered the past and how they wanted it to be remembered, even if that memory did not reflect historical reality. For more on targeted iconography for Roman soldiers, see Kemmers (2014). Livy 25.32–36. The two Scipios were killed a month apart. The Ebro Treaty remains the subject of debate, thanks in part to the disparate accounts in Livy (21.2.6–7) and Polybius (2.13.3–7). Scholars tend to rely on Polybius, though they debate Polybius’ assertion of the reason for the treaty in the first place. Polybius argued it was due to a fear of Gallic invasion in northern Italy beginning in the 230s (Pol. 2.21–24). For more on the debate, see Eckstein (2012: 206–229); Montesanti (2016).
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ginian stronghold of Carthago Nova, on the southern coast of Hispania.183 This critical victory paved the way for the Roman armies to establish control in the region and brought numerous Iberian allies over to the Roman side.184 Scipio Africanus’ siege of Carthago Nova and subsequent campaigns illustrate three themes that shaped how the Romans remembered and memorialized their experiences: the brutality of conquest, underhanded foreign policy, and the conspicuous interest in capturing booty and exploiting natural resources, particularly silver and later gold mines.185 First, Scipio sacked the city in brutal, harrowing fashion, indiscriminately killing and enslaving 10,000 male survivors. He reportedly freed those from Carthago Nova but declared 2,000 artisans and skilled workers “state property,” enslaving them to work for the Roman cause.186 Second, he enticed locals to join his cause through various gifts, including the return of hostages and prisoners of war, while at the same time holding onto at least one Iberian leader’s wife and children to induce him to join the Romans.187 The third common theme in literary descriptions of Rome’s Iberian Peninsula conquest is compulsive triumph-hunting and the despoliation of cities and landscapes that followed it.188 Taken at face value, the reports of Scipio’s campaigns reflect this practice. We are told he seized 600 talents of coins – likely Carthaginian – and bullion, and he seized the neighboring silver mines.189 He also paraded in his triumph 276 en-
Scipio was only 24 years old when he put his name forward for the special election to serve in Spain. He was much too young to hold consular imperium, and his election emphasized how precarious the situation felt to the Roman people. He was given proconsular imperium by popular vote. Livy also pointed out how distrustful the Roman people were of their military leaders after numerous setbacks (26.18–20). For more on the battle itself and the aftermath, see Pol. 10.6–17; Livy 26.41–51, 27.17.1–7; App. Ib. 19–24; Val. Max. 4.3.1, 9.11, ext. 1. Roman conquerors often arbitrarily vacillated between ruthlessness and leniency, souring their relationship with local peoples, yet local support and advice was also critical, and the Romans sought to capitalize on the divisions among Iberian peoples to aid their conquest. We know, for example, of the injustices that Hasdrubal inflicted on his allies, the Ilergetes, that caused them to defect to the Romans (Livy 27.17). Livy 26.47, 27.17. The Iberian leader, Edesco, was likely a local king of the Edetani, whose territory was on the central Mediterranean coast, south of Saguntum. We know, for example, of at least four early Roman triumphs or ovations in the Iberian Peninsula in which plundered coins featured. Those are the triumphs of M. Helvius (195), Q. Minucius Thermus (195), M. Porcius Cato (194), and Q. Fulvius Flaccus (180). See Knapp (1977: 1–2). Rich (1993) explored the broader ramifications of the role that triumph-hunting played in driving Roman imperial decision-making. Pol. 10.19.1–2. A talent is an Attic measurement for weight or a large number of coins. 1 talent = 60 minas = 6000 drachmas (or 6000 denarii) = 25.8 kg (c.57 pounds). So Scipio’s 600 talents of gold would be 34,200 pounds, or 15.5 metric tons.
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graved gold platters (paterae), each weighing a pound, and 18,300 pounds of silver bullion.190 Plunder lists such as these were often exaggerated, but their very existence underscored the relationship between resources, conquest, and wealth production and memorialized the successes of the conquering Roman general. Polybius suggested that by 150 BCE, the mines near Carthago Nova that Scipio had taken were producing 1,500 talents per year for the Romans, about 50% of Rome’s total yearly silver bullion.191 To put this into context, 1,500 talents was about ten million denarii, and the average Roman soldier in the Republican period earned a yearly salary of approximately 120 denarii.192 As such, the Iberian mines on their own could theoretically supply enough silver to pay the yearly salary of around 83,000 Roman soldiers.193 In myriad ways, therefore, control of the peninsula was mediated through war: for territorial acquisition, for economic exploitation, and for administration.194 Controlling Hispania was therefore critical to the financing of wars across the empire.195 Iberian mines produced materials for many forms of metallurgical production.196 This resulted in a dramatic reshaping of the Iberian landscape to facilitate Roman mining practices, which had the added effect of broadcasting Roman hegemony, since the Romans established towns and roads to facilitate their economic investment and control of the region.197 We can also see evidence of Rome’s investment in the Iberian Peninsula in the decision to increase the number of praetors in 198 BCE
Livy 26.47.5–10. Harl (1996: 46). Kay argued this estimate was a bit excessive but felt that Polybius’ estimate was feasible and is supported by ecological evidence (2014: 45–49). Legionary salary pay has been the subject of significant debate, in part because of a re-tariffing of the denarius from 16 to ten asses sometime in the mid-second century BCE. It is generally accepted that the pay was increased under Caesar to 225 denarii per day, with the denarius at that point equaling ten asses. See Watson (1958: 113–120). Harl (1996: 42–55) stated that a single legion cost between 550,000 and 600,000 denarii per year in salary alone, but with equipment and food, a legion likely cost around a million denarii per year, “though, as mentioned above, Kay had reservations about Harl’s estimate” (2014: 45–49). By the 70s BCE, the Romans consistently fielded 20–25 legions per year, which made controlling the mines in Hispania crucial to the security of the empire. Pina Polo noted that Rome’s relationship with the Iberian Peninsula was mediated by war but that it was not universal. Some areas saw long periods of relative peace, while others, particularly the interior, suffered almost continuous conflict (2011: 39). Strabo (3.2) proclaimed that nowhere was as rich in gold, silver, copper, and iron as Iberia. Iberian mines had been worked since at least 4,000 BCE, though the Romans certainly intensified mining production (Gosner 2016: 125). Domergue argued that the potential economic exploitation of Iberian mines was the main factor in Scipio’s expansionist attitude in the Peninsula (1991: 181–182). Gosner (2016: 126). Gosner noted that one way to track the Roman exploitation of Iberian mines is through analysis of heavy metal pollution, and that approximately 70% of lead pollution found in Greenland today stems from exploitation of Iberian mines from the fourth century BCE (Punic and Iberian) through the first century CE (Roman). Chemical analysis of Roman coins from the Augustan period also reveals that most were produced from raw material from Iberian mines. Gosner (2016: 126–127).
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from four to six, with two of those praetors dedicated to overseeing the administration of the Iberian provinces.198 This pattern of Roman victory, Iberian defeat, and brutal exploitation continued through the wars and rebellions of the second and first centuries BCE. The fasti triumphales record five triumphs or ovations between 206 and 190 BCE.199 Livy included another six for a total of 11 triumphs in the period. All told, there were at least 32 triumphs or ovations between 206 and 19 BCE for action in Hispania, the only province rivaling the Gallic provinces in the number of recorded triumphs. In the Iberian Peninsula, many of those triumphs were also dubiously achieved. The Roman Senate did try to curb triumph-hunting, denying triumphs to some generals and giving others the lesser honor of an ovation.200 Regardless, warfare was almost constant in the second century BCE, and between 197 and 179, only four of the recorded 24 magistrates sent to the province were not explicitly engaged in war.201 The Celtiberian Wars between 155 and 132 BCE, for example, were part of a series of revolts by local peoples, mostly the Arevaci, Belli, Lusoni, and Titi, stemming at times from Roman mismanagement or unwillingness to accede to legitimate requests from local peoples with whom they were ostensibly allied.202 Polybius referred to the Celtiberian revolt as the “war of fire,” underscoring the anxiety the wars caused the Romans.203 Much as with characterizations of Gallic peoples discussed in Chapter 1, local revolts reified Roman perceptions of Iberians as disloyal, warlike, and prone to treachery, despite clear attestations of similar behavior from the Romans.204 Appian, for example, described the Lusitanians as poor, bandits, warlike, and as treaty violators just before explaining their massacre by the praetor Ser. Sulpicius Galba in 150
Richardson (1986: 75). They are Cn. Cornelius Blasio, ovation 196/5; M. Helvius, ovation in 195/4; Q. Minucius Thermus, triumph in 195/4; M. Porcius Cato, triumph in 194/3; M. Fulvius Nobilior, ovation in 191/90. Richardson (1986: 74–75) argued that for at least Blasio, the ovation indicated the irregularity of his command and emphasized the ad hoc approach the Romans took to the province after Scipio’s campaigns. See Pittenger (2009). Richardson (1986: 105) stated that only about half of the magistrates between 195 and 178 earned triumphs or ovations. Of those four, two were late arriving to their provinces, and one suffered from prolonged illness (Richardson 1986: 105). Curchin (1991: 34) noted that the Roman response to the initial refusal by the Segedans to pay tribute or provide troops to Rome was excessive. The Senate, for example, moved the date at which magistrates’ duties started from March 1 to January 1, as Curchin stated, citing Livy Per. 47, “because the Spaniards were rebelling.” Pol. 35.1.1. See also Curchin (1991: 33). Another example of violent triumph-hunting is L. Licinius Lucullus’ attack on Cauca in 151 (App. Ib. 51–55; 59–60). See also Curchin (2004). Though Appian (Ib. 60) emphasized that the Romans “matched treachery with treachery” and their behavior was “unworthy of Rome.”
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BCE, thus essentially providing a justification for their destruction.205 Strabo saw the Iberians, whom he lumped together at this point in order to make a point, as morose, crafty, insidious, predatory, insincere, and yet incapable of resisting subjugation because they could not work together, mirroring somewhat the descriptions of Gallic peoples.206 Though Strabo did admit that the decentralization of Iberian societies drew out the conquest of the peninsula for hundreds of years. The wars of rebellion culminated in an incredibly violent final attempt to drive the Romans out of the province by siding with the exiled Roman general Q. Sertorius in the Sertorian War, in which the Iberians were ultimately unsuccessful.207 And Roman repression of indigenous revolts was incredibly harsh. Archaeological evidence from sites such as Valentia (Valencia) and Castellet de Banyoles (Tivissa) testify to that violence. In Valentia, archaeologists have found the skeletons of executed Sertorian soldiers which show evidence of torture stemming from Pompey’s capture of the city in 75 BCE.208 The Romans destroyed Castellet de Banyoles around 200 BCE, based on evidence from burn layers, a wide distribution of weapons, hoards of valuables, and the recent discovery of a Roman camp outside the city.209 Roman actions during these various rebellions signaled their intention to retain and expand control over the Iberian Peninsula, and the coin hoards attest to Rome’s economic investment in extending its hegemony.210 At least 93 datable hoards of Roman silver coins – mostly denarii, but with some other denominations such as victoriati and quinarii – span the length of Roman intervention in the peninsula (Tabs. 2.1 and 2.2).211 As we can see from the following tables, there are spikes in Spanish hoards in 124–92 and 78–50 and notable spikes in Portuguese hoards in 124–92 and 44–27. Each of these is a period with significant Roman economic and military activity, as we can see by mapping the lists of active conflicts onto the chronological breakdown of coin hoards (Tab. 2.1).
App. Ib. 59. Not all ancient authors viewed the Lusitanians or their leader, Viriathus, in this way. Livy saw him as a sort of rags to riches story, rising from simple shepherd to brigand to the powerful general who defeated the Romans in battle and forced them to send consular armies against him (Per. 52.8). Cicero begrudgingly admitted that Viriathus acquired great power and defied Roman armies (Off. 2.40). There is an undertone of heroism implied here that reflects the “noble barbarian” motif of Attalus I’s Galatian monument. Strabo 3.4.5. Curchin (1991: 33). Ribera Lacomba and Calvo (2015: 19–40). Noguera et al. (2014). Or at least to the awareness that this was an emergency situation that required a significant uptick in mint output. Lockyear (2007: 32). As Ripollès noted, these hoards mostly range in date between the second and first centuries BCE since Roman coins were rare before the last third of the second century BCE (2005: 84).
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Tab. 2.1: Number of denarii in Iberian hoards in the CHRR database (Crawford 1969). Data taken from Lockyear (2007: 33). I have added the military conflicts to show the correlation between increased military activity and hoarding.212 – –
–
– –
–
–
–
Total
Portugal
, (%)
, (%)
,
, (%)
, (%)
,
Lusitani, Celtiberi Vettones Callaeci
Callaeci Lusitani Arevaci
Spain
Conflicts Second Punic War
Sertorius Caesar Cantabri Cantabri and Astures Pompey
Tab. 2.2: Comparison of total number of denarius hoards between Blázquez (1987–1988) and CHRR Database (Crawford 1969). Data taken from Lockyear (2007: 33).
Iberia (Blázquez) Iberia (CHRR)
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Total
Furthermore, the volume of coins per hoard in those two clusters suggests significant Roman economic investment in the region.213 Thanks to the preservation of these hoards, we can evaluate the relative prevalence of specific coin types – both those produced in Hispania and those produced in Rome. With 200 years of military activity, it is unsurprising that the Romans’ experiences in the Iberian Peninsula shaped their perceptions of individual and familial achievements, which were increasingly memorialized on Roman coins after the 130s BCE.214 Those experiences also centralized Iberian iconography in the Roman visual language of power in a different way than Gaul; not as an ethnic representation such as with the Gallic carnyx, but rather as a cowritten symbol of cohesion between local peoples and Roman authority. To explore the cowriting process, this chapter will turn first to how coins “stored” cultural memories and then to the inter-cultural messaging that defines cowriting.
See Roy (2023a: 345). Lockyear noted a total of 5,902 coins from hoards in Portugal in the CHRR database and 5,543 from Spain. For the period 124–92, there are 1448 coins in Portuguese hoards and 2,506 in Spanish hoards, comprising 24% and 45% of the total coins, respectively. For the period 78–50 in Spain, the coins comprise 39% of Lockyear’s total. And for the period 44–27 in Portugal, the coins comprise 65% of Lockyear’s total. Meadows and Williams (2001).
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2.2 Coins as Cultural Memory Coinage was part of a visual culture that included public and private architecture, victory monuments, and inscriptions, among others, which reified elite conceptions of power and prestige. The city of Rome was a “memory landscape” embedded with coded messages that drew on symbols of Roman military power, associated above all with the Roman triumph.215 Whereas temples decorated with spoils of war and visual messages highlighting Roman military success were fixed monuments in the memory landscape, coins could be widely distributed and offered flexibility that fixed monuments could not. Just as with architecture, coin iconography embraced symbols that reflected Roman social mores, in particular the vital role that military success played in elite political and social success in the capital. Coins were mobile, varied annually, and were designed by moneyers with autonomy in determining iconography.216 Such control over image production allowed moneyers to bolster their familial claims.217 Consequently, coin imagery became a vehicle through which Roman elites could make competing, at times even dubious, claims over military victories, treaties, and other events that could help further their political goals. One aspect of how Roman elites drew the conquest of Hispania into coin iconography was through invented tradition.218 Coin imagery disseminated values and expectations of behavior that reified the status quo and created a sense of historical continuity.219 While many numismatists have argued that coinage did not target specific audiences, others have proposed a middle ground between dismissing coins as incapable of persuasion and seeing all coins as deploying messages intended to target specific audiences.220 This middle ground has argued that coins allowed for the longterm diffusion of ideals over an extended period.221 While the scholarship on this debate has emphasized the first and second centuries CE, it is applicable to the Republican period as well, at least in broad strokes. Republican cultural values were more Galinsky (2016: 27) referred to the city of Rome as a “memory landscape,” in which buildings and statues that created and reflected cultural memory were embedded. For the idea of an elite syntax in visual culture, see Rutledge (2012: 121). Hölkeskamp (2016: 203–204) also argued that objects had “medium-specific coded and contextualized messages, all of which contributed to the visual language of Roman memory.” Hölkeskamp (2016: 187). Though coin iconography did not begin to change radically on a yearly basis until the 130s BCE. See Meadows and Williams (2001). Hölkeskamp (2016: 186) discussed the idea that coinage was composed of both invented tradition and intentional history, and that moneyers sometimes made genealogical claims of dubious authenticity. Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983: 1) defined invented tradition as “a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behavior by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past.” Ibid.: 1–2. For more on coin messages, see Levick (1999); for coins and identity, see Howgego et al. (2005). Noreña (2011b: 18) stated that “regular, long-term dissemination of imperial ideals was instead intended, at least in part, to reinforce belief in the legitimacy of Roman imperial rule . . . . [coinage] was particularly well suited to the slow, long-term diffusion of ideas.”
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ambiguous than their imperial counterparts, but conquest imagery was a core tenet; it represented the importance of virtus and war in the careers of Roman politicians. Invented tradition also facilitated the diffusion of Roman cultural values and, more importantly, obscured events that did not align with Rome’s perception of its empire.222 They were “portable spaces” on which Roman moneyers could advertise family achievements and Roman cultural values, past and present.223 And even if coins were intended to be legible primarily to Roman audiences, they were dispersed throughout the empire. In areas of Roman expansion such as the Iberian Peninsula, coins had a secondary effect of advancing Roman hegemony and confronting local iconographic styles.224 Drawing on both the distant and recent past, the Romans minted coins that wove together invented tradition and intentional history. The story of their conquest of the Iberian Peninsula was articulated through both as well as through victory monuments, literature, and the diffusion of Roman architectural styles in the peninsula. Coins allow us to see not only how conquest shaped Roman memories but also how coins worked alongside fixed monuments to hone and recirculate cultural values that defined Roman identity. The visual syntax expressed through coinage had, as we will see, a dramatic impact on local iconography, which both rejected and absorbed Roman imagery to make explicit claims about local identities. Furthermore, Roman conquest also accelerated the monetization of the province. Coin production not only increased at existing mints, but new mints also began to issue coins under Roman purview.225 The complex and fraught conquest of the Iberian Peninsula led to some creative adjustments in how Roman elites reflected on and used their experiences to bolster their political interests back in Rome. One invented tradition directly tied to Roman activity in Iberia is RRC 234/1, a denarius minted in Rome by Ti. Veturius Gracchus in 137 BCE (Fig. 2.1).226 This, denarius was issued during the Numantine War, a massive rebellion that was sparked in 155 BCE and reignited in 143, when Rome sent its armies to focus on the Celtiberian stronghold of Numantia (Soria), in north-central Iberia. The obverse shows a bust of Mars wearing a plumed helmet, while the reverse depicts an oath-taking scene. Two warriors face each other, one bearded and without armor, the other beardless and in armor; each holds a weapon and touches a pig held by a figure kneeling between them. For example, Noreña (2011a: 248–249) discussed the communicative function of coins. For the portrayal of Roman Republican values in visual culture, see Hölscher (2018). Clark (2007: 138–139). In fact, many Roman coins were minted at local mints coopted by the Romans, but likely managed by locals. Ripollès suggested that Roman governors likely had some authority to authorize coin production at local mints, but that city authorities retained control over the design and production (2005: 82–83). Ripollès (2005: 82–85). The exact date of this coin issue is debated. Sydenham (1976) dated this coin to c. 110/108 BCE, while Babelon (1885) dated it to c. 129 BCE (see Badian 1968: 34). Woytek (2014: 51) situated it in the 130s BCE. Backendorf (1998) followed Crawford’s dating. Yarrow (2021: 42) also dated the coin to 137.
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Fig. 2.1: RRC 234/1, a denarius minted in Rome in 137 BCE by Ti. Veturius, which reflects a complex entanglement of distant history and local events, merging references to Roman defeats at the Caudine Forks and Numantia. Obv: A helmeted bust of Mars; Rev: An oath-taking scene with two warriors facing each other, one with a beard and armor, one beardless and without armor. The kneeling man holds a pig that is difficult to see in the image. Image courtesy of the American Numismatic Society, inv. no. 1944.100.374.
This coin can be interpreted in multiple ways, and demonstrates how a moneyer could weave together the present with allusions to the distant past to make a statement about Roman fortitude.227 First, it borrowed its reverse’s oath-taking scene from a much earlier, and rare, gold coin reverse.228 Mimicking older coin types was quite common in this period of Roman coinage (c. 130 BCE onward).229 On the surface, it memorialized the achievements of the moneyer’s ancestors, both real and invented. The obverse portrait of Mars was the first depiction on the obverse of a god other than Roma, and possibly references Ti. Veturius, priest of Mars (flamen martialis) in 204 BCE, and to the etiological story of the smith Mamurius Veturius, who reproduced the shields of Mars that fell from the heavens.230 The reverse image may refer to the military disaster at the Caudine Forks during the Samnite Wars in the late fourth century BCE, and the resulting dishonorable treaty that required the Romans to be stripped of their armor and pass humiliatingly under an oxen yoke.231 If true, the allusion to Caudine Forks would have paralleled the military failure at Numantia and the new treaty (foedus Numantinum) of 137 BCE, concluded by Ti. Sempronius Gracchus (tr.pl. 133). At Numantia, C. Hostilius Mancinus bungled the campaign and Gracchus,
Hölkeskamp (2016: 197, cf. 187–188). It copies RRC 28/1–2 and 29/1–2, dated to 225–214/12 BCE (Woytek 2018: 360). Woytek identified three stages of Roman Republican coinage: (1) c.300–c.241 or 218 BCE (didrachms); (2) c.218–135 BCE (quadrigatus, then denarius with little variation in type); (3) c.135 BCE to end of the Republic (significant variation in image-type and much higher production) (Woytek 2018: 360). Woytek (2018: 361). The etiological reference remains disputed. Bremmer, for example, located the origins of this myth in the Augustan period, though he did not discuss the coin image (2014: 152). Noreña (2011: 252); Ayres (2018: 210); San Vicente (2012: 322–325).
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Mancinus’ quaestor, negotiated a treaty that, while unfavorable in Roman eyes, saved the Romans from greater disaster. Even so, the Senate refused to ratify this treaty.232 With this coin image, the moneyer, whose full name was Ti. Veturius Gracchus Sempronianus, thus honored his adopted gens, the Veturii, and his biological family, the Sempronii.233 Veturius’ coin illustrated the melding of the distant past and recent events to (re) produce Roman-valued memory. By intertwining the long-ago Caudine Forks disaster with the recent embarrassment at Numantia, Veturius highlighted his relative Gracchus’ treaty and reframed the disaster of Mancinus’ campaign as a success. If the reverse image is an allusion to Caudine Forks, the coin may have reminded Roman audiences that they had survived that disaster and emerged victorious and would do so again in Hispania. Veturius’ coin demonstrates how a coin that was on the surface about distant family achievements could be distilled into a message about contemporary conflicts. This coin’s distribution also suggests that it circulated widely amongst the people most concerned with the events depicted on the coin’s reverse. It is found in hoards throughout the empire, with a concentration in Italy, as one might expect. It also can be found in approximately 17 hoards in the Iberian Peninsula, most of which date to two periods of rebellion.234 The first is a protracted conflict between the Romans and the Lusitanians that spanned the period from c. 115–93 BCE, with a truce between c. 107 and 102 BCE. The second was the Sertorian War (82–72 BCE). Ultimately, war brought coins to Hispania, where they were subject to diverse interpretations, including potentially as a representation of Roman power through their connection with military expansion. One of the most striking aspects of the development of the Roman language of power is the introduction of recent events into coin iconography, instead of reflections back on the deeds of a moneyer’s ancestors. As discussed in Chapter 1, using contemporary events to produce coin imagery was a second-century development that coincided with the rapid expansion of the Roman Empire.235 For Roman generals – or perhaps their moneyer allies – coins paid armies, but over time, they also influenced how the populace, and potentially subject peoples, remembered one’s actions. The civil wars of the first century BCE, for example, produced numerous coins with ideological iconography as part of efforts to shape perceptions and memories of both sides’ actions and the role individual cities played in choosing the “right” or “wrong” side. Steel (2013: 12–13). The Senate repudiated the treaty and ordered that Mancinus be handed over to the Numantines, but the Numantines refused to take him and Mancinus was sent back to the Romans. There is some dispute on the origins of this family and the overlap between the Veturii and other clans. See Badian (1968) for some of the debate. These hoards are: Pozoblanco (114 BCE), Cordoba (108 BCE), Sierra Morena-El Centenillo (106 BCE), Jaen (105 BCE), Torre de Juan Abad (105 BCE), Castillo de las Guardas (105 BCE), Penhagarcia (104 BCE), Cogollos de Guadix (104 BCE), Puebla de los Infantes (103 BCE), Cachapets (101 BCE), Santa Elena (101 BCE), Idanha-a-Velha (100 BCE), Santarem (74 BCE), Cabeça da Corte (74 BCE), Alt Empordà (71 BCE), Fuente de Cantos (45 BCE), and Castro de Alvarelhos (27 BCE). Hoard data from Chaves Tristán (1996). Woytek (2015: 105–106); see also Fuchs (1969: 5–6).
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By the first century BCE, coins were a prevalent form of mass communication, and portrayed not only past events, real or invented, but also could project an intended future. One such coin was a denarius from 82 BCE (RRC 365/1a; Fig. 2.2).236 Minted in Massalia (Marseilles) by C. Valerius Flaccus as proconsul in Gaul, the coin was issued as part of the initial movements against Q. Sertorius’ rebellion (82–72 BCE) in Hispania.237 The obverse of the coin – a bust of the goddess Victory – is notable because while Victory was a common and somewhat generic representation on the reverse of Roman coins, she was rarely depicted on the obverse, and not before the late second century BCE.238 The coins reverse is of a legionary eagle and two military standards.239 The symbolism on the obverse and reverse of Flaccus’ coinage set forth the expectations for the campaign against Sertorius and underscored the previous successes of L. Cornelius Sulla, with whom C. Valerius Flaccus was allied, thus connecting the campaign to wider Roman politics.240 Civil war in the Iberian Peninsula often sparked more overt messaging on Roman coins because of its complicated political and moral ramifications.241 Wars that pitted Rome against its Italian allies, and Romans against other Romans, evoked ideological battles that played out on the coins each side minted.242 In the last stages of the civil war between the Caesarian and Pompeian factions in 46–45 BCE, the Iberian Peninsula witnessed the circulation of competing coin messages that broadcast each side’s claims to legitimacy and authority. Minted locally as each side’s armies were on the move, and these coins were produced in significant numbers and underscored the economic obligations each side faced in the war.243 Civil war also made the boundaries between ethnic image-types in a sense more permeable, in that the barbarian enemy could be invoked to garner support or to ob-
RRC 365/1a–c appeared in 27 hoards. 18 of those hoards were in Cisalpine Gaul, three in Transalpine Gaul, and six in the Iberian Peninsula (Alt Empordà, Castro de Alvarelhos, Jaen, La Grajuela, Spain 2, and Torre Milanera). Crawford (1974: 380–381). RRCH records only 22 discrete examples of coins with Victory on the obverse, and many come from this same series. The earliest is RRC 306/1, minted in 108/107 BCE by L. Valerius Flaccus, who, incidentally, was the cousin of the moneyer who minted RRC 365/1a, C. Valerius Flaccus. RRC 365/1a. The standards were of the hastati and principes, who comprised the first and second lines in a traditional, second-century BCE Roman legion, according to Polybius (6.6.22–25). See also Keppie (1984: 34–35). The moneyer of the following year, C. Annius, also campaigned against Sertorius and minted coins in 82–81 BCE in both northern Italy and Hispania (Plut. Sert. 7) as he moved against Sertorius (RRC 366 series). This denarius’ reverse would later be copied by Mark Antony in his coinage leading up to the Battle of Actium (RRC 544 series). See also Woytek (2003: 503–518). Noreña (2011b: 192) argued that civil war “tended to encourage the production of coin types with topical messages.” While he was referring to the civil wars of the first century CE, the argument applies to the civil wars of the Republican period as well. For more on civil war coins and their messaging, see Woytek (2003); Welch (2002). Laignoux (2020: 3).
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Fig. 2.2: RRC 365/1a, a denarius minted in Massalia (Marseilles) by C. Valerius Flaccus in 82 BCE. Obv: Bust of Victory; Rev: A legionary eagle with military standards with a legend that provides Flaccus’ name, senatorial permission (ex s.c.), and Flaccus’ honorific imperator. Image courtesy of the American Numismatic Society, inv. no. 1896.7.72.
scure the civil nature of the conflict, providing a more appropriate enemy to memorialize. One such example is RRC 468/1, a denarius of Julius Caesar, minted while on campaign in Hispania in 46/45 BCE, discussed briefly in Chapter 1 (Fig. 1.9).244 The goddess Venus, invoked as the progenitor of the Julian clan, graces the obverse, while on the reverse stands a trophy decorated with an oval shield and a carnyx in each hand, and topped with a horned helmet. Seated at the base of the trophy are two captives. On the left is a female captive, who rests her head in one of her unbound hands, a sign of mourning. On the right sits a bearded male whose arms are bound behind his back as he looks over his shoulder at the trophy. This coin was minted in the war zone to fund military activity, and it had a localized distribution in southern Hispania.245 Four of the Iberian hoards containing Caesar’s coin date to 45 BCE, meaning that the coins were deposited soon after production. RRC 468/1 may have been minted at Obulco (Porcuna, Andalusia) since it was Caesar’s initial camp.246 In other words, this denarius circulated among soldiers and civilians directly affected by Caesar’s campaigns and sent a powerful message about Caesar’s recent military successes. The second coin in that same series, RRC 468/2, had a slight variation, with the captive male on the left, kneeling on one leg and looking up at the trophy, and the seated
Caesar issued several “imperatorial” coin series (a phrase borrowed from Woytek) while on campaign to pay his armies, including RRC 443/1, 452/2, 452/4–5, 452/3, 457/1, 458/1, 467/1, and 468/1–2 (Woytek 2018: 375–376). Woytek (2003: 303–306). He noted that the hoard finds of RRC 468/1 typically ranged from 1.5% to 10% of the hoard volume, and that it was not nearly as large an issue as RRC 443/1, Caesar’s elephant denarius, thus concluding that RRC 468/1 did not have as large an impact on circulation and that it was likely minted in the region where we see the largest concentration of finds. See Strabo 3.4.9 for Caesar’s camp. Woytek stressed that Obulco was only a suggestion, and that the coin could have been produced at any mint in the war zone (2003: 304).
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female captive on the right.247 These two denarii emphasized Caesar’s recent conquest of Gaul, and their imagery effectively extended that symbolic conquest into Hispania. Since Iberian peoples had been in contact with Roman armies and experienced Roman conquest for over 150 years at this point, they had witnessed other depictions of Roman trophies and likely could extrapolate the meaning behind Caesar’s coin.248 The imagery of Gaul’s subjugation also implied Caesar’s future success in the war against the Pompeians without directly referring to the ongoing civil war, thus avoiding the moral quagmire of celebrating victory over fellow citizens.249 While Caesar’s coins highlighted his past successes in subjugating Gallic peoples, the Pompeian faction issued coins with alternative narratives. The Pompeian faction was headed by Cn. Pompeius the Younger, the eldest son of Pompey the Great, who had been killed in 48. As his father’s heir, Gnaeus used coinage to legitimate his leadership of the Pompeian faction. One such example is RRC 469/1d, a denarius minted likely in Sicily by Gnaeus Pompey and M. Publicius in 46/45 BCE (Fig. 2.3, top).250 The obverse image is of the goddess Roma, underscoring Pompey’s claims to legitimacy as the successor in Pompey’s position as protector of the state.251 The coin’s reverse has a female figure standing on the left, holding two spears in her left hand. She has a shield slung on her back, and with her right hand, she either hands a palm-branch to a soldier standing on the prow of a ship, or they both grasp it together, depending on the specific coin issue. Others have argued that the armed figure is Mars, and that the obverse and reverse are supposed to express cooperation between Hispania and the arriving Pompeian army, and that the palm branch represents the future victory that Hispania is handing to the Pompeians.252 This is a compelling argument and, taken alongside Caesar’s coins depicting captive Gallic women, establishes that foreign
It was a smaller issue, appearing in 22 hoards in the RRCH database. For example, an Iberian or Celtiberian monument from Osuna (Sevilla), probably dating to the second century BCE, has a shield quite similar in style to those depicted on Caesar’s coins. Quesada Sanz (2005: 69) argued that Iberian soldiers were familiar with the oval or oblong shield from fighting as mercenaries in Roman armies and suggested that the Osuna relief “may even show the panoply of an Iberian auxiliary scutarius of Roman republican date.” Thus, it is likely that at least Iberian soldiers would have the necessary knowledge to read this coin. MacDougall (2020: 88) stated that the coin allowed Caesar to invoke his military prowess without referring to the ongoing conflict but did not go as far as to state that Caesar was implying future victory. RRC 469/1a–d. Woytek argued that the Pompeian coins were minted not in Hispania, as Crawford alleged, but likely in Sicily since Gnaeus never controlled mints in the war zone (2003: 299). The obverse bust could also be a young Mars, rather than Roma, which would be a less direct reference to Pompey’s claims to be his father’s heir in fighting for the state, but still makes a clear martial reference and suggests Pompey’s intent to prolong his campaign as long as possible. See MacDougall (2020: 82); Buttrey (1960: 87–94); Woytek (2003: 288); Berdowski (2017: 170); Welch (2002: 19). The palm branch, because of its association with Victory, was a common feature on Roman coinage. For more on the symbolism of the palm branch, see MacDougall (2020: 82). Some scholars have suggested that the armed figure on the coin’s reverse should be identified as Gnaeus Pompey the Younger (MacDougall 2020).
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Fig. 2.3: Top: RRC 469/1d, a denarius minted by M. Publicius and Pompey the Younger in 46/45 BCE. Obv: Bust of Roma, or possibly a young Mars. The obverse legend provides Publicius’ name and his office as governor of the province (LEG.PRO.PR). Rev: A female figure with a shield on her back, holding two spears in her left hand and a palm branch in her right, which she gives to the soldier on the right, who is standing on a ship’s prow. The reverse legend reads Gnaeus Magnus, Imperator. Image courtesy of the American Numismatic Society, inv. no. 1896.7.106. Bottom: RRC 470/1b, a denarius minted by M. Minatius Sabinus and Pompey the Younger in 46/45 BCE. Obv: Bust of Pompey the Great with his name and honorific title, imperator. Rev: Female figure on the left wearing a turreted crown, holding a caduceus and shaking hands with a soldier standing in the center. Another woman stands on the right, also wearing a turreted crown, and holding a trophy while crowning the soldier. The reverse legend gives Sabinus’ name and his office (proquaestor). Image courtesy of the American Numismatic Society, inv. no. 2012.34.17.
women were increasingly coming to signal both blatant subjugation and the “positive” aspect, from the Roman perspective, of that subjugation: support from local peoples for Rome’s civil wars. In the same year, Gnaeus Pompey and M. Minatius Sabinus issued another denarius series, RRC 470/1 (Fig. 2.3, bottom).253 Each coin in this series has the head of Pompey the Great on the obverse, emphasizing the dynastic claims of Gnaeus, much as Octavian would later do with Caesar.254 In reinforcing dynastic claims, these coins expressed con-
RRC 470/1a–d. Welch (2002: 19).
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tinuity with a historic past that each side wanted to embrace, and reified the invented tradition they hoped to stimulate.255 The reverse of the four denarii in Pompey’s and Sabinus’ series each depicted a slightly different composition of the same scene. The female figures in this coin series (1a-d) are often assumed to be personifications of Iberian cities. In the series, a female figure wears a turreted crown and stands amidst a pile of arms. She raises her right hand to greet or offer a branch to a soldier. In 1a, the soldier is stepping off the prow of a ship. In 1b, the soldier receives a shield from another female figure, who is kneeling and wearing a turreted crown. In 1c, the second female figure holds a trophy and crowns the soldier. Finally, in 1d, the soldier and one of the female figures shake hands. Some scholars have identified the female figures as Iberian cities, variously Cordoba, Hispania, Baetica, or simply an unidentified Iberian city.256 Woytek argued that variants 1b and 1c/d depicted two distinct phases in the Pompeian campaign in southern Hispania. 1b represented the subjugation of some Iberian cities, which may have, as the coin’s image suggests, pleaded for mercy.257 1c/d, on the other hand, conveyed the honor that cooperative or loyal cities bestowed on Gnaeus and his soldiers. The complexity of these images inevitably raises questions about whether any contemporary viewer, particularly a non-Roman, would be able to identify any of the figures depicted on the reverses.258 But the resulting ambiguity of such imagery is part of the point, in that each coin could be read differently depending on one’s cultural identity. Thus, like the denarius minted in Narbo to celebrate a Roman triumph (Chapter 1), the ambiguity aided cultural negotiation without risking offense to local peoples by using unambiguously Roman conquest imagery.259 The imagery on these coins indicates that conquest imagery had become fully realized as a method of narrating conquest, as well as of signaling the intended outcome of Roman expansion. That Pompeians employed such imagery suggests that coins had become a platform for Roman elites to compete in their invented traditions. On the one hand, Caesar deployed references to his Gallic triumphs, while on the other hand, the Pompeians utilized personifications of Iberian cities to signal successful cooperation between Iberian cities and the Pompeians. Furthermore, each Pompeian series centered Iberian cities in this cultural memory, providing local peoples with a key role in the ultimate success, or failure, of the Pompeian cause.260 That these were small issues and did not circulate widely suggests that they may have targeted a spe Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983: 1). Crawford (1974: 480) and Buttrey (1960: 88) identified the standing female figure as Cordoba. Sydenham (1952: 173) and Grueber (1970: 366) identified her as either Hispania or Baetica. Cody (2003: 120) argued that we cannot definitively identify her. Woytek (2003: 290). As argued by Berdowski (2017: 169). MacDougall (2020: 82) claimed that the ambiguity was deliberate. Though not cited, MacDougall’s position echoed Rowan’s broader argument about the utility of ambiguity in provincial coinage (2016: 25–34). Berdowski (2017: 172). MacDougall’s (2020: 83–88) analysis of the Iberian hoard evidence provided a compelling case for seeing the Pompeian coins as targeting a “niche audience,” and like Chaves Tris-
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cific local audience allied to this cause.261 And even if of limited circulation, this implicit shared experience is part of the wider trend of cowriting that incorporated local agency into the language of power. Coins such as those issued by Caesar and Cn. Pompey in the Iberian Peninsula offer tantalizing glimpses into the impact that coin imagery could have had on viewers. Civil wars and rebellions propagated powerful topical messages that shaped how people remembered events. Tracing both the hoard evidence that dates to the period of rebellions and the production of local coinage in those periods can illuminate how Roman coin messages may have been understood by both Roman and local audiences in the first century BCE. Furthermore, it hints at the implicit cowriting process as locals and Roman negotiated the visual representation of Roman hegemony through coin imagery.
2.3 Embracing Commensuration: Inter-Cultural Messaging on Coins In the Gallic provinces, captured weaponry came to connote Roman power. Such objects had cultural value in the local warrior aristocracy; by redeploying them as Roman symbols, the Romans overwrote their conquest onto Gallic visual culture. Yet, as Gallic weaponry became a standard visual trope, it also became more ambiguous in that it provoked alternate, even overlapping, interpretations depending on the audience. A similar, albeit less straightforward, process occurred in the Iberian Peninsula. Iberian weaponry never circulated in Roman visual culture in the prolific way that Gallic weaponry did, and Iberian captives were not ubiquitous symbols of Roman victory. However, as we will see, the falcata did serve as a synecdoche for Iberian peoples, and Hispania was among the first provinces to be personified in Roman iconography. Rather than through weaponry, fixed monuments, or captive bodies, commensuration in the Iberian Peninsula played out most overtly through coin iconography. This process was not spurred by overt and targeted messaging. Rather, military necessity required frequent infusions of coins to maintain Roman power. Yet, as Roman iconography became more flexible in the second century BCE, coin series that articulated recent or current events increased, thus creating the opportunity for coin iconography to respond visually to the expectations and needs of those most affected by war: Roman commanders, soldiers, and the local communities from whom they sought military and financial support. In coins minted in Hispania that incorporated local events, we see an increasing entanglement between Iberian and Roman coin ico-
tán (2005a: 229, 235), she argued that these coins were not intended to fully fund Pompeian soldiers, and that older coinage likely comprised the bulk of their pay. While he focused on the Principate, Noreña argued that coins were not intended to target specific audiences because they would be vastly outnumbered by existing coins in circulation, he did acknowledge that some “concentrated bursts” of coins were likely minted to convey specific ideas to a particular audience (2011b: 195–196).
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nography, including the appearance of Iberian shields, the melding of Iberian physiognomic styles for divine figures with busts of the emperor, and commensuration between the Iberian and Roman wolf. The various wars of the first century BCE served as the catalyst for these iconographic entanglements. Shields, like other military equipment, became ethnic markers to signal victory over conquered peoples in Roman visual culture. This was true of Gallic and Macedonian shields and also of the Iberian labyrinth-patterned shield (Fig. 2.4, top).262 Circulating between Iberian and Roman contexts, the labyrinthine pattern appeared on shields depicted both on coins and in the hands of the famous Lusitanian warrior statues (Fig. 2.4, bottom). We also see the labyrinthine shield appear on a decorative arms frieze from Pietrabbondante (Italy), where it is depicted alongside a round, Greekstyle shield and a Gallic shield.263 But this imagery did not just create a symbolic link between conquerors and conquered; it came to represent victory more broadly. It is not surprising that warrior iconography was the lynchpin of Romano-Iberian visual entanglement. As with Gallic cultures, many Iberian cultures prized warrior iconography as a core component of their visual cultures dating back to at least the sixth century BCE. The labyrinthine-pattern shield moved through different contexts and became simultaneously emblematic of Lusitanian warriors and of Roman victory over Lusitanians. The image likely evoked different reactions based on cultural perspective, particularly because not all Iberians utilized this style for their shields. Perhaps even more significantly, some of the Lusitanian warrior statues date to the first century CE, long after the initial conquest, suggesting a renewed interest in this image within the local iconographic system, and not just that the Romans coopted it. In other words, it might suggest an attempt to recapture an Iberian image from the tangled web of Roman conquest imagery. Both Romans and locals minted coins with labyrinthine-pattern shields, called moneta castrensis, or caetra, for the type of shield often carried by cavalrymen. They were a frequent symbol in traditional iconography, particularly in northwestern Iberia.264 On Iberian coins outside that region, such as from Obulco (Porcuna) or Osuna (Sevilla) in Baetica, the shield appeared on coin reverses depicting a horseman, which was a frequent pre-Roman icon.265 Warrior statues such as those at Obulco (fifth century BCE)
RPC I, 1–4, a dupondius series dating to after 27 BCE, and minted in northwestern Spain (mint uncertain), shows Augustus on the obverse and the labyrinth-pattern shield on the reverse. The specific image is of RPC I, 4, no. 17 (inv. no. 1624) in the RPC database. For more on Gallic shields, see Chapter 1. DAI Rom Inst. Neg. 75.2648. Another example can be found at the Porta Flaminia in Rome (DAI Rom Inst. Neg. 29.141). See also Polito (2012: 143). Villaronga and Benages (2011: 640). For example, ACIP 2272 from Obulco. The Iberian horseman is arguably the most ubiquitous numismatic icon in the Iberian Peninsula, appearing with variations on coins from well over a dozen Iberian cities across the Peninsula. They do not all appear armed; however, many hold a palm branch or chlamys and some are armed only with a spear. The main cities whose coinage depicted Iberian horsemen carrying the caetra were in southern Iberia, for example, Ikalesken (Italensken; Iniesta, Cuenca) (ACIP 2071–79; 2083–2099) and Carisa (Bornos, Cádiz) (ACIP 2513–2524).
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Fig. 2.4: Top: RPC I, 4 no. 17, a bronze dupondius from an uncertain mint in northwest Spain, c. 27 BCE. Obv: Bust of Augustus, with a palm branch and a winged caduceus and Augustus’ titles imperator and son of a god (divi).; Rev: Around shield with a labyrinthine pattern. Here we can see the parallels between indigenous Iberian use of the labyrinthine shield on a warrior stele and its use in Roman iconography. Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, no. FRBNF41858381. Bottom: First-century BCE– first-century CE Lusitanian warrior statue. The statue holds a labyrinth-patterned shield. Image courtesy of the Lisbon National Archaeological Museum, Direção-Geral do Património Cultural /Arquivo e Documentação Fotográfica. Photographer José Pessoa, 1992.
and Urso-Osuna (third century BCE) also carried the shield.266 And last, it also could be found in funerary contexts, such as in the fourth–third-century BCE necropolis of Coimbra del Barranco Ancho de Jumilla (Murcia).267 Much as with the Lusitanian statues, the coinage from Obulco with the horseman carrying a caetra date from the first century BCE at the earliest. These shields were essentially layered onto the preexisting horseman imagery which dates back to at least the early second century BCE.268 Examples such as Obulco’s coinage and the Lusitanian warriors represent a blend between Ibe-
Blázquez and González Navarrete (1985: 61–63); Bosch-Gimpera (1955: 5); Blázquez (1988: 505–506). Blázquez (1988: 505). Examples include the coinage from Bursau (Borja) dating to after 143 BCE, including ACIP 1588–1591.
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rian traditions and Roman messaging. The reemergence of traditional symbols within local visual culture suggests that Iberian peoples borrowed from Roman iconography to craft new styles that attached Roman representations of Iberian peoples to traditional imagery, creating something wholly new that was at once Roman and Iberian.269 Skeptics will question whether local peoples ever engaged enough with Roman imagery, particularly on coinage, to evoke the kinds of iconographic entanglements that define commensuration. It is certainly a difficult question to answer. Coins were common enough in Mediterranean urban spaces that their images did not necessarily elicit special attention, and their messages – the combination of image and text – were difficult to discern.270 The legibility of Roman coin iconography among contemporary audiences remains hotly contested. The current debate surrounds two main camps: first, the argument that the target audience for most Roman coins in the Republican period was the average Roman citizen represented in the assemblies (contiones) who had a high degree of cultural memory which allowed them to read coin types.271 The second scholarly camp argues that like other forms of visual symbols, the visual typography of Roman coinage was limited to a very small insider group that required considerable knowledge.272 Both camps adhere to the idea that Romans were the audience, not nonRomans. However, just because non-Romans were not the moneyers’ target audience did not mean that they did not interact with, and likely attempt to interpret, Roman coins. While it is near impossible to track contemporary legibility of Roman coinage among conquered peoples, the long-term effects of Roman coin iconography are visible in the local coinages, suggesting at least an accumulation of experience with Roman coin iconography. Coins are often, after all, a medium through which cultures communicate, and therefore they are a potentially “loaded” medium.273 As Roman economic investment and military intervention in the Iberian Peninsula intensified, Roman and local coinage interacted more frequently in communal contexts, as is evidenced by excavations at urban sites, sanctuaries, and necropoleis.274 Roman coinage was assuredly viewed and interpreted, if not fully understood, by local audiences as well as by Romans. Thus, during the cultural transition of the mid-to-late first century BCE, coinage became a medium through which “identities could be negotiated.”275
Jiménez (2011: 111) argued that these were a mixture of “modernity” and “tradition” and explain why in the first century BCE we see the falcata appear in sculpture in areas where the falcata was not a common weapon. It was, however, a common Roman attribute for Iberian peoples. Woytek (2018: 356). Morstein-Marx (2004: 68–118). Hölscher (2004). Woytek (2018) attempted to nuance both Morstein-Marx and Hölscher’s arguments. Rowan (2014a: 147). Woytek (2018: 376–380) stated that for imperatorial coinages, at least – that is, coin series minted by imperators to pay their armies – we can accept some degree of audience targeting. For evidence of mixed coin hoards, see Chaves Tristán (1996). We also find coins as votive objects, often deposited with other objects, in both Roman and local tombs in the peninsula. See, for example, Jiménez (2011: 110). Rowan (2016a: 34).
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Warrior iconography was a principal element of Iberian visual culture dating back to at least the sixth century BCE. Much as with their northern Gallic neighbors, weaponry was a prolific element in Iberian visual culture, particularly swords and shields.276 Stelae of warriors were also common, and many demonstrated Hellenistic influence, evincing an early adaptability to other cultural models.277 Indeed, the practice of using shields as ethnic markers likely derived from Hellenistic iconography, particularly commemorations of the defeat of the Galatians in the late third century BCE, as depicted in the Attalid monument and on Ptolemaic coins.278 With the Roman conquest of the Hellenistic world, these objects became even more entangled, as the Romans coopted and reimagined Hellenic victory markers to signal Roman power, yet also adapted shields from other conquered peoples into their language of power.279 At the same time, Hellenic imagery also diffused throughout the Mediterranean, and particularly in the Iberian Peninsula. Hellenic imagery was also adapted in local visual cultures and further added to the ambiguity of image-types. The coins and sculpture produced in the first century BCE represent, in other words, a form of cowriting – that is, they were objects that facilitated the shared interpretation of Roman images of power.280 As Roman fashions spread, local artists adapted Roman imagery as part of the ongoing negotiation of local identity under Roman dominion. At the same time, coin imagery could provide a pointed message in times of war, as Roman coins funded the Roman armies and camps that littered the Iberian Peninsula in the Republican period.281 Coins also funded local mercenaries and, of course, also paid those who opposed Rome. Moments of crisis tended to evoke
Beyond the typical funerary dedications of weapons that are common in Iron Age elite graves, excavations have uncovered petroglyphs from at least the Bronze Age that reveal the symbolic importance of weapons and warriors in Iberian societies. Many of these petroglyphs are found at sanctuary sites where people gathered for community rituals. See González García (2009: 59–61). See also Quesada Sanz (2014). Blázquez (1988); Rodríguez-Corral (2013). Jiménez (2011: 106) noted that most of the workshops that produced what she termed hybrid sculptures were local, such as Osuna, Obulco, and Cerro de los Santos, and thus their stylistic ambivalence is partly the result of commensuration between local style and the patron’s needs. The Gallic shield first appeared on the gold, silver, and bronze issues of Ptolemy II Philadelphos (r. 283–246 BCE) in the late 280s BCE, once he began to use Gallic (Galatian) mercenaries in his armies. Examples of this coin type include CPE 280–285; CPE 441. See also Coleman (2012); Wolf and Lorber (2011). The Macedonian shield, for example, soon joined other defeated arms as a symbol of Roman victory. Macedonian shields appeared on the coins issued by M. Caecilius Metellus in 127 BCE (RRC 263/ 1a–b); on coins of another M. Caecilius Metellus, who joint-issued the coin in 82–80 BCE with L. Cornelius Sulla (RRC 369/1) and on a coin series issued by C. Coelius Caldus in 51 BCE (RRC 437 series), where it was entangled with Gallic references to signal the family’s ancestral achievements. For more on Metellus and Sulla’s coinage, see Crawford (1974: 387–388). Rodríguez Oliva referred to such local sculptures as bilingual (1996: 14; 2001–2002: 308). For evidence of increasing Roman military intervention, see Morillo and Aurrecoechea (2006: 85–106).
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more potent messages, and they are ideal case studies for how both Roman and indigenous coin imagery could be used as expressions of identity. The entanglement between Roman and Iberian coin iconography began in earnest with the Sertorian War (82–72 BCE). History predominantly remembers the war as one between Romans, shaped by the larger civil conflict in the early first century BCE between the military dynast L. Cornelius Sulla and his opponents. But for the Iberian peoples who joined the rebellion, it was an opportunity to throw off the yoke of Roman domination.282 Their wartime actions demonstrate the extent to which Roman dominion had shaped and reshaped Iberian conceptions of power and authority since the initial conquest of the Peninsula began in 209 BCE. The coin hoards associated with the Sertorian War provide fascinating insight into the types of coins imported or minted on site to pay soldiers on both sides as well as the resurgence of Iberian coins among those fighting for Sertorius. Explicitly linking hoards to the Sertorian War is a fraught process often stymied by the incomplete nature of many of the hoards.283 Similarly difficult to answer is the question of who buried the hoard since Roman coins appear in hoards from both sides of the conflict, although Sertorius’ soldiers also minted their own coins. Some have hypothesized that Sertorius’ Iberian allies must have plundered Roman camps during one of their victories to explain how newly minted Roman coins ended up in Iberian hands.284 Others have argued that it does not particularly matter how the coins ended up in Iberian hands; rather, the presence of so many Roman coins in what seem to be Iberian hoards indicates the emergency situation and the need for coinage to fund the ongoing war efforts.285 Over 50% of the hoarded Roman coins had images evoking military victory (Tab. 2.3).286 The hoards also offer a glimpse into the degree of local support for Sertorius’ cause. We see the routine presence of Iberian coins with the toponyms Sekobirikes (Cuenca) and Bolskan (Osca, modern Huesca), both cities closely allied with Sertorius. This is significant because, as discussed below, these cities minted perhaps the most overtly Iberian coin image the horseman, and witnessed the most explicit commensuration between Roman and local imagery in the wake of the Sertorian War.
For more on the rebellion, see Curchin (1991: 40–54). Some hoards, for example, might be part of larger hoards and have been incorrectly catalogued. This is a hypothesis put forward by Alarcão (1999) that Ruivo et al. (2015) disputed. Ruivo et al. (2015: 140). Ruivo (1997: 91–100) argued that Alcaide, Região de Leiria, and Pinhal do Alvarinho should also be considered Sertorian hoards. Rodríguez Casanova (2011) tentatively associated several other hoards with the Sertorian War. She broke the hoards down into five categories: complete hoards, hoards known through references, hoards with more than 50% known, hoards with less than 50% known, and hoards known only through imprecise or inaccurate data. In total, she argued that approximately 60 hoards have at some point been associated with the Sertorian War but noted that many of these hoards were discovered in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and little is known about them.
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Tab. 2.3: A composite list of hoards tentatively identified with the Sertorian War. Hoard
Date
Roman Coins
Iberian Coins
Other Material
Alt Empordà
BCE
(Iberian denarii), drachmas (Emporion)
None
Baños de Fortuna
BCE
None
None
Barranco de Romero (Nerpio)
BCE
None
None
Burgos
BCE
Castro de Romariz
BCE
(Sekobirikes)
lunula, gold bracelet, unidentified silver object, a clay pot
Coiço
/ BCE
None
fragmented torque
BCE
(Sekobirikes)
None
Casal Ascenso Antunes
BCE
None
None
Santarém
BCE
None
None
Santana da Carnota (Casal dos Cabeços/Quinta de Pancas)
BCE
(Bolskan and Sekobirikes)
torques ( twisted), earrings, frag. ingot
Columbeira
BCE
( in Ruivo)
None
None
Cabeça da Corte
See Martínez Chico (2020). Ruivo (1997: 91) stated that there were originally 102 denarii, a gold ring, and a silver object found in this hoard in 1843, but only 71 Roman denarii and 1 Iberian denarius were inventoried. The information about this hoard is muddled. Hipolito (1960–1961, 62, no. 87) stated that there were about 420 denarii discovered in about 1920 in a clay pot. Crawford (RRCH 300) argued that only 158 of those were part of a discrete hoard, and Valls (1966, 338, no. 32) added an Iberian Sekobirikes denarius. See Ruivo (1997: 92). Ruivo (2015: 137) noted that this hoard was found over time, so it is unclear if the 15 pieces comprise the entire hoard.
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Tab. 2.3 (continued) Hoard
Date
Roman Coins
Iberian Coins
Other Material
Charneca (Torres Novas)
BCE
(Bolskan)
None
Las Somblancas
BCE
None
None
Mahaliman
BCE
Maluenda
BCE
Monroy
BCE
None
None
Oristà
BCE
Iberian denarii, drachmas (Emporion)
None
Palenzuela
BCE
None
Poio
BCE
None
Skyphoi, jar, plate, four rings, silver ball
Puerto Serrano
BCE
Retortillo
Uncertain
Uncertain
~ (Arsaos, Arekoratas, Bolskan, Turiaso, BentianBenkota)
Skyphos, silver cup, bronze dolphin
Valdesalor
BCE
None
None
Vila Nova/Cabeço de Trás de Figueiró (Ansião)
BCE
(Bolskan)
None
Among the Iberian coins found in Sertorian hoards, we can see the enduring importance of warrior imagery and the continuity of coin iconography for many mints, particularly the Pegasus and the horseman.292 Consequently, Roman coins with similar imagery were ambiguous enough to be read through an Iberian cultural lens, encouraging the commensuration between the image-types that would occur in the wake of the war. During the Sertorian Revolt, some of the Iberian mints returned to minting coins whose imagery drew on some of the oldest Iberian iconography prior to Roman conquest: the horseman and the wolf (Fig. 2.5 top, bottom). To supply Sertorius and his rebel army with funds to resist the Romans, mints in northeastern Spain, including Bolskan (Huesca) and Turiaso (Tarazona), issued coins with Iberian inscriptions and
Ruivo (1997: 92) added that four denarii in the possession of an antique dealer were likely part of the Charneca (Torres Novas) hoard, which would bring that hoard’s total to nine. The Pegasus was particularly favored by Emporion and the horseman by Bolskan, Turiaso, Arsaos, Arekoratas, and Bentian.
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images on them but used the weights, measurements, and metrology of the Roman denarius.293 Others, such as Iltirta (Lleida), minted bronze coins that returned to preRoman iconography as well as weights and metrology during the Sertorian War. For example, Iltirta issued numerous bronze coins with a male head on the obverse, and a wolf on the reverse, with an Iberian toponymic inscription (Fig. 2.5 (bottom)).294 The
Fig. 2.5: Top: Iberian denarius minted at Turiaso, c. 200–27 BCE. Obv: Masculine head; Rev: Horseman with lance accompanied by an Iberian toponymic inscription. Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, no. FRBNF41770781. Bottom: Iberian bronze coin from the mint at Iltirta (80–72 BCE). Obv: Male head; Rev: Iberian wolf, facing r. and has the legend ILTIRTA in Iberian script. Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, no. FRBNF41740393.
The identification of specific mints with pro-Sertorian sentiments has been the subject of increased debate in recent years. Beltran Lloris (2002: 45–92) examined archaeological evidence for cities that supported Sertorius and/or were destroyed during the Sertorian War. Esteban de Domingo (2014: 241–250) traced the mobilization of Iberian coinage for Sertorius’ war effort. Some of the minting authorities for Iberian denarii are only known through their coinage, and the location of the mint remains uncertain. ACIP 1263–1268 are the Iltirta coins prior to the Sertorian War, which used Roman denominations. ACIP 1269–1275 are the Sertorian issues, which return to the unit and half denominations. These coins either have a horse or a wolf and have the Iberian inscription ILTIRTA on the reverse.
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wolf was also a symbol that connoted Roman power, so the return to an Iberianstyled wolf potentially indicated anti-Roman sentiment. Wolf imagery is one of the best examples of the type of commensuration that merged Roman and Iberian motifs and furthered the spread of Roman cultural values. The wolf was a well-known symbol of Rome, associated with the twins Romulus and Remus. While less common on coins, the wolf and twins appeared on some bronze coin issues in the third and second centuries and in two large silver denarius issues.295 The denarii with the wolf and twin motif are found in 37 hoards in the Iberian Peninsula.296 While more famous today as a symbol for the city of Rome, the wolf was also a powerful symbol in Iberian visual culture, with both martial and religious connotations, so Roman coins with the she-wolf were imbued with other associations among Iberian audiences.297 As a shared symbol, the wolf may have established a point of cohesion between Romans and the Iberian communities they ruled.298 Iltirta’s coinage exemplifies the entanglement between Roman and Iberian imagery. The inherent ambiguity of the wolf icon meant that the wolf would have an alternate meaning depending on the cultural values of the person holding the coin. Any Roman soldier fighting for Sertorius, for example, might feel an affinity for the wolf as a symbol of Rome. The return to pre-Roman coinage may also reveal some antagonism toward Iberian denarii, as they were overtly associated with Roman conquest.299 Yet, even if Iltirta’s return to pre-Roman styles was intended to be an expression of anti-Roman sentiment, its earliest wolf coins – dating to c.218 BCE, with a wolf and Pegasus on the reverse – were still embroiled in Roman expansion because the earliest coins date to the beginning of the Second Punic War.300 In other words, the wolf icon was already an entangled object in Iltirta and only became more ambiguous during the Sertorian War.301 The return of pre-Roman Iberian coin issues is particularly striking because many Iberian mints had only begun issuing coins under Roman occupation, utilizing Roman symbols and metrology, from around the first quarter of the second century BCE. The coinage of Arse and Saetabi (both near Valencia), for example, were among the earliest to invoke Roman emblems on their coinage, borrowing the ship’s prow and the eagle, respectively. Ripollès argued for a clear Roman association, stating that
RRC 235/1a–c (137 BCE), and RRC 287/1 (115/114 BCE). Hoard data from Chaves Tristán (1996, 2005b); Hipolito (1960–1961); Ripollès (2010). Rowan (2016a: 30). For the significance of wolf iconography, see Almagro-Gorbea (1997). Rowan (2016a: 27). There is a lot of speculation about the purpose of Iberian denarii, including whether they were minted to pay tribute or taxes to the Romans and when they were introduced, but they clearly stem from Roman conquest, and it is likely that Roman and Italians living in the peninsula used them. Some of the debate has resulted from disagreement about when the Roman denarius was first introduced. See Woytek (2012). Rowan (2016a: 30). Wolf imagery from other contexts, such as sculpture. The wolf may also have held religious significance in Iltirta. Villaronga (1969–1970); Villaronga (1978); Giral Royo (2006); Ripollès (2010: 180). Rowan (2016a: 30). See also Ripollès (2012).
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Saetabi’s eagle was borrowed from the Roman gold issues from 211–208 BCE and postulated that the eagle either directly represented Roman hegemony and triumph or was adopted by the Saetabi to signal their ambitions.302 Some of these mints also adopted Latin script for their coin inscriptions from the second century BCE.303 The Iberian denarius reached its greatest production levels in the first quarter of the first century BCE, the period of the Sertorian War.304 These coins demonstrate that the process of entanglement had started well before the Sertorian War, making it even more likely that the Iberians using Roman and local coins during the war understood the power of this iconography. Scholars have speculated about the motivations behind the return to pre-Roman Iberian iconography, weights, and metrologies. Some have suggested that the decision to use Iberian coinage reflected Sertorius’ respect for Roman institutions; in other words, he did not want to utilize Roman imagery during his revolt.305 Others have hypothesized that Sertorius encouraged the use of Iberian coinage to foster the nationalist sentiments that brought so many Iberian cities over to his cause.306 We know, for example, that Sertorius used Osca, the site of the ancient Bolskan mint, as one of his bases of operations during the war, and scholars have argued that he was responsible for reactivating the mint, which had not issued coins since the second half of the second century BCE.307 Regardless of the degree of Sertorius’ involvement, the reactivation of a onceprolific mint suggests a self-conscious decision to mint Iberian coins, with Iberian images and script, to fund the rebellion against Rome. Doing so may have also activated Bolskan cultural memories of their own coins, stirring resentment against the Romans, for
Ripollès (2007: 33). Rowan (2016a: 39) was somewhat more cautious, positing that the image could be a representation of Roman power or more aspirational. Ripollès (2005: 82–83). Marcos Alonso (1999: 93); García-Bellido (1993). Campo (1998: 328). Sertorius using Iberian coinage to foster nationalist sentiment is an argument put forward by Domingo (2014: 248) against Campo’s argument that it reflected Sertorius’ respect for Roman institutions. Crawford (1985: 210) suggested that Sertorius minted these coins himself. Plutarch also emphasized that Sertorius provided money to his Iberian soldiers to help them purchase and decorate new Roman armor. Plutarch is unclear about where this money came from or what type was used (Plut. Sert. 14). While Plutarch’s statement may seem contrary to Domingo’s argument, it does at least emphasize that money was circulating through the hands of Sertorius’ Iberian soldiers. Domínguez Arramz (1997: 139–140); García-Bellido and Blázquez (2001: 306–308). Sertorius may have established a new mint, as Bolskan coins are usually broken down into two categories (Villaronga 2011: 257), those minted prior to 100 BCE are called the pre-Palenzuela-type and those minted during the Sertorian War are called the Palenzuela-type, referring to the type of silver denarius found in the Palenzuela hoard (modern Palencia), which is firmly dated to 74 BCE based on the presence of Roman denarii in the hoard. There are between 151 and 160 Bolskan coins in this hoard. Along with the Bolskan coins, there are coins from two other Sertorian mints – 1,076 from Sekobirikes and 840 from Turiaso – along with coins from other Iberian cities and 14 Roman coins, for a total of 2,673 coins in the hoard. Some scholars have argued that the Sekobirikes coinage began around the time of the Sertorian revolt, as there are no Sekobirikes coins prior to c.110 BCE (Amela Valverde 2016: 145–148).
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whom Iberian denarii were likely minted.308 The widespread use of pre-Roman Iberian imagery such as the horseman, combined with the mixture of Roman and Iberian denominations, weights, and metrologies, also suggests a more local impetus for the coin issues. We should not forget, however, that Roman intervention spurred the creation of numerous Iberian mints, even if civic officials were responsible for the die engraving and production.309 In other words, commensuration had been part of the minting process for many civic mints since their inception. Yet, we should also be cautious in reading all coin production through the lens of Roman overlordship. By returning to preRoman iconography, many Iberian mints were rejecting longstanding practices of working within a Roman system, and Iberian coins could be read as an assertion of Iberian identity regardless of Rome’s initial involvement in establishing their mints.310
2.4 Entangled Coin Imagery After the Sertorian War The end of the Sertorian War brought about dramatic change in the coinage of the Iberian Peninsula. Production of Iberian denarii, which had been minted since the second century BCE in Hispania Citerior, stopped after the Sertorian War.311 Many Iberian mints would not mint coins again until the mid-first century BCE, a full generation later.312 When those mints reopened, coinage had undergone a transformation: Iberian script disappeared, and Latin took its place. While some cities continued minting coins with Iberian imagery, such as the mint at Lascuta (Alcalá de los Cazules, Cádiz), they coupled those images with Latin script and the names of local, pro-Roman magistrates. Coinage that only a generation earlier had been used to resist Roman authority now expressed loyalty to Rome, particularly during the civil war between Pompey and Caesar in the early 40s BCE.313 While outside the scope of the Roman Republic, it is useful to Knapp (1977: 18) noted that the intention of the Iberian denarius is not entirely clear beyond that it seemed to have been minted for governmental and military purposes (to pay allies, soldiers, mercenaries, and taxes or tribute) and not for private, commercial purposes. Ripollès (2005: 79–81). There has been some debate on where most of Sertorius’ money came from to fund his war efforts. Plutarch attested that Sertorius had significantly more money than his opponents (Plut. Sert. 14.1), though he does not specify whether Sertorius minted the coins himself or his local followers did, or if they were using plundered coins (Sert. 22.4). Ripollès (2014: 59) argued that there is too much unknown about the dating and chronology of Iberian minting in the Sertorian War and that a positive identification of the mints associated with the Sertorian conflict must wait for further data. Chaves Tristán (2005a: 210). Ripollès (2005: 84). Some Iberian mints drew upon Roman imagery at an earlier date. The coinage from Saguntum, for example, used a ship’s prow with the goddess Victory flying above on the reverse and the goddess Roma on the obverse. Saguntum in fact began minting these hybrid Ibero-Roman coins as early as the mid-second century BCE. For example, see ACIP 1985–95; CNH 309/9; 310/45–46, 310/64. The laurel wreath, a potent triumphal symbol in the Roman language of power since the general wore one dur-
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analyze how Augustus utilized coin imagery in the last decades of the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula and how local cities transformed their coin imagery to celebrate both the emperor and their local history. The Iberian coinage of the Augustan period demonstrates subtle adaptations of imperial imagery that helped merge it with local iconographic traditions, part of the cowriting process. Some scholars have argued that Iberian and Roman iconography became increasingly entangled in the wake of the Sertorian War.314 The ambiguity of the imagery made it widely readable, allowing traditional Iberian imagery to be interpreted in a new, Roman context that reified Roman hegemony.315 This is particularly compelling when contextualized in the wider pattern of the development of conquest imagery. Ambiguous iconography facilitated the cowriting process, allowing participation from a wider audience, albeit one that likely understood the imagery in diverse ways. The transformation of Iberian iconography during the war suggests that the Romans may have associated specific images with the Sertorian cause and sought to reimagine them as Roman symbol, easing the path toward cultural integration.316 We can see this attempt to address Sertorian imagery, for example, in the coinage of the new Augustan foundation of Segobriga. Sekobirikes, a pro-Sertorian city whose name bears linguistic connections with the new Roman foundation, minted coins with an unspecified male head, likely a deity, on the obverse (Fig. 2.6, top). In Segobriga’s coinage, the head of the emperor replaced the unspecified male head on the obverse (Fig. 2.6, bottom). Rowan argued that the addition of Augustus’ name on the obverse made the image unambiguous. Yet, the emperor’s hair and wreath were stylized in a way that hinted at the distinctive curls on the Iberian head, particularly when the emperor’s bust was paired with the Iberian symbols of the dolphin and the palm branch, which appeared on the pre-Roman coins. And the emperor’s obverse portrait is paired with a much more ambiguous image, the Iberian horseman, with a Latin toponym, Segobriga (Saelices, Cuenca), but otherwise the image retained the Iberian style.317 More importantly, the reuse of Iberian imagery suggests not only a localized origin for these ambigu-
ing his triumphal parade, begins to appear on Iberian coinage before the Sertorian War, such as on the coins from Emporion (Empuriés), which used the laurel wreath paired with a Pegasus, the traditional symbol of Emporion coins, or with a bull. Rowan (2016a). Rowan (2016a: 50). Crawford (1985: 213) stated, “The Iberian followers of Sertorius, thus leaderless, made their peace with Rome and their silver coinage, doubtless identified with their support of Sertorius, ended. Their taxes were henceforth paid in Roman denarii.” ACIP 3240–3242. Rowan (2016a: 34) used the Segobriga coin as an example of an unambiguous imperial portrait. Regarding the relationship between Segobriga and Sekobirikes, since the exact location of each of these mints is still somehwat disputed, not all scholars agree on whether Segobriga’s foundation was connected to the earlier city of Sekobirikes. For the debate on the potential relationship between Sekobirikes and Segobriga, see Ripollès and Abascal (1996: 19) and Amela Valverde (2016).
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Fig. 2.6: Top: Iberian bronze unit minted at Sekobirikes c. 120–80 BCE. Obv: Male head; Rev: Horseman with Iberian toponymic inscription. Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, no. FRBNF41749107. Bottom: Augustan-era bronze as from Segobriga, c. 36–14 BCE. Obv: Stylized head of Augustus; Rev: Horseman with Latin toponymic inscription. Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, no. FRBNF41749110.
ous coins but also that local artisans continued to work within traditional stylistic paradigms even as they incorporated Roman symbols such as the bust of the emperor.318 In fact, Iberian coin portraits of the Julio-Claudian emperors tended not to follow the fashions of other provincial mints. Augustus’ imperial portrait adhered more closely to his image as Octavian, particularly in the hairstyle, which bore slightly more resemblance to earlier Iberian hairstyles than Augustan coin portraits outside Hispania did.319 Tiberius similarly remained youthful and idealized, whereas Caligula’s portraits had more iconographic variation. Segobriga’s coinage would later, under Tiberius and Caligula, drop some of more overtly Iberian coin reverse images, particularly the horseman, as the emperors exercised greater control over local mints. Reverse images that focused on religious symbols were highly Romanized, while coins with military
See Jiménez (2010, 2011) for more on image hybridity in Roman Hispania. Gozables García (2015: 290–91).
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symbols were only attested in Roman colonies.320 Only coins with economic messages maintained more continuity with pre-Roman iconography, such as animal motifs, but even those had parallels in Italy, such as the bull or dolphin, that made them ambiguous.321 During the Julio-Claudian period, many cities dropped their reverse imagery altogether and focused on their new, colonial Latin toponym surrounded by an oak wreath, denoting their municipal status, and enshrining their loyalty on the medium of exchange.322 The horseman, however, was not entirely forgotten. He mediated the community’s pre-revolt identity and its new status in the Augustan period, forging the connection between Iberians and Romans before being replaced by more characteristically Roman imagery. The horseman was a clear point of commensuration, rendering what was once two disparate images into a single expression of a community’s new municipal status. Similarly, on the coinage of the Roman colony established at Bolskan – renamed Urbs Victrix Osca – the Iberian male head on the obverse was replaced with the laureate head of Augustus along with legends honoring the princeps (Fig. 2.7, bottom). And while the reverse image was still a horseman, the figure was now simpler, without the embellishment on earlier Bolskan coins (Fig. 2.7, top).323 The reverse legend now proclaimed the colonial name of the city and often included the name of the local magistrates, the duumvirs. Osca’s coins were adorned with Roman words and imagery to create an imagined community, paving the way for the imperial community that typified the Iberian Peninsula under the Principate. Osca’s iconographic transformation, when viewed through the lens of the Principate, is perhaps unsurprising since Roman colonies or municipia, such as Segobriga, were often hybrid communities, and many had military connections that fueled their interest in martial coin imagery. Such images sanctified the colonial or municipal status of a community and celebrated the reason for their status.324 Yet, we should be cautious in categorizing Osca’s experience as a generic example of Roman colonization. The particular attention paid to hybridizing Osca’s wolf and horseman imagery suggest a concern for local identities and traditions in the crafting of a new imperial identity in the region.
Ibid.: 293–307. Ibid.: 301–303. ACIP 3243–3247. Reverse images with laudatory or commemorative messages such as the oak crown, trophy, or chariots. The civic crown was introduced in the coinage of Emerita, Colonia Patricia (Cordoba), Colonia Julia Romula Hispalis (Sevilla), Acci, Carthago Nova, Tarraco, and Caesaraugusta (Zaragoza) (Gozalbes García 2015: 304). RPC I, 287. Similarly, on the coinage of Turiaso, the traditional Iberian horseman takes on the characteristics of a Roman equestrian statue, and Latin legends appear on the coins. See ACIP 1700 ff. for the coins of Turiaso before the Sertorian War. See also Bilbilis’ commensurate coinage (ACIP 3014–3016). For the equestrian statue type, see RPC 1, 401–402. See also Rowan (2016a: 33); Jiménez (2008: 136); Jiménez (2010: 54). For more on Osca’s coinages, see Aguilera Hernández (2016). Gozalbes García (2015: 306–307).
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Fig. 2.7: Top: Iberian denarius minted in Bolskan during the Sertorian War, c. 80–72 BCE. Obv: Male head; Rev: Horseman with lance and Iberian toponymic legend. Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, no. FRBNF41750028. Bottom: Augustan-era bronze as from Osca (Bolskan). Obv: Laureate head of Augustus with the legend ‘Augustus, son of a god, pontifex maximus, father of the fatherland.’ Rev: Horseman with a spear and a legend with the names of the magistrates and the new colonial name of the town. The legend identifies the colony’s duumvirs, Sparsus and Caecilianus. Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, no. FRBNF41835597.
The Iberian horseman was not the only traditional emblem to undergo a hybridizing transformation in the Augustan period. The wolf was an ancient symbol with strong ritual and martial significance in the Iberian Peninsula.325 In Iberian contexts, the wolf was frequently portrayed with bared teeth and, at times, front-facing, which was not a perspective shared in Roman wolf iconography. We can see extant examples of the Iberian wolf in the bas relief sculpture in the so-called Torre de Minerva in Tarraco (Fig. 2.8, left). This remarkable relief is potentially a very early example of commensuration between Iberian and Roman iconographies. In this relief, a frontal portrait of a wolf, teeth bared, appears on the shield of Minerva. The wolf was asso Almagro-Gorbea (1997).
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ciated with protective deities in both Iberian and Italic religious contexts, and Minerva’s role as custos of Tarraco (Tarragona) may reveal why she found herself associated with a wolf.326 The relief’s iconography therefore intertwines Iberian, Roman, and Greek styles. The relief dates to the end of the third century BCE, the period in which Scipio Africanus was using Tarraco as a base for his military operations against the Carthaginians and their Iberian allies. A remarkably similar wolf appears on the so-called Tivissa plate (Fig. 2.8, right).327 It was found in Castellet de Banyoles, a settlement of the Ilercavones on the lower Ebro River. The plate (patera) was part of the Tivissa III hoard, found in 1927, and dated to the first half of the second century BCE.328 The hoard of silver objects contains four paterae, including the wolf plate, ten vessels, and two bracelets. The plate pictured below has a central forward-facing wolf head with sharply pointed ears decorated to replicate fur, triangular spikes around the face to denote bristling fur, a snout-like nose, and incised, almost braided lips grimacing to reveal sharp, exaggerated teeth. The face is surrounded by a ring of oblong shapes set off in two braided bands. While these forwardfacing wolves bear little iconographic resemblance to the wolves portrayed on Iberian coinage, or to Roman wolves, they bear witness to the long-standing significance of wolves in Iberian iconography, both religious and civic. The Iberian city of Iltirta, later the Roman municipium of Ilerda, was strongly associated with wolf imagery. Their wolf remained on the coinage after the Sertorian War; however, it transformed from a male to a more Romanized female wolf, with visible teats on some of the issues, similar to the wolf on RRC 338/1, a denarius from 77 BCE minted in Rome (Fig. 2.9).329 In other words, what had been a symbol that could be read as a reclaiming of an indigenous emblem from Roman authority – reading the wolf as fully Iberian instead of ambiguously Ibero-Roman – was now redeployed as a more overt Roman symbol through its feminization. At the same time, the wolf as a symbol became increasingly intertwined with both Roman power and with Augustus himself. This can be seen in the use of the epithets lupa Romana or lupa Augusta, found on statue bases in Hispania that suggest some form of she-wolf statue intended to complement sacrifices on behalf of the emperor.330
Pina Polo (2003). Another earlier example is the torso of a warrior sculpture now in the Museo de la Alcudia (Elche) with a front-facing wolf baring its teeth on the warrior’s cuirass. It dates to the fifth–fourth centuries BCE. Grünhagen (1976: 217). Rowan (2016a: 31). RRC 338/1a–b has the helmeted head of Roma on the obverse and a she-wolf with obvious teats on the reverse. There is one from Epora (Montoro, Cordoba) offered by a seviri augustales named M. Valerius Phoebus (CIL II.7 139 = CIL II 2156 = ILS 6913). Other examples of lupa Augusta include CIL II 4603, add. p. 987, 1045 = IRC-1, 132.
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Fig. 2.8: Left: Bas relief from Tarraco of Minerva with a shield embossed with a front-facing wolf head, late third century BCE. Right: The Tivissa plate with a front-facing wolf head, first half of the second century BCE. Both wolves appear to be baring their teeth. Tarraco image courtesy of the DAI in Madrid, no. 1188750. Tivissa image courtesy of the Museu d’Arqueologia de Catalunya, inv. no. MAC BCN-019445.
Fig. 2.9: Cast of a bronze as from Ilerda (Iltirta), Augustan. Obv: Head of Augustus with the legend ‘Imperator Augustus, son of a god.’ Rev: A feminized Iberian wolf and the legend ‘Municipium Ilerda.’ The teats are visible on the wolf’s belly. Bronze as from Ilerda (Iltirta). Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, no. FRBNF41740397.331
RPC I, 260, no. 3.
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The locally produced coin imagery of the last quarter of the first century BCE demonstrates that coin iconography was not static.332 Images changed as the meaning of the ideas they conveyed changed. They required constant communication between the messenger and the audience. Therefore, even when coin imagery maintained a degree of continuity with the past, that did not mean that the image would be interpreted in the same way. Ancient symbols in the Iberian Peninsula such as the horseman or the wolf shifted in meaning as the experiences and worldviews of the audiences changed. At the same time, the use of Roman symbols allowed issuing cities to demonstrate that they were up to date on iconographic types, while putting a spin on them that celebrated their city and its history.
2.5 Conclusion Scholarly work on ambiguity, entanglement, and commensuration offers valuable tools in analyzing the process through which Iberian and other local peoples confronted and adapted the Roman iconography that spread through their conquest. Yet, it is not just that the imagery became more ambiguous and therefore easier to read according to one’s cultural viewpoint. Roman conquest imagery became a de facto symbol of power, one that could be deployed by conqueror and conquered alike. In a world in which, thanks to extensions of citizenship, non-Roman elite subjects were increasing their power, conquest imagery could provide social capital. Furthermore, the ambiguity reflected in Sertorian and post-Sertorian iconography developed not only through extensions of Roman power but also through prolonged Roman engagement with Iberian iconography. It was not, in fact, a new process, but one that had its roots in the earliest phases of Roman conquest. It accelerated in the first century BCE in part because Roman uses of coin iconography shifted more toward commemoration, emphasizing victory and individual achievement as Roman politics degenerated into civil wars. Conquest played a fundamental role in shaping how the weapons and bodies of the conquered entered Roman visual culture, but so too did the aftermath, in which local peoples negotiated a place for themselves within a new social milieu, and Romans fought to redefine their own hegemony. Because of this process, by the late first century BCE coinage in the Iberian Peninsula had become an expression of imperial ideals, but those ideals incorporated the communities of non-Romans who lived under Roman hegemony. A coin was more than a unit of exchange; it stored and disseminated representations of identity. Through coinage, the Romans could reimagine, present, embellish, and negotiate their relationship with local peoples. Through the long conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, coinage became increasingly embroiled in the negotiation between Romans and locals
Gozalbes García (2015: 286).
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about the place of local peoples within empire. As this case study has established, coinage could broadcast Roman representations of events in Hispania, and it facilitated the integration of the peninsula into the empire both militarily and economically. But, even more importantly, in the late Republic coinage became the primary means of communicating one’s loyalties, whether to a Roman rebel, to one side in a civil war, or to Rome itself. Indeed, the choice and interpretation of coin imagery was not always at Rome’s behest or to Rome’s advantage. Local peoples reused, reimagined, and (re)remembered Roman coins, redefining their social meaning in new contexts to embody new identities. This typified the process of commensuration in the peninsula, a process which allowed the first-century BCE geographer Strabo to proclaim somewhat exaggeratedly that the Turdetanians, for example, had become so Roman as to forget their own language.333 The negotiation between Roman cultural values and indigenous imagery in postSertorian coinage created an intentional ambiguity so that whether the viewer was Roman or Iberian, they could interpret the coin imagery.334 Over time, ambiguity facilitated a fusion of Iberian identity with Roman imagery that was evident on the coinage of the later Augustan and then Julio-Claudian period. This fusion suggests that perhaps we might contextualize the changes in the Iberian Peninsula less in the language of forgetfulness that has typified English-language scholarship on the region and instead analyze them through the language of invented tradition and hybridity.335 Local peoples did not simply forget their past; their self-representation in the form of coins, inscriptions, and monuments in the early imperial period reflects a conscious melding of Roman memories with their own.336 The material and visual culture of the Iberian Peninsula was a reimagination of empire as a unifying culture in which people from across the empire could participate equally.
Strabo 3.2.15. Rowan (2016a). Johnston referenced the “forgetfulness of empire” when discussing Augustan-era Spain (2017: 4). Jiménez (2015), on the other hand, has championed the idea that the Iberians of the southern peninsula, for example, retained far more of their pre-Roman practices than has previously been allowed and purposefully meshed Roman and Iberian style in architecture and other media. I am also referencing Hobsbawm and Ranger’s (1983: 1) definition of invented tradition, discussed at the beginning of the chapter. Jiménez (2011).
Chapter 3 Rome and the Greek East: Overwriting and Cowriting Conquest Rome’s relationship with the city-states and peoples of Roman Greece and Macedonia (Map 3) has been the subject of vast scholarly debate.337 From Roman anxieties over philhellenism and Greek cultural influence to the Greek impact on Roman architecture and consumer interests, scholars have often framed Rome’s relationship with Greece in terms of a cultural debt.338 This framing is particularly present in studies of visual and material culture.339 At the same time, scholars have lamented Roman Greece as a period of decline, a sad shadow of its former glory.340 These characterizations fail to capture the richness that was Greek history under Roman rule. In recent years, scholarship has shifted toward greater emphasis on local agency, emphasizing the complexity of Greco-Roman interaction and the varied, overlapping material expressions of identity.341 Scholars have long asserted that Roman cultural identity was shaped and solidified through the conquest of foreign peoples, and, in fact, the Roman conquest of the Greek East, beginning in the second century BCE, occurred in a period when Roman
For the purposes of this study, I am confining my definition of the Greek East to the Greek Peninsula, Epirus, and Macedonia rather than the entire Greek-speaking Hellenistic East. In doing so, I follow the same pattern as previous chapters, focusing on the areas impacted by Rome’s earliest wars of conquest in the region, from the First Macedonian War (c. 214–168 BCE). This, of course, leaves out Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor, but I hope that the narrower geographical focus will better illuminate how Roman visual culture interacted with local traditions during and after the initial phase of conquest. Versluys, for example, stated with respect to the Ahenobarbus altar: “The shock of so much new brought about cultural anxieties and deep reflections on what it meant to be Roman” (2017: 4). For more on the development of Roman identity, see Farney (2007). For Roman anxieties over philhellenism and cultural identity, see especially Gruen (1992). For Greek influences on Romano-Italic art and architecture, see Pollitt (1978); Clarke (1991); Gazda (1991); Gazda (2002); Welch (2006); Marzano and Métraux (2018). For Greek influence and Roman anxieties over luxury and consumption, see Wallace-Hadrill (2008); Bounia (2004); Evans (2011). For the question of Roman Hellenization, see Veyne (1979); Wallace-Hadrill (1998). Alcock (1993: 1–3). Whitmarsh (2010) provided an important case study of Greek local agency within the Roman Empire. Recent scholarship has emphasized monetary and economic interactions between Rome and Macedonia and Greece. For Macedonia, see Rizakis (2020); Kremydi-Sicilianou (2021). For central Greece and Crete, see Amandry (2021). For the impact of Roman imperialism on local identities, see Revell (2009). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111326634-004
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identity was still quite fluid.342 This has inevitably led some to conclude that Rome’s conquest of Greece had an enormous impact on Roman identity, and that Hellenization, rather than Romanization, should be understood as the main process of cultural integration in the Mediterranean in this period.343 However, we must remember that the conquest of Greece was part of an expansionist period that included the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, the Gallic provinces, and later the provinces of Asia and Syria. In other words, Rome interacted with Greeks and Macedonians alongside other conquered peoples, and the conquest of Greece was one episode of several that shaped Roman identity and imperial visual culture. When we discuss cultural integration, therefore, we should not isolate the Greeks or the Greco-Roman relationship from the other interactions Rome had with newly subjugated peoples. Even more importantly, Roman interaction with conquered peoples normally occurred at a local level. That is, Rome developed relationships with individual citystates and typically sought to maintain local institutions rather than impose direct rule.344 This indirect approach had significant implications for how Roman imagery spread or was adapted in local contexts. The coin iconography of Roman colonies across the Mediterranean, for example, reveals that there was no singular method of expressing the local relationship to Roman authority and no Roman expectation of a particular style. Colonial coin imagery, discussed later in this chapter, also engaged with idiosyncratic local traditions, complicating our understanding of the language of power. The Greeks experienced the same processes of commensuration that their western counterparts did, even if at times they were expressed differently. In fact, those very differences in expression resulted from the process itself; that is, regardless of place, the Romans drew on local iconographies to visualize conquered peoples. The Roman triumph brought these local iconographies into Rome, where they percolated through public and private art and representation. In Rome, local iconographies connoted martial prowess and Roman hegemony. Over time, however, conquest imagery became almost de-militarized, and no longer had to be coupled to military victories but rather could be used to express power and prestige more broadly.345
For more on cultural identity, see Gruen (2011); Farney (2007); Laurence and Berry (1998). Demetriou argued that mixed settlements and colonies were by default multiethnic communities, which suggests consequentially diverse material culture (2012: 5). Wallace-Hadrill (2008), for example, analyzed Italian visual culture in the Republican period, assessing the interaction between Roman, Greek, and local influences. He argued that Hellenism offered an alternative for local elites to Roman influence. See Rizakis (2020). Gleason even posited that Roman control strengthened Greek identity (2006: 229–39). This is a concept to which I will return in Chapter 4.
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But because the Romans essentially inserted themselves into existing prestige systems, the method of deploying these entangled symbols of power differed. In the Greek world, this process of commensuration occurred predominantly through monuments, honorific statues, inscriptions, and coinage that varied based on context and need.346 In fact, the process of commensuration both reflected and aided a transformation of the honorific habit in the Greek world in the second half of the second century BCE into a hybridized Greco-Roman system.347 Yet, as has often been acknowledged in modern scholarship, we cannot read Greek imagery as a one-way interaction with Rome. Greek cultural symbols held a powerful appeal for peoples across the Mediterranean and were often adapted alongside Roman iconography outside Greece. Within the hybridized honorific system, local peoples negotiated new identities, and the burgeoning prestige economy emerging in this period offered opportunities to convey one’s identity through the consumption of luxury goods circulating throughout the empire.348 In the wake of the Second Macedonian War (200–196 BCE), the city of Rome received a sudden and massive influx of wealth and art through despoliation and indemnity payments.349 The influx of plunder forever marked the Greek East as a source of financial and symbolic capital. Whereas in the Gallic provinces, conquest was overwhelmingly expressed through images of captive bodies and weaponry, in the Greek East conquest followed a different pattern. First, conquest resulted in plunder that was sold in Rome for profit or used to decorate private homes, becoming immensely influential on Roman material culture. Greek luxury goods continued to be purchased or looted long after the initial phase of conquest, making their way into private collections of elite Romans, and Greek artists and artisans moved throughout the Roman world, their labor contributing to the embellishment of Rome’s visual language of power.350 Second, the Romans overwrote their power onto existing Greek monuments or honorific landscapes. The Romans essentially integrated their imagery into the Greek Ma (2013: 4). Ma argued that the changes included an increase in statues granted by cities to benefactors, honors granted to families, multiple portraits to individual honorands, and honorands paying for their own statues (2013: 7). A topic discussed further in Chapter 4. This book focuses overwhelmingly on elite classes, but it should be noted that sub-elites and other social groups also consumed goods that drew on the visual language of power. As Woolf (1998: 206) remarked, “the spread of Roman style, right down to the most basic tableware, shows that even the poorest had learned to be impoverished in a Roman manner.” For the impact of the prestige economy on Roman habits in the late Republic, see Roy (2023b). Rosenstein (2016: 120–122) calculated that over 50% of Rome’s war profits between 200 and 167 came from these indemnities, and only one of those was from a war not in the Greek East. In fact, the Achaean League minted coins from 167 to 146 BCE, stopping when the Romans defeated them, and they began minting again from 88 to 30 BCE and Rowan (2014a: 151) noted that this could have been to pay their indemnities to Rome. See also de Callataÿ (2019). Richlin (2018a: 169–193) noted how much human cargo was a part of the “cargo culture” of Roman imperial power, serving, for example, as the subjects of Roman comedy through their enslavement while at the same time bringing Greek comedy and art to Rome through their labor.
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memory landscape, creating a new, blended vision of the present.351 Yet, much as with the western provinces, visual interaction always involved overlapping processes of destruction and commensuration. While the Romans were conquerors, they also intended to stay, and the destruction of cultural property was not a practice that could be maintained indefinitely if one wanted to create enduring relationships, however uneven those relationships may have been at times. The burden for negotiating or conforming to Roman expectations most often fell on local peoples.352 This protracted negotiation is emblematic of cowriting, a shared process where imperial subjects more broadly utilize and contribute to a shared language of power. Within cowriting, however, “authorship” is heavily localized and, as such, reflects distinctly idiomatic interpretations of the visual language.353 To explore this process in Greece and Macedonia, I begin with Rome’s earliest military interventions and trace the often ambiguous and intertwined processes of overwriting and cowriting through three phases: Roman intervention in local traditions; Roman translation of plundered Greek materials into the Roman honorific landscape; and the adaptation of conquest imagery to express local power.
3.1 Roman Revisions: Monumental Interventions in Hellenistic Commemorative Landscapes Scholars have long discussed the Hellenic influence on Roman visual culture. However, much of the scholarship focuses on the late Republic and early Empire and consequently overlooks the more direct adaptation of Greek imagery that stemmed from the initial conquest. During the conquest of Macedonia and Greece, Roman generals despoiled Greek cities and displaced populations by the tens of thousands through both enslavement and the destruction of cities. That violence diffused Greek art, artisans, and skilled labor throughout the Mediterranean. Yet, many Roman generals also coopted existing Greek monuments or deployed Greek iconographic styles to celebrate their campaigns. This was more than simply cultural borrowing. Such acts demonstrated a clear revision to Hellenistic royal achievements that allowed Roman commanders both to link their names to Hellenistic kings and to demonstrate superiority over them. During the conquest period, Roman honorific practices in the Greek world focused predominantly on existing commemorative landscapes such as Delphi and Olympia which reverberated with generations of first Greek and then royal Hellenistic military exploits. Hellenistic royal palaces were subject to wholesale despoliation, and the Romans positioned themselves as heirs to
Alcock (2002) brilliantly captured how the Greeks and Romans together reshaped the Greek memory landscape in the Roman period. Heller and van Nijf (2017: 10), for example, argued that the burden for conforming fell on the Greeks, who had to adapt their honorific economy to Roman expectations. For more on authorship in Roman art, see Hijmans (2016).
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Macedonian rule and at the same time as saviors of the Greeks through their victory over the Macedonians.354 The Romans joined generational patterns of advertising their wealth and power within sacred spaces. Hellenistic and Roman hegemony were both evident at Delphi. T. Quinctius Flamininus, for example, was honored with a gold stater coin series and had a shield, crown, and plunder dedicated in his name in the city’s sacred space, following time-honored traditions for victors.355 As the victor over Philip V of Macedon at the Battle of Cynoscephalae in 197 BCE, he positioned himself as the guarantor of freedom for all Greeks, which he announced at the Isthmian Games in 196.356 As such, dedications in his name in a sanctuary that resonated with generations of dedications to Greek freedom made sense. He and his colleague, M’. Acilius Glabrio, were also honored with equestrian statues, a medium often associated with Roman triumphs.357 Coupled with the honorific inscriptions in a space that commemorated great military commanders, such statues positioned Flamininus as a clear successor in a long line of Greek and Hellenistic war heroes.358 Whether Flamininus himself dedicated these remains unclear, but that underscores the ambiguity that so often marked Roman visual expressions of power – they could be read in completely different ways depending on the audience. However, we should not presume that any ambiguous image must be locally produced or that all locally produced imagery is by definition ambiguous. That sometimes leads to the assumption that cowriting was a local phenomenon produced by top-down cultural influence. Certainly, cowriting was often an unequal, and perhaps at times even somewhat coercive, practice in which local peoples enmeshed Roman ideas or imagery with local traditions. Yet, conquest imagery developed both because the Romans encountered, adapted, and reused local imagery and because local peoples did the same. Therefore, ambiguous imagery served both parties. It is through the resulting process of commensuration that certain icons, styles, and tropes such as shields, trophies, and barbarian captives became easily recognizable. And since the Romans themselves were not always the originators of these tropes, borrowing many from Hellenistic, Egyptian, and Near Eastern precedents, this shared language of power was both rooted in conquest and simultaneously divorced from it, presenting a cowritten, broadly imperial visual language that conveyed authority and prestige. Rizakis (2020: 15–18). Plut. Flam. 12.6–7. See also Miller (2000: 279). There are also dedications to Flamininus at Delos, which are known through inventory lists where he appears as a dedicant: IG XI, 439A, lines 77–78; 442B, lines 85–86; 1429A, lines 21–22; 1441A, lines 105–106; 1446, line 15. Flamininus had numerous honorific inscriptions as well. Chalcis: IG XII, 9, 931; Cos: IG XII, 4, 1049; Gytheum: SIG 592; Corinth: SEG XI, 73; Scotussa: Mastrokostas, REA 66; Phanotia: Klaffenbach (1971: 167–168); Livy 32.18.6. See also Eckstein (1990: 62). Discussed more below. Syll.3 607, CID 4.103 (Flamininus), and Syll.3 616 (Glabrio). Equestrian statues in Rome date back to the mid-fourth century BCE and appeared in conjunction with fornices and arches from the second century BCE. See Kontokosta (2013).
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Fig. 3.1: South frieze of Aemilius Paullus’ monument in Delphi, commemorating his victory over Perseus of Macedon. Image courtesy of DAI, no. 1215418. arachne.dainst.org/entity/437046; Photographer H. Kähler.
The nebulous boundary between overwriting and cowriting in the eastern Mediterranean was due in no small part to Greek traditions. As the Romans extended their hegemony in the region, military commanders and magistrates were increasingly lauded – or lauded themselves – with honorific dedications, both visual and epigraphic, throughout Greek cities. In the wake of his victory over Philip V’s son and successor, Perseus of Macedon, for example, the Roman commander L. Aemilius Paullus undertook a victory tour of Greece, including visiting Delphi. That visit resulted in Paullus coopting an unfinished monument intended for Perseus himself. The revised monument was an elaborate pillar topped with an equestrian statue of Aemilius Paullus and decorated with friezes narrating the battle. In the scene above, we can see both Roman and Macedonian cavalry and infantry, identified, as was typical, by their starkly different shields: a round, often elaborately decorated shield for Macedonians, and a long, oval shield (scutum) for the Romans (Fig. 3.1).359 Much as with the Iberian labyrinthine shields, Macedonian shields were used as an ethnic marker on both monuments and coins. As another example of the Mediterranean-wide roots of conquest imagery, we can see a dead, naked Gallic warrior, one of the 2,000 mercenaries fighting for Perseus, on the bottom left of the scene. He is identifiable not only by his nudity but also by his elaborate hair and the hint of a possible mustache, borrowing from Hellenistic ethnographic
Taylor (2016: 559–560).
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stereotypes of Celtic peoples and mirroring the Gallic tropes reproduced throughout Italy and the western provinces.360 By supplanting Perseus’ intended monument with his own, Paullus transferred Perseus from the position of victor to the position of defeated captive, a position reinforced by the monumental inscription Paullus attached. The inscription read: L. Aimilius L.F. Inperator de rege Perse / Macedonibusque cepit (“Lucius Aemilius, son of Lucius, commander, seized this from the kingdom of Perseus and the Macedonians”).361 Michael Taylor described this inscription as “a stark act of linguistic chauvinism amid the sea of Greek epigraphy.”362 While it was common practice for Roman generals to add triumphal inscriptions to plundered statues, most of those statues were in Rome.363 By overwriting the victory monument of the conquered king in situ, Paullus was reminding the Macedonians that he had defeated them. Plutarch neatly incapsulated the process of overwriting in his description of Paullus’ monument: ἐν δὲ Δελφοῖς ἰδὼν κίονα μέγαν τετράγωνον ἐκ λίθων λευκῶν συνηρμοσμένον, ἐφ᾽ οὗ Περσέως ἔμελλε χρυσοῦς ἀνδριὰς τίθεσθαι, προσέταξε τὸν αὐτοῦ τεθῆναι: τοὺς γὰρ ἡττημένους τοῖς νικῶσιν ἐξίστασθαι χώρας προσήκειν. At Delphi, he saw a tall square pillar composed of white marble stones, on which a golden statue of Perseus was intended to stand, and gave orders that his own statue should be set there, for it was meet that the conquered should make room for the conqueror.364
Many Greek honorific spaces “made room” for their conquerors in the wake of Roman victories. This monument is a clear example of a Roman general taking it upon himself to make that room.365 By erasing Perseus from the honorific and memorial landscape, Paullus achieved a double victory over the Macedonian king first at Pydna and then at Delphi.366 That double victory could, in a way, be a triple victory since Perseus was captured and paraded in Rome with his sons during Paullus’ triumph. The practical and symbolic power of Paullus’ victory at Pydna is also evident in the much later coin issue of L. Aemilius Lepidus Paul-
Taylor (2016: 567). This goes back to the shared experience of Gallic/Galatian invasions shared by Hellenistic kings and the Romans that produced Attalus I’s monument as well. ILS 8884 = ILLRP 323 = CIL I2 622; Pol. 30.10; ROL 66. See also FdD 4.36. Taylor (2016: 560). Taylor argued that the frieze was intended to depict the Romans “everywhere triumphant.” See also Flaig (2000: 138). With the notable exception of some of L. Mummius’ inscriptions, for example in Olympia (SEG 44.410) and Argos (SEG 30.365). Plut. Aem. 28.2. Translation from Alcock (1993: 196). A riderless horse identifies the battle as Paullus’ victory at Pydna in 168 BCE since the account of the battle mentioned a runaway horse (Plut. Aem. 18.1). On a different frieze panel, scholars have tentatively labeled one figure engaged in combat as Paullus himself. This was also Paullus’ third triumph, putting him in a very small percent of Roman generals to achieve that distinction. He had earlier triumphed possibly in 189 (Hispania) and in 181 (Ligurians). See Itgenshorst (2005: no.177a; no. 186) and Rich (2014: no.185). Kleiner (1992: 26–27).
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lus, who, dubiously claiming descent from Paullus, minted a coin commemorating the original Paullus’ victory and triumph over Perseus.367 On the coin, Perseus and his sons face a Roman trophy, behind which stands Paullus himself. Through this presentation, Perseus’, and consequently Macedonia’s, subjugation was rendered clear and permanent and was used to bolster the status of the moneyer through its symbolic power.368 The Roman general L. Cornelius Sulla provides one of the most complete pictures of Roman overwriting in the Republican period. Sulla was dispatched to Greece in the wake of one of the most violent attacks on Italian civilians in Republican history. Mithridates IV Eupator, King of Bithynia and Pontus, coordinated a mass attack in 88 BCE on Roman civilians living in the region: approximately 80,000–150,000 Romans and Italians were massacred.369 Sulla’s campaigns in Attica culminated in a critical victory at Chaeronea and the vengeful sack of Athens in 86 BCE. Sulla’s commemoration of these victories reflects a clear attempt at overwriting. While in control of Athens, Sulla seized the mint and issued an Athenian tetradrachm series. Athens’ archetypal coin with Athena and the owl was well-known throughout the Mediterranean and was synonymous with Athenian power. Sulla “amended” the coins. The obverse depicted the head of Athena Parthenos, while the reverse showed the traditional Athenian owl perched on an amphora, to which Sulla added two distinctly Roman trophies on either side of the owl (Fig. 3.2, top).370 Roman trophies, of course, evoked the triumph and were a symbol of power. By seizing the Athenian mint and superimposing references to his recent victories on Athenian coin iconography, Sulla asserted his dominance over the Athenians while also financing his conquest. For the Athenians, it must have been especially galling considering that they had only been free of Macedonian monetary interference for less than a century and had been granted the right to mint their own coinage again in the wake of the Roman victory at Cynoscephalae in 197. Sulla’s Athenian coin series, along with his itinerant coin issues (Fig. 3.2, bottom), were mobile representations of the two actual trophies he dedicated in honor of his victories.371 These two trophies commemorated his victories at Orchomenos and Chaeronea over Pontic forces, and while they did not explicitly celebrate the subjuga-
RRC 415/1 (fig. 1.7). I briefly mentioned this coin in Chapter 1 to emphasize how different it was from allusions to defeated Gallic chieftains. Crawford (1974: 441). Mithridates drew on anti-Roman sentiments to persuade locals to support this attack. See App. Mith. 22–23, 54, 61–63; Val. Max. 9.2; Memnon 22.9; Plut. Sull. 24; Cic. Pro Flac. 25; pro Man. 5.11; Vell. Pat. 2.19. While many scholars (Brunt 1971: 38; McGing 1986: 111–118; Ñaco del Hoyo and Antela-Bernárdez 2009: 6–8) are skeptical of the high death toll, the lower number of 80,000 is generally accepted as realistic. Metenidis (1998: 118) argued that these Sullan issues were part of a series of coins minted by L. Licinius Lucullus at Sulla’s behest, melted down from the coins Sulla seized from the sanctuaries at Epidaurus, Olympia, and Delphi. For more on the so-called Lucullan coins, see de Callataÿ (2016: 324–325). Plut. Sull. 19.9–10. Sulla minted not only the Athenian tetradrachm with these trophies but also a limited aureus series (RRC 359/1) and a denarius series (RRC 359/2).
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Fig. 3.2: Top: Athenian New-Style Tetradrachm of L. Cornelius Sulla, c. 86–84 BCE. Obv: Bust of Athena Parthenos; Rev: Athenian owl flanked by two Roman trophies. Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, no. FRBNF41815049. Bottom: RRC 359/2, a denarius of L. Cornelius Sulla, minted on campaign c. 84–83 BCE. Obv: Head of Venus, with Cupid holding a palm branch and Sulla’s name underneath; Rev: Two trophies flanking a jug and lituus with a legend proclaiming Sulla imperator for the second time. Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, no. FRBNF41981862.
tion of those Greeks who supported Mithridates, their location, imagery, and the use of Greek for the inscription were all deliberate choices to signal Roman authority.372 A 2004 excavation revealed what seems to be the remains of one of Sulla’s trophies.373 Zoumbaki (2018: 361–362). Another tentative identification for a Sullan trophy was found at Orchomenos in 1990 and identified by Camp (1992) as one of Sulla’s. It has been the subject of fierce debate over whether it is Sulla’s trophy, as described by Plutarch, or if it is the work of a local, Greek patron. Cassius Dio’s (42.18) comment that Sulla wore a signet ring engraved with three trophies has led some scholars to argue that the trophy at Chaeronea is one of Sulla’s. More recent scholarship has argued for it being of local initiative rather than a trophy erected by Sulla (Ibarra 2009: 60). Camp’s marble trophy followed standard Roman trophy iconography, with the torso dressed in armor and the bronze skirt turning smoothly into the shaft of the pillar, just as depicted in Sulla’s coinage (Camp 1992: 444). Mackay (2000: 161–210) disagreed with the Sullan attribution, arguing that Romans used Latin inscriptions on provincial monuments. However, as Ibarra (2009: 59) noted, it is difficult to argue for an epigraphic
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Consisting of an armed mannequin with the head of a captive positioned near the greaves, and an accompanying inscription, it resembles other Roman trophies of the period.374 Archaeologists also excavated a series of carved panels associated with the monument. The weapons friezes, the armed trophy, and the captive’s head indicate that this monument drew on the increasingly standardized vocabulary of the Roman visual language of power, underscoring the growing similitude of conquest imagery in the Republican period.375 Roman trophies were a common phenomenon, but were mostly representations on coins and monuments, except for the ephemeral constructions paraded in Roman triumphs. Unlike the Greeks, the Romans rarely erected battlefield trophies.376 Sulla’s trophies are among the few known Roman battlefield monuments. Erected at the site of his victory over Mithridates’ forces, the site was imbued with meaning.377 In terms of overwriting, the location of the battle at Chaeronea offered further commemorative fodder since Chaeronea was the location of Philip II and Alexander the Great’s victory over the combined Greek armies in 338 BCE, which first brought the Greek city-states under Macedonian dominion. Sulla underscored that connection to his Hellenistic predecessors by utilizing the Greek epithet Epaphroditos on his inscriptions in Greece rather than the Roman cognate Felix, suggesting that the language and legacy of Hellenistic kings may have inspired Sulla’s inscriptions and coins.378 Numerous Roman conquerors followed in the footsteps of Flamininus, Paullus, and Sulla, erecting or being honored with triumphal inscriptions at Delphi, the heart
tradition when the first-known trophy monument was from only 39 years earlier, that of Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus and Q. Fabius Maximus in Gaul. SEG 59.483; Kountouri et al. (2018: 359–368). Trophies were a common form of conquest imagery in Gaul, as discussed in Chapter 1. Ibarra (2009: 62–66) delved into the potential patronage behind this monument, arguing that Sulla’s soldiers likely commissioned it. The battlefield trophy was also rare among Hellenistic kings (Kinnee 2018: 49). Kinnee (2018: 3) argued that this type of Roman trophy, what she termed a mannequin, was “entirely absent from the Greek repertoire,” though Rabe (2008: 165–166) argued to the contrary on the origins, which Kinnee did not discuss. Furthermore, trophies were well-attested in Seleucid coin iconography, where Nike is often seen crowning a trophy, much like in the Roman victoriatus imagery where the goddess Victory replaces Nike. See, for example, the tetradrachms of Seleucus I minted at Susa between 301 and 295 BCE (ex: 173.10, ANS 1968.183.8). These two trophies are generally considered to represent Sulla’s victories over Pontic forces at Orchomenos and Chaeronea. See Mackay (2000: 207); Zoumbaki (2017: 361). Plut. Mor. 318D; Santangelo (2007: 9). Santangelo (2007: 199–213) argued that Sulla’s use of Epaphroditos was not just a direct translation of Felix (lucky, favored, blessed), but rather an attempt on Sulla’s part to counteract accusations of impiety due to his plundering of Greek sanctuaries.
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of the Greek honorific landscape.379 As mentioned above, these generals were heirs to a long-standing practice. In erecting statues and other dedications in sacred landscapes such as at Delphi or Olympia, they inserted themselves into a commemorative system that, since the third century BCE, had been dominated by foreign intervention.380 Interestingly, of the 3,477 inscriptions from Delphi that are complete enough to categorize, only 17 are fully in Latin.381 While these inscriptions seem to continue the practice of lauding Hellenistic kings, some have argued that honorific inscriptions dedicated by or on behalf of Romans reflect a shift in practice.382 These Roman inscriptions, whether Latin, Greek, or bilingual, inscribed Roman power into Greek historical memory by borrowing from a Greek honorific tradition that stretched back hundreds of years.383 In fact, in the first half of the second century BCE, all the highranking generals who campaigned in the Greek East received commemorative monuments at Delphi, reflecting a growing integration of Roman power into the honorific landscape.384 While the form of negotiation differed, we see similar patterns of commensuration in the western provinces, through both architecture and coinage.
In fact, only 45% of the statues dedicated at Delphi were erected by Delphic citizens. The other 55% were dedicated by outsiders (Grzesik 2021: 52). Roman commanders erected or had erected on their behalf, honorific inscriptions at Delphi as well as other cities such as Olympia, Corinth, and Delos. Some of those inscriptions include as follows: T. Quinctius Flamininus: ILLRP 762. M. Minucius Rufus: ROL 6, CIL 12 692, ILS 8887. L. Cornelius Sulla: ILLRP 711. L. Licinius Lucullus: SIG3.745, CIL 12.2.714 = ILS 865 = I. de Délos. L. Calpurnius Piso: ILLRP 756. Q. Pompeius Rufus: ILLRP 0361, CIL 12.2.710 = I. de Délos 4.1.1848. C. Rabirius: ILLRP 399; CIL 12.2.773 = I. de Délos 4.1.1859. Macedonian kings, for example, had a close relationship with Delphi (Grzesik 2021: 57). For more on Macedonian dedications at Delphi, see Miller (2000: 262–281). After 279 BCE, Delphi fell under Aetolian control, and they had a stranglehold on Delphi’s honorific system (Grzesik 2021: 57). With the fall of the Aetolians after 190, Grzesik (2021: 58) traced a rise in individual honorific statues. See also Philipp and Koenigs (1979) for Mummius’ dedications. Grzesik (2021: 52). Though Grzesik asserted that the Latin inscriptions were very prestigious and placed in a prominent position to awe visitors. Erskine (1994: 70–73) emphasized that the epigraphic phrase κοινοι ευεργέται (“common benefactor”) was relatively unknown in Hellenistic or Greek inscriptions until coupled with Roman benefactors. What is particularly fascinating about the common benefactor epithet is that none of the inscriptions that use the phrase had Romans as the actual subject of the inscription. Grzesik (2021: 53) asserted that from the fifth century BCE, Delphi became “a Panhellenic showcase for military triumphs and personal achievements.” Gruen (1992: 237–40) noted that Romans switched between Latin and Greek depending on what level of authority they wanted to convey. Meyer (2011: 192) argued that epigraphy was central to Roman social communication, and that the Romans emphasized only what they construed as positive achievements that enhanced social memory. On the broader pattern of Roman use of Greek in inscriptions, see Santangelo (2007: 199–213); Wallace-Hadrill (1990: 143–181). Grzesik (2021: 58). As Wallace-Hadrill (1990: 155) argued, cases like that of C. Verres demonstrate that the Romans “understood Greek honorific practice, knew how to turn it to their own political advantage, manipulated and controlled the mechanisms of the Greek polis, appreciated the contrasts between the Greek idiom and their own, and imported the Greek idiom to Rome.”
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At times, overwriting took the form of recasting Greek cult statues and art as triumphal symbols or testaments to individual prowess, but it could also consist of revising or creating civic and sacred spaces through the modification of Greek monuments. Augustus, for example, founded a commemorative city, Nikopolis (quite literally “city of victory”), to memorialize his defeat of Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BCE. The foundation of this city in Ambracia was in itself a clear statement because Ambracia was on the coast of the Ionian Sea, a region impacted by Roman military intervention since the second century BCE.385 Ignoring the economic devastation that the civil wars wreaked on the region and Greece as a whole, Augustus highlighted his victory with the construction of a vast commemorative monument decorated with the bronze prows of captured ships, a visual statement that was impossible to miss.386 While Augustus was willing to ignore the economic devastation with his commemorative monument, Roman conquest had a significant, negative impact on local economies in the second century BCE. Many Greek and Macedonian cities struggled to produce the coinage necessary to pay the exorbitant war indemnities that the Romans leveled on them. Roman territorial reorganization disrupted economic and trade networks, and the displacement of populations further destabilized local economies. When tracing the impact that Roman conquest had on local iconographies and honorific practices, therefore, we should not ignore the economic component. The overlap is particularly evident in coin iconography and monetary policies in the Greek East.
3.2 Roman Monetary Interventions in the Hellenistic World The slow integration of Roman images of power began in the earliest phase of Roman conquest. Roman hegemony did have negative economic consequences for the Hellenistic world, as discussed above, but it also proved to be a boon for those cities and regions that initially supported Roman authority. For example, the treaty that followed T. Quinctius Flamininus’ victory at the Battle of Cynoscephalae stripped the kingdom of Macedon of its territorial acquisitions, which earned pro-Roman Thessaly its autonomy.387 As an expression of that autonomy, the Thessalian League began to issue new bronze and silver coinage, a privilege that they had been denied under Macedonian hegemony.388 Thus we
A much earlier Roman general, M. Fulvius Nobilior, despoiled Ambracia in pursuit of his triumph in 187 BCE, and one of his inscribed statues bases for a now-lost plundered statue has survived. For more on Augustus’ victory monument at Nikopolis, see Zachos (2003). For Augustus’ overall program in the Ambracian Gulf, see Lorenzo (2019: 121–144). Kremydi-Sicilianou (2021: 81). Autonomous Thessalian coin production was interrupted in the fourth century BCE and only restarted after Rome’s victory in 196 (Kremydi-Sicilianou 2021: 85). Rome’s victory at Cynoscephalae also impacted Macedonian coinage, as hoard evidence indicates that Philip’s silver coinage did not circulate outside of Macedonia and its neighboring regions, and new denominations of silver coins were
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must consider the fraught landscape of political alliances into which the Romans entered when examining the adaptation of Roman images of power. The well-known gold stater of T. Quinctius Flamininus, RRC 548/1a, should be situated in this complicated political picture. At the time of its issue in the first decade of the second century BCE, Rome’s mint had only been issuing coins with a fixed typology for about 15 years, which for the silver denarius was usually Roma on the obverse and the Dioscuri on the reverse.389 The contrast for a Roman audience, therefore, between typical Roman coins and Flamininus’ stater must have been readily apparent. With Flamininus’ bust on the obverse and the goddess Victory holding a laurel wreath on the reverse, this coin seems at first glance to be an assertion of Roman hegemony in Macedonia (Fig. 3.3).390 Flamininus was in fact the first living Roman to have his visage appear on a coin and would be the last until Julius Caesar. Yet, considering the deep dislike that those cities subsumed under Macedonian hegemony felt for their overlords, we must be careful to ascribe this coin simply to Flamininus’ desire to claim ownership over the victory following his hyperbolic declaration in 196 of “freedom to all Greeks” at the Isthmian Games. Considering the benefits that some cities received for their loyalty to Rome in the wake of Flamininus’ victory, this coin could be an honor bestowed by local Greeks.391 Either reading – as a form of political propaganda by a Roman commander or a celebratory issue by a pro-Roman faction of Greeks – highlights the potency of coins as a form of symbolic capital.392 Roman conquest, at least in its initial phases, typically meant appropriation and destruction. In Greece, for example, the Romans were responsible for mass deportations, for land confiscation, and for gutting the elite class, which resulted in significant demographic and economic stagnation.393 Yet we can also see through material evidence that the Romans were at times equivocal in their interventions in local administrations, economies, and cultures.394 This resulted in idiosyncratic expressions of the Roman language of power, the catalysts for which can be difficult to reconstruct. This is particularly true
introduced, such as the hemidrachm, drachm, and didrachm. These new policies were maintained by Philip’s successors (Kremydi-Sicilianou 2021: 81–82). Assenmaker (2018: 395). It has generally been presumed that the coin was minted at Chalcis on Euboea. The debate over who minted this coin concentrates on whether the coin was a locally produced and limited issue intended only for Flamininus’ supporters since the coin was unpopular in Rome (Gruen 1984: 167), or whether Flamininus must have had a hand in its production (Harl 1996: 49). De Callataÿ, on the other hand, suggested that this coin was in circulation, even if on a limited basis, rather than simply a commemorative coin presented to friends and supporters (2011: 60). As Assenmaker noted, if it was a Greek initiative, agreeing to the honor would have been a major concession from Flamininus to Hellenistic royal monetary precedents (2018: 395). For example, in the treatment of noble families associated with the Achaean League, like with Polybius. Rizakis (2020: 20–22). For example, the Romans typically maintained local governments and administrative infrastructure. In Greece, where the Roman intervened in monetary production, they initially did so through the Athenian tetradrachm rather than their own coinage (Rizakis 2020: 23–24).
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Fig. 3.3: RRC 548/1a. Stater of T. Quinctius Flamininus, c. 196 BCE. Obv: Bust of Flamininus; Rev: The goddess Victory along with the Latin inscription T. QVINCTI, for his name. Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, no. FRBNF41836185.
because for the Romans, the Greeks were not a monolith. They dealt with each city-state or league separately. Free cities were allowed to mint their own coinages, and their imagery often varied from that of Roman colonies such as Corinth or Patras, where Latin replaced Greek on coin legends, and Greek and Roman imagery blended.395 As in other provinces, in the Greek Peninsula, Roman power could be reflected through coin production – both in terms of who had the right to mint coins and what imagery those coins invoked – and, as we will see later in the chapter, through shifts in the monumental landscape, particularly in sacred spaces. Images had power, and Roman imagery joined traditional Greek iconography in offering concrete methods of expressing class status and identity. To understand how that process occurred, however, it is necessary to assess how and where Roman power became intertwined with monetary authority in Greece and Macedonia. As with most of the Mediterranean world, coinage was a point of interaction between the Romans and their Greek subjects, and as such it offers a window into how Roman images were interpreted in local contexts. And here “interpret” can be understood in multiple ways: as local adaptations of Roman imagery and as Roman interposition within local spaces. While some scholars have argued that Roman coins never became the dominant form of currency in the Greek Peninsula in the Republican period, it is now commonly accepted that Roman monetary intervention transformed local economies by the first century BCE.396 Many scholars now argue that the Romans were involved in Greek monetary production, even if at times it was a limited involvement.397 For example, the
Rowan (2014a: 149). See, for example, Rizakis (2020) for Macedonia. Burnett (2005: 177–178), for example, once argued that the dearth of Roman coins in the Greek world was due to local derision for Roman coinage. However, in recent years, scholars have argued that the denarius did become widespread in the Eastern Mediterranean in the late first century BCE. The seminal
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Romans imposed the Athenian tetradrachm as an international unit of exchange in the second century BCE, with the cooperation of Athens as their ally, and those tetradrachms were produced in large quantities by the middle of that century.398 Roman coins also did not have to circulate in order for the Romans to influence local economies.399 While locally produced coins such as the Athenian tetradrachms did not necessarily code Roman, as locally produced currency sometimes did elsewhere, they stemmed from Roman economic intervention.400 Yet, we cannot ignore the fact that the Romans had an enduring influence on local economies by imposing massive indemnities on the kingdom of Macedon.401 In other words, Hellenistic money tacitly underscored the entire process of conquest, funding the Roman army through raw materials, taxation, and indemnities. Consequently, it remains debated whether the Roman presence encouraged prosperity or led to economic stagnation.402 In the years following Rome’s victory in the Third Macedonian War (171–168 BCE), the Romans reorganized the kingdom into four administrative districts (merides) to better facilitate taxation.403 This administrative imposition resulted in economic and social disorganization that made it difficult to
studies of Roman denarius circulation in Greece are Touratsoglou 1987 and Picard 1987. Papageorgiadou and Kosmidou (2020) reassessed the RRCH Online Database and found that there was an uptick in denarii hoards in the first century BCE and that known hoards from the 50s BCE onward were almost exclusively of denarii, whereas earlier Roman hoards in the region contained a lot of bronze coins (2020: 138) Thompson (1961); Price (1987: 96–97); Touratsoglou (2010: 240); Rizakis (2020: 23–24). This is true as well of the degree of new local coin series introduced in the wake of Rome’s victory at Pydna in 167. Scholars continue to debate the number of new silver issues in the second century BCE (Kremydi-Sicilianou 2021: 84). As for denarii, De Callataÿ (2011: 56–57) acknowledged that denarii likely did not circulate in any large quantity before the second half of the first century BCE, based on an Augustan articulation of the conversation rate for denarii (IG IX2 414c, ll.55 and 84). Rizakis argued that Roman economic intervention did not stimulate growth; even though the Romans taxed at lower rates than the Macedonian kings had, economic activity did not reach pre-Pydna (167 BCE) levels until at best the late first century BCE (Rizakis 2020: 23–24). This was particularly true in Macedonia, where Rome’s defeat of the Antigonid dynasty ended traditional coin production and forced a return to barter and the production and circulation of “barbarian-style” coins modeled on older royal civic issues, or people relied on non-local coins such as Athenian tetradrachms or drachms from Dyrrachium or Apollonia (2020: 24). Though Rizakis also noted that economic stagnation was already a problem in the late Hellenistic period, and thus Rome inherited an existing problem (2020: 24). Philip V had to pay 500 talents up front in 196 and then pay an additional 500 in annual installments spread over 10 years (Livy 34.34.11). The Aetolians had to pay 200 talents up front in 189 and then 50 talents annually for 6 years (Pol. 21.30.1–2). The indemnities of Philip V (196), Nabis the tyrant of Sparta (195), the Seleucid king Antiochus III (190), and the Aetolians (189) equated to more than 140 million denarii, which was more than 50% of Rome’s total profits from the entirety of its wars between 200 and 167 BCE (Serrati 2016: 120–122). Rizakis (2020) and Kremydi-Sicilianou (2018) investigated the economic consequences of Roman intervention in Macedonia, while Carbone (2014, 2019–2021, 2021) and de Callataÿ (2011) explored the same in Asia Minor on Roman taxation and the disappearance of independent issues in Hellenistic Asia Minor. Tselekas (2020: 39).
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meet the economic demands of both indemnity payments and taxation.404 The resulting economic stagnation increased Roman monetary intervention. Much of Roman authority was implicit, such as in the promotion of Athenian tetradrachms in the second century BCE as a unit of exchange. Other firm indications of Roman hegemony within local coin iconography can be difficult to identify. The names of Roman consuls and imperatores, for example, began to appear on cistophori and tetradrachms from Asia Minor and Greece in the first century BCE.405 And Roman imagery, such as the goddess Roma, also began to appear on the reverses of New Style Athenian tetradrachms, such as on a tetradrachm from c. 89/8 BCE minted in Athens by three magistrates, Kointos – a Hellenized version of the Latin Quintus – Kleas, and Pleistias (Fig. 3.4). The obverse maintains the traditional bust of a helmeted Athena, while the reverse shows the Athenian owl perched on an amphora, with Nike crowning the goddess Roma to the right.406 Through various iterations, Roma was attached to a powerful Athenian symbol, the owl perched on the amphora, blending Roman images of power with Athenian.407 The agency behind these expressions of commensuration is at times ambiguous. The picture is complicated by the fact that the Athenian tetradrachms with Roman imagery were introduced in a period when Mithridates VI threatened Roman hegemony during the Mithridatic Wars (88–63 BCE). As such, some coin series stemmed from Roman military production, such as with Sulla’s monetary intervention during his campaigns in southern and central Greece.408 Yet it is not so much the catalyst that matters, but rather that, as in the western provinces, local coinage began to take on an ambiguous flavor that met the needs of both Romans and local peoples. Seen in that light, such changes are almost more fascinating if locally introduced because they could indicate that local peoples saw utility in Roman images of power.
Rizakis (2020: 25) is qualifying Polybius’ claim (36.17.3) that Macedonia prospered after Andriscus’ revolt in 148 BCE. Q. Braetius Sura, for example, was a legate in Macedonia (c. 93–87 BCE) whose name appeared on a small series of silver tetradrachms minted at Thasos. Examples of Sura’s coin include SNG (1828); Brussels II 82788 and BnF 2072. See Bauslaugh (2000); De Callataÿ (2011, 2020). Examples of Roman names on cistophoric tetradrachms: C. Atinius in Ephesus (c. 122–121 BCE) and Fimbria in Asia (c. 85 BCE). Examples on Attic tetradrachms: Quintus in Athens (c. 89–85 BCE) and Caius in Stratonikeia (c. 80 BCE). See De Callataÿ (2011). Another example is a tetradrachm from Athens (BMC 1896.0703.266), which included a seated figure holding a sword and spear, who is crowned by Nike. The coin was minted by the same three magistrates as Fig. 3.4. There is some speculation that the seated figure represents Q. Caecilius Metellus Pius (pr. 89), who served under Sulla in the First Mithridatic War. For the dating of these coins, see Mattingly (1971); Mørkholm (1984). Coins issued by Kointos and Kleas, as well as Xenokles and Harmoxenos, showed Nike crowning Roma (Thompson 1961: 363). Thompson argued that the New Style coinage became even more overtly pro-Roman after 104/103 BCE (1961: 409). For example, Roma was sometimes seated and in other versions crowned by Nike. See also Thompson (1961): no. 1127a–b; ANS 2015.20.861. Zoumbaki (2020: 33–54). Roman war indemnities also impacted coin production, see Rowan (2013); Rosenstein (2016).
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Fig. 3.4: Athenian tetradrachm c. 89/8 BCE minted by Kointos, Kleas, and Pleistias. Obv: Helmeted head of Athena; Rev: Owl on an amphora with Nike crowning Roma to the right with the names of the magistrates surrounding. Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, no. FRBNF41815021.409
Despite the relative rarity of examples such as the Flamininus stater or the Kointos tetradrachm they demonstrate that Roman power was intertwined with Greek coinage in complex ways, even if that power relationship was not always overt. Local coinages were dominant in the second century BCE, but they were produced within a world increasingly directed by Roman authority. As with their western counterparts, Greek symbols also occasionally made their way onto Roman coins to celebrate individual generals’ achievements in the conquest of Greece. Macedonian shields, for example, joined Gallic and Iberian shields in the Roman visual language of power. They became particularly synonymous with one family, the Metelli. Q. Caecilius Metellus, conqueror of Macedonia in the Fourth Macedonian War (150–148 BCE), earned the agnomen Macedonicus. His epithet birthed a family tradition of using the Macedonian shield to signal their ancestral family achievements.410 The first of these was RRC 263/1a, a denarius from 127 BCE minted in Rome by Macedonicus’ son M. Caecilius Metellus (Fig. 3.5).411 This coin has the goddess Roma on the obverse and then a Macedonian shield with another family emblem, the elephant, as the shield’s central boss. The shield is surrounded by a laurel wreath, a triumphal symbol. As moneyer that year, Metellus also issued bronze coins with a Macedonian shield above a ship’s prow. In 82–80 BCE, Metellus’ coin was copied by M. Metellus.412 As with Gallic or Iberian shields, Macedonian shields were synecdochic
Thompson (1961): no. 1127. The Caecilii Metelli also used elephants as a family coin emblem, referencing L. Caecilius Metellus’ victory over Hasdrubal in 251 BCE (for example RRC 374/1). M. Caecilius Metellus (cos. 115; MRR 77). Crawford stated that the coinage was restored in 82–80 to allow Sulla to issue coinage without needing to appoint new moneyers. The three coins chosen to “restore”, RRC 263–265, belonged to family of three of his supporters, according to Crawford (1974: 388). Luce, following Mattingly, argued that
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Fig. 3.5: RRC 263/1a, a denarius minted in Rome in 127 BCE by M. Caecilius Metellus. Obv: Helmeted head of Roma; Rev: Macedonian shield with the name of the moneyer. Image courtesy of the American Numismatic Society, inv. no.1937.158.615.
representations of Macedonian armies and drew symbolic power from their association with Macedonian kings stretching back to Philip II and Alexander. Indeed, the association with Alexander led Q. Caecilius Metellus to display the despoiled equestrian statues of Alexander’s companion cavalry in his temple complex, which commemorated his victories over Macedon.413 It is important to keep in mind the economic component of the new hegemonic relationship between Rome and Greece in the wake of the Third Macedonian War (171– 168 BCE). Roman business interests and tax farmers encouraged an Italian diaspora into Roman Greece that further intertwined cultural symbols and practices. Yet, Rome’s complicated cultural relationship with Greece, encapsulated by Horace’s famous lines, meant that the honorific landscape of Greek sanctuaries and cities received some of the most explicit attention from Roman generals seeking to advertise their achievements within a Greek monumental landscape.414 Roman generals who achieved significant victories in the Hellenistic world leaned heavily on existing commemorative practices to advertise their success, and at rare times simply chiseled their names and achievements onto existing monuments, erasing the names and deeds of those they defeated.415 More often, however, honorific imagery and inscriptions were produced at a local level that easily entwined Greek and Roman practices, blurring the lines between visual cultures.
the restored coinage should be dated to 80 BCE, though he cautioned against reading the choice to restore those coin series as explicitly pro-Sullan (Luce 1968: 35–36). The equestrian statue group was by Lysippos and displayed perhaps in the portico Metellus built around the temples of Juno Regina and Jupiter Stator. See Vell. Pat. 1.1.3; Pliny HN 36.40; Vitruvius 3.2.5; Livy 39.2.1, 40.52.1. Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artis/intulit agresti Latio (‘Captive Greece captured her fierce captors and brought the arts to rustic Latium’) (Hor. Ep. 2.1.156–157). Such as with L. Aemilius Paullus with Perseus’ monument at Delphi.
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Those lines were further blurred by the impact that Greek art and iconography had on the performance of power in Rome. As many Roman moralists lamented, the Romans became fascinated with the art that came to Rome via plunder. As such, overwriting in Greece was defined not only by the incorporation of Roman prestige into a Greek honorific landscape but also by the despoliation and rededication of Greek art in new, Roman contexts. Greek and Macedonian plunder was paraded and then displayed in Rome and became synonymous with the type of luxury that left some Roman writers worrying about the fate of Roman cultural values.416
3.3 Despoliation as Overwriting: Hellenistic Plunder in Roman Contexts War booty, particularly of Hellenistic origin, played a vital role in shaping Roman visual culture and aesthetics and has received significant scholarly attention.417 But the seizure of war booty from Greek cities and Hellenistic royal palaces was more than an expression of Roman military power. It was also a powerful form of overwriting. From the late third-century BCE arrival of Roman armies in the Greek world, cities and sanctuaries in the eastern Mediterranean experienced ongoing despoliation of their art, luxury goods, raw materials, coins, and bullion, along with the damage and destruction of their urban spaces and the capture and sale into slavery of many of their people.418 As such, we must understand the visual culture of late Hellenistic and early Roman Greece as one characterized in many ways by absence. Objects were removed from their original contexts, brought to Rome, paraded through the city, and displayed, giving them symbolic capital in a new, Roman context. This process added another crucial element to the process of circulation that marked the development of conquest imagery: the influx of the material culture of conquered peoples into Italy. Overwriting was an effective method of visually negotiating and expressing power among dual audiences. The seizure of cult statues, for example, shattered the link between cult, god, and people which, as Alcock noted, often resulted in rural emigration,
Numerous Roman authors associated a Greek or Hellenistic triumph with the introduction of luxury more broadly or of a specific luxury item into Rome. Juvenal, for example, described the introduction of Greek fashions, such as Corinthian bronzes, as a sort of tacit Greek revenge for Roman conquest. (Juv. Sat. 6.294–297). Polybius also saw victories in the Greek world as a turning point in Roman luxury (31.25.3), as did Diodorus Siculus (31.20), though Livy saw Asia as the source (39.6.6–9). For example, Welch (2006); Wallace-Hadrill (2008); Pape (1975); Miles (2008). The descriptions of these campaigns in later Roman sources such as Livy or Pliny the Elder presented much of this destruction in the form of emotionless lists of the number of cities taken, the number of people sold, and the types and weight of plundered goods. For Rome as a “cargo culture,” see Loar et al. (2018).
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further rewriting the landscape.419 This practice was not unique to Rome’s conquest of the Hellenistic world in the second century.420 Such overwriting was evident in the ancient Roman practice of the evocatio. Through this ritual, Romans called upon a rival city’s god, offering them a place in Rome. In doing so, they ruptured the generational and ritual link between a people and their gods.421 This process was, at times, followed by the forced relocation of all or part of a population to new territory, further interrupting inherited traditions and imposing Roman power on subject peoples.422 The seizure of cult statues therefore represented not only a military strategy but also a form of triumphal acquisition that could serve as a reference to conquered peoples. Q. Fabius Maximus, who conquered the Greek city of Tarentum (southern Italy) in 209 BCE, for example, seized the cult statue of Hercules and rededicated it in a Roman temple to the same god as both an expression of piety and as a representation of his martial prowess.423 T. Quinctius Flamininus and L. Mummius similarly seized statues from the Hellenistic cities they conquered and dedicated them back in Rome.424 While such acts were represented positively in Roman sources, one must imagine the psychological trauma for the home city. Some of these cults stretched back generations, and suddenly their temples and sanctuaries were altered by Roman hands. Once in Rome, cult statues and other plundered objects took on new life histories, becoming first Roman expressions of power and then, later, luxury consumables.425 As these objects entered Roman spaces, the process of overwriting shifted from imposing a Roman triumphal dedication in a Greek landscape to implanting a Greek object in a Roman setting and then superimposing a Roman signifier on it, whether that was an inscription, an equestrian statue, or additional decorative elements. One such ex-
Alcock (1993: 33–92). There are examples of Roman gods replacing local cults in Cisalpine Gaul, but it is difficult, if not impossible to determine whether that was the result of force or a locally inspired shift toward Roman religious practices. For example, we know that in the Veneto, the sanctuary for Reitia shifted to worshipping Minerva, Vesta, and the Dioscuri, while the worship of Trumusiatus/Trumusiata at Lagole switched to Apollo (Lomas 2007: 28–29). Some sanctuaries in Gaul were also spatially reorganized after Roman conquest to better suit Roman conceptions of ritual practice, though again, the impetus is not always clear (Woolf 1998: 224–225). For example, Propertius (Eleg. 3.2.4.) reimagined the evocatio of the god Vortumnus (Vertumnus). We see intermittent references to forced deportations throughout Roman conquest across both the eastern and western halves of the empire. In the wake of Paullus’ victory at Pydna, he forcibly rounded up leading citizens in Aetolia, Acarnia, Epirus, and Boeotia, appropriated the city of Leucas from the Acarnanians, and deported the citizens of Antissa before destroying their city (Burton 2017: 177). Other examples include Picenum, Campania, Pydna, Liguria, and Bolsena. For more on deportation, see Pina Polo (2009). Strabo 6.3.1. Flamininus seized a statue in Greece that he dedicated to Jupiter Imperator in the temple precinct of Jupiter Optimus Maximus (Cic. Verr. 2.4.129) and Mummius seized and rededicated a statue of Hercules in his new Temple of Hercules Victor (CIL 12.626; Edwards 2003: 50). The latter process is discussed in Chapter 4.
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ample is the so-called Altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus, which should, based on recent reinterpretations, be called the Altar of M. Antonius, who earned a naval triumph for his campaign against the Cilician pirates in the eastern Mediterranean in 102 BCE.426 This altar, or more appropriately statue base, is composed of four relief panels, three of which depict a marine procession honoring the marriage of Neptune and Amphitrite, and were likely Greek in origin. The marine panels were not only associated with the cult of Neptune/Poseidon, from one of whose temples the marble reliefs likely came, but it also evoked the memory of Antonius’ naval triumph.427 Much as L. Aemilius Paullus overwrote his own victory onto the unfinished monument of his defeated enemy, Perseus, Antonius revised the original Greek monument by adding a fourth panel depicting a wholly Roman procession, the census. The intent of a census procession was to register and enroll men in the army, facilitate taxation, and, in the case of this relief, was overseen by the god Mars. The men lining up in this panel’s census procession would soon go out to further Roman conquest and steal more art to adorn Roman temples from wherever they were stationed. Thus, the panel both signaled Antonius’ civic commitments and underscored the fact that Greek wealth, which had paid for the monument, also fueled Roman conquest. Antonius also likely placed a statue of himself above the reliefs.428 By doing so, the reliefs, like those of L. Aemilius Paullus in Delphi, served as the foundation, both literal and metaphorical, for the general’s monument and memory.429 The destruction inherent in this type of appropriation is also apparent in the various statues found in the Mahdia shipwreck (c. 100–70 BCE), which show evidence that the statues were forcibly removed from walls and statue bases, to be carted back to Rome.430 While explicit overwriting typified the early phase of Roman conquest, and intermittently returned in the wake of subsequent wars, the Romans increasingly remained in local territories beyond the initial conquest phase, acting as agents in provincial administration alongside local elites. This intertwined overwriting and cowriting, making it difficult to distinguish between the processes. That overlap, however, reflects the very nature of cowriting, in that the shared nature of the visual language of power meant that individual agents used it to bolster their own reputations,
This statue base has been the subject of significant scholarly debate in recent years. For a review of the debate on the attribution of this statue base, see Kuttner (1993: 198–229). While scholars have agreed that the panel depicting the census and the ones depicting the marine thiasos came from different workshops and date to different periods, they do not agree on the Roman context or on who commissioned the monument. Scholars have agreed that the artist was Greek (Stilp 2001; Kuttner 1993: 198). One can extrapolate from other processional reliefs from the Greek world, such as the second-century BCE Pergamene Altar of Zeus, that the original context was likely to be a temple or altar relief and, based on the theme, could have been dedicated to Poseidon. Kuttner (1993: 198). Kuttner (1993: 198); Hölscher (2004: 30). Strauss (2008: 179). The Mahdia, Artemision, and Antikythera wrecks’ cargo all show signs of possible looting, as does the Riace wreck, though that dates to the first century CE.
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and therefore Roman generals used it to make at times heavy-handed memorials to their own martial prowess, often at the expense of those they conquered. The increasing overlap between the overwriting and cowriting accelerated when the Romans formally restructured the empire into administrative districts under Augustus in 27 BCE, with the provinces of Macedonia and Achaia (with Epirus) among those carved out of the Hellenistic East.431 That restructuring resulted in the emigration of Roman veterans and civilians, along with other Italians, to new colonies such as Corinth, Patras, and Nikopolis.432 As populations intertwined, the shared visual language became even more critical since ethnicity and citizenship no longer offered clear boundaries between conquerors and subjects. Thus, in the late first century BCE and first century CE, conquest imagery became the language not simply of military commanders, but of those whose status was marked by office-holding and wealth.
3.4 Roman and Greek Cowriting Interaction at local and global levels defined the relationship between elites throughout the empire. In the western provinces, that included urbanization as well as changing epigraphic habits.433 In the eastern provinces, epigraphic habits also shifted to incorporate Roman power.434 Scholarship on Roman Greece has focused on the Greek honorific economy – an apt name, in that it had financial as well as symbolic functions.435 Scholars, however, have mostly emphasized the epigraphic evidence for this honorific economy, with a few notable exceptions.436 The problem with the focus on epigraphy is that it places unnecessary emphasis on the presupposed uniqueness of Greek elites and overshadows the similarities they shared with elites across the empire. Those similarities are evident in monuments such as the Sebasteion and in colonial coinage and, of course, in epigraphic evidence. While much of this evidence is outside the scope of the Republican period, it reveals the culmination of the long-term process of commensuration that created the shared visual language of power. Conquest imagery was fully realized as a material expression of power in the JulioClaudian period, when imperial imagery became even more entwined with the idea of Empire, the emperor, and the imperial community. See Millar (2012). Alcock (1993: 129–171). On urbanization and epigraphic habits, see Goodman (2007) and Anderson (2013) for Gaul; Fear (1996) for Roman Iberia; Laurence et al. (2011) for the west. Though, as Ewald (2019: 233) noted, in many ways, the Greek honorific economy remained “remarkably attached to a visual idiom and a formal language whose cultural authority was never in doubt, and which they never gave up altogether – although it was, in many ways, ill-suited to communicate specifically Roman concerns.” Heller and van Nijf (2017: 13). For example, Dillon and Palmer Baltes (2013).
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Cowriting was a process of negotiation, and in the Greek East that manifested as power negotiations between local elites, Italian immigrants, and the mostly absent Roman authorities that both created and reified local identities. Much of that negotiation occurred in urban spaces, through honorific monuments, epigraphy, and conspicuous consumption in the form of luxurious houses and their decoration. Just as in the western provinces, however, some of that negotiation occurred through coin iconography. In Roman colonies established in cities with deep historical roots, new colonial coinage often entangled traditional motifs with Roman images. For example, Corinth entangled the motif of Bellerophon and Pegasus on the reverse with the head of Caesar on the obverse.437 Much as with the Iberian horseman or the wolf, this reflects commensuration between traditional indigenous imagery and Roman. The reverse image shows how deeply rooted Corinth’s imagery was in its civic identity since it marked a return to a traditional coin image that had not been circulated in centuries, since Corinth had not minted its own coins or even had continuous occupation since Mummius sacked the city in 146 BCE.438 Corinth’s mint also produced more archetypal Roman conquest imagery under the Julio-Claudians, including a bronze coin with Tiberius on the obverse and Victory standing on a globe holding a wreath and palm branch on the reverse.439 Macedonian coinage in the Julio-Claudian period offered particularly interesting examples of cowriting. As noted above, Roman intervention in Macedonian coinage reached back at least to the second century BCE, including bronzes issued by the quaestor C. Publilius in 148/147 BCE.440 Like its western counterparts, Macedonia became embroiled in the civil wars of the late Republic, producing coins representing the ambitions of military dynasts such as Mark Antony.441 With his defeat, however, we can see a return to local monetary production that produced deeply varied iconographic choices reflecting both diverse civic interests and multifarious approaches to the incorporation of Roman imagery and, one assumes, Roman communities. The Macedonian mint in Dium, for example, issued coins that paired the bust of Augustus on the obverse with an ambiguous image of Athena/Roma on the reverse.442 The reverse drew upon the Greek coin image of Athena standing – variously holding Nike, a patera, a spear, or a shield – that graced the coinage of numerous Greek and Macedonian cities.443 Similarly, during the reign of Claudius the Koinon of Macedonia pro RPC I, 1116; BMC 485–489. Rowan (2014a: 149). RPC I, 1148. Examples include ANS 1941.131.478 and 1940.77.19. RPC I, 1546A, minted in Pella by Antony, showed a bust of Eleutheria on the obverse and a wreath with Pella written in Greek on the reverse. RPC I, 1504. The Macedonian mints of Amphipolis, Thessalonica, Pella, and the Macedonian Koinon minted coins with the image of Roma on the reverse (Kremydi-Sicilianou 2005: 97). Examples stretch back at least to the fourth century BCE, such as a silver stater from Aphrodisias that showed Athena Parthenos holding Nike and a shield (LIMC Athena, 217). Numerous bronze issues from Athens and Larissa, among others, showed Athena standing with a spear.
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duced a copper coin series that had the emperor’s head on the obverse and an archetypal Macedonian shield on the reverse.444 While this may recall for the reader the use of Macedonian shields on Roman victory monuments, here the Macedonian shield likely reflected local traditions since the Macedonian shield had long been a standard symbol on Macedonian coins. Thanks to their entanglement, however, a Roman examining one of these coins might read the shield through the lens of Roman conquest imagery. The moneyers in Dyme (Achaea), on the other hand, chose not to represent their distant and autonomous past or to syncretize Roman and local imagery, but instead to celebrate their refoundation as a Caesarian colony. Their earliest colonial bronze coins had the head of Caesar on the obverse and a plough, a common symbol for a colonial foundation, on the reverse.445 Other issues had the name of the colony surrounded by an oak wreath on the reverse, an increasingly standardized municipal style seen throughout the empire.446 Despite the different iconographic choices made in Corinth, Dium, and Dyme, their coins all represented mixed populations of Roman colonists and local peoples, and their diverse styles demonstrate the different types of negotiation that produced communal identity among these groups.447 While this book has mostly focused on visual cowriting, that process also took epigraphic form, as many scholars have recognized. One of the best places to investigate epigraphic cowriting is the cosmopolitan island of Delos, which was essentially the commercial hub of the eastern Mediteranean in the Republican period.448 Delos was the nexus for trading in oil, wine, slaves, and luxury goods, and it developed a significant population of Italian merchant immigrants.449 Significant work has been done in recent years on bilingualism on Delos, often noting that Italians were tightly bound in social relationships to other, non-Italian elites, but that they wanted to integrate linguistically while maintaining a corporate, Italian identity.450 As a result, Delos had a mixture of monuments in Greek and Latin, put up by Greeks and Romans alike to honor individual civic achievements and/or Roman magistrates.451 Delos’ epigraphic embrace of both Roman benefactors and Romano-Italian citizens stretched back to the early second century BCE and reflects the ongoing negotiation be-
RPC I, 1612. For example, RPC I, 1283. See Rowan (2014a). RPC I, 1285. Daubner (2014) traced similar patterns in Roman Macedonia. It became a trading hub in part because it was a duty-free port, due to the Senate granting it a tax exemption (Rovai 2020: 171). Rovai (2020: 173) noted public and funerary inscriptions on Delos from Italy, Athens, Syria, Egypt, Cyprus, Asia Minor, the Black Sea region, the Aegean islands, Greece, Macedonia, Arabia, Mesopotamia, Media, and Cyrenaica. Rovai (2020: 172). See Touloumakos (1995: 119–120, 125); Adams (2002); Adams (2003: 642–662); Hasenohr (2007); Rizakis (2002, 2014); Zarmakoupi (2016); Zoumbaki (2017). There are over 30 inscriptions in Durrbach (1977) from the second and first centuries BCE associated with Romans or Italians, and the dedicants are a mixture of Greek, Roman, and Italian.
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tween Roman magistrates, immigrants, and local peoples.452 Both Italian immigrants and Greeks erected monuments to honor the Roman magistrates who had fought against Mithridates since Delos had lost approximately 20,000 civilians in Mithridates’ coordinated attack on Italian immigrants in 88 BCE. Two of the most prestigious honorific spaces in the city, the South Stoa and the Portico of Philip, incorporated Roman honorees beginning in the second half of the second century BCE, beginning with a portrait statue of Scipio Aemilianus, the conqueror of Carthage, erected by L. Babillius.453 L. Munatius Plancus, for example, was honored with two monuments, one by the famous sculptor Agasias.454 For the most part, these cowritten dedications honor both Greek and Roman benefactors.455 As can be seen, Roman commanders and magistrates were incorporated into the existing commemorative landscape and granted honorific titles that had previously been extended both to Hellenistic kings and Greek military heroes. This practice is evident elsewhere in the Greek world, and Roman communities in Greek cities acted both independently and jointly with local or regional authorities to produce honorific monuments.456 This blending of Greek and Roman antecedents is also characterized as one of the most well-attested monuments from the Hellenistic East, the Sebasteion in Aphrodisias (Caria, in modern Turkey).457 Built c. 20–60 CE under the patronage of local elite families, the Sebasteion, while obviously outside the scope of the Republic, encapsulates the process of cowriting and demonstrates the circulation of the Roman visual language of power articulated in this and previous chapters. Among the most famous reliefs in the Sebasteion are the personifications of different ethnic groups (ethnē) under Roman subjugation, and the conquest reliefs depicting Claudius subduing a naked Britannia (Fig. 3.6, left), and the emperor Nero standing above a slumped Armenia (Fig. 3.6, right).458 The conquest imagery depicted in the Claudius and Nero reliefs was unusual in not following Augustan or earlier precedents for depicting Roman conquerors, most signifi-
These civic honors also occurred outside of monumental epigraphy in the form of honorific titles, such as those granted to Scipio Africanus in 193 BCE. Delos granted him the titles proxenos and euergetes, both of which had long histories in the honorific economy, along with other civic honors. See Durrbach (1977: no. 64). ID 1842; Durrbach (1977: no. 94); Dillon and Palmer Baltes (2013: 221). The South Stoa and the Portico of Philip face each other, framing a sort of shared honorific space. A statue of Mark Antony was also erected here (ID 1700; Durrbach 1977: no. 139). Note that Scipio Aemilianus was the biological son of L. Aemilius Paullus, the victor over Perseus at Pydna, and was adopted into the Scipio gens, so the honorific statue encouraged multiple readings for multiple elite families. Zoumbaki (2017: 258). Appian (Mith. 34) identified Plancus as the commander in charge of Chalkis when Archelaus headed there after his defeat at Chaeronea at the hands of Sulla. Ibid.: 259. Zoumbaki listed the bilingual honorific monuments erected by Roman communities for their Greek and Roman benefactors (2017: 255–259). Ibid.: 254. We can also see this syncretism in the monument of Philopappos in Athens, but it is far outside the chronological scope of this book. The surviving ethnē that Smith identified include: the Egyptians, Judaeans, Arabs, Bosporans, Bessi, Dacians, Dardanians, Iapodes, Andizeti, Pirousti, Rhaeti, Trumpilini, and the Callaeci. For more on Roman conceptions of Britannia, see Stewart (1995).
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cantly by portraying both emperors in the heroic nude.459 This underscores the local idiom of the sculptural display.460 And the absence of Greek subjects from the ethnē portraits and conquest reliefs reflects how local elites could elide their own subject status and assert a distinguished position in the Roman empire. As Susan Alcock stated: In other words, the Greeks were comprehended within the Sebasteion’s imperial sweep, yet also quietly distinguished from the more vulnerable, such as Britannia or Armenia. On the parallel portico, Greek myths literally and figuratively supported the emperors above, emperors (identified for local viewers) portrayed in Hellenic manner. Imperial power was carefully located within a home-town frame of reference – associated with Aphrodite, upheld by Greek memories. It may be discomforting for eyes trained to seek out artistic origins and to dissociate ‘Greek’ from ‘Roman’ elements, but to pick apart the Sebasteion misses much of the point: that elements here meshed to create something new.461
In a clear expression of cowriting, the patrons emulated imperial motifs through a local idiom, in their portrayal of the emperors and the references to the Amazonomachies.462 The composition of the scenes in these two images also echo images of Penthesilea, where Achilles frequently stands over a fallen Penthesilea to deal a final blow.463
Fig. 3.6: Left: Claudius subduing the personified Britannia. From the south portico of the Sebasteion, in Aphrodisias. Right: Nero subduing the personified Armenia. From the south portico of the Sebasteion, in Aphrodisias. Images courtesy of the New York University Excavations at Aphrodisias (G. Petruccioli).
See also Davenport (2020) on the symbolism of the violence in these images. Smith (1988: 57, 65); Alcock (2002: 90–93). Alcock (2002: 93). Ibid.: 93. For example, the Exekias Amphora, c. 540–530 BCE, from Vulci (BM 1836, 0335.127).
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This analysis of the Sebasteion is not a new approach. However, when we ground the Sebasteion in the circulation of conquest imagery, it takes on new significance. The narrative of the reliefs echoes in amazing detail the typical motifs of Roman conquest imagery, demonstrating a deep awareness of Roman images of power. Whatever their cultural inspiration – Hellenistic, Pergamene, Gallic, or others – Romans embraced conquest imagery in all its forms and circulated it throughout their empire on coins and monuments where locals were bound to see it.464 The ethnē reliefs recall Roman depictions of captives, an uncommon motif in Greek art.465 Captives were prevalent on coins, on triumphal friezes such as those from the Temple of Apollo Sosianus or the Arch of Titus, on lamps or statues, on trophy monuments in the provinces, and, in the reliefs from the Sebasteion.466 Indeed, the Sebasteion’s imperial motifs demonstrate how concretely local peoples associated conquest imagery with Roman power. The motifs show that local elites drew upon that visual language of power to articulate their own status within their social networks and negotiated a place for Aphrodisias within the imperial hierarchy by eliding Greek populations from the ethnē reliefs.467 The Greeks, and Aphrodisians, were not to be read as captives, but rather as aligned with the clear demonstration of imperial might in these reliefs. More importantly, perhaps, the Sebasteion reliefs are some of the most explicit depictions of Roman subjugation that have survived. Most of the more violent imagery comes from the provinces, often erected by local elites rather than the Romans.468 Monuments like the Sebasteion, with clear articulations of the violence of conquest, hint at a possible commentary on Roman power. Perhaps in reimagining the typical Roman captive motifs into a more blatant statement of Roman dominion, the Sebasteion was intended as a critique of Roman hegemony since the emperor is the explicit agent of violence against the female captives who personify provinces.469 While it may not have been their intent, the patrons of the Sebasteion created a series of imperial portraits in which the emperors’ violent acts point to Roman subjugation as a whole but also to the violence perpetrated against women in warfare. Ultimately, whatever their intent, the Sebasteion underscores the constant circulation of the Roman language of power and reveals that local elites clearly understood – and could also redeploy – conquest imagery, emphasizing its violence while removing themselves from visually subordinate positions. For the Hellenistic influence, see Hölscher (2004: 23–46). See also Hölscher (1984). De Souza (2011). One example is a Cypriot terracotta lamp from the British Museum (GR 1868 1–10.658) depicting a Roman trophy with a male and female barbarian below. Davenport (2020). The columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius are notable exceptions. Davenport (2020: 100–127) placed the Sebasteion’s reliefs within a larger framework of imagery in the eastern provinces that depicted the Romans as agents of violence – including statues, coins, and terracotta votives – and argued that local elites sought to equate themselves with the Romans rather than as the conquered.
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3.5 Conclusion Overwriting was an overt expression of conquest utilized as the Romans extended their authority over Greek populations. Cowriting, on the other hand, encompassed the visual expressions of status and prestige that characterized the negotiated honorific economy discussed throughout this chapter. Most studies of Roman Greece have focused on the euergetic practices of local elites in the imperial period, scrutinizing their motivations in honoring Roman patrons or examining honorific monuments and portraits for imperial or local influence.470 But separating the imperial period’s honorific economy from the processes that preceded it overlooks the clear insertion of a Roman visual language of power into a Greek landscape, and the ways in which local elites deployed this visual language to carve out new imperial identities for themselves. The Greek euergetic system had to accommodate Roman power, yes, but Roman power was also harnessed to accommodate Greek prestige, as it was in other provinces. The Sebasteion at Aphrodisias reveals exactly why we cannot separate the imperial visual culture from that of its earlier antecedents. Its symbolic power rested on the earlier, highly Romanized visual language of power and on Hellenistic antecedents that influenced Roman iconography and resonated with the local population. When examined alongside the developments in the western provinces, it is clear that local agency was expressed through resistance to and adaptation of Roman conquest imagery and power was negotiated within an increasingly global prestige economy that fulfilled both Roman and local elite needs. Just as elites in Glanum (Gaul) drew on Roman conquest imagery for their civic monuments, so too did the elites of Aphrodisias in Asia Minor. The Roman visual language of power was utilized not only to honor Roman patrons but also to compete for prestige within local social networks. When viewed through that lens, everything from public honorific monuments to portrait statues, from honorary inscriptions to villas and other domestic elite, should be understood as part of the circulation of visual expressions of power in the wake of Roman conquest. While this chapter articulated some of the ways in which Greek and Roman visual culture interacted with and influenced each other in a social world dominated by prestige, it also shed light on the endurance of local idioms in the shift to Roman control. Across the empire, elite life adapted to accommodate, but also to exploit, the Roman visual language of power to speak to and compete for status. While the way in which the Greeks were forced to confront Roman conquest imagery was often differ-
This is not to say that non-elites did not participate in the diffusion of Roman imperial imagery. They were significant consumers of such imagery, but they did not have the wealth or social cachet in most cities to participate in the expensive and public euergetic practices of the local elites. And while most elites were men, we do see the beginnings of female elite euergetic practices in the JulioClaudian period as well, such as in Delos or Pompeii. See, for example, the contributors to Longfellow and Swetnam-Burland (2021).
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ent than in the west – Greeks rarely, for example, had to experience images depicting their own subjugation – they faced Roman power in other forms, particularly through the rampant despoliation of their material culture. That, however, demonstrates just how effectively the Romans could tailor their visual language to regional situations. But at the same time, part of adapting to Roman imperial rule across the empire was learning how to become Roman while fundamentally remaining local at the same time.471
I allude here to Woolf (1994).
Chapter 4 Conquest Kitsch: Moving Iconography from Public to Consumer Contexts Conquest imagery began as a commemoration of military achievements bound up in elite Roman social and political advancement, but by the late Republic it became a prolific, widespread language of power used to convey status in the growing imperial community. While previous chapters have explored how conquest and subsequent interactions with specific conquered peoples shaped that language, Roman hegemony cannot alone explain how conquest imagery became a generic and easily recognizable expression of wealth and prestige across the empire. For non-Roman elites, the Roman general’s military goal – a triumph and future magistracies in Rome – was unobtainable and thus not their goal in utilizing conquest imagery. That did not mean that the social cachet produced through conquest was inaccessible because it was restricted only to Roman generals. Rather, commissioning or owning conquest imagery evolved effectively into a substitute for military achievement as an expression of prestige, so one could, in essence, purchase social cachet. Increased competition forced the Roman prestige system to adapt to incorporate new methods of performing status.472 The triumphal parade had always been a vital source of public display; it was where representations of battles, spoils lists of conquered cities, and the captives themselves were paraded through the city for the viewing pleasure of the Roman spectators.473 While the parades always linked action with image, commemorative architecture accessorized with conquest imagery rendered these transitory moments permanent. But while triumphs brought art, luxury goods, foreign coins, and captives into Rome, it also became increasingly difficult to obtain one.474 The luxury goods pouring into Rome through conquest, however, provided a useful alternative for conveying prestige, and elite social identity was gradually redefined around consumption.475 In doing so, the Romans inadvertently blurred the lines
MacDonald (2018: 164). For the triumph and its imagery, see Beard (2007); Bastien (2007); Brilliant (1999); Holliday (2002); Itgenshorst (2005); Künzl (1988); Östenberg (2009); Pandey (2018: 186). For the ancient viewers’ experience, see Favro (1994, 2014). See Beck et al. (2016); Kuhn (2015); Wallace-Hadrill, (2008). Scholars have emphasized the economic and social aspects of consumption, positing a consumer revolution. See Woolf (1998); Wallace-Hadrill (2008). For the luxury economy and elite collecting habits, see Bartman (1991); Bounia (2004); Evans (2011); Gahtan and Pegazzano (2015); Rutledge (2012). For consumption and consumerism more broadly, see Dietler (2010); Hingley (2005); Walsh (2014). For the imperialist framework for this consumer revolution, see Loar et al. (2018). For more on political communication, see Rosillo-López 2017. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111326634-005
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that had once separated them from elites they had conquered, and wealth became the most important marker of social differentiation rather than citizenship. To understand how conquest imagery could come to encompass everything from triumphal monuments to small intaglios, it is necessary to trace the iconography outlined in the preceding case studies through three forms of conspicuous display: monumentality, domestic spectacle, and luxury consumption. What links these three elements is that that their cultural capital stemmed from their roots in conquest, and thus the spectacle of conquest lurked behind their use.476 Spectacle, once the sole purview of public events, became, essentially, domesticated, when elites extended their status performances into their homes. Once conquest imagery was coupled to domestic space, and therefore no longer linked solely to one’s public role, it was a simple step to further commodify it in the form of small, portable goods such as lamps and jewelry. Consequently, an elite, either Roman or local, could effectively indulge in the outcome of military conquest – depictions of battle, victory, subjugation, and the cultural capital they produced – without ever needing to pick up a sword.
4.1 Purchasing Prestige: Elite Competition and Monumentality As the preceding chapters have established, conquest imagery was not solely an expression of imperial authority, it was just as often a localized articulation of power. Yet when local elites appropriated conquest imagery to express prestige, they still drew upon a shared language that stemmed from Roman dominion over foreign peoples, including themselves. Rome’s imperialist ambitions provided the initial spark for the development and circulation of conquest imagery, lauding wealth and military prowess as defining markers of social status. Thus, we must begin in Rome to ascertain how conquest imagery was transformed into a metonym for prestige across the empire. In Rome, public works projects were intimately tied to elite competition and conquest.477 If Roman magistrates were deemed successful enough military leaders (i.e., seized enough plunder and slaves), then the Senate could vote them a triumph or ovation, which would garner them significant political capital.478 Many generals cemented their newfound prestige by constructing temples or other structures in the city as permanent celebrations of their military prowess.479 These structures served
Welch (2006). See Hölscher (2006). For the triumph, see Beard (2007); Lange and Vervaet (2014). For the frequency of triumphal parades, see Rich (2014). The social pressures to achieve military success are explored in Rosenstein (1990); Pittenger (2009); Clark (2014). For triumphal architecture and public space, see Popkin (2016); Davies (2017). Favro’s hypothetical walk-through of Rome is also a valuable source on the viewer’s experience (1996: 24–41).
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dual purposes: they continuously performed each general’s subjugation of foreign peoples and they also cemented Roman hegemony in viewers’ minds. Roman politics and the social importance of the triumph are well-trod ground, but it is worth reemphasizing that the highly competitive nature of Roman elite society was foundational to the development of conquest imagery. In domestic contexts, the performance of conquest enhanced the social and political cachet a conquering general could earn publicly. A Roman elite male’s status was determined by two overriding factors: could he attain high office and could he equal or exceed the achievements of his ancestors. Roman generals strove for triumphs, even breaking precedents and moral standards in their efforts to achieve one.480 Yet, imperial expansion proved a double-edged sword. It brought numerous opportunities for triumph-hunters while also devaluing the spectacle of individual triumphs as a means of accruing votes. For how would the tortoiseshell tables or purple tapestries you seized on campaign stand out in a sea of such wonders? And how would your triumphal temple be distinctive enough to testify to your achievements when Rome was increasingly crowded with such structures? To achieve distinction, Roman aristocrats increasingly relied on the material wealth generated through conquest. The Roman booty mentality drove a reimagination of domestic space and the role of plunder therein.481 With so many generals erecting triumphal buildings, public architecture no longer provided enough social cachet, and thus domestic space was absorbed into the symbolic topography of the triumph to provide an additional platform for social performance. Plundered art was a popular means of connoting power in both public and domestic contexts. Art’s metaphoric elasticity meant that by entwining the original meaning with new, superimposed Roman cultural values, art was subject to numerous, diverse interpretations that could bolster one’s reputation.482 In public, spoils and the monuments constructed to house them projected a triumphal narrative for the individual general and for Rome itself. Through architecture and artistic display, generals could shape social memory to bolster their claims to victory. Commemorative architecture enhanced the semantic power of conquest imagery by creating an immersive experience that retold conquest narratives. For example, the addition of porticoes controlled the viewer’s experience, making certain architectural elements more visually dominant. By way of illustration, the temples of Jupiter Stator and Juno Regina in Rome were bound by a double portico that forced the viewer’s eye to the temples and their decoration, cutting off their view of the rest of the city. The viewers’ experience, therefore, was focused on the visual narration of the
For example, the case of L. Licinius Lucullus’ attack on Cauca in 151 BCE (App. Ib. 51–55; 59–60) or the massacre of the Lusitanians by Ser. Sulpicius Galba in 150 BCE (App. Ib. 59). Welch (2006). Cult statues, for example, retained an element of their original pious function, but once removed from a temple or sanctuary and taken to Rome, that piety was overlaid with clear assertions of Roman power and values such as virtus and auctoritas. See Liverani (2014: 73).
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patron’s achievements.483 Through ongoing performance, these images aided Roman generals in achieving high office, at times even literally, as in the case of one former general who earned a consulship by standing in the forum each day next to an image he had commissioned to offer details about his exploits to passersby.484 At the same time, these buildings were part of a wider spatial dialogue created with nearby triumphal monuments so that a triumphal procession or even a walk through the city visually narrated the history of Roman dominance.485 That constructed narrative governed how subject peoples were understood and remembered within Roman visual culture. Triumphal reliefs and paintings froze foreign peoples in a permanent moment of subjugation that transcended any future changes in their status, such as earning citizenship. Triumphal iconography also drew foreign territories into Rome, acting as physical representations of people, events, and places that could not otherwise be present for the viewer.486 Captives, though, were omnipresent in Rome. They were not only inscribed into the visual landscape but they also provided the city’s slave labor and even helped produce many of the monuments, sculptures, and coins that reified their subjugation.487 Captives were, consequently, the most frequent conquest image in both public architecture and the prestige economy. Material evidence from the provinces demonstrates that elites across the empire were enveloped in the same intense wave of monumental self-expression that Roman elites were, albeit slightly later outside Italy.488 For the non-Roman elite, using the conquest-based visual culture declared that they were members of a powerful and growing international elite and allowed them to differentiate themselves from those they saw as social inferiors. It is important to stress that local elites in the provinces did not construct Roman buildings or art because the Romans required it of them. Rather, they employed a visual language that they had internalized as an expression of power thanks to the ubiquitous presence of conquest images on Roman monuments and coins. Yet, we must be
This complex focused on the exploits of Q. Caecilius Metellus (cos. 146), whose victories in Macedonia over Andriscus earned him a triumph. The complex was decorated with a plundered equestrian statue group, originally commissioned by Alexander the Great and housed at the sanctuary of Zeus in Dion until Metellus seized them during his military campaign. He also dedicated an ivory statue of Jupiter by Pasiteles in the Temple of Jupiter Stator (Plin. HN 36.4). Vell. Pat. (1.11.2–7) described the double portico and the Temple of Juno Regina (1.1.3). See also Vitruvius 3.2.5; Livy 39.2.1, 40.52.1. L. Hostilius Mancinus reportedly exhibited a painting of Carthage with references to his martial contributions – rather than those of his more famous colleague Scipio Aemilianus – and would stand by it in the forum each day to help explain what viewers saw (Plin. HN 35.23). Popkin (2016). See also Favro (1996). Hölscher (2018: 4–10) asserted that Roman visual culture drew the past, the geographically distant, and the foreign into the present space of the Roman viewer and forced the viewer to confront them. For Roman visuality, see Elsner (2007). See also Kuttner (1999) on Pompey’s triumphal space as a museum. Amy Richlin (2018a: 169–193) emphasized the importance of human cargo in Rome’s “cargo culture.” For Italy, see Wallace-Hadrill (2008). For the provinces, see Keay (1995); Goodman (2007); Anderson (2013); Kuhn (2015); and Zuiderhoek (2009).
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careful not to read these structures as a signal that local elites had shed their indigenous identities in favor of being Roman; one could be Roman and Greek while also still being a Gaul or Iberian.489 Roman visual culture in fact mixed with existing conceptions of prestige and merely intensified the role of ostentatious display in expressing social status.490 Monumentality and luxury consumption allowed local elites to create coherent visual messages that signaled their aesthetic taste, cultural knowledge, and kinship with other elites in the empire. Furthermore, cowriting allowed local elites to adapt, resist, and deploy Roman imagery for their own needs. Roman Gaul is an excellent example of how monumentality and luxury consumption performed status in non-Roman elite societies. The infrastructure and architecture of Gallo-Roman cities such as Glanum (St. Remy-de-Provence), Vasio (Vaison-la-Romaine), and Arelate (Arles) reflected the cultural aspirations of their elites. The redesign of an existing city on the scale performed in southern Gallic cities in the first century CE required both wealth and civic cooperation and therefore demonstrated an elite desire to embrace the new visual culture circulating through the Mediterranean.491 Many of these cities mimicked Roman political infrastructures, added new temples and cults, and decorated their urban centers with euergetic public monuments like fountains, theaters, and victory monuments.492 The urbanization of Roman Gaul may seem to be a wholesale adoption of Roman culture, but urbanization varied, demonstrating that this was neither a systematic process nor a top-down imposition from Rome.493 Glanum had been caught up in one of the last Gallic revolts against Roman hegemony in 90 BCE and much of the town was destroyed.494 Under Augustus, the city prospered again, eventually achieving colonial status.495 As part of this renaissance, they embellished the city with commemorative monuments, including an altar, a fountain, and a trapezoidal portico. While only fragments survive, one part of the altar’s frieze depicted a bound and nude captive, kneeling with a pile of weapons, which included the typical Gallic-coded shield from Roman trophies.496 Nearby, a fountain was embellished with two statues of bound male captives kneeling beside breastplates (cuirasses). Their bodies were posed around a central trophy and above them was a frieze of Gallic weapons.497 Thus in the heart of their city, near the most indicative aspects of Roman power – the forum and the imperial cult – the citizens of Wallace-Hadrill (2008: 6). Woolf (1998: 7–16). Woolf (1998); Goodman (2007). See Nicholson (1996); Goodman (2007); Gassner (1966); Kleiner (1973). Woolf (1998: 106–141). Livy Per. 73.10. This may also be when Entremont was destroyed. CIL XII, 4379; Plin. NH 3.37. Kleiner (1973: 388). These weapons friezes were popularized in Pergamum and appeared in Gaul after Caesar’s conquest thanks to Roman colonists (Kleiner 1973: 388). However, they also appear commonly on Roman coins depicting Gallic captives before that date, and since the citizens of Glanum paid for and erected
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Glanum inscribed their new civic status onto the landscape by embracing the Roman visual language of power. While the chronology of this urban renewal, coming in the wake of both a revolt and a Roman civil war, might suggest either that the patrons were Roman colonists or that the patrons were keen to redefine themselves as Romans by constructing wholly Roman monuments, neither suggestion fully explains the decorative scheme of Glanum’s monuments. The trapezoidal portico, for example, had decorative heads that provide clear continuity with traditional Gallic headhunting displays from Roquepertuse, Entremont, and pre-Roman Glanum itself.498 This does not mean that Roman conquest did not impact Gallic society or identity. Roman hegemony imposed numerous burdens, including seizing land, and plunder, as well as levying troops and supplies for Roman armies.499 This burden was even more significant for societies that expressed their status through ostentatious display.500 For the Gallic elite, their place in the empire was mediated by their prominent role in an imperial visual language, where the Gallic body represented “a privileged site of cultural conflict.”501 As subdued captives, Gallic peoples were paraded across Roman triumphal media, especially coins and monumental reliefs. So, for Gallic elites, embracing Roman visual culture meant confronting a narrative in which their own people figured prominently as subject peoples.502 How they confronted that narrative reveals the degree to which they had internalized the Roman visual language as an expression of power and prestige. We cannot ignore, therefore, the ongoing confrontation that local peoples may have had with imagery that signaled both their prestige and their ancestral subjugation. Possibly because of that ongoing confrontation, local elites drew upon a wide range of existing visual systems for expressing prestige, of which Roman visual culture was one option. In other words, we do not see a wholesale erasure of indigenous visual culture or of alternative visual systems.503 Rather, we see that on an individual level elites utilized what resonated most with them or the audience they wanted to reach, such as in the combination of captives and decapitated heads at Glanum. With cult places, for example, we see that indigenous structures were often remodeled, but not always solely along Roman lines. At sanctuary sites in the southern Iberian Peninsula, such as Cerro de los Santos (Albacete), La Encarnación (Murcia), and La Luz (Murcia), the remodeling drew on both Greek and Italic monumental styles to articulate indigenous ritual practices.504 these triumphal monuments, it required widespread civic support and thus should not be seen solely as a veteran monument. Frakes (2005: 171). Woolf (1998: 41). Woolf (1998: 42). Woolf (2009: 180). Amy Richlin (2018a: 169–193) also discussed the concept of the captive body being a form of cargo and appropriation. See also Richlin (2018b). Ferris (2011). Such as Hellenistic or Punic. Jiménez (2011: 507).
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Two other sacred spaces in southern Iberia, Torreparedones and the sanctuary of the Collado de los Jardines in the Despeñaperros, drew on Punic models, again demonstrating that local peoples had a range of material cultures from which to choose to evoke status and identity.505 Similarly, cult statues at Cerro de los Santos acquired Romano-Italic embellishments, such as togas, but they were expressed within indigenous models, such as human images on cylindrical stones or animal sculptures.506 One scholar argued that the “bilingualism” of such statues allowed both locals and Roman settlers to commission local artists to create statues that reflected their tastes.507 The evidence from Rome, Gaul, and Iberia demonstrates that monumentality was a key component in elite self-expression, but it also reveals that conquest imagery accrued additional vocabulary and meanings in new social contexts. It became part of the cowriting process, adding layers of ambiguity to the foundational expression of Roman dominion over foreign enemies. Depending on context, this imagery could signify anything from commemoration of municipal status to a conscious multilingual representation of an individual’s layered identities.508 Yet, as in Rome, public architecture was not always enough to raise an elite man’s status above his peers. Thus, while monumentality was a necessary component of self-representation, elite social performances also occurred in domestic spaces. Domestic space was another facet of public performance in Rome and in the provinces, becoming yet another platform for commensuration between Roman and local, because both the architecture itself and the art it housed reflected one’s wealth. And within those semi-private spaces, conquest imagery and prestige items expressed social position, cultural knowledge, and aesthetic taste.
4.2 Conquest and Domestic Spectacle: Luxury Consumption as Elite Self-Expression Conquest imagery was one component of a larger process of transforming elite selfrepresentation from an emphasis on martial and political achievements to a broader focus on luxury consumption.509 What we see in the provinces is a prolonged mediation between Roman and local cultures as indigenous peoples negotiated their role in an im-
Ibid.: 508. Ibid.: 508. Rodríguez Oliva (1996: 14; 2001–2002: 308). For example, the second-century CE monument of Gaius Julius Antiochus Epiphanes Philopappos in Athens blended Roman and Hellenistic styles to proclaim both his service as suffect consul under Trajan and his descent from Antiochus IV, the last king of Commagene. As Smith noted, Philopappos’ choice to depict himself wearing a Greek himation in the honorific portrait but a Roman toga in the main frieze encompassed the “opposite poles of the second-century dress-code” (1998: 72). See Welch (2006); Wallace-Hadrill (2008).
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perial world. Roman material culture was easily adapted to reify local, hierarchal social relationships. One of the most characteristic methods of expressing that prestige was customizing domestic spaces; in the first century BCE and the first two centuries CE Roman domestic styles proliferated in the provinces, expressed through local mediums. Villas were particularly syncretic, blending Hellenistic luxury homes, Roman conceptions of natural settings and decorative schemes, and indigenous style and craftsmanship.510 While the spread of domestic architectural styles does not at first glance seem rooted in anything related to conquest imagery, it was an essential part of the narrative. First, Roman villa culture itself developed in the cultural milieu of conquest, with the first villas appearing in the second century BCE but increasing significantly in the first century BCE.511 In other words, domestic space was yet another form of luxury consumption. And second, domestic space served as the backdrop for the display of luxury consumables and was a performative space for elite self-representation. The first centuries BCE and CE witnessed increasing commensuration in urban and domestic architecture across the Mediterranean. These were by no means carbon copies of an idealized Roman model.512 Rather, material evidence suggests a gradual process by which existing structures were monumentalized and adapted to add new, sometimes Roman, features. Rural farms, for example, were gradually augmented to add more villa-style architectural features, such as porticos, tiled roofs, wings, and courtyards.513 A similar process of commensuration occurred in townhouses. The so-called House of Sulla in Glanum, dating to the mid-to-late first century BCE, had frescoes in the Pompeian Second Style of wall painting, a style rife in Italian houses in the same period and into the first century CE.514 However, the house itself was designed using local measurements and construction techniques.515 Similarly, the design of the Maison au Dauphin (c. 40–30 BCE) in Vasio reflected a negotiation between local and Roman social needs. One of the earliest examples of Roman-style pri-
Marzano and Métraux (2018: 19) argue that Roman villa culture was not born solely from Hellenistic antecedents, but rather also evolved from Etruscan precedents, such as the Auditorium Villa in Rome that was occupied c. 500–300 BCE (Terrenato 2001). And Zarmakoupi (2018: 85–86) argued that the incorporation of the natural setting into the villa’s design was a particularly Roman characteristic. Howe (2018: 101). See also Zarmakoupi (2014). Research has shown that identifying any sort of standardized town plan that was reproduced elsewhere is quite difficult. See, for example, Keay (1995); de Ligt and Bintliff (2020); Parkins et al. (1997); Goodman (2007). We see this, for example, in the pre-Roman Gallic farms at Gremecy (Moselle region) and La Grangette (Narbonne) in France, at Druten in the Netherlands, at Varignano Vecchio near La Spezia in northern Italy, and in the southern Iberian Peninsula, among other places. Villas also proliferated in northern Italy, with elites from Brixia (Brescia) and Verona establishing villas near Lake Garda, those from Mediolanum (Milan) constructing homes in the Brianza region, and still others – including emperors – preferring Lake Como (Brogiolo and Chavarría Arnau 2018: 179). Clarke (1991); Ling (1991). Anderson (2013: 32).
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vate architecture in southern Gaul, it had a porticoed garden emblematic of Roman private display.516 The Dauphin’s portico, however, utilized a different axial plan and therefore was not structured around the Roman social performance of the salutatio.517 Houses such as the House of Sulla or the Maison au Dauphin indicate that Gallic elites not only embraced Roman public monumental display, discussed above, but also transformed their homes into tableaux for luxury display. Roman houses, and the material culture that went with them, were “highly exportable” and easily adaptable.518 So, beginning with the late first century BCE, we should speak of a Mediterraneanwide prestige economy rather than one that is distinctly Roman. Indeed, villas were just as idiosyncratic in local contexts as other manifestations of the language of power. Gallo-Roman villas in southern France, for example, have no standardized plans, whereas in Hispania, peristyle villas predominated.519 Villas and townhomes appeared in southern France, northern Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, Greece, Macedonia, Epirus, and elsewhere.520 Most grew out of existing farms and fortified settlements, suggesting that the scale and richness of architectural style and interior decoration appealed to an established local elite. Despite the villa’s association with Roman culture, we must be careful not to ascribe Roman-motivated acculturation to their popularity.521
For more on Roman gardens, see Jashmenski (1979, 1993); MacDougall (1987); Hartswick (2004). Some scholars have argued that the axial alignment of the peristyle garden with the atrium, where the salutatio occurred, was a display of dominance since clients would be able to get glimpses of the gardens but not enter them. Gallo-Roman elites would be more likely to be clients in that relationship, so their houses would not reflect this social practice. For more on the social function and design of Roman houses, see Hales (2003); Wallace-Hadrill (1994). For the Maison au Dauphin, see Goudineau (1979). The contributors to Hales and Hodos (2010) explore the relationship between material culture and social identity. Papaioannou (2018: 328). Buffat (2018: 233). See also Teichner (2018: 240–242, 246). Buffat identified some of the early villas as built by Italian colonists based on the presence of Italic material culture. This feels a bit overgeneralized since many people from diverse backgrounds bought what the author is terming Italic goods, and even Italic is a bit of a loose term. See, for example, the estates at Paliomanna, Mieza, and Baltaneto in Roman Macedonia; Ladochori, Masklenitsa, Strongyli, Hagia Pelagia, and Valanidia in Roman Epirus; the houses at Pano Magoula, Cheliotomylos, Kastro Kalithea, and at other sites near Corinth, Sparta, and Patras in Roman Greece; the estates of Els Ametllers, La Llosa, Els Tolegassos, and Torre Lauder in Hispania Tarraconensis, and Courelas de Antas, Carrion, Sao Cucufate, and Milreu in southwestern Hispania; and in France, villa examples include Plassac (Gironde), Montmaurin, Seviac, Chiragan, Saint-Michel de Lescar (Pyrénées-Atlantiques), and Lamarque (Tarn-et-Garonne). These villas date from roughly the first century BCE through the third century CE. For more on these villas, see Marzano and Métraux (2018). Maria Papaioannou, for example, asserted that Romanization did not adequately encompass the phenomenon, and rather the spread of villa culture and the related material culture should be understood as synoecism (“living together”), in other words a shared process (2018: 329; Papaioannou 2016). Synoecism, which I have absorbed into the term cowriting, is often used to afford the Eastern Mediterranean a privileged status, and indeed Papaioannou explicitly linked this process to Roman Greece, arguing that it was different from what is evident in the western provinces (2016: 39). And yet, the
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Across the Mediterranean, the consumer revolution rendered prestige a tangible, visible element of both public and domestic spaces.522 Domestic space was itself a performative backdrop in which elites could reify social relationships.523 It was linked to conquest imagery first through the semi-public nature of Roman houses and the display of objects associated with victory in those spaces. Ownership of luxury materials that were, at one time, paraded in Roman triumphs also helped link conquest and consumption. The movement of peoples around the Mediterranean – both voluntarily and forcibly – also facilitated the spread of this consumer culture.
4.3 Conquest Connoisseurs: Performing Status and Identity with Conquest Iconography The cultural cachet of luxury consumption encouraged the development of a colonialelite consumer culture rooted in conquest. Elite identities coalesced around luxury consumption in part because the social performances expected of elites were increasingly commensurate across Mediterranean cultures. Ostentatious display, rewarding subordinates, and consumption were key elements of numerous elite cultures. This helps illustrate why conquest imagery and elite fashion became so remarkably unified across the empire. Once the triumph and martial prowess became something one could effectively purchase – albeit in the distilled form of artistic mimicry – Roman visual culture broadened and became more accessible. The triumphal parade was limited because of its logistical restrictions; it could only, technically, be granted by the Roman Senate. Furthermore, Rome was no longer the fulcrum for disseminating the shared visual language since the provinces became centers of production.524 Understanding this shift allows us to situate the spread of conquest imagery from monumental architecture to coins to other portable consumables within a broader identity negotiation occurring across the Mediterranean. Conquest imagery in the Late Republic and Early Empire no longer served solely, or even primarily, as a commemoration of Roman military expansion. Rather, it reified social hierarchies and reflected fashion, advertising and cementing one’s membership in the imperial community. Furthermore, fixed monuments had a limited audience, were expensive, and
archaeological evidence demonstrates that a similar process occurred in both halves of the empire, even if it did not always produce a similar result. Papaioannou (2007: 352), for example, argued that the presence of portraiture in domestic contexts in Greece stemmed from the Roman tradition of displaying ancestor busts and masks in the atrium. See Flower (1996) for ancestor masks. Hales (2003); Bartman (1991). Much of the popular terra sigillata pottery, for example, was produced in southern Gaul, though manufacturers were also located in Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, and elsewhere. See Sciau et al. (2020).
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were not portable. Small objects did not have such restrictions, which helps explain how conquest imagery shifted from monumental and luxurious, and therefore expensive, media such as public architecture, sculpture, and wall decoration, to smaller materials that were both cheaper to produce and easier to circulate and own.525 Portable goods were, of course, not solely linked to conquest imagery. The variety in consumer iconography was staggering, but one of the more ubiquitous genres drew directly from the visual language of power. One of the earliest examples of the overt commodification of conquest imagery – transforming images of conquest into something that expressed fashion or taste – was the appearance of both captured weaponry and representations of captured weaponry in domestic contexts. Roman domestic display of captured weaponry and representations of arms dated from at least the fourth century BCE.526 Literary descriptions attest to the increasing presence of spoils in domestic contexts in the Republican period, particularly on house façades, or in atriums or vestibules.527 Captured arms were already taking on a more aesthetic quality in Rome from the early third century BCE and were valued as both a representation of violence and a form of decoration.528 And in the first centuries BCE and CE, the display of arms and objects that emulated war booty appeared in the provinces as well.529 Conquest narratives took on numerous forms in domestic contexts from paintings of mythological scenes, allegorical references, and historical scenes to the mimicry of coin or monumental iconography to decorative arms friezes.530 While they overtly referenced military victory, the decorative purpose of these representations simultaneously
Neither did coinage, which is one reason it became a critical component of circulating conquest imagery. Its minting might be controlled, but once coins entered circulation, the moneyers had no control over how those who used the coins interpreted the visual messages. Welch (2006: 102–105) noted that triumphal generals in the late third and early second centuries BCE used their homes to house “art collections” composed of their spoils seized from campaigns in the Hellenistic East. Polito (1998: 264) traced the appearance of arms motifs from the fourth century BCE in Greek and Roman contexts. He argued that the practice of displaying physical weapons and representations of weapons were parallel developments. Besides references to specific generals who displayed plunder in their homes, there are other generic references to the private display of spoils being customary practice, such as in Polybius (6.39.10), Livy (23.23.4–7), Pliny (HN 35.2.7), and Suetonius (Nero 38.2). Livy, for example, mentioned the Samnite spoils paraded by L. Papirius Cursor in his triumph in 294, which were admired for their “splendor and beauty” and used as decoration in public space (10.46.7–8). There are visual references to equestrian statues likely associated with triumphs, in a fresco depicting the Forum of Pompeii and in the Praedia of Julia Felix (Reg. II, Ins 4, 3–12). References to the Trojan War and mythological heroes were prevalent. They could, however, have layered interpretations, including reflecting on the Roman conquest of the Greeks. Pesando (2002: 250–251), for example, suggested that the Theseus and the Minotaur scene in the House of the Labyrinth was an allegory for the Roman victory over the Samnites since the Samnites were often associated with steers. And perhaps the most famous martial motif is the Alexander Mosaic from the House of the Faun, in Pompeii, depicting Alexander the Great in battle against the Persian king Darius. A small carnelian intaglio possibly depicting Alexander was also found in the house (Pesando 2002: 238).
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divorced them from their violent origins. In the Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum, for example, there is a vaulted stucco ceiling with a frieze of weapons (Fig. 4.1).531 The frieze includes 14 shields, nine helmets, a breastplate, greaves, a double axe, a quiver, swords, and spears.532 These weapons make both western (Gallic, Roman) and eastern (Amazonian gorytos) references, paralleling similar commensuration in conquest iconography. The arms frieze also mimics similar friezes from the porticoes of the sanctuary of Athena Polias in Pergamum.533 The weapons frieze had numerous parallels in both public and private imagery in Rome that were popularized in the late Republic.534 A wall painting from a first-century BCE house in Pompeii depicted two trophies, one of which had Gallic weaponry piled around the base, while the other had weaponry that was more identifiably eastern at its base.535 Both the arms frieze in the Villa dei Papiri and the painting in Pompeii are dated to roughly 40–25 BCE, hinting at the increasing popularity of martial imagery in domestic contexts in the late Republic. That they were retained through later phases of construction indicates that the imagery remained fashionable in the early imperial period.536 The arms frieze became one of the most prolific motifs in visual culture, appearing on victory monuments, tombs, in houses, on public, commemorative monuments, and on small finds. Examples abound of the tumultuous tumble of weapons becoming both an ambiguous symbol of power and a decoration.537 At the same time, these arms friezes perpetuated stereotypes about conquered peoples, standardizing the association between their weapons and their ethnicity, even at a time when many people who descended from conquered Iberians, Gauls, and Macedonians themselves served in Roman armies and no longer carried the weapons. Such imagery was also increasingly commercialized.538 And, of course, some of the primary consumers were those very same descendants.
Room I, Villa dei Papiri. We also see a few shields – both as portraits and weapons – in the Villa at Oplontis. The Ilion Sanctuary in Pompeii also has a stucco frieze (c. 40–30 BCE) that illustrate scenes from the Trojan War. Guidobaldi and Esposito (2010: 40). See Polito (1998: 21–189) for numerous examples. Though, the choice of stucco is quite rare and seems to underscore the domestic nature of the arms frieze. There is another frieze of painted weapons at the Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii dated to c. 80 BCE, as well as in the House of the Trojan Sacellum, also in Pompeii. See Polito (1998: 127–129, 131). See also Guidobaldi and Esposito (2010: 40). Ferris (2000: 170–171); Charles-Picard (1957: 220–224). Guidobaldi and Esposito noted that the arms frieze was in a room that was in the process of being renovated but remained incomplete at the time of the eruption (2010: 42–44). We see, for example, an arms frieze at Pietrabbondante, a tufa frieze from Cuma now in the Naples Archaeological Museum, friezes for Domitian in the Domus Flavia on the Palatine, and even a simple one of two crossed shields from Vindobona (Vienna), of first-century CE date. There is also an unidentified Roman weapons frieze of unknown date and origin, complete with a carnyx, in the Casa de Pilatos in Sevilla, Spain. One example is a first-century CE glass relief fragment in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, no. 17.194.369. There is also a notable example of a trophy image on a terracotta antefix from c. 40–70
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Fig. 4.1: First-century CE stucco frieze of weapons, Villa dei Papiri. Image courtesy of Herculaneum in Pictures. Photo by Michael Binns. With permission from the Ministero della Cultura – Parco Archeologico di Ercolano.
4.4 The Fashion for Barbarians: From Literal Reflections to Metaphorical Interpretations The commercialization of captive imagery both reflected the popularity of Gallic motifs and helped cement barbarian captives as a trope within Roman consumer culture. It is perhaps unsurprising that people within the Roman Empire consumed images of barbarian captives – those that coded Gallic or otherwise. The empire was dominated by a culture that historically revered martial prowess and triumphal celebration. As such, the presence of conquest imagery in consumer contexts makes sense. The Romans had always visually consumed conquest – by watching triumphal parades and by viewing and owning objects stamped with conquest imagery. And through the continual consumption of such imagery, conquest became something that could also be represented metaphorically. But what is perhaps most remarkable is the enduring legacy of the visual tropes of Gallic peoples: the combination of bound captive, shield, and trophy. The popularity of such imagery took it from public, honorific contexts into the home, and then back out again in the form of architectural decoration and small, portable objects that serve both public and private functions.
CE made in Italy (BM 1805.0703.419). It shows Victory standing on a globe holding up a trophy that holds two shields and two spears. Two capricorns flank the globe, a clear Augustan reference.
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The now-familiar coupling of trophy and captive detailed on numerous Roman coins is perhaps the most common conquest image-type from the Republican period, and its Gallic references are evident in part of a terracotta frieze from an entablature found in Italy (Fig. 4.2).539 The relief is a Gallic trophy – denoted by the carnyces and horned helmet – and at the trophy’s base sit a partially nude and chained male captive facing away, and a seated, mourning female captive.540 In cases such as these, captive bodies were essentially stamped onto the Roman house, suspending captive bodies in a moment of performative defeat. Thus, the domus mirrored the popular triumphal friezes and victory monuments that littered the city of Rome and the wider empire. In this way, captive bodies, much as with their living counterparts, became something decorative and consumable: easily made, easily broken, and easily replaceable.
Fig. 4.2: Terracotta relief depicting a trophy, a bound male prisoner, and a veiled female prisoner in a position of mourning. Image courtesy of the Ministero della cultura – Museo Nazionale Romano, photographer Giorgio Carnel e Luciano Mandato.
While arms friezes and captive reliefs were a frequent form of domestic architectural decoration, they were far surpassed by ubiquitous small finds such as terra sigillata ceramics, fibulae (brooches), lamps, jewelry, glass, terracotta reliefs, and intaglios that
These terracotta reliefs are frequently called Campana reliefs. See Ferris (2000: 168–169). The relief refers to images such as that seen on RRC 468/1.
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contained conquest imagery.541 Intaglios preserve remarkable evidence of the reproduction of conquest iconography and demonstrate the increasing accessibility of conquest imagery as an expression of identity beyond elite circles. While some intaglios and other rings were quite expensive, paste intaglios were cheaper, mass-produced, and in fact sometimes even used coins as molds. In doing so, they, along with the coins on which they were based, facilitated the circulation of standardized visual references to conquest.542 Coins with portraits of Pompey or Caesar, for example, were used to express loyalty to one side in the civil war.543 Even Mithridates Eupator, the perennial foe of the Romans in the 80s BCE, was represented. These intaglios were likely part of a wave of fashionable objects that circulated around the western provinces and Italy after Pompey’s triumph over Mithridates.544 They provide unambiguous evidence of the connection between conquest imagery and fashion. As discussed in Chapter 1, the deeply entrenched tropes about Gallic warriors were among the most enduring elements of conquest imagery. Through commodification, blatant references to the subjugation and enslavement of Gallic peoples became expressions of fashion and aesthetic taste. Indeed, participating in subjugation, even if tangentially through artistic references, was essentially part of what it meant to be Roman, so it makes sense that visual references to such subjugation became fashionable. There was also remarkable continuity in the popularity of particular image-types. Two image-types deserve further consideration. First is the Gallic portrait. Images of wild-haired, mustachioed Gallic barbarians were quite popular in Roman art. One intaglio, for example, borrows the Gallic portrait from the denarius of L. Hostilius Saserna from 48 BCE discussed in Chapter 1, one of the most remarkable references to Gallic subjugation ever produced on a coin (Fig. 4.3).545 What is particularly striking about this intaglio is that it was not a simple one-to-one copy of the coin that could arguably be produced without much consideration for the image itself. Rather, the artist in fact changed the size of the shield that sits behind the bust of the Gallic captive on the coin’s obverse and changed the hair, imitating the forelock that portraiture of Alexander the Great popularized.546 The end result was a unique portrait that referenced conquest im-
For more on the small finds, see Webster (2001: 209–225); Woolf (1998: 169–205). For changes in settlement patterns and urbanization, see Goodman (2007); Nouvel (2011). Liv Yarrow identified four categories of paste intaglios: (1) portraiture, (2) images used to express partisanship toward Roman commanders, (3) Roman iconography, and (4) female deities associated with trade and commerce (2018: 35). Though Yarrow (2018: 38–39) noted that the sheer variety makes individual attribution difficult, and perhaps we should view these coins more as communities “taking the portrait as a shared symbol.” Other coins utilized included gold Ptolemaic coins. Yarrow (2018: 40). Figure 1.8, top. Yarrow (2018: 41).
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Fig. 4.3: Glass paste intaglio from the first century BCE–second century CE. Image © Trustees of the British Museum, inv. no. 1814.0704.2515.
agery while also paying homage to the growing fashion for Hellenistic portraiture spurred by Roman victories in the East.547 The second image-type to explore is the trophy tableau, which remained incredibly popular until at least the third century CE with remarkably little variation in style.548 One clay relief, dated to approximately the first century BCE to the early first century CE, invokes the standardized trophy tableau discussed in previous chapters (Fig. 4.4). It shows a victorious general crowned by Victory, a kneeling female figure – likely personifying a province – and a trophy holding two oblong shields on each arm, capped with a horned helmet, and with two bound captives seated below. This simple clay relief is thought to perhaps represent the founding of a town or colony and may have come from a public context, though its exact provenance is debated.549 It is remarkably consistent in the style of its trophy tableau to the denarius coinage produced to honor Caesar’s conquest of Gaul in the mid-40s BCE.550 The appearance of such similar images on different media and in different contexts reinforces that coinage played a critical role in diffusing and standardizing particular image-types.551
We can see that fashion for Hellenistic portraiture in the sculptural busts in the Villa dei Papiri, for example. See Pandermalis (1971). The Severan period produced numerous examples of conquest imagery that mimicked older styles, so much so that several monuments in France that once were dated to the Julio-Claudian period have been proposed as Severan. See Walter (1993); Anderson (2013). Adam (1994: 44, n. 87). The most overt connection is to RRC 468/1, minted by Caesar c. 46/45 BCE (Fig. 1.9), which has a male and female bound captive. We also have seen the pairing of captives and trophies appear in monumental reliefs and on other coins. For example, the British Museum houses a lamp, c. 70–100 CE, possibly from Corfu, which shows a barbarian couple seated on either side of a trophy, mirroring the same trope produced ad nauseum in Roman visual culture. See Ferris (2000: 175, 148–177).
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Fig. 4.4: Clay relief from the c. mid-to-late first century BCE or early first century CE, found on the Via Cassia. Image courtesy of the Ministero della cultura – Museo Nazionale Romano, photographer Giorgio Carnel e Luciano Mandato.
Conquest imagery percolated through numerous different genres of fashion, including lamps, intaglios, and even roofing revetments.552 As with the clay relief above, there was a marked preference for the types of tropes first depicted in reference to Gallic subjugation, though trophies in general remained the most popular expression of conquest imagery, particularly to be reimagined with new conquests, such as against the Dacians and Parthians.553 Commodification aided the popularization of conquest tropes, transforming, for example, the once overtly Gallic reference of a male and female bound captive beneath a trophy into a somewhat generic reference to conquest that served the needs of this foundation story. Indeed, bound captives and trophies, had, by the mid-first century BCE, become more statements of fashion that reflected imperial identity than representations of specific military victories. We see, for example, a second- to first-century BCE intaglio depicting a bound captive seated beneath a trophy (Fig. 4.5). This intaglio departed from precedent by emphasizing the bound captive, making him significantly larger than the trophy that looms behind him. While the captive seems to have long hair, it
Other examples of trophy intaglios from the British Museum include Victory standing between two trophies (1923.0401.641); generic trophies (no. 1814.0704.2254; no. 1814.0704.2264); a cuirass trophy (1814.0704.2245); and a trophy paired with a plumed helmet (1814.0704.2259). We also see trophies appear on glass, such as a plaque fragment from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which depicts a trophy, standard, and possibly a carnyx (no. 17.194.359). Perhaps the most famous example, though, is the Gemma Augustea (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Antikensammlung IXa 79), on which in the second register, Roman soldiers are in the process of erecting a trophy, and the male and female captive are shown first being led to the trophy and then seated beneath it, with the male bound. The Parthians were treated similarly to Gauls and attached to trophies, for example, a coin of Septimius Severus (RIC IV, 1, no. 176) which duplicated the style of Caesar’s RRC 468/1. The Parthians’ hats served as their ethnic marker. A remarkable gem from the Roman period in the British Museum depicts a bound Parthian captive (BM 1996.0430.1). See also the so-called Parthian monument (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Antikensammlung I.866).
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Fig. 4.5: Convex oval brown glass paste intaglio, c. second–first century BCE. Image © Trustees of the British Museum, inv. no. 1814.0704.2656.
Fig. 4.6: Terracotta lamp, c. early first century CE, depicting a Gallic horseman carrying a shield. Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 2017.452.
does not closely follow Gallic styles, and it is difficult, and ultimately unnecessary, to read a specific ethnic marker into the image because its style clearly indicates the pervasiveness of this trope, but it nevertheless echoes the prevalent Gallic image-type.
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The provenance of many of these small finds, especially intaglios and lamps, can only be speculated. This ambiguity reinforces just how ubiquitous conquest imagery had become in Mediterranean-wide visual cultures. Similarly, their dating is also difficult to deduce, as conquest imagery, particularly of captives and trophies, was remarkably static through the imperial period. Distinguishing between representations of trophies and captives of Julio-Claudian, Trajanic, Hadrianic, or Severan origin is remarkably difficult due to their continuity.554 Commodification in fact only reified visual stereotypes of conquered peoples. There are numerous examples of small statues depicting bound and captive Gauls which perpetuate the stereotypes discussed in Chapter 1.555 Among the numerous examples, one stands out for its distinction from the subjugated captive trope. It is a terracotta oil lamp depicting a Gallic warrior, dated stylistically to the early first century CE (Fig. 4.6). The horseman is nude from the waist up and has the long, wild hair that is characteristic of Roman representations of Gallic warriors. He is carrying a long, oblong shield of the type common on mannequin trophies, and wears a torque around his neck. The lamp’s imagery clearly reflects the stereotypes of Gallic warriors that circulated through both literature and art in the Republican period.556 Such imagery demonstrates how deeply entrenched the subjugation of foreign peoples, particularly Gauls, was in Roman material culture.
4.5 Conclusion The commodification of conquest imagery occurred in two distinct forms. The first was the decorative schemata in the structure of domestic spaces, such as in architectural decoration or in wall paintings. The second was the reproduction or adaptation of conquest iconography in other media, such as glass intaglios. The commodification of conquest imagery reflects its growing appropriation beyond elite circles. Once such images were widely portable and available in cheaper materials, the stranglehold that elites had on the production of those images ceased. Conquest imagery was now widely accessible and became a way for anyone to participate in what was, essentially, the business of empire: the glorification of hegemony. The reimagination of conquest imagery traced in this chapter was influenced by the complex redistribution of power that reshaped Rome with the establishment of the Principate. Conquest imagery originated in elaborate competitive spectacles between Republican generals seeking political power. Yet, as expansion broadened their access to the conquest-triumph process, it also undermined the social cachet of the
In fact, many of the tropes, both visual and written, of barbarians were translated into Byzantine culture as well. See Grünbart (2018); Wharton (1988). For example, a small statuette of a half-nude and bound Gaul (BM 1859.1126.1); and another small bronze that evokes the Dying Gaul motif (BM 1772.0302.15.1). For example, consider the pose of the fleeing Gauls in the Civitalba frieze discussed in Chapter 1.
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individual triumph and pitted Roman elites against each other in increasingly fierce social competitions that eventually undermined the Republic. With the loss of political power brought on by the arrival of the Principate, Roman elites turned to conspicuous consumption to express their status and to reinforce their hierarchical superiority over social inferiors. This was particularly necessary as the gradual extension of citizenship first in Italy and then in the provinces challenged Roman identity. Conquest imagery itself underwent a similar process. It began as a performance of violence intimately bound up in the subjugation and humiliation of defeated enemies paraded in chains through Rome. Yet, once the ephemeral triumph no longer garnered enough social cachet, or later was restricted solely to the imperial family, conquest imagery was etched onto the urban landscape, in architectural and decorative form to continually reperform the feats of individual generals and solidify the delineation between Roman and non-Roman. At the same time, this broadened access to such imagery, particularly as the Romans increasingly stamped their power onto local landscapes through overwriting. Soon local elites appropriated and adapted conquest imagery, beginning a process of cowriting that reimagined conquest imagery as an expression of prestige rather than battle. This spurred a fashion for conquest imagery that encouraged its commodification and redistribution in portable, forms such as intaglios, lamps, and amulets. In doing so, it untethered conquest imagery from its martial roots while still echoing the inherent embedded violence thanks to stateproduced imagery that continued to dominate imperial visual culture.557 The true mark of commodification, however, is that we cannot tell from the object itself what the purpose was in commissioning it. Smaller, portable objects, for example, could be souvenirs for triumphal spectators or private commissions by a general’s supporters. They could be purchases that resonated with the owner because they fought in or witnessed military events. Or they could simply be something that caught one’s eye at a shop or because everyone else had one and the owner wanted to join in. The imagery was popular because it reinforced communal identity, delineating what it meant to be Roman, while also visually defining what it meant to be foreign in Roman eyes.558 By the first century CE, conquest imagery had become a complex jumble of interlocking categories: state-produced and locally produced; overt reflection of conquest and metaphorical allusion; prestigious and widely accessible; monumental and portable; expensive and cheap; ponderous reflection of individual status and kitschy souvenir. This was very much an imperial prestige economy, entrenched in colonization, but also appropriated by anyone who wanted it. It was, indeed, a highly global expression of what it meant to be a citizen of the Roman Empire.
Such as triumphal arches and the columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius. Pandey (2018: 188).
Conclusion In the last 30 years, analysis of visual culture in its myriad forms has been one of the most prominent trends in studies of the ancient world. Its characteristically interdisciplinary nature has propelled the field forward, producing new questions and approaches. One area, however, that has remained understudied in this wider scholarly revolution is the visual culture of the Roman Republic. Due in part to the spotty nature of extant evidence, scholars have focused on the Republic mostly as a backdrop to wider studies on imperial imagery. However, by relegating this period to a brief introduction, we create a skewed narrative of the incredibly long development of what is often termed an imperial koine, situating it more in the late Republic and early Principate rather than in the earliest phases of Roman overseas conquest.559 In fact, the distinctly triumphal, or martial, flavor so characteristic of imperial visual culture connects directly to Republican antecedents, both in the distinctive Roman cultural values embraced in imperial imagery, but also in the very process through which that imagery circulated and came to represent power. Any study of Roman visual culture in the imperial period must grapple with the long shadow cast by Paul Zanker’s landmark 1988 study on Augustan-era imagery. The study not only spawned fruitful new questions about the power of visual media but also set our default timeline for imperial imagery to begin in the Augustan era. While scholars acknowledge that many of the values disseminated through the visual culture of the empire developed from Republican antecedents, particularly the core values of the mores maiorum, they start from the assumption that the Augustan era produced something revolutionary. It is not my intention to argue against this precept, but rather to complicate, or perhaps reorient, it a bit. Visual culture from the Augustan period was, overwhelmingly, about power – who had it, what it looked like, what legitimized it, who it subordinated, and how it was disseminated.560 Augustus and his successors certainly did revolutionary things, but they frequently drew upon processes, ideas, and images that stretched back at least to the second century BCE. In fact, the remarkable cohesion of Augustan-era imperial imagery rested upon the widespread circulation of imperial imagery in prior generations. Augustus’ programmatic visual culture owed its legibility – in terms of both imagery and cultural values – to the fact that local peoples throughout the empire had had generations to negotiate with and adapt to the relationship between image and power that typified A phrase used by Russell and Hellström (2020), as well as others such as Ripollès (2005: 81). Noreña (2011b), for example. And, while not explicitly the focus as it was in Noreña’s work, the role of the emperor and imperial ideology in visual culture was fundamental to Pollini (2012), Hölscher (2018), and Russell and Hellström (2020). More narrowly focused studies of the emperor’s role in visual culture focus on such things as the dissemination of imperial statues or the imperial cult, and the accompanying inscriptions. See, for example, Højte (2005). For comparable examples of Near Eastern dynasts see Kropp (2013). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111326634-006
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Roman visual culture. The fundamental connection between image and power coalesced in the Republican period, as Roman elites used visual media to articulate personal achievements within a competitive semiotic system, and non-Roman elites used imagery to navigate their localized power in an increasingly Roman-dominated world. That broadly legible language of power relied on the circulation and dissemination of imperial imagery. While Roman conquest was the catalyst, and Roman exploitation of conquest imagery codified the association between imagery and power, they were far from the only drivers of the wider circulation of conquest imagery. This is particularly true once conquest imagery became something portable and consumable. With that shift, everyone across the empire, regardless of class, could exercise their consumption habits and facilitate the circulation process. This cemented conquest imagery as a widespread expression of power in the Mediterranean world, aided by the fact that such imagery had been a common material expression in earlier empires and the cultural memory of such an “imperial” style made Roman images that much more readable.561 In fact, we can attribute the remarkable longevity of Roman imperial imagery to its elasticity with respect to alternative visual traditions. Roman ideals could be and were meshed within many existing visual systems. This essential relationship between image and power is why, throughout this book, I have relied on the term “conquest imagery.” Romans of the Republican period relied on foreign subjugation in performances of power. The Romans inflicted defeat, then seized people, money, and any art and luxury goods they could find. They sold people into slavery and paraded some unlucky few in their triumphs back in Rome, along with the spoils they seized. They then erected temples, statues, and monuments in Rome and, at times even in conquered towns, that visually narrated Roman hegemony. Decorated with battle scenes that emphasized the dichotomous relationship between victorious Roman and defeated enemy, these monuments were rife with depictions of captured weaponry and bound and subdued captives visually subordinated to Roman trophies. Such monuments embodied Roman dominion by their very presence in captured towns, as well as through their overt conquest imagery. What might shock subjugated viewers even more than the visual narration of their defeat would be to learn that, in some cases within a few generations, their descendants would draw upon many of these same symbols to illustrate their own successful positions within local social hierarchies. This shift potentially reflects the sort of colonial buy-in among elites who wanted to share in power that was common in other empires.562 While the above summary is useful for distilling a convoluted process down to a few key moments, it is critical to remember that the Romans were only one cog in the
For more on imperial imagery in other ancient empires, see Hall (1986), Collins (2014), Foster (2016), Fowler and Hekster (2005), Wharton (1988), and Hill et al. (2013). For colonization, see Dietler (2005), Salmon (1970), and Stek (2018).
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wheel that circulated conquest imagery, and not solely imagery of Roman origin, throughout the Mediterranean. Roman visual culture did not become what it was exclusively through Roman hands and Roman eyes. It developed through interaction with and exploitation by local peoples in the provinces. We must therefore incorporate marginalized peoples across the empire into the narrative of how Roman visual culture developed.563 It was once common in the historiography of ancient Rome to treat the western and eastern halves of the empire separately. This divide was not only geographical, but theoretical, as scholars often contrasted between the “forgetfulness” of the western Roman provinces and the “nostalgia” of the eastern provinces.564 Some scholars have argued that in the west, local peoples expressed their agency under Roman hegemony through the act of deliberate, but selective forgetfulness. They chose which elements of indigenous traditions, beliefs, visuality, and language they would retain and which would be subsumed by Roman equivalents. On the other hand, scholars have debated a self-conscious nostalgia in the east for a shared, even imagined past from which Roman conquest had separated them. Nostalgia and antiquarianism, they argue, allowed eastern inhabitants of the Roman Empire to express agency by embracing selective memories and memory landscapes. Both schools divide the two halves of the empire, and this informs our approach to understanding the relationship between Rome and its provinces more broadly, but also specifically in the nature of their artistic and iconographic interaction. The dichotomy, however, is more modern invention than historical reality. It is less a question of who forgot and who remembered, and more a question of how people across the empire negotiated their place under Roman hegemony through processes such as overwriting and cowriting. That negotiation could be quite complex, and the diverse imagery deployed on coins or monuments reflects both the diverse cultural choices available to local peoples and the ways in which they adapted or reinterpreted Roman ideas. And while this book takes on only limited case studies, it leaves room for further research that incorporates provinces across the empire. Because of its deep connection to power and prestige, the empire’s visual language had a shared lexicon of images that was both recognizable across cultural boundaries and idiosyncratic in its local manifestations. But what allowed it to be simultaneously legible and idiosyncratic was the fact that it drew on a generational visual vocabulary exploited by the Romans to convey their power. Thus, for local peoples in Gades in southern Spain, or Ariminum in northern Italy, or in Ephesus in Asia Minor, piles of shields, trophies, or bound captives, for example, were highly readable material expressions of power. How such images were utilized in the wider Something that scholarship is increasingly doing in numerous subfields. Johnston (2017) and Woolf (1998) both utilized the language of forgetfulness in discussing Roman Hispania and Roman Gaul. Alcock (2002) surveyed the historiographical trend toward Greek nostalgia before arguing against it. See also Millett and Blagg (1990), Alcock (1997), and Whitmarsh (2015).
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semiotic system was up to interpretation. Often, they became entangled with other local images of power, creating individualized representations of power and prestige that were still readable to an imperial audience, even if viewers interpreted them differently based on their own cultural knowledge. Much of this book has focused on the development and diffusion of conquest imagery on coins, monuments, and trophies, which broadcast Roman power to Romans and non-Romans alike. But we cannot fully understand how rooted in conquest Roman visual culture was without examining the broader prestige economy that developed in the late Republic, influencing material and visual cultures across the Mediterranean. Often, the consumer or cultural revolution, as some scholars have labeled it, is linked to conquest only obliquely.565 In particular, scholars have traditionally linked the development of a prestige economy to the conquest of the Greek Peninsula and the subsequent influx of luxury goods that flowed into Rome.566 While Greece played a vital role in the development of Rome’s prestige economy, that economy was rooted in a much longer, and more widespread process of visual and material interaction. By tracing both the development and circulation of conquest imagery and the growing prestige economy, I have attempted to meld two elements of visual culture that are often treated separately: conquest imagery and the consumer revolution. It is not that scholars overtly see these as separate phenomena; many have implicitly, or even explicitly, linked the two. Yet even as we explore the development of imperial imagery – including conquest imagery, euergetic practices, and consumer goods – we tend not to question how conquest imagery became embedded in the minds of ancient peoples as something consumable, something that they wanted to purchase to decorate their homes or show off their status. We also tend to separate public architecture and conquest imagery from prestige goods, and yet they are interconnected. Moreover, it is not just prestige goods that are stamped with martial images linked to conquest. Rather, the entire prestige economy is symbolically linked through the relationship between conquest, power, and prestige. One element of this relationship has received significant attention in recent scholarship: the consumer revolution. Roman conquest fueled a growing interest in owning and collecting prestige items explicitly or symbolically linked to Rome’s conquest of the Hellenistic East.567 This “booty mentality,” as Welch termed it, catalyzed the mental association between conquest and art collecting. These landmark studies have, however, left a few questions unanswered. First, we need to understand how conquest imagery coalesced into a broadly readable visual language in the Republican
Wallace-Hadrill (2008) provided the most well-known study to analyze the cultural revolution of the late Republic and early Principate. Welch (2006) also linked conquest and consumption, but only in a limited fashion. Wallace-Hadrill (2008), Welch (2006), Zanker (1988), Rutledge (2012), and Bounia (2004) all overtly or implicitly linked the popularity of luxury goods to the conquest of the Hellenistic East. Wallace-Hadrill (2008) and Welch (2006).
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period. For one to signal prestige through either ownership of specific types of goods or through one’s euergetic dedication of temples and other monuments, the chosen imagery needed to be legible to audiences. Second, many of these studies take a Roman-centric focus, looking at consumption, connoisseurship, and prestige through a Roman gaze. But that focus obscures the fact that foreign peoples navigated a world in which conquest imagery represented their violent subjugation. Furthermore, the collection of prestige goods in Rome occurred, at least initially, through the appropriation of those materials from foreign hands. And it is entirely possible that many artisans from conquered regions ended up producing the commissioned objects that advertised their ancestral defeat. Yet at the same time, those same foreign peoples seemed to, by the imperial period, view conquest imagery and luxury consumption as a reflection of prestige, and they deployed both to mark their status. While the spotty nature of Republican-era literary and archaeological evidence has made understanding how conquered peoples reacted to, negotiated with, and adapted conquest imagery difficult to reconstruct, the question remains essential to understanding how conquest imagery became both highly readable and, presumably, palatable to conquered peoples as an expression of status and identity. Ultimately, local peoples seem to have found use in conquest imagery and prestige as a representation of power and status, much as the Romans did. We see in monuments such as the Sebasteion in Aphrodisias that in some cases, elites distanced themselves from the initial violence of conquest, focusing the viewer’s gaze on the conquest of other people. Similarly, the elites at Glanum who decorated various public monuments with images of bound captives disassociated them from Gallic conquest by emphasizing their own support of Rome during various wars against other Gallic peoples. None of this is unusual. There are myriad historical examples of people drawing upon images and practices that once signaled their own subjugation to broadcast their rise in status, whether from manumission, martial achievement, politics, or simply good fortune. Its frequency throughout history is yet another reason to assess it more critically. By tracing particular types of images from the provinces to Rome and back again, and by examining the interaction between image-types, I have sought to show that imperial visual culture developed through routine, cross-cultural interaction throughout the Mediterranean. While materials, craftsmen, and ideas were flowing from Greece to Rome, they were also flowing between Rome and the Iberian Peninsula, between Rome and the Gallic provinces, between the Iberian Peninsula and the Gallic provinces, and between the Greek East and the western provinces. This process of circulation is both what consolidated the stock repertoire of imperial images that denoted Roman conquest and is what made imperial imagery readily understood across provincial and class boundaries. And once conquest imagery was equated with prestige, it slipped the reins of elite power, becoming a commodity accessible to much wider audiences.
Bibliography Abbreviations ACIP
ANS BMC BM BN BnF CID CIL CNH CPE FdD ID IG ILLRP ILS LIMC MRR OGIS REA RIC RIC2 ROL RPC RRC SEG SIG SNG Syll3
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Index Acilius Glabrio, M’. 90 Actium, Battle of 10, 35, 61, 97 Aedui 45 Aemilius – Aemilius Lepidus Paullus, L. 32–33, 92 – Aemilius Paullus, L. 9, 32–33, 91–93, 95, 103, 105–106, 110 – Aemilius Scaurus, M. 29, 43 Aetolia 36, 96, 100, 105 Alexander 95, 103, 118, 125, 129 Allia River, Battle of 17 Allobroges 43 Amazonomachy 4 ambiguity 3–4, 8, 24, 27, 31, 49, 65, 70, 75, 78, 84–85, 90, 121, 133 Ambracia 11, 97 amphora 18–19, 93, 101–102, 111 ancestor mask 21, 124 Antipolis 46, 47 Antonius – Antonius, M. 106 – Antonius, M., altar of 106 – Antony, M. 4, 61, 97, 108, 110 Aphrodisias 108, 110–113, 139 Apollo 105 – Apollo Medicus, Temple of 4 – Apollo Sosianus, Temple of 4, 5, 112 appropriation 9, 98, 106, 120, 133, 139 Apulia 18 Aquae Sextiae 29 Arausio 29, 30, 36 architecture 57, 85–86, 96, 117, 119, 121 – commemorative 115, 117 – domestic 122–123 – monumental 124 – public 117–118, 121, 125, 138 – triumphal 116 Arelate 30, 31, 32, 46, 119 Arevaci 49, 54, 56 Armenia 25, 34, 110–111 armor 3–4, 26, 38, 45, 58–59, 76, 94 – armored soldier 38 Arretium 17 Arse 75 Artemis 19, 34 Arverni 27, 43 Asia Minor 7, 12–14, 19, 86, 100–101, 109, 113, 137 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111326634-008
Athena 93, 101–102, 108 – Parthenos 93–94, 108 – Polias 126 – Pronaos 19 Athens 9, 93, 100–101, 108–110, 121 Attalus I 14–16, 30, 55, 92 auctoritas 23, 117 audience 3–6, 10, 21, 44, 50, 57–58, 60, 65–66, 69, 75, 78, 84, 90, 98, 104, 120, 124, 138–139 Augustus – Augustan 4–5, 10, 12, 36, 59, 78–79, 80–81, 83, 85, 100, 110, 127, 135 Aurelius – Aurelius Scaurus, M. 27 – Marcus 6, 44, 112, 134 Baetica 65, 67 barbarian 3–4, 13–16, 18, 20, 25–28, 32, 36, 38–39, 44, 55, 61, 90, 100, 112, 127, 129, 130, 133 bas relief See relief benefactor See euergetism bilingual See language Bituriges Cubes 42 Boii 2, 17, 43 Bolskan 71–73, 76, 80–81 booty 21, 23, 43, 52, 104, 117, 125, 138 booty mentality See booty Britannia 110–111 Caecilius – Caecilius Metellus Pius, Q. 101 – Caecilius Metellus, L. 102 – Caecilius Metellus, M. 70, 102–103 – Caecilius Metellus, Q. 102–103, 118 Caesarian 33, 36, 46, 51, 61, 109 caetra 67–68 Caligula 79 Campania 18, 105 Campus Martius 4, 35 Cantabrian Wars 6, 10 capital, cultural 12, 37, 84, 88, 98, 104, 116 captive 2, 4–5, 7, 15, 24, 26, 30–39, 44, 47–48, 62, 66, 88, 90, 92, 95, 103, 112, 115, 118–120, 127–131, 133 – bound captive 5, 6, 22, 24, 31–32, 35, 119, 127, 130–131, 136–137, 139 – female 24, 33–36. 62–63, 112, 128, 131
162
Index
– kneeling 30, 32, 62, 119 carnyx 6, 14, 26–27, 30, 32, 34–38, 45–48, 56, 62, 126, 128, 131 Carpentras 22, 36 Carthage 2, 17, 110, 118 Carthago Nova 52–53, 80 Cassius Longinus, L. 29 Castellet de Banyoles 55, 82 Caudine Forks 59, 60 Celt 14–15 – Celtic 3–4, 8, 13, 15–16, 21, 25–26, 92 Celtiberian 49, 51, 54, 58, 63 celtomachia 3–4, 19–20 Cenomani 18 Chaeronea 93–95, 110 chariot 27, 30, 33–34, 80 – charioteer 19 Cimbri 23, 28–30 circulation 21, 38, 44, 50, 61–62, 66, 98, 100, 104, 110–113, 116, 125, 129, 135–136, 138 Circus Flaminius 4 Cisalpine Gaul 2, 11, 13, 17, 21, 43–44, 61, 105 cistophori 101 citizenship 16, 84, 107, 116, 118 civil war 10–11, 32, 35–36, 46, 51, 60–61, 63–64, 66, 77, 84–85, 97, 108, 120, 129 Civita Castellana 3 Civitalba 18–19, 20, 133 Claudius 108, 110–111 – Claudius Marcellus, M. 17 Cleopatra 4, 97 Coelius Caldus, C. 70 colonization 2, 12, 17, 80, 134, 136 colony 17, 27, 30–31, 36, 46–47, 80–81, 87, 99, 107–109, 130 comedy 2, 88 commemoration 10, 21, 70, 93, 115, 121 commensuration 8–9, 11–12, 49–50, 66–67, 69, 70–71, 75, 77, 80, 84–85, 87–90, 101, 107–108, 121–122, 126 communication 9–10, 23, 44, 50, 61, 84, 96 consumer revolution 115, 124, 138 consumption 39, 86, 88, 108, 115–116, 119, 121–122, 124, 127, 134, 136, 138, 139 Cordoba 60, 65, 80, 82 Corinth 90, 96, 99, 107–108, 109, 123 Cornelius – Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, P. 2, 110, 118 – Cornelius Scipio Africanus, P. 51–54, 82, 110
– Cornelius Scipio Nasica, P. 2 – Cornelius Scipio, Cn. 51 – Cornelius Scipio, L. 19 – Cornelius Scipio, P. 51 – Cornelius Sulla, L. 61, 70–71, 93–96, 101–103, 110 cowriting 9–11, 48, 56, 66, 70, 78, 89–91, 106–113, 119, 121–123, 134, 137 – cowriter 37 cultural knowledge 119, 121, 138 cultural memory 14, 50, 51, 57, 65, 69, 136 cultural negotiation 2 cultural reception 21 cultural values 12, 23, 50, 57–58, 66, 75, 85, 104, 117, 135 Cynoscephalae, Battle of 90, 93, 97 Delos 90, 96, 109–110, 113 Delphi 9, 13–14, 17, 24, 89–93, 95–96, 103, 106 denarius 8, 22–23, 25–28, 30, 32–36, 42–45, 50, 52–53, 56, 58–59, 61–65, 72–78, 81–82, 93–94, 98–100, 102–103, 129–130 despoliation 52, 88–89, 104, 114 diffusion 7, 21, 50, 57–58, 113, 138 dignitas 23 Dioscuri 23, 98, 105 dissemination 19–20, 30, 57, 135 Dium 108–109 domestic space 116–117, 121–122, 124 domestic spectacle 116 Domitius – Domitius Ahenobarbus, Altar of 106 – Domitius Ahenobarbus, Cn. 22, 25, 27, 43, 95 drachma 52, 72–73, 100 Dumnorix 45–46 dupondius 67–68 Dying Gaul 15, 30, 133 Dyme 109 Ebro Treaty 51 Egypt 4, 24, 86, 109 – Egyptian 7, 32, 90, 110 enslaved 2, 11, 27 enslavement 2, 16, 24, 33, 36, 89, 104, 129, 136 entangled 9, 39, 50–51, 70, 75, 78, 88, 108, 138 Entremont 4, 40–41, 43, 119–120 epigraphic 94, 96, 107, 109 epigraphy 32, 92, 96, 107–108, 110 ethnic 14, 49, 87 – group 11, 13, 18, 110
Index
– image-types 61 – marker 4, 22, 24, 67, 70, 91, 131–132 – origin 16, 25, 32–33 – representation 14, 56 – stereotype 14, 31 – trope 49 ethnicity 16, 18, 31–32, 34, 37, 48, 107, 126 euergetism 96, 110, 113, 119, 138–139 Fabius – Fabius Labeo, Q. 44 – Fabius Maximus, Q. 22, 25–27, 43, 95, 105 falcata 4, 8, 66, 69 frieze 5–6, 10, 18–19, 24, 91–92, 119, 121, 127 – arms 24, 67, 125–126, 128 – sculptural 35, 40 – terracotta 128 – triumphal 112, 128 – weapons 95, 119, 126 Fulvius – Fulvius Flaccus, Q. 52 – Fulvius Nobilior, M. 54, 97 Fundanius, C. 30 Furius Philus, M. 26 Galatian 13–15, 17, 19, 36, 55, 70, 92 Gallic identity 13, 22, 34, 38 Glanum 22, 25, 32, 36–37, 39, 43, 48, 113, 119–120, 122, 139 – House of Sulla 122–123 Greek East 11, 86, 88, 96–97, 108, 139 Greek Peninsula 2, 7, 13, 99, 138 Gundestrup cauldron 38–39, 40 Hannibal 2, 17 head – decapitated 40–41, 120 – severed 4, 8, 40, 41–46 headhunting 40–43 Hellenism 87 – defensive 11 – philhellenism 86 Hellenistic iconography 70 Hellenistic imagery 22 Hellenistic influence 7, 19, 70 Hellenistic kings 32, 89, 92, 95–96 Hellenistic visual stereotypes 15, 92 Hellenization 86
163
helmet 126 – boar’s head 26, 38 – helmeted 25, 40, 45, 59, 82, 101–103 – horned 26, 28, 30, 35–36, 47, 62, 128, 130 – Montefortino 3 – plumed 58, 131 Hercules 105 Hercules Victor 32, 105 Hispania 11–12, 35–36, 50–57, 60–63, 65–66, 77, 79, 82, 85, 123, 137 hoard 21, 28, 44, 50, 55–56, 60–63, 65–66, 69, 71–73, 75–76, 82, 97, 100 honorific system 88, 96 horseman 8, 19, 38, 40, 42–45, 67–68, 71, 73, 77–81, 84, 108, 132 Hostilius – Hostilius Mancinus, C. 59 – Hostilius Mancinus, L. 118 – Hostilius Saserna, L. 33–34, 129 Huesca See Osca hybridity 79, 85 Iberian identity 77, 85 Iberian Peninsula 2, 8, 11, 44, 49, 50–53, 55–56, 58, 60–61, 66–67, 69, 70, 78, 80–81, 84–85, 87, 122–124, 139 iconographic shift 11, 21, 23 identity – ethnic 6, 49 – imperial 80, 113, 131 – local 58, 70, 80, 86, 108 ideology 5, 7, 135 Ilerda 82–83 Iltirta 74–75, 82 images of power 2, 7, 12, 46, 48, 70, 97–98, 101, 112, 138 image-type 6–9, 12–14, 21, 23, 30, 59, 70, 73, 128–130, 132, 139 imperator 62, 64, 68, 94 – imperatorial 62, 69 imperial community 35, 8, 80, 107, 115 imperial imagery 5, 7, 12, 78, 107, 113, 135–136, 138, 139 imperium 35, 22, 29, 52 indemnities 88, 97, 100–101 indigenous 10, 49, 55, 68, 82, 85, 108, 119–122, 137 intaglio 6, 10, 20, 40, 116, 125, 128–134 invented tradition 15, 57–58, 65, 85
164
Index
Judaea 4–5, 34, 110 Julius Caesar, C. 6, 22, 29, 30–36, 43–44, 46, 53, 56, 62, 64–66, 77, 98, 108–109, 119, 129–131 Junius Silanus, M. 29 Juno Regina 103, 117–118 Jupiter 35, 27, 30, 118 – Jupiter Heliopolitanus 6, 48 – Jupiter Imperator 105 – Jupiter Optimus Maximus 105 – Jupiter Stator 103, 117–118 Kleas 101 Kointos 101–102 La Tène 3, 37–38 La Turbie 11, 36 language – bilingual 96, 110 – bilingualism 109, 121 language of power 8, 10–11, 14, 20–21, 25, 37, 44, 50, 56, 60, 66, 70, 77, 87–90, 95, 98, 102, 107, 110–113, 115, 120, 123, 125, 136 Lascuta 77 Licinius – Licinius Crassus, L. 27 – Licinius Lucullus, L. 54, 93, 96, 117 Ligurian 28, 92 local agency 9, 66, 86, 113 Ludovisi Gaul 15 Lusitania 28 – Lusitanian 68 – Lusitanians 54–55, 67–68, 117 luxury – consumption 119, 121–122, 124, 139 – display 123 – goods 136, 138 – home 122 – materials 124 Macedonia 7–8, 14, 86, 89, 93, 97–102, 107–109, 123 Macedonian War, First 86 Macedonian War, Fourth 102 Macedonian War, Second 88 Macedonian War, Third 100, 103 Mallius, Cn. 29 Manlius Vulso, Cn. 19 mannequin See trophy
Marius, C. 29–30 Mars 26–28, 58–59, 63–64, 106 martial prowess 4, 22, 24, 35, 87, 105, 107, 124, 127 Massalia 30, 33–34, 46, 61, 62 memorialization 21, 23 memory landscape 57, 89, 137 military equipment 3, 24, 27, 67 Minatius Sabinus, M. 64 Minerva 81, 83, 105 – Torre de Minerva 81 mines 52–53 mint 36, 44, 55, 62, 67–68, 74, 76, 93, 98, 108 Minucius – Mincuius Rufus, M. 96 – Minucius Thermus, Q. 27, 28, 52, 54 Mithridates 93–95, 101, 110, 129 Mithridatic Wars 101 moneyer 22, 26, 28, 30, 32, 34, 57–61, 69, 93, 102–103, 109, 125 monument – commemorative 97, 119, 126 – fixed monument 22, 57–58, 66, 124 – honorific 9, 110, 113 – triumphal 49, 116, 118, 120 – trophy 112 – victory 15, 36, 57–58, 92, 97, 109, 119, 126, 128 monumentality 119, 121 Mummius, L. 92, 96, 105, 108 municipal status 47, 80, 121 municipium 82–83 Narbo 22, 26–27, 43, 65 Nemausus 48 Nero 110–111, 125 Nike 95, 101–102, 108 Nikopolis 97, 107 Numantia 58–60 – Numantine War 58 – Numantines 60 Obulco 62, 67–68, 70 Octavian See Augustus Olympia 89, 92–93, 96 oppidum 40, 43 Orchomenos 93–95 Osca 71, 80–81 Osuna 4, 63, 67–68, 70 ovation 52, 54
Index
overwriting 9–11, 89, 91–93, 95, 97, 104–107, 113, 134, 137 owl, Athenian 93–94, 101 panoply 3, 10, 18, 26, 63 Patras 99, 107, 123 performance 12, 24, 35, 104, 117–118 Pergamum 14–15, 19, 119, 126 Perseus, King 9, 32–33, 91–93, 103, 106, 110 personification – of a province 25, 34, 49, 66, 111–112, 130 – of ethnic groups 110 – of Gallic peoples 49 – of Iberian cities 65 – of subject peoples 36 Philip II, King 95, 103 Philip V, King 90, 91, 97–98, 100, 110 Picenum 17–18, 105 Pictones 41 Pompeians 51, 61, 63, 65–66, 122 Pompeii 113, 125–126 Pompeius – Pompeius Magnus, Cn. 30, 46, 55–56, 63–64, 77, 118, 129 – Pompeius the Younger, Cn. 63–66 Pompey See Pompeius prestige economy 88, 118, 123, 134, 138 Publicius, M. 64 Publilius, C. 108 Punic War, First 2, 17, 18, 35 Punic War, Second 2, 6, 17, 22, 23, 50–51, 75 Punic War, Third 2 Punic Wars 2, 17, 35 Pydna, Battle of 92, 100, 105, 110 quinarius 30 Quinctius Flamininus, T. 90, 95–99, 105 relief – arms 10 – bas 81, 83 – captive 128 – clay 130–131 – conquest 111 – ethnē 110, 112 – funerary 24 – Gallic horseman 40 – marble 106 – monumental 37, 120, 130
165
– of Aemilius Paullus 9, 106 – Osuna 4, 63 – panel 106 – Temple of Apollo Sosianus 5 – terracotta 128 – Torre de Minerva 82 – triumphal 4, 118 Roma 8, 23, 25–26, 36, 45, 59, 63–64, 77, 82, 98, 101–103, 108 Roman identity 2, 35, 49, 58, 86–87, 134 Roquepertuse 41, 43, 120 Saguntum 51, 52, 77 Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges 36, 49 Salluvii 40, 48 salutatio 123 Samnite War, Third 17 Samnite Wars 59 Samnites 17, 125 scutum See shield Sebasteion 107, 110–113, 139 Segobriga 78–80 Sekobirikes 71–72, 76, 78–79 self-representation 5, 85 – elite 39, 121–122 – Gallic 14, 37, 39 semiotic system 12, 136, 138 Sempronius Gracchus, Ti. 59 Sena Gallica 17 Senones 17–18 Sergius Silus, M. 8, 43, 45 Sertorian War 11, 51, 55, 60, 71–72, 74–78, 80–82 Sertorius, Q. 55, 61, 71, 74, 76, 77 Servilius Caepio, Q. 29 shield 3, 10, 26–27, 59, 63–65, 70, 90–91, 108, 126–127, 129–130, 132, 137 – Gallic 4, 6, 14, 16, 18, 24, 26–28, 31–38, 47–48, 67, 70, 102, 119 – Iberian 49, 67, 102 – labyrinthine 67–68, 91 – Macedonian 8, 10, 67, 70, 91, 102, 103, 109 – oblong 32, 42, 63, 133 – of Minerva 81, 83 – oval 3, 23, 36, 62, 91 Sicily 24–25, 50, 63 slave 2, 109, 116, 118 slavery See enslavement Social War 16 spoils 11, 20, 43, 57, 115, 117, 125, 136
166
Index
stater 108 – of Flamininus 90, 98–99, 102 statue, equestrian 9, 80, 90–91, 103, 105, 118, 125 stereotype 13, 15, 17, 19, 23–25, 28, 44, 126, 133 Sulpicius Galba, Ser. 54, 117 syncretism 7, 35, 110, 122 synecdoche 23–24, 27, 66, 102 Tarraco 80, 82–83, 123 tetradrachm 36, 93, 95 – Athenian 98, 100–102 – Athenian, of Sulla 93–94 Teutones 28–29 Tiberius 79, 108 Titus, Arch of 112 Tivissa 55, 82–83 torque 14–16, 18, 31, 33, 35, 39, 72, 133 tradition 19, 32 – iconographic 78 – indigenous 137 – inherited 105 – invented 17, 65 – local 69, 80, 86–87, 89–91, 109 – visual 50, 136 Transalpine Gaul 11, 20–22, 27, 38, 43–44, 47 trope 6, 8, 21, 23, 25, 37, 66, 90, 92, 127, 129, 130–133 trophy 4–6, 11–12, 15, 24, 26–27, 30, 32–36, 38, 41, 43–44, 46–49, 62–65, 80, 93–95, 112, 119, 126–128, 130–133, 136–138 Turiaso 73–74, 76, 80 Urso See Osuna Vaison-la-Romaine See Vasio Valentia 55 Valerius Flaccus, C. 61–62
Vasio 47, 119, 122 – Maison au Dauphin 122–123 Veneti 18, 41, 42 Venus 35, 46–47, 62, 94 Verres, C. 96 Veturius, Ti. 58–60 Victory 27, 30, 33, 46–47, 61–63, 77, 95, 98–99, 127, 130–131 villa 113, 122–123 Villa dei Papiri 126–127, 130 virtus 58, 117 visual language, shared 6, 10, 12, 37, 89–90, 106–107, 116, 124, 137 visual system 12, 120, 136 wall painting 126, 133 – Second Style 122 warrior 3, 8, 26, 39, 58–59, 70 – aristocracy 66 – captive 24 – Gallic 3–4, 8, 13–16, 19–21, 23–25, 27, 32, 34–35, 46–47, 49, 91, 129, 133 – Iberian 4 – iconography See warrior:imagery – imagery 38, 41, 73 – seated 41 – statue 40, 67–68, 82 weaponry 3, 11, 20, 22–24, 26, 35–39, 49, 66, 70, 88, 125–126, 136 wolf 38, 67, 73–75, 80–84, 108 – female 82 – feminine 83 – Iberian 74, 81 – she-wolf 75, 82 wreath 30, 78, 108 – laurel 77–78, 98, 102 – oak 33, 35, 80, 109