Why Ancient Objects Matter: Greek and Roman Art and Materiality from Antiquity to the Present 3111182916, 9783111182919

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Why Ancient Objects Matter

Why Ancient Objects Matter Greek and Roman Art and Materiality from Antiquity to the Present Edited by Nicholas Cipolla, Anne F. LaGatta, Candace Weddle Livingston, Peter J.M. Schertz, Ambra Spinelli and Sarah K. Yeomans

This volume was funded by the Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences and the Department of Art History at the University of Southern California, and by generous gifts from Bernard Frischer and Drusus Pollini.

ISBN 978-3-11-115182-3 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-118291-9 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-118445-6 Library of Congress Control Number: 2024947641 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. © 2025 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston, Genthiner Straße 13, 10785 Berlin Cover image: Reverse of a coin showing Apollo in long robes standing left on a platform between two anchors, holding a patera and a lyre. RIC I2 366. © Courtesy of John Pollini. Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com Questions about General Product Safety Regulation: [email protected]

Hic Pietatis Honos (Verg. Aen. 1.253) In honor of John Pollini, Professor of Classical Art, Archaeology, History, Classics, and USC Associates Endowed Professor in Art History in the Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California

Acknowledgments This volume was a collaborative effort, realized not just through the goodwill of all our contributors but also the support of many of John’s friends and colleagues. We would like to extend our special thanks to De Gruyter Brill both for their enthusiasm for this project and for their patience; this is especially true of De Gruyter’s editorial team, Mirko Vonderstein, Carla Schmidt, Jessica Bartz, and Jens Lindenhain. Special thanks and gratitude are also due to the financial supporters of this project: John’s long-time friend and collaborator Professor Emeritus Bernard Frischer of Indiana University’s Department of Informatics and founder and CEO of Flyover Zone, and John’s son, Drusus Romulus Pollini. We also wish to thank USC’s Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences and the Department of Art History and its former Chair, Professor Kate Flint, and its current Interim Chair, Professor David St. John, for generously supporting this project. Nicholas B. Cipolla Anne F. LaGatta Candace Weddle Livingston Peter J. M. Schertz Ambra Spinelli Sarah K. Yeomans

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111182919-202

Preface Anyone who encounters John Pollini has a story—usually multiple stories—about the depth of his knowledge, the acuity of his comments, the range of his interests, and the variety of his eccentricities (including his annual Io Saturnalia! cards). My fondest memories of him, though, have nothing to do with any of that and everything to do with why we chose to create this volume through, in effect, an editorial collective. USC’s Art History department used to be part of the School of Fine Arts and shared a corner of the campus with the Department of Architecture. One of the buildings had a café with an outdoor courtyard (it is Los Angeles, after all). Every week, John would have lunch there, and any students who were around and were so inclined could join him. USC was a commuter school at the time, and those lunches were one of the few opportunities to develop friendships and exchange ideas outside of the classroom. I cannot, of course, omit mention of the delight John took in baiting his Greek and Turkish students about their nationalist differences or haranguing his overtly Jewish and Christian students about the many sins of Western monotheism. According to John, we would all be better off as subjects of the Roman Empire—at least, those who survived the Roman way of war and did not object to the depredations of Roman tax farmers. The present volume, Why Ancient Objects Matter: Greek and Roman Art and Materiality from Antiquity to the Present, is a secular agalma from John’s students to their teacher and mentor. This volume is our gift to him, a gift given out of our respect and fondness for him, but especially out of gratitude for all that he has taught us and all the ways that he has shaped us as scholars and intellectuals, even those of us whose paths have taken us away from academia. The title Why Ancient Objects Matter was also chosen as a tribute to the type of scholarship John practices, a scholarship grounded in his vast knowledge of the historical and cultural context of the ancient world and in the art, literature, archaeology, and architecture of antiquity. Through this knowledge and his intense engagement with the details of objects, John is able to tease out their resonances in today’s world as well as their meanings and potential meanings for the people who made and first encountered those objects. This is not, of course, the only way to approach an object, and it is not the only way John approaches objects; but, with his steady focus on what objects can tell us about the past, this mode of scholarship deeply roots the discussion of the past and reminds us that, while art history and archaeology tell us much about ourselves and our changing concerns, they also recover the lost thoughts and impressions of those who lived before us. The title was also chosen to reflect the breadth of John’s scholarship, the subject of Olga Palagia’s introduction to this volume. While John is best known for his work on Roman sculpture, from the Augustan period in particular and the Julio-Claudian period more generally, his work has ranged far beyond that to encompass studies on the Warren Cup, the Cobannus Hoard from Roman Gaul, lovemaking and voyeurism in Pompeian wall paintings, the Roman reception of Egyptian gods, and the Christian https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111182919-203

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destruction of pre-Christian art—and the list could go on. John has also long been a champion of using science and technology to help us understand the materiality of ancient art, including computer reconstructions of sites like the “Horologium Augusti” based on in situ observation; the now well-established practice of identifying marbles by sampling and analysis rather than visual guesswork; and the study and analysis of marble surfaces for traces of polychromy to help reconstruct the original appearance of ancient sculptures. Indeed, at a time when many of the colorized reconstructions of ancient sculptures adhered so narrowly to what could be posited with certainty on the basis of surviving pigments, John was an early advocate for creating more realistic-looking reconstructions on the basis of, for instance, Fayum portraits. The essays in this volume are a tribute to John’s status in the study of the ancient world. Many of the essays are by his former students, while others are penned by scholars who have collaborated directly with him, or scholars whom John has touched through his work and friendships. We have divided the essays into five sections, which reflect the breadth of his scholarship. The volume opens with the section “Portraiture and Honorific Statuary.” The contributions range from Diane Favro’s contribution on the fornix, one of the spaces where portraits and honorific statues could be displayed in the Roman cityscape, to Faya Causey’s discussion of a lost amber portrait of Augustus and Anne LaGatta’s article on a finely carved marble Tiberius, part of her championing of the importance of the Tiberian period in the development of Imperial Roman art. Both Susan Walker and Eric Varner address portraits of cultural elites, Walker writing on the portrait of an unknown priest while Varner looks more closely at the phenomenon of “intellectualized portraits” of the Second Sophistic. The second section, “Gods, Myths, and Ritual Practice,” includes Alan Shapiro’s enviable essay on Phthonos as well as Dyfri Williams’ study of the motif of Orestes in Roman art; both scholars take the long approach to these topics, looking at the transformation of their subjects over time. This section also has contributions by Patricia Butz on internationalism on Delos as revealed by the statue of Aphrodite, Pan, and Eros and its inscription by Dionysios, son of Zenon as well as by Carol Mattusch on Amazons, a topic to which she is returning after many years. Ambra Spinelli contributes an essay on mythological scenes in Vesuvian tablina and the performative and cultural context in which they circulated, and the section concludes with Candace Livingston’s thoughts on what a careful examination of a formulaic sacrificial relief from Anatolia reveals about bull breeding in the region. Rhetoric has always been a passion of John’s, and the third section, “The Rhetoric of Empire,” concerns imperial and other forms of political address. We are honored to be able to open this section with an essay by John’s friend and colleague, the late Andrew Stewart, on Rome’s religious policies in Greece. This section continues with Peter Holliday’s look at the deep roots of the form of the Mausoleum of Augustus in Rome and Etruria’s distant past. Bernard Frischer continues the exploration of Augustan Rome with his archaeological and archival explorations of the Meridian of Augustus.

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Trinidad Nogales-Basarrate continues the Augustan theme with a discussion of a group of sculptures of Aeneas and Romulus found in the colony of Augusta Emerita in Spain. Leaving Augustus behind, both Peter Schertz and Susan Wood explore mythological creatures—the Forum Marsyas in the case of Schertz and fantastic beasts like griffins and phoenixes in the case of Wood—and how these creatures were harnessed for the glory of Rome and its empire. Like John’s mind and scholarship, the fourth section, “Craft, Practice, and Production,” is eclectic. On the one hand, it includes Owen Doonan’s discussion of a cup by the Attic painter Brygos in relation to both its iconology and its status as a trade good; on the other hand, the section includes Sarah Yeomans’ work on medical instruments made a millennium after Brygos lived and what those instruments can tell us about the practice of medicine. In between are essays by Beryl Barr-Sharrar on the influence of Greek plunder on the development of fine—especially silver and gold—dining vessels and the Roman taste for luxury, and by Alessandra Giumlia-Mair on the metallurgical innovations in the time of Augustus. The section “After Antiquity: Restoration, Forgery, Reception” is, appropriately, the final section of this volume. In her contribution, Claire Lyons recovers the ancient core among the modern additions and interpretations of the Capitoline Museums’s Lion Attacking a Horse and explores its physical setting and cultural resonances both in pre-Roman and post-Roman times. Kenneth Lapatin separates out the modern from the ancient in his exploration of the widely imitated and forged carver of gems Gnaios, while Linda Nolan explores the far weightier—or at least heavier—black stones associated with the martyred saints of Christianity that are found in Roman churches. Both Dietrich Boschung and Hans Goette address in their different ways the reception of ancient statues and a return to the theme of section I: Boschung by examining the instability of the intellectual underpinnings of the study of ancient art, especially portraiture, and Goette through an exploration of a limestone statue of a woman restored with a head from quite a different work. The volume concludes with essays by Roger Von Dippe and Robert Cohon, both of whom discuss sarcophagi that are decidedly not ancient; Von Dippe uses the occasion to describe a process for discerning fakes, while Cohon reconstructs an early-twentieth-century workshop that specialized in producing works that fooled the eyes of those who bought them, but which close examination has now recognized as à la antique. This volume was a collaborative effort, realized not just through the goodwill of all our contributors but also through the activities of the editorial committee. We would like to thank Steven Fine, who was an early advocate for producing a Festschrift for John, as well as John’s colleague at USC, Selma Holo, and Patricia Butz for all her help and encouragement. Denise Demetriou kindly consulted with us on the initial planning of the volume and shared her own hard-won experience in preparing a Festschrift. Although this was a collaborative project, I would also like to take this opportunity to acknowledge some of the many ways that my fellow editors ensured that this volume came into being –Sarah Yeomans for her generosity in sharing her

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thoughts and experience in approaching publishers and authors throughout this project; Nicholas Cipolla for his expertise in technical matters ranging from the mundane to the (to me) baffling; Anne LaGatta, John’s most recent graduate student, for her dedication in keeping this project on track when it threatened to flounder, even as she was completing her dissertation; and, especially, Candace Livingston and Ambra Spinelli, for their heroic efforts in shepherding the manuscript and index through the proofing stage to their final publication. On behalf of the editorial committee, I would like to thank De Gruyter for their enthusiasm and patience; we worked directly with Mirko Vonderstein, Carla Schmidt, Jessica Bartz, and Jens Lindenhain but we also want to recognize the crucial role played by the behind-the-scenes team at De Gruyter who made this volume possible. Special thanks and gratitude are also due to the financial supporters of this project: John’s long-time friend and collaborator Bernard Frischer of Indiana University’s Department of Informatics and John’s long-time son, Drusus Pollini. We also wish to thank USC’s Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences and the Department of Art History and its chair, Prof. Kate Flint, for their generous support of this project. And everybody thanks Phyllis, John’s wife and pillar of support. Peter Justin Moon Schertz

Contents Acknowledgments Preface

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Olga Palagia Introduction

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Part I: Portraiture and Honorific Statuary Diane Favro Look Up! The Roman Fornix as an Architectural Solution to Problems of Honorific Display 11 Faya Causey An Amber Augustus at Olympia

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Anne F. LaGatta Tiberius in the Michael C. Carlos Museum: A Portrait Masterpiece Susan Walker The Priest’s Tale

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Eric Varner Intellectualizing Images? Private Male Portraits and the Second Sophistic in Rome 79

Part II: Gods, Myths, and Ritual Practice Alan Shapiro Peleus and the φθόνος θεῶν

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Patricia A. Butz Aphrodite, Pan, and Eros and an Inscription at the Établissement of the Poseidoniastai of Berytos: Internationalism in the Cult Sanctuaries of Delos 111

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Dyfri Williams The Judgement of Orestes and the Agamemnonidae: Some Observations on Transmission and Transformation in Roman Art 131 Carol C. Mattusch Amazons at Herculaneum

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Ambra Spinelli Spectacle and Society: Mythological Wall Paintings in the Tablinum of Houses at Pompeii and Herculaneum 169 Candace Weddle Livingston The Mistress of the Beasts and Her Humpbacked Bulls: New Considerations About the Breeding of Sacrificial Animals and Roman Trade with India 189

Part III: The Rhetoric of Empire Andrew Stewart† Roman Power and Greek Sanctuaries: Two Studies

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Peter J. Holliday The Mausoleum of Augustus and Etruscan Precedents for Roman Renewal 223 Bernard Frischer The Phasing and Design of the Calendrical Device (“Horologium”) of Augustus 243 Trinidad Nogales-Basarrate Aeneas and Romulus in the Forum of Augusta Emerita (Hispania) Peter Justin Moon Schertz New Evidence for the Forum Marsyas Statue Type

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Susan Wood Fantastic Beasts and How to Use Them: Griffins and the Phoenix in Visual Panegyric 299

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Part IV: Craft, Practice, and Production Owen Doonan Death and the Maiden: Meditations on a Kylix by the Brygos Painter

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Beryl Barr-Sharrar Hellenistic Gold and Silver Luxury Tableware as a Legacy of Roman Spoils of War 339 Alessandra Giumlia-Mair Metallurgical Innovations at the Time of Julius Caesar and Augustus

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Sarah K. Yeomans Portrait of a Medical Practice: The Marcianopolis Instrumentarium

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Part V: After Antiquity: Restoration, Forgery, Reception Claire L. Lyons The Capitoline Lion Attacking a Horse—An Icon of Feline-Equine Combat Kenneth Lapatin Gnaios: In Search of an Artistic Personality

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Linda Nolan “Time is Truly Forgetful”: The Black Stones in Early Modern Rome

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Dietrich Boschung Finding the Particular: On the Ancient Portrait in the History of Scholarship 463 Hans Rupprecht Goette A Late Republican Statue from Rome and Its Transformation

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Roger Von Dippe A Putative Second Century CE Roman Sarcophagus in Los Angeles: The Dynamics of Establishing a Fake 489

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Robert Cohon Experts: The Story behind a Forged Roman Sarcophagus List of Contributors Index

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Introduction The volume in hand is a tribute to John Pollini by pupils and colleagues who have been inspired by his teaching and his outstanding contribution to the art, particularly the sculpture, and archaeology of Rome during the late Republic and the early Principate. Pollini’s interests range from archaic Greek marble sculpture to Gallo-Roman bronzes.1 He has also worked on the Christian destruction and desecration of images and temples of classical antiquity, which remains an ongoing project.2 But most of his publications illuminate the sculptured portraiture of the chief historical figures of the Augustan and Julio-Claudian period and offer innovative interpretations of the era’s ideology. He is interested in interdisciplinary cooperation, especially concerning the implications of marble provenance for the interpretation of sculptures,3 the analysis of bronze alloys for determining the re-employment of bronze statuary by attaching a different portrait head,4 as well as the application of computer technology in producing three-dimensional models of buildings and sculptures.5 He is a frequent contributor to ASMOSIA (Association for the Study of Marble and Other Stones in Antiquity). From 2010 until 2015 he conducted excavations in Rome and Ostia Antica as a field school course for students of the University of Southern California. He has been the recipient of several honors and awards, both in the USA and Europe. Among others, he has served as Whitehead Professor of Archaeology in the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (2006–2007), twice as invited scholar in residence at the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin (2011 and 2016), and as senior fellow at the International Morphomata Center for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Cologne, Germany (2017–2018). In 2015 he received a faculty recognition award from the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society for his book From Republic to Empire: Rhetoric, Religion, and Power in the Visual Culture of Ancient Rome (published in 2012). From 2005 to 2021 he was awarded a number of distinguished named lectureships, including the Martha Sharp Joukowsky Lecturership in Archaeology, giving 14 lectures for the Archaeological Institute of America. John Pollini took his B.A. in Classics at the University of Washington in 1968 and his M.A. at the University of California at Berkeley in 1973. In 1978 he was awarded a Ph.D. in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology from the University of California at Berkeley. His long and distinguished academic career includes appointments

 E.g., Pollini 2000c and Pollini 2003a.  See Pollini 2007a and in progress.  E.g., on the Augustus Prima Porta: Pollini 1992a; Pollini et al 1998; Pollini 2000a; on a historical relief from Spain: Pollini et al. 2018b.  Polllini/Giumlia-Mair 2019c; Pollini 2019b.  Pollini 2012a, pls. XVII, XIX–XXX, 2012b, 2017a, 2017b, 2017f. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111182919-001

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as Assistant Professor in Johns Hopkins University’s Department of Classics and Curator of the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum (1980–1987). Since 1987 he has been teaching in the Department of Art History of the University of Southern California, first as Associate Professor, then as Full Professor and since 2018 as USC Associates Endowed Professor in Art History. He has also served as Dean of the School of Fine Arts (1993–1996). Since 2010 he has been Director of the Visual Culture of the Ancient World, organizing lectures and symposia for a consortium of institutions in Southern California. The subject of Pollini’s Ph.D. dissertation (“Studies in Augustan ‘Historical’ Reliefs”) was the harbinger of a lifelong interest in Augustus. In addition to publishing a seminal monograph on the portraiture of Augustus’ grandsons, Gaius and Lucius, thereby establishing the portrait typology of Augustus’ ill-fated heirs,6 Pollini has published extensively on Augustus. His papers investigate his portraiture and its significance, the rhetoric of his imagery, his cultural policies and his architectural legacy.7 His interpretation of the Ara Pacis Augustae as a manifestation of the concept “Peace through Victory” and as a gallery of dynastic portraits of Augustus and his entourage occupies pride of place in his general overview of the Augustan era. The detailed examinations of the narrative friezes as well as the acanthus scrolls of the Ara Pacis and their symbolism form chapters V and VI of Pollini’s seminal book From Republic to Empire (Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 2012). This consists of nine chapters discussing aspects of the art and ideology of Julius Caesar, his adopted son and heir Augustus and the family of the Julio-Claudians, Augustus’ successors. They are all revised, updated and expanded versions of papers previously presented at international conferences. The opening chapter deals with the tradition of ancestral wax masks of the Roman Republican elite and its impact on the development of Roman portraiture, as it is argued that wax masks were based on life masks, following a technique that was developed in fourth-century Greece. Chapter II is mainly concerned with the coin imagery of late Republican and early Imperial leaders and the struggle to strike a balance between realistic portraiture and godlike traits signifying divine protection. The official images of these leaders tended to avoid any hints at deification in order to steer clear of the theomorphic aspects of Hellenistic monarchies, keep up the pretense that leaders were elected merely to serve the people, and ward off the ire of the Senatorial class. By contrast, art works commissioned for private use could reflect a less restrained ideology, where the ruler assumed a godlike aspect. This is particularly noticeable in luxury items like the Gemma Augustea, where Augustus posed as Jupiter, surrounded by gods and personifications. In addition, Roman provincial municipalities could on occasion erect statues of the deified leader and institute

 Pollini 1987.  Pollini 1987/88; Pollini 1995; Pollini 2001a; Pollini 2003b; Pollini 2007b; Pollini 2009; see also Pollini 2012a, discussed below.

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cults in his name, even though this was unthinkable in Rome. However, the state allowed leaders to achieve divine status after death, as was the case with Julius Caesar, whose posthumous state cult and its imagery is discussed in Chapter III. Two years after Caesar’s assassination, the Senate consecrated him as a divus, i.e., a human who had attained divine status, and voted him a temple and an altar. Posthumous deification became regular practice henceforth. But living leaders had to tread with caution. The tension between official versus private imagery for the living leader, and the subtle assimilation of his features to those of his patron god or of a venerable predecessor, constitutes one of the main threads of this book. Chapter IV examines Augustus’ emulation of Alexander the Great’s military prowess, even though he condemned his inability to build a stable empire, which was Augustus’ goal. Pollini argues that Augustus introduced new imagery to emphasize the achievement of “Peace through Victory,” a concept that is elaborated upon in Chapter V, discussed above. Chapters VII and VIII investigate sculptural monuments from the time of Caligula and Claudius. Chapter VII offers a new interpretation of the smaller Cancelleria reliefs, which are reconstructed as components of an altar similar to the Ara Pacis Augustae, dedicated in the reign of Claudius. Chapter VIII argues that Caligula’s alleged “insanity” is a misconception due to hostile literary sources distorting his intentions, and, anyway, Caligula did not live long enough to implement the sacrilegious actions of which he was accused. The final chapter (IX) resumes the argument of Chapter III on the issue of deification of the deceased leader, which was indirectly inspired by the Hellenistic monarchies. The chapter concentrates on the association of astral imagery with the divinity of the ruler, beginning with the comet that appeared in the skies during the funeral games held in honor of Julius Caesar. The comet was reproduced on Roman state coinage next to Caesar’s head and was later appropriated by Augustus when posing as “son of the deified Julius.” The dual stars had been symbols of the Dioskouroi (Roman Castores), the divine twins, since the fifth century BCE, when the Dioskouroi functioned as patrons of the dual kingship of Sparta. Augustus’ introduction of the dual heir system when he appointed his grandsons Gaius and Lucius as his heirs gave Castorian imagery a new lease on life. The dual heir system, evoking the divine protection of the Dioskouroi as reflected in official imagery, was revived several times in the first and second centuries CE. From Republic to Empire thus encapsulates many of Pollini’s concerns with the cultural implications of the early Principate’s policies. His profound knowledge of the history and religion and their impact on the art and architecture of the period renders this book essential reading for all students of Roman culture. Even though the emperor Nero, last of the Julio-Claudians, is not discussed in this book, Pollini has redressed the balance in his most recent publications, where he deals with the portraiture of Nero’s forebears, the Domitii Ahenobarbi, and attempts to disentangle the complicated typology of the juvenile portraits of Nero and his halfbrother, Britannicus. In a new study of some of the panels from the Sebasteion of Aph-

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rodisias,8 Pollini focuses on panel C 19 of the South Building, representing two young princes, one holding an aphlaston and a globe. He suggests that the panel reflects the dual heir system, identifying the youths as Britannicus and Nero, Claudius’ designated heirs. He proceeds to establish the portrait typology of Britannicus, which was hitherto unknown, thereby offering a study comparable to his treatment of the portraits of Gaius and Lucius, published in 1987.9 Finally, in a paper delivered at an international conference on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the discovery of the Cartoceto bronzes organized by the University of Urbino in 2021, Pollini introduces new evidence to support his earlier identification10 of the Cartoceto bronzes as portraits of L. Domitius Ahenobarbus (consul in 54 BCE), his wife, Porcia, his son, Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus (consul in 32 BCE), and the son’s wife, probably to be identified with Aemilia Lepida. The identification is reinforced by the marine motifs on the horse trappings of both equestrian portraits, suggesting naval victories, and indeed both men were distinguished naval commanders. As John Pollini continues to work on the imagery of Augustus and his family, we expect him to shed further light on the significance of the ruling house’s propaganda and the politics of the early Empire.

Publications of John Pollini Books Pollini, John (1987). The Portraiture of Gaius and Lucius Caesar. New York. Pollini, John (1990a). Roman Portraiture: Images of Character and Virtue, with graduate student participation. Los Angeles. Pollini, John (2002a). Gallo-Roman Bronzes and the Process of Romanization: The Cobannus Hoard. Leiden. Pollini, John (2003a). The de Nion Head: A Masterpiece of Archaic Greek Sculpture. Mainz. Pollini, John (2005a). Terra Marique: Studies in Art History and Marine Archaeology in Honor of Anna Marguerite McCann on the Receipt of the Gold Medal of the Archaeological Institute of America (editor, designer, and contributor of introduction, publication list, and one of 19 essays). Oxford. Pollini, John (2012a). From Republic to Empire: Rhetoric, Religion, and Power in the Visual Culture of Ancient Rome, Norman, OK.

Books in Progress Augustus Caesar: From Man to God, from Image to Icon. Christian Destruction and Desecration of Images and Temples of Classical Antiquity.

 Pollini 2021.  Pollini 1987.  Pollini 1993b.

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Articles Pollini, John (1977). “A Flavian Relief Portrait in the J. Paul Getty Museum,” GettyMusJ 5, 63–66. Pollini, John (1981). “Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus and the Ravenna Relief,” RM 88, 117–140. Pollini, John (1982). “A Pre-Principate Portrait of Gaius (Caligula)?” JWaltersArtGal 40, 1–12. Pollini, John (1984). “Damnatio Memoriae in Stone: Two Portraits of Nero Recut to Vespasian in American Museums,” AJA 88, 547–555. Pollini, John (1985). “The Meaning and Date of the Reverse Type of Gaius Caesar on Horseback,” American Numismatic Society Museum Notes 30, 113–117. Pollini, John (1985). “Response to E. Judge’s ‘On Judging the Merits of Augustus,’” in Center for Hermeneutical Studies: Colloquy 49, 44–46. Pollini, John (1986). “Ahenobarbi, Appuleii and Some Others on the Ara Pacis,” AJA 90, 453–460. Pollini, John (1987/88). “The Findspot of the Statue of Augustus from Prima Porta,” BCom 92, 103–108. Pollini, John (1988). “Two Acrolithic or Pseudo-Acrolithic Sculptures of the Mature Classical Period in the Archaeological Museum of the Johns Hopkins University,” in: N. Herz and M. Waelkens (eds.), Classical Marble: Geochemistry, Technology, Trade (NATO ASI Series E vol. 153). Dordrecht, 207–217. Pollini, John (1990b). “Man or God: Divine Assimilation and Imitation in the Late Republic and Early Principate,” in: K.A. Raaflaub and M. Toher (eds.), Between Republic and Empire: Interpretations of Augustus and His Principate. Berkeley, 334–363. Pollini, John (1992a). “The Marble Type of the Augustus from Prima Porta: an Isotopic Analysis,” JRA 5, 203–208. Pollini, John (1992b). “The Tazza Farnese: Principe Augusto ‘Redeunt Saturnia Regna’!” AJA 96, 249–255, 283–300. Pollini, John (1993a). “The Acanthus of the Ara Pacis as an Apolline and Dionysiac Symbol of Anamorphosis, Anakyklosis and Numen Mixtum,” in: M. Kubelik and M. Schwarz (eds.), Von der Bauforschung zur Denkmalpflege, Festschrift für Alois Machatschek. Vienna, 181–217. Pollini, John (1993b). “The Cartoceto Bronzes: Portraits of a Roman Aristocratic Family of the Late First Century B.C.,” AJA 97, 423–446. Pollini, John (1993c). “The Gemma Augustea: Ideology, Rhetorical Imagery, and the Construction of a Dynastic Narrative,” in: P. Holliday (ed.), Narrative and Event in Ancient Art. Cambridge, 258–298. Pollini, John (1994). “The ‘Trojan Column’ at USC: Reality or Myth?” Trojan Family, 30–31. Pollini, John (1995). “The Augustus from Prima Porta and the Transformation of the Polykleitan Heroic Ideal,” in: W.G. Moon (ed.), Polykleitos, the Doryphoros, and Tradition, Madison, WI, 262–282. Pollini, John (1997). “The ‘Dart Aphrodite’: A New Replica of the ‘Arles Aphrodite Type,’ the Cult Image of Venus Victrix in Pompey’s Theater at Rome, and Venusian Ideology and Politics in the Late Republic – Early Principate,” Latomus 55, 757–785. Pollini, John et al. (1998). “Parian Lychnites and the Prima Porta Statue: New Scientific Tests and the Symbolic Value of the Marble,” JRA 11, 275–284. Pollini, John (1999). “The Warren Cup: Homoerotic Love and Symposial Rhetoric in Silver,” ArtB 81, 21–52. Pollini, John (2000a). “The Marble Type of the Statue of Augustus from Prima Porta: Facts and Fallacies, Lithic Power and Ideology, and Color Symbolism in Roman Art,” in: D.U. Schilardi and D. Katsonopoulou (eds.), Paria Lithos: Parian Quarries, Marble and Workshops of Sculpture (Proceedings of the First International Conference on the Archaeology of Paros and the Cyclades, Paros, 2–5 October 1997). Athens, 237–252. Pollini, John (2000b). “Ein mit Inschriften versehener Legionärshelm von der pannonisch-dakischen Grenze des römischen Reiches: Besitzverhältnisse an Waffen in der römischen Armee,” in: H. Born (ed.), M. Junkelmann, Römische Helme VIII Sammlung Axel Guttmann. Mainz, 169–188. Pollini, John (2000c). “The Riace Bronzes: New Observations,” KölnJb 33, 37–56.

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Pollini, John (2001a). “A New Portrait of Octavian/Augustus Caesar,” in: J. Michael Padgett (ed.), Roman Sculpture in the Art Museum, Princeton University. Princeton, 6–11. Pollini, John (2001b). “Two Bronze Portrait Busts of Slave-Boys from a Shrine of Cobannus in Roman Gaul,” Studia Varia II: Occasional Papers on Antiquities of The J. Paul Getty Museum 10, 115–152. Pollini, John (2002b). “‘Frieden-durch-Sieg’ Ideologie und die Ara Pacis Augustae: Bildrhetorik und die Schöpfung einer dynastischen Erzählweise,” in: M. Bietak and M. Schwarz (eds.), Krieg und Sieg: Narrative Wanddarstellungen von Altägypten bis ins Mittelalter (Internationales Kolloquium 23. – 30. Juli 1997 im Schloss Heindorf, Langenlois; Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften XXIV). Vienna, 137–159. Pollini, John (2002c). “A New Portrait of Octavia and the Iconography of Octavia Minor and Julia Maior,” RM 109, 11–42. Pollini, John (2002d). “Two Gallo-Roman Bronze Portraits of Sacrificial Ministrants in the J. Paul Getty Museum” in: C.C. Mattusch, A. Brauer, and S.E. Knudsen (eds.), From the Parts to the Whole 2: Acta of the XIIIth International Congress on Ancient Bronzes, Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 28 – June 1, 1996. Portsmouth, RI, 89–91. Pollini, John (2003b). “A New Head of Augustus from Herculaneum: A Marble Survivor of a Pyroclastic Surge,” RM 110, 303–318. Pollini, John (2003c). “Slave-Boys for Sexual and Religious Service: Images of Pleasure and Devotion,” in: A.J. Boyle and W.J. Dominik (eds.), Flavian Rome: Culture, Image, Text. Leiden, 149–166. Pollini, John (2004). “The Caelian Hill Sacrificial Minister: A Marble Head of an Imperial Slave-Boy from the Antiquarium Comunale on the Caelian Hill in Rome,” RM 111, 1–28. Pollini, John (2005b). “The Armstrong and Nuffler Heads and the Portraiture of Julius Caesar, Livia, and Antonia Minor in: J. Pollini (ed.), Terra Marique: Studies in Honor of Anna Marguerite McCann on the Receipt of the Gold Medal of the Archaeological Institute of America. Oxford, 89–122. Pollini, John (2005c). “A Bronze Gorgon Handle Ornament of the Ripe Archaic Greek Period,” Annuario della Scuola Archeologica Italiana di Atene e delle Missioni Italiani in Oriente, 83, 235–247. Pollini, John (2005d). “A New Marble Portrait of Tiberius: Portrait Typology and Ideology,” AntK 48, 57–72. Pollini, John (2005e). “A North African Portrait of Caracalla from the Mellerio Collection and the Iconography of Caracalla and Geta,” RA 39.1, 55–77. Pollini, John (2005f). “Problematics of Making Ambiguity Explicit in Virtual Reconstructions: A Case Study of the Mausoleum of Augustus”, with L. Swartz, K. Kensek, and N. Cipolla: electronic publication of the international conference, Computer Technology and the Arts: Theory and Practice, sponsored by the British Academy and the University of London (www.chart.ac.uk/chart2005/papers/pollini.html). Pollini, John (2007a). “Christian Desecration and Mutilation of the Parthenon,” AM 122, 207–228. Pollini, John (2007b). “A New Bronze Portrait Bust of Augustus,” Latomus 66, 270–273. Pollini, John (2007c). “Ritualizing Death in Republican Rome: Memory, Religion, Class Struggle, and the Wax Ancestral Mask Tradition’s Origin and Influence on Veristic Portraiture” in: N. Laneri (ed.), Performing Death: Social Analyses of Funerary Ritual in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean (Oriental Institute Seminars 3, University of Chicago). Chicago, 237–285. Pollini, John (2008a). “Gods and Emperors in the East: Images of Power and the Power of Intolerance,” in: E.A. Friedland, S.C. Herbert, and Y.Z. Eliav (eds.), The Sculptural Environment of the Roman Near East: Reflections on Culture, Ideology, and Power (Interdisciplinary Studies in Ancient Culture and Religion). Leuven, 165–196. Pollini, John (2008b). “A New Bronze Lar and the Role of the Lares in the Domestic and Civic Religion of the Romans,” Latomus 67, 391–398. Pollini, John (2008c). “A New Portrait Bust of Tiberius in the Collection of Michael Bianco,” Bulletin Antieke Beschaving 83, 133–138. Pollini, John (2009). “Augustus: Portraits of Augustus,” in: Oxford Encyclopaedia of Ancient Greece and Rome, 44.

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Pollini, John (2010a). “Lovemaking and Voyeurism in Roman Art and Culture: The House of the Centenary at Pompeii,” RM 116, 289–319. Pollini, John (2010b). “Recutting Roman Portraits: Problems in Interpretation and the New Technology in Finding Possible Solutions,” MemAmAc 55, 23–44. Pollini, John (2012b). “Computer Technology and Three-Dimensional Models in Determining the Recutting of Roman Portraits: The Getty Augustus,” in: A. Gutierrez Garcia, P. Lapuente, and I. Rodà de Llanza (eds.), Interdisciplinary Studies on Ancient Stone, Proceedings of the IX ASMOSIA Conference (Documenta 23, Institut Català d’Arqueologia Classical). Taragona, 31–37. Pollini, John (2012c). “A New Winged Goat Table Leg Support from the House of Numerius Popidius Priscus at Pompeii and the Rediscovery of Related Finds Lost for a Century and a Half,” Vesuviana 4, 143–155. Pollini, John (2013a). “The Archaeology of Destruction: Christians, Images of Classical Antiquity, and Some Problems of Interpretation,” in: S. Ralph (ed.), The Archaeology of Violence: Interdisciplinary Approaches (IEMA Proceedings 2). Albany, 241–265. Pollini, John (2013b). “I parenti e gli eredi di Augusto,” in: E. La Rocca, C. Parisi Presicce, A. Lo Monaco, D. Giroire, and D. Roger (eds.), Augusto. Verona, 164–171. Pollini, John (2013c). “Re-immaginando l’immagine di Caligola: Un’indagine fra l’uomo e il mito,” in Caligola: La trasgressione al potere, Rome, 257–266. “The Image of Caligula: Myth and Reality,” electronically published as part of the Digital Sculpture Project: Caligula (Proceedings of a Symposium on Caligula, “Creating a Total Environment for the Caligula in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts,” held at the Virginia Museum on Art in December 2011): http://www.digitalsculpture.org/ papers/pollini/pollini_paper.html [accessed 10 October 2024]. Pollini, John (2014a). “Observations on Augustus’ Obelisk, Meridian, and Ara Pacis and their Symbolic Significance in the Bildprogramm of Augustus,” in: L. Haselberger (ed.), The Horologium of Augustus: Debate and Context, JRA Suppl. 99, 53–61. Pollini, John (2014b). “La parenté d’Auguste,” in: E. La Rocca et al. (eds.), Auguste, Paris, 88–91. Pollini, John (2015). “Some Observations on the Use of Color on Ancient Sculpture, Contemporary Scientific Exploration, and Exhibition Displays,” in: P. Pensabene and E. Gasparini (eds.), Interdisciplinary Studies on Ancient Stone: Asmosia X, Rome, 901–910. Pollini, John (2016). “The God from Cape Artemision: Zeus or Poseidon? An Old Question, a New Approach,” in: A. Giumlia-Mair and C.C. Mattusch (eds.), Proceedings of the XVIIth International Congress on Ancient Bronzes, Izmir, Turkey. Monographie Instrumentum 52. Autun, 219–230. Pollini, John (2017a). “The Birth of Augustus, the Solarium Augusti, and the Life-Giving Aspects of Apollo and Sol in Augustan Visual Culture,” in “New Light on the Relationship between the Montecitorio Obelisk and Ara Pacis of Augustus,” with N. Cipolla, in Studies in Digital Heritage 1.1 (2017) 51–59: Published online: https://doi.org/10.14434/sdh.v1i1.23331. Pollini, John (2017b). “Aeneas, Augury, and Dynasty and Destiny in the Ideology of Augustan Visual Culture,” in “New Light on the Relationship between the Montecitorio Obelisk and Ara Pacis of Augustus,” Studies in Digital Heritage 1.1 (2017a) 60–63: Published online: https://doi.org/10.14434/ sdh.v1i1.23331. Pollini, John (2017c). “The Bronze Statue of Germanicus from Ameria (Amelia),” AJA 121, 425–437. Pollini, John (2017d). “Burning Rome, Burning Christians,” in: S. Bartsch, K. Freudenburg, C. Littlewood (eds), The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Nero, Cambridge, 213–236. Pollini, John (2017e). “The ‘Lost’ Nollekens Relief of an Imperial Sacrifice from Domitian’s Palace on the Palatine: Its History, Iconography, and Date,” JRA 30, 97–126. Pollini, John (2017f). “A Short Note on the Archaeometric Study of Two Sculptures in the Gabinetto Segreto of the Naples National Archaeological Museum: The ‘Pan and the She-Goat’ Group and the ‘Bikini Venus,’” with F. Antonelli and S. Cancelliere, Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 9, 685–691.

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Pollini, John (2018a). “Contact Point: The Image and Reception of Egypt and Its Gods in Rome,” in: J. Spier, T. Potts, and S.E. Cole (eds.), Beyond the Nile: Egypt and the Classical World. Los Angeles, 211–217. Pollini, John (2018b). “A New Roman Imperial Relief Said to Be from Southern Spain: Problems of Style, Iconography, and Marble Type in Determining Provenance,” with P. Lapuente, T. Nogales-Basarrate, and J. Podany, ASMOSIA XI. Split, 377–389. Pollini, John (2019a). “A Hellenistic Bronze Statuette of a Dwarf Artisan in the Metropolitan Museum of Art,” in: C. Dobiat, F. Fless, and E. Stauch (eds.), EXCELLENCE: Studies in Honor of Olga Palagia (Internationale Archäologie, Studia Honoria 38). Rahden/Westf., 211–220. Pollini, John (2019b). “Past and Recent Metal Analyses of the Germanicus Statue from Amelia,” in: P. Baas (ed.), Proceedings of the XXth International Congress on Ancient Bronzes in Tübingen. Oxford, 25–34. Pollini, John / Giumlia-Mair, Alessandra (2019c). “The Statue of Germanicus from Amelia: New Discoveries,” AJA 123, 675–686. Pollini, John (2020a). “The Image of Caligula: Myth and Reality,” in: P. Schertz and B. Frischer (eds.), New Studies on the Portrait of Caligula in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Leiden, 70–90. Pollini, John (2020b). “Die Umarbeitung von römischen Kaiserbildnissen: Deutungsprobleme und Lösungsansätze durch die digitale Technologie,” in: T. Greub (ed.), Revisionen des Porträts: Jenseits von Mimesis und Repräsentation. Paderborn, 243–270. Pollini, John (2021). “New Observations on the Imperial Reliefs from the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias and the Portraiture of Claudius Britannicus and the Young Nero,” JdI 136, 231–287. Pollini, John (forthcoming). “New Observations on the Cartoceto Bronzes: Portraits of the Aristocratic Family of the Domitii Ahenobarbi in the Late Republic,” in Proceedings of the International Conference on the Occasion of the 75th Anniversary of the Discovery of the Cartoceto Bronzes, University of Urbino, Soprintendenza Archeologia dell’Emilia-Romagna, Municipality of Cartoceto di Pergola. Pollini, John (forthcoming). “Ancient Roman Winged Genius Pantheus of Octavian (?),” in Proceedings of the 22nd International Congress on Ancient Bronzes in Athens, Greece.

Review Articles Pollini, John (1999). Review of D. Boschung, Die Bildnisse des Augustus (Das römische Herrscherbild I.2), ArtB 81, 723–735. Pollini, John (2004). Review of E. Varner, Mutilation and Transformation: Damnatio Memoriae and Roman Imperial Portraiture (Monumenta Graeca et Romana 10), ArtB 88, 591–598.

Other Reviews [52] short book reviews on various aspects of Greek and Roman art, archaeology, history, and culture for CHOICE Scholarly Reviews

Part I: Portraiture and Honorific Statuary

Diane Favro

Look Up! The Roman Fornix as an Architectural Solution to Problems of Honorific Display Spreading across the empire and the centuries, commemorative arches are a hallmark of Roman Imperial architecture. Covered with laudatory inscriptions and reliefs, topped with generals in chariots, and integrated into victory parades, these memorials are resolutely (if incorrectly) dubbed “triumphal arches.” The dazzling history and pervasiveness of the form make it difficult to look backward to its origin story. In recent years, the exploration of early memorial arches has expanded, with excellent studies interrogating Republican precursors dating to the second century BCE.1 Archaeological evidence is scarce, and descriptions in ancient sources generalized, incomplete, and often confusing. In the long history of the Roman Republic, only six constructs are identified as memorial arches in Rome; all are described as fornices by authors writing centuries after their creation (Fig. 1). Their primary purpose was to celebrate the donors’ achievements through sculptural display. Beyond the name fornix (“vault”), there is limited information about the size, material, structural design, or orientation of these structures.2 As a result, scholarly attention has focused on possible locations in Rome, relations to later triumphal processional routes, potential manubial and votive associations, and statue identifications. By redirecting our viewpoint 180 degrees to focus on the period of creation, other pragmatic causal factors appear, centering on visibility, security, and implementation of sculptures.3

Problems of Public Sculptural Display According to Pliny the Elder, “a most civilized sense of rivalry” among Roman elites inspired the enduring custom of erecting honorific statues in public places (Plin. HN 34.17, transl. Rackham). Fashioned of long-lasting materials, these works celebrated the honorees during their lifetimes and projected their memories into the future. Visibility was critical. When the Senate voted a statue to commemorate the ambassador

 For interrogation of Republican fornices see Popkin 2016, Hrychuk Kontokosta 2013, 7–35, WallaceHadrill 1990, Coarelli 1988, De Maria 1988, Kleiner 1985 and 1989.  Linguistically, the word fornix applies to both a vault as part of any structure and to a specific type of memorial.  Hölscher 1978, Wallace-Hadrill 1990. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111182919-002

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Fig. 1: Map of Rome in the Republic. Image: author.

Gnaeus Octavius, who was assassinated in 162 BCE, the official decree specified it be erected at a place “most visible to the eye” (oculatissimus locus).4 By capturing the eyes of spectators, sculptures imprinted a myriad of associations linked to the memorialized subject. A prominent location and clear sightlines meant the honorees’ achievements were reinforced by repeated viewings and, equally important, by re-

 Plin. HN 34.24, transl. Rackham; Beagon 2011, 78–79. Regarding the siting of statues in prominent locations, see Stewart 2003, 135–139.

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lated discussions among diverse audiences. Given the scant remains and lack of data about the size, placement, or orientation of mid-Republican sculptural displays, specific viewing contexts cannot be easily recreated.5 Ancient descriptions come primarily from texts written decades later, yet they, along with a brief overview of early public sculptural exhibits, suggest the ongoing challenges to viewing that percolated as fornices emerged. In early Rome the terracotta statues of gods on temple ridgepoles caught the eye, their matt-painted forms silhouetted against the blue sky. Like the deities they represented, these images could not be fully understood. Their high placement precluded close visual analysis, and terracotta manufacturing limited scale. In the sixth century BCE, the depiction of Jupiter driving a chariot atop the gigantic temple to the Capitoline triad at Rome was probably close to human (not divine) size. Seen either at a raked angle looking upward, or at a distance from other urban hilltops or tall structures, even the greatest god seemed, if not little, certainly distant from human existence and achievement.6 Public statues of human beings were frequently small. The state honored four envoys assassinated in 438 BCE with statues (presumably of bronze) on the speaker’s platform in the Forum; they measured three Roman feet in height, “the scale of these marks of honor in those days” (Plin. HN 34.24, transl. Rackham). The small size affirmed the gap between gods and humans, but also reflected practical concerns. Bronze statues were expensive. Other available materials were not ideal outdoors. Local stones such as pock-marked volcanic tuffs could not maintain sharp details; terracotta sculptures did not fare well in high traffic venues. Elevation of the ambassadors’ images atop a platform may have helped with viewing, especially if the small images were placed on pedestals so as to sit at or above the eye level of pedestrians in the Forum.7 The grouping of statuettes expanded the overall size of display and drew attention to related narratives and individuals represented. The high value of metals put small bronze figures at risk. After defeating the Etruscans of Volsinii in 264 BCE, M. Fulvius Flaccus entered Rome triumphant, carrying 2,000 looted statues among other booty (Plin. HN 34.34). Partial inscriptions with the name Folvios have led to the association of this haul with platforms in front of the

 For an analysis of honorific statues by location in Rome, see Lahusen 1983.  Plin. HN 35.157, transl. Rackham. An apt comparison is provided by the viewing experience of the Chariot of Liberty (1927) by Paolo Bartolini. Rising eleven meters above the Victor Emmanuel II National Monument on the northern slope of the Capitoline Hill in Rome, the sculpture seems appropriate to the urban scale of the project with the sculpture height-to-building-width at 1:12 versus approximately 1:33 for the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. In the fourth and third centuries BCE the display of terracotta statues on temple ridges declined; a bronze chariot replaced the terracotta quadriga on Jupiter’s temple in 296 BCE; Liv. 10.23.12.  The repeated listing of the ambassadors’ names by Roman authors implies the existence of identifying inscriptions on their bases. Overall lack of secure evidence complicates the assessment of base heights for early- and mid-Republican statues at Rome. An extensive assessment of Imperial statue bases indicates that most were between .8 m. and 1.4 m.; Højte 2005, 30.

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twin temples of Mater Matuta and Fortuna in the Forum Boarium (Area Sacra di Sant’Omobono), though the dismantling of the structures in 213 BCE complicates reconstruction.8 Careful archaeological work has revealed low-lying offering tables with the remains of metal fittings on top; these suggest the placement for over two dozen mismatched bronze statuettes (probably of divinities) on top, standing 2–3 feet in height, a familiar format in Etruscan and Italic sanctuaries (Fig. 2).9

Fig. 2: Hypothetical reconstruction of offering table with votive statuettes, Area Sacra di Sant’ Omobono, Rome. Image: author.

Together the individual figures created a grouping united by dedicatory purpose (and possibly by shared manubial identity), as well as by proximity. After viewing the en-

 The platforms have been identified as either altars or donaria and suggestively linked to construction of the Aqua Anio Vetus after 272 BCE.  Diffendale et al. 2016b, 32–33.

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tire group, spectators had to come near, bend down, and walk around the platform to notice the details of individual statues.10 As Roman territories and wealth expanded, so did the range of sculptural materials, sizes, scales, and subjects. Powerful individuals sought, and received, recognition for achievements during their lifetimes; the state responded with honorific statues in public venues to celebrate honorees and to stand as exemplars for other citizens. In 338 BCE, the Senate celebrated Latin victories by awarding the triumphators equestrian statues in the Forum Romanum, an act that Livy noted was rare at that time.11 The scale of this early display is unknown, though a figure on horseback implies a generous size and area for viewing.12 Other ambitious Romans shrewdly deployed associations with divinities to justify erecting works on their own initiative. In 293 BCE the triumphator Spurius Carvilius commissioned a statue of Jupiter for the Capitoline Hill, forged from bronze weaponry he had captured from the Samnites.13 The filings left over from polishing the colossal work were then used to fashion a smaller image of Carvilius himself standing at the god’s feet, an overt visual and material linkage of victims and victors, human and divine.14 This dynamic melding attracted attention near and far. Roman viewers atop the Capitoline could admire the honor statue of Carvilius at around eye level or crane their necks to look up at Jupiter. Outside the city the colossus was visible as far away as the Alban Mount, about fifteen kilometers from Rome. This unique example of extra-urban spectatorship affirms Roman awareness of intervisuality by conceptualizing a statue as seeing as well as being seen.15 Ritual processions reinforced the potency of the visual exchange. At elite funeral parades, actors wearing ancestor masks exchanged glances with spectators at ground level as if the statues had come to life; all present looked upward at the deceased being carried aloft.16 A similar undirected exchange occurred at triumphal proces-

 Pollini 2007, 243–244. The engagement with small figurines is similar to what occurred at household lararia, though in the domestic context the statuettes were often viewed closer to eye level.  Liv. 8.13.9; Longfellow 2015, 346–347; Tanner 2000, 29. Most public statues were of standing figures; Plin. HN 34.28.  A wall-painting from the Praedia of Julia Felix, Pompeii (before 79 CE), shows a row of equestrian statues at about half life size and raised on podia around 1.5 m. tall, a configuration that required spectators at ground level to look upward to see the riders’ faces, see Olivito 2013. Well-known Greek equestrian statues (such as those by Lysippus) may have also inspired life-size renditions of horses and riders.  Plin. HN 34.43–44; Pollini 2007, 247.  Davies 2017, 63. A similar potent pairing of a donor’s image was made in 209 BCE, when Fabius Verrucosus placed an equestrian statue of himself on the Capitoline next to a captured colossal statue of Heracles taken from Tarentum; Plut. Fab. 22.6.4–5.  Cicero provides an intriguing example of statue orientation in 65 BCE, noting that soothsayers recommended reorienting a statue of Jupiter to face the sun, Forum, and Curia to provide light so that the Senate and people would be able to “see” threats to the state; Catil. 3.20.  Pollini 2007, 239.

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sions where images of gods, captured sculptures carried on floats (fercula), and the victorious general in his chariot looked down upon ground-level spectators. Honored figures, like the gods, merited elevated size and placement. In the second century BCE, colossal statues were costly, difficult to insinuate into crowded public locales, and considered too hubristic for human beings.17 Tall, round bases provided a logical architectural response. Columns supporting statues were well known from Greek examples and relatively easy to erect. In addition, they did not take up much valuable urban space. The Senate voted C. Maenius a statue to memorialize his defeat of the Volscians in 338 BCE.18 The bronze statue stood atop a tall column, attracting attention for more than its height.19 Each day the shaft’s kinetic shadow animated the Forum; in late afternoon, a herald standing before the Curia Hostilia announced the day’s end by noting the sun’s relationship to the pillar (Plin. HN 7.212). As naval conflicts multiplied in the third century BCE, the Romans sought ways to display new types of booty. Near his column, the state displayed the ships’ prows captured by Maenius on the speaker’s platform (itself henceforth known as the Rostra), creating an ensemble of remembrance. The projecting prows were eye-catching, but also took up space, pushing spectators away from the orators and statuary on display.20 When C. Duilius celebrated the first Roman victory at sea in 260 BCE, the Senate and people of Rome awarded him a column monument in the Volcanal area on the slope of the Capitoline in full view from the Forum; a lengthy inscription on the base described his achievements (Fig. 3).21 Captured rostra (ship prows) attached to the column shaft high above ground level drew eyes upward toward the crowning image in bronze, a permanent reminder of Maenius’ great victory, grand triumphal parade, and enduring fame.22

 On experimentation with honor displays, see Kondratieff 2004, 8–9.  Plin. HN 34.20. Maenius captured the rostra as booty, but not in a naval battle. Pliny dates another column in the Forum Romanum honoring the praefectus annonae L. Minucius Augurinus to 439 BCE, though Evans convincingly argues it was erected during the second century BCE, when the Minucii attempted to establish a venerable history for their gens through promotional coinage; Plin. HN 18.15; 34.21; Evans 2011, 4–5. Republican fornices did not appear on Roman coins, perhaps because they were self-generated rather than erected by the Senate; Ridley 2014, 20–21.  The shiny gilding of highly-placed statues enhanced visibility but was both expensive and became less reflective over time.  Plin. HN 34.20. Contested late sources imply the Columna Rostrata C. Duilii was subsequently moved to another location in the Forum and that a second rostrate column to Duilius stood near the Circus Maximus; Kondratieff 2004, 2, 6–9, 15.  The base was about 1.6 m in height. Extant remains indicate that the inscription was repeatedly reworked over the years; CIL 6.1300 = 31591.  Ship anchors may also have been exhibited on the column shaft, as seen on later rostrate columns; Kondratieff 2004, 9. To minimize stress on the column shaft, the exhibited rostra must have been from the smallest triremes, though even these weighed several hundred kilograms. A display of three pairs would require a column shaft at least 5 m. in height. Overall, the weight and holes for attachment of the rostra compromised the columns’ stability.

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Fig. 3: Hypothetical reconstruction of Columna Rostrata C. Duilii, adapted from Forbes (1895).

Column monuments were not without challenges. Full appreciation of the whole required distance viewing, which impeded recognition of the sculpted honoree.23 On first encounter, spectators relied on the ground-level base inscription for identification. Statue orientation potentially posed problems if later constructions in an area compromised visibility. Architecturally, the columnar bases had two significant drawbacks. In the late third or early second century BCE, Ennius wrote of Scipio Africanus, “What manner of statue, how great a column shall the Roman people make, to tell of your deeds?” (Enn. Scip. 10, transl. Warmington). Increasing tallness as an indication

 To compensate for distant viewing, the artists may have created less detailed sculptures for atop columns.

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of status threatened to place the honoree at eye level with the gods. In addition, great height was a technical dead end, since stability decreased as statues rose higher and higher.24 Also, the flat area atop a column capital easily accommodated a single large, sculpted figure, yet growing awareness of the Hellenistic world began to stimulate Roman interest in viewing larger ensembles.25 Few honorific statues can be sited precisely. Donors, logically, favored sites with the greatest concentration of eyes, erecting memorials along well-traveled urban routes and in public venues like the Forum Boarium, Capitoline Hill, and Forum Romanum, though specific placements are rarely known. Generally, sculptures stood close to buildings in fora to preserve the open spaces for events and temporary structures such as stages and arenas. The Romans did consider the interrelationships between statues and places, and oriented individual works to enhance intervisuality, but apparently did not mandate the overall curation of public spaces. As a result, the proliferation of honorific statues, along with on-going construction and an everexpanding population in Rome, began to compromise viewing at the end of the third century BCE.26

Security Victorious generals returning to Rome with ample booty sought ways to stand out among rivals competing for status and lasting memory. Statues provided an effective means, but their endurance was not guaranteed. The wagonloads of captured statues entering the city underscored the vulnerability of sculptural displays.27 While the Roman capital city was not subjected to citywide attack, theft, and looting, its statues were susceptible to various human interventions ranging from civic unrest and vandalism to displacement by new building projects, as well as to decay from neglect. Vandals added graffiti or removed gilding.28 The early three-foot tall statue of the augur Attus Navius standing in front of the Senate house burned during the riot at the funeral of Publius Clodius in 52 BCE (Plin. HN 34.21; Cic. Mil. 90). Building and

 Despite these drawbacks, memorial columns regained popularity in the late antique and Byzantine periods.  In the mid-third century BCE, the wealthy Aetoian Aristaineta commissioned a tall monument (over 9 m.) at Delphi with adjacent columns supporting a platform surmounted by her statue along with family members (Biard 2017, 102). At Pergamon, Attalus I commemorated his defeat of the Gauls (223 BCE) with several large bronze groupings including the so-called Long Monument with over a dozen life-size figures on a base approximately 1.15 m. in height; Marszal 2000, 208, Fig. 76.  Davies 2017, 145–146; Stewart 2003, 124–132.  Stewart 2003, 151.  Evidence is limited for vandalism of statues at Rome in the Republican period. Juvenal later mentions gilding being scraped from statues; Juv. 13.150; Stewart 2003, 264–265.

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event sites presented physical dangers. In 186 BCE, a memorial column on the spina of the Circus Maximus toppled when hit by an apparatus or beam (Liv. 39.7). Other statues disappeared from the historical record when new structures took over their sites. Elite families assumed responsibility for maintaining images of ancestors in public as well as private venues, though changing fortunes often hindered maintenance.29 Natural forces were not kind to sculptures. Dramatic temperature changes cracked terracotta statues. Floods and earthquakes destabilized bases, causing figures to fall. The frequent conflagrations in Rome decimated buildings and artworks alike. In 241 BCE, the state awarded Lucius Caecilius a statue on the Capitoline for saving sacred objects from a raging fire (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 2.66). Bronze sculptures distributed their heavy weight downward to stable platforms, but hollow interiors and shallow base sockets made them vulnerable to forceful lateral thrusts. According to Livy, a tempest in 182 BCE toppled numerous statues on the Capitoline Hill and near the Circus Maximus (Obseq. 4; Liv. 40.2.1–4). Pliny highlights a colossal statue by the famous Greek artist Lysippus at Tarentum because, “it is not dislodged from its place by any storms,” though he adds that the artist took the precaution of placing a column nearby to break the force of the wind (Plin. HN 34.40, transl. Rackham). Lightning often struck figures placed on high, an occurrence taken to indicate divine displeasure. During the wars against Pyrrhus in the early third century BCE, a bolt hit a terracotta statue on the pediment of the Capitoline temple, causing it to crash to the ground (Cic. Div. 1.10). In 172 BCE a lightning strike shattered the Columna Rostrata Aemilii Pauli from top to bottom, the bulky projecting ship prows contributing to its rapid downfall. Ever clever, the augurs appeased the gods with religious cleansing, sacrifices, and games, and at the same time interpreted the fallen rostra taken from defeated enemies as evidence Rome would continue to expand her territories (Liv. 42.20). Aulus Gellius records that after lightning hit the small statue of Rome’s early hero Horatius Cocles, treacherous Etruscan augurs “moved [it] to a lower position, on which the sun never shone, being cut off by the high buildings which surrounded the place on every side” (Gel. 4.5.1–6, transl. Rolfe); subsequently, loyal Romans rescued the revered statue and placed it at an elevated and commanding position in the Volcanal, looking down on the Forum Romanum. Fixity was an issue for sculptural displays. Images could be altered, with the heads of statues changed, a cost-effective solution that clearly demonstrated disrespect for both the person depicted and the donor (Plin. HN 35.4). Outside Rome, when Verres detached a statue in the first century BCE, the empty pedestal was considered a stark insult to the memory of Scipio Africanus, whose name was inscribed on the base.30 In 179 BCE the censors Aemilius Lepidus and M. Fulvius Nobilior removed stat Flower 1996, 10, 56, 63–65. The maintenance and repair of public statues became the responsibility of the honorand’s heirs in perpetuity; Wallace-Hadrill 1990, 158–159; cf. Cic. Ver. 2.4.79–80.  Cic. Ver. 2.4.78. Verres himself suffered when his statue was pulled down and the empty pedestal left standing in the forum of Tauromenium; Cic. Ver. 2.2.160

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ues (signa) between the columns at the Temple of Capitoline Jupiter because they were inconveniently placed.31 Two decades later the censors of 158 BCE ordered the removal of all statues in the Forum Romanum representing Roman magistrates except for those voted by the people or the Senate (Plin. HN 34.30). At the same time, they melted down an early bronze statue of the tyrant Spurius Cassius, probably a threefoot tall image from the fifth century BCE, an act that reveals growing anxiety about the expanding fame of individuals as well as the vulnerability of accessible statues.32 Few statues had such a long lifespan. Many suffered from political vicissitudes. In the first century BCE, the Roman tribes honored the praetor Marius Gratidianus with sculptures in Rome’s districts (vici), though soon after “threw them down again at the entrance of Sulla” (Plin. HN 34.27, transl. Rackham).

Implementation Exactly how public sculptural displays were implemented remains unclear. Ancient texts indicate that the Senate and people of Rome, alone or together, awarded statues, but give few details about the process.33 Polybius notes that the sovereign people of Rome alone had the right to confer honors, while the Senate celebrated military achievements (Polyb. 6.14.4; 6.15.7). In practice, clear distinctions between approving entities were neither mandated nor practiced. Rather, the criteria for approvals continuously evolved in response to the honorands’ rank, offices, and specific achievements, as well as to current political imperatives.34 The Senate could refuse requests, as could recipients.35 Tradition and practical requirements compelled the state to

 Liv. 40.51.2–3. Romans of the Republic used several different words to describe statues. Signa referred to images of gods or humans, but also to other symbols, including military standards; Hrychuk Kontokosta 2013, 17–18. Often the written context for the word informs the meaning. Livy’s specific mention of signa militaria later in the same passage strengthens the interpretation of signa, in reference to items removed from the temples, as sculptures. Regarding the crowds of statues in the Area Capitolina see Stewart 2003, 129–130.  Wallace-Hadrill 1990, 163; Sehlmeyer 1999, 152–159; Stewart 2003, 128–130.  Flower 1996, 55–65; Wallace-Hadrill 1990, 170–173.  The right to exhibit a wax ancestor mask (imago) was a high honor apparently reserved to those who held the “curule magistracies,” but similar restrictions did not apply to honor statues; Flower 1996, 9, 53–59, 61; Pollini 2007, 237–240; Fejfer 2009, 24–25.  For example, the Senate declined to award Cicero’s friend Servius Sulpicius a statue, arguing that his natural death while ambassador did not qualify him for that honor; Cic. Phil. 9. Livy recorded that Scipio Africanus forbade the people to erect statues to him in the Comitium, on the rostra, in the senate house, on the Capitol and in the shrine of Jupiter; Livy 38.56.12–13; cf. V. Max. 4.1.6. This passage is generally considered a retrospective invention, yet it implies that the refusal of sculptural honorifics (possibly as a feigned sign of piety and modesty) was considered possible; Hölkeskamp 2018a, 439; Ridley 2014, 19; Hrychuk Kontokosta 2013, 27.

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exert some proprietary control over civic areas such as the Forum Romanum, as evident in the censorial removal of statues in 158 BCE. Priests and religious institutions likewise curated open areas and sculptural content.36 But opportunities were readily available. Many statues in public areas resulted from individual and family selfassertion, blurring the distinction between official and unofficial commemoratives.37 The financial aspects of acquiring land and the fabrication of statues were rarely recorded. The cost of a plot for a statue base must have been nominal even with the high land values in Rome. Fabrication and erection expenditures grew along with the size of representations and expanded availability of costly materials. A life-size bronze figure weighing around 450 kg was expensive to make and required a strong base with substantial foundations. As bases became bigger and taller, so did the budgets for construction work. For example, the lifting of a large metal image onto the top of a column required sophisticated equipment and skilled operators, and ample open space in which to maneuver.38

An Architectural Solution: The Fornix Rome of the second century BCE was a cauldron for change. Stimulated by external contacts, enriched by war-won wealth, and provoked by social realignments, ambitious generals sought effective, novel ways to memorialize themselves and, by extension, their families. They paired with architects to experiment with architectural materials, forms, and scales to make their memorial images “most visible to the eyes,” including coupling self-images with colossi and statue placement atop towering columns.39 Existing architectural forms in Rome suggested an alternative solution. Gates into Etruscan and early Republican cities affirmed the visual and structural power of arches embellished with apotropaic sculptures.40 Roman subterranean tomb architecture coupled vaulted forms with statues; at the burial complex of the Scipios outside Rome, a superstructure with roughly life-size sculpted figures stood over arched open-

 Orlin 2002, 70–71, 116–138; Pietilä-Castrén 1987, 27.  Wallace-Hadrill 1990, 158–165; Sehlmeyer 1999, 158.  Russell 2015, 189; Hölscher 1990, 80.  In the same period, Romans experimented with porticos as covered walkways, unifying facades embellished with shields and art, and spatial enclosures for curated sculptural displays. For the range and sequence of building projects in Rome during the mid-Republican period, see Coarelli 1977, 1–10, 20–23; Davies 2017, 75–146; Bernard 2018, 253–261.  The Porta Triumphalis in the southern Campus Martius may have provided a direct inspiration for early fornices, though its form and sculptural program remain uncertain; Hrychuk Kontokosta 2013, 26; Richardson 1992, 22. Outside Rome, Greek entryways (propylaea) surmounted by sculptures likewise served as models; Plin. HN 34.27.

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ings in full view of travelers on the Via Appia.41 In Rome, the expanding aqueduct system brought water in channels elevated to maintain even gravity flow; leaping over streets, these sequential arch supports drew attention within the cityscape and appeared on coin images surmounted by statues.42 A similar urban experience could be had along urban streets where arches inserted into the dense urban fabric helped stabilize structures flanking streets.43 Livy mentions a Via Fornicata in the Campus Martius that may have looked like the medieval arches of the Clivo di Scauro on the Caelian Hill (Liv. 22.36.8) (Fig. 4). The rebuilding of wooden bridges in stone during

Fig. 4: View of the Clivo di Scauro on the Caelian Hill, Rome. Photo: © joselomba for Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0.

 Flower 1996, 162. The Tomb of the Scipios was extensively reworked in the mid-second century BCE; for a reconstruction see Volpe 2014, fig. 13.  Rome’s third major aqueduct, the Aqua Marcia (built 144–140 BCE) was the first to enter the city on arches; Plin. HN 36.121. A coin of M. Aemilius Lepidus from 114/113 BCE may represent an equestrian statue placed high atop an aqueduct or an arched base; British Museum R.7782.  Liv. 22.36.8. For an Imperial example see the arch between two buildings on the debt-burning scene of the Plutei di Traiano, 98–117 CE, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Plutei_ di_traiano%2C_98-117_dc_ca._04.JPG [accessed 17 August 2024].

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the second century BCE also caught the eye, as is evident from the massive arches referred to as fornices added to the Pons Aemilius in 142 BCE and recurring numismatic images of arched bridges topped with statues.44 The arched central entrances on Roman stage sets ornamented with sculptures may have provided additional inspiration.45 Combining statues and arches, strength and familiarity, height and passage, these extant architectural models prompted the evolution of a simple rectangular structure with an arched opening as a base to support honorific statues. The new form, dubbed fornix, directly addressed pragmatic issues associated with contemporary sculptural displays. The arch form is strong and stable, maximizing the weight carried while minimizing the amount of brick or stone used. Relatively quick to build, a Roman fornix could be self-supporting or connected to lateral buildings. When freestanding, its footprint consisted only of two modest plots, simplifying land acquisition. Fornices spanning public streets exploited non-monetized air rights. Elevated above ground level, arch-top displays were highly visible and less subject to damage from floods, fires, vandalism, or alteration.46 In addition, the spacious top platform could accommodate numerous figures and provide ample space for the assembly of large bronze statues and statue groups as well as eye-catching booty. The raised groupings with statues of roughly the same height were less prone to lightning strikes than were individual statues atop columns or buildings. The flat wall surfaces below the display platform offered additional spaces for communication. Allowing passage, the form curated and enhanced observers’ engagement and increased memorability. In turn, the kinetic exchange compelled people to face the structure as they passed under the arch, a positioning that limited distortion and enhanced the legibility of figures and inscriptions. In addition, passage under the displayed statues underscored their superiority in relation to the people moving under their feet. The few known arched bases of the Republic reveal the exploratory nature of the form’s evolution and implementation in the second century BCE. While erection of votive temples or government-sanctioned public sculptures entailed religious and political approvals and other complications, the novel fornix offered more latitude. Apparently, early donors initiated the arched bases for showy exhibits on their own initiative.47 They experimented with placement on or near roads, as well as with diverse displays. In 196 BCE, the proconsul Lucius Stertinius returned to Rome laden with booty from a

 Liv. 40.51. Workers may have used their expertise in clamping the stone blocks to bridges to secure bronze statues atop fornices and thus prevent them from toppling in storms.  Klar 2006, 178.  After the notorious governor Verres fell from power in the first century BCE, residents in several Sicilian cities pulled down many of his statues, though those of him and his son atop a fornix in Syracuse may have been spared due to their high placement; Cic. Ver. 2.2.154, 160.  Patronage by private donors rather than officeholders may explain why no images of fornices appeared on coins; Ridley 2014, 20–21.

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victorious campaign in Spain. Holding imperium pro consule as a privatus, he understood that the chances the Senate would award him a triumph were slim; Livy tells us Stertinius did not even apply.48 Approval to erect a temple or glorifying statue in the Forum or other major public memorial appeared unlikely. He deposited 50,000 pounds of silver in the state treasury and spent his personal share of the manubiae to erect three fornices, which served as bases for glittering gilt images (signa aurata).49 Two stood in the Forum Boarium in front of the temples of Fortuna and Mater Matuta, and one in or near the Circus Maximus (Liv. 33.27). In 210 BCE fire had raged through the area over two days, consuming both sacred and profane structures (Liv. 24.47.15–16). Several major floods between 215 and 200 BCE caused further damage, with that of 202 BCE inundating the Circus Maximus (Liv. 30.38). As a result, by 200 BCE much rebuilding was underway in the lowlands east of the Tiber River. Rather than assume responsibility for a major new project, Stertinius apparently maximized his outlay by insinuating new sculptural displays into ongoing renovation projects, though the lack of archaeological evidence precludes specifics. The two fornices fronting the temples may have been elaborations of entries into the religious complex or strategically placed adjacent to the sanctuary.50 If oriented in alignment with the known temples, the elevated displays faced south in full view of the crowds in the popular Forum Boarium, but would not have been readily visible to participants in triumphal parades entering the city from the Campus Martius. The third fornix of Stertinius at the Circus Maximus likewise has left no physical trace, though placement at the south-east end of the circus can be postulated.51 At the end of the Second Punic War, the large entertainment structure was undergoing both repairs and aggrandizement, including the addition of statues atop columns on the spina.52 Embellishment of an existing entrance with glittering sculptures, safe above future floods and silhouetted against the sky, would enhance the

 Liv. 33.27; Hrychuk Kontokosta 2013, 11–12; Pietilä-Castrén 1987, 71–74. Since the wealth of elite Romans often derived from military campaigns, it is difficult to determine if private expenditure on a fornix was a substitute for triumphal honors, especially as none apparently exhibited quadrigas; Davies 2017, 122; Richardson 1992, 22.  Scholars debate whether the signa aurata atop fornices were gilt trophies of some type, figural statues of gods, humans, or portrait busts. Images of gods seem out of place on such promotional projects; busts and elevated exhibits of booty (e.g. piles of weapons) would not be easily legible to spectators on the ground. Given the personal nature of these monuments, the representation of standing donors and/or family members seems likely, foreshadowing later Imperial commemorative arches; Ridley 2014, 16–19; contra Leoni 2020, 69.  For a recent assessment of the complicated archaeological evidence at Area Sacra di Sant’ Omobono, see Diffendale et al. 2016b, 37.  By the second century BCE, several honorific memorials clustered near the southeastern end of the Circus Maximus; Serv. ad Georg. 3.29; Hrychuk Kontokosta 2013, 13. Evidence for two Imperial arches overlaid at the Circus’ curved end have led to speculation that the fornix of Stertinius stood in the same spot; Leoni 2020.  Liv. 40.2.2; Hrychuk Kontokosta 2013, 13–14.

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Circus and ensure Stertinius’ achievements were readily visible by the large crowds of spectators attending events. Six years after the fornices Stertinii, another elevated display appeared in Rome, but this time not linked to existing structures. In 190 BCE the revered general and statesman P. Cornelius Scipio Africanus erected an arched base along the prestigious Clivus Capitolinus before leaving the capital to serve as legate for his brother, whom the Senate had put in command of a campaign in Asia (Liv. 37.3.7). Africanus had earlier celebrated a triumph in 201 BCE, but as a privatus in 190 BCE he could not expect another.53 Instead he quickly erected a large arched statue base to display more of the rich booty from his previous military victories before his brother’s campaign could even begin. The exhibit on the top of the fornix was carefully curated with a showy exhibit of seven statues (signa aurata) and two horses (probably with riders) representing notable members of the gens Cornelia.54 In front were two marble basins (labra), probably at ground level.55 Africanus felt a special bond with the “best and greatest” god, treating the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline as a second home.56 Given this connection, he may have conceptualized the arch as a way-station along a well-traveled path up to Rome’s greatest temple. Livy describes the structure as oriented toward the street (adversus viam).57 This may indicate its siting at a curve to face approaching pedestrians, frame a view, or mark an entry into an adjacent space (Area Capitolina?). Alternatively, the orientation may have resulted from a lack of space or purchasable land for fornix foundations on both sides of the road. Another possibility is that the siting parallel to the street facilitated views of the fornix and its crowning statues from the Forum below, indicating that display rather than passage was of paramount importance (Fig. 1).58 Sometime before 133 BCE another fornix stood on the Capitoline. Writing in the fifth century, the historian Orosius situated the murder of T. Sempronius Gracchus in 133 BCE near the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, on stairs above the fornix Calpurnianus (Oros., Adv. pag. 5.9.2). This terse reference provides no insights as to the

 Scipio Africanus had been denied a triumph for his victories in Spain (205 BCE) because he was a privatus cum imperio, though he did perform rituals in thanks on the Capitoline; Liv. 28.38.4; Davies 2017, 122; Ridley 2014, 16–21; Hrychuk Kontokosta 2013, 15, 26–28.  Hölkeskamp 2018a, 437; Ridley 2014, 18–19  Though no aqueduct brought water to the Capitoline hill at this time, the basins could have been filled from cisterns to quench the thirst of pedestrians as they climbed the steep street, or the marble pieces may have been captured booty with no pragmatic function; Ridley 2014, 19.  Hölkeskamp 2018a, 440–442. Africanus’ close connection with Jupiter is affirmed by placement of his ancestor mask in the Capitoline temple; V. Max. 8.15.2; Flower 1996, 48–51; regarding other family memorials on the hill see Wallace-Hadrill 1990, 163–164; Ridley 2014, 15–16.  Ridley 2014, 13–15; Biliński 1961, 274.  Hölkeskamp argues that this fornix was perceived as a monumental gateway to the Capitoline Hill whether one passed through it or not; Hölkeskamp 2018a, 437.

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structure’s donor, date, form, or display.59 The steps may belong to a temple or to the Centum Gradus near the Tarpeian rock at the south-west corner of the Capitoline overlooking the Forum Boarium. The hillside site probably provided viewing opportunities to and from the memorial, along with protection from flood damage, though not from rash human action. The last known example in Rome is the fornix Fabianus towering over the Sacra Via at the southeastern edge of the Forum Romanum.60 Two dates are suggested for its erection: 120 BCE, in association with the triumph of Q. Fabius Maximus Allobrogicus over the Gauls, or later in 108 BCE, when he may have served as censor.61 Equally possible, the memorial could have been, like the earlier fornices, erected by Allobrogicus without connection to a specific event or magistracy. To avoid the need for formal approval, a site on private land next to, rather than in, the Forum was preferable. The small footprint of this building type minimized the amount of land to be acquired in the densely built-up area, though the crowding of people and buildings probably meant the structure was not easily seen in its entirety. Allobrogicus’ namesake grandson and curule aedile reworked the memorial in 57 BCE, perhaps after damage caused by a destructive storm in 60 BCE, and added his own statue (Dio Cass. 37.58). Distinctions between the two versions are difficult to determine, though a travertine block with fragments of a Doric frieze and inscription is associated with the first iteration.62 In the sixteenth century, investigators recorded several inscriptions (now lost) of honorees and mentioned reliefs of shields and trophies thought to belong to the second phase.63 The arched fornix provided a sturdy base for over a half- dozen sculptures.64 The structure had an impressive statuary program representing notable members of the gens Flavia with inscribed names to help identify the lofty figures from ground level. The relief carvings probably decorated the piers. Frequent exhibitions of cap-

 The fornix Calpurnius is usually placed at the southwest edge of the Capitoline overlooking the Forum Boarium, though there are no archaeological remains; Biliński 1961; Ridley 2014, 13; Hrychuk Kontokosta 2013, 13.  The exact location of the fornix Fabianus remains uncertain, with current consensus coalescing around a position north of the Regia; Hrychuk Kontokosta 2013, 9–11, 16, 20–21; Chioffi 1995, 264–266.  Florus mentions structures associated with Allobrogicus’ triumph, but not the fornix, an omission that may indicate the memorial was built later, possibly to honor the Fabian clan as a whole (Flor. Epit. 1.37.3); for opposing interpretations, see Ridley 2014, 13; Davies 2017, 168. On the complex multimedia strategies for self-fashioning by the gens Flavia, see Hölkeskamp 2018b; Ridley 2014, 12–13.  Chioffi 1995, 265.  The inscriptions were said to have been carved on Parian marble. De Maria 1988, 265. The identity, placement, and form of the sculpted members of the gens Fabia are debated; Hrychuk Kontokosta 2013, 20–22. Standing figures would have the greatest visual impact, though busts have also been suggested; Ridley 2014, 12.  Voussoirs uncovered in the southeastern Forum Romanum during the late nineteenth century were part of an arch spanning over three meters, but they cannot be securely associated with the fornix Fabianus; Hrychuk Kontokosta 2013, 25.

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tured shields in Rome celebrated the symbolic and intrinsic value of enemy weapons and their portability. Carved versions offered an advantageous alternative, as they could not easily be carried away or damaged, and thus presented a lasting affirmation of the family’s collective military achievements. When describing sculptures on earlier fornices, ancient writers had employed the generalized term signa aurata, highlighting the material not the subjects.65 The texts, inscriptions, and archaeological remains affirm that the fornix Fabianus was an overtly familial memorial representing successful men linked by lineage and achievements. In effect, the imagery in stone mimicked the collections of clan members represented by death masks in domestic displays and elite funeral parades through the Forum, though at a more prestigious and elevated level.66 Emphasizing generational continuity and success rather than a specific event or magistracy, the fornix Fabianus reflected contemporary attempts to maintain the Forum as an area of elite privilege.67 The raised position of the statues ensured the visibility and participation of gens Fabia members, allowing orators in the Forum to reference specific clan members simply by pointing to their statues on high.68 Encounters with the fornix Fabianus also directed eyes to information presented at lower levels. Rising above the muchtraveled Sacra Via, the fornix Fabianus became an urban signpost celebrating a place as well as a family and often mentioned in ancient sources.69 The constant flow of traffic through the opening emphasized horizontal movement and sequential viewing, especially when ritual parades moved on through the Forum and up the Clivus Capitolinus past the fornix Scipionis.70

Looking Up The Romans closely associated notoriety with personal identity. Jockeying for power in the Republican period, they increasingly exploited portrait statues to promote individuals and family members, especially at Rome. The crowded capital, however, presented challenges to viewing, and security, as well as intense competition and the es-

 The lack of reference to signa aurata might indicate a material shift to marble from gilt bronze to marble statuary.  Pollini 2007, 239.  On the attempts by the optimates to control the Forum, see Davies 2017, 182; Hrychuk Kontokosta 2013, 18; Sehlmeyer 1999, 158.  A passage in Cicero implies that the statue of L. Aemilius Paullus was visible from the Forum and referenced by speakers; Cic. Vat. 11.28; Ridley 2014, 12–13.  For ancient references to the fornix Fabianus as an urban marker, see Richardson 1992, 154.  The connection between the two fornices was experiential rather than visual; Hölkeskamp 2018b, 732–733.

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calation of sculpture size. Ambitious patrons explored display alternatives, drawing upon Hellenistic and earlier strategies while always seeking logical, preferably uniquely Roman, forms. The arched base was a logical solution. Simple in shape and concept, the fornix successfully addressed pragmatic challenges for sculptural display. The strong, stable arched base efficiently supported, protected, and promoted statue groupings, directing Romans to look upward to see their “superiors,” the golden men presented on high. As the Republic gave way to an Imperial future in the first century BCE, the fornix disappeared, replaced by the arcus. Pliny calls this a “new invention,” but it was in truth a rebranding to eliminate the negative connotations of the word fornix71 while serving the propagandistic aims of autocratic leaders with broader imperial imperatives. The arcus proliferated over the following centuries. The commemorative arch became a major, sophisticated architectural entity smoothly integrating columns, pediments, reliefs, and lengthy inscriptions, with reliefs and sculptures culminating on high with a triumphal quadriga urged onward by a forceful general. Seneca might have been looking at such structures when he wrote, “None of those who have been raised to a loftier height by riches and honors is really great. Why then does he seem great to you? It is because you are measuring the pedestal along with the man” (Sen. Ep. 76.31, transl. Gummere).

Bibliography Beagon, Mary (2011). “The Curious Eye of The Elder Pliny,” in: R. Gibson and R. Morello (eds.), Pliny the Elder: Themes and Contexts, Leiden, 71–88. Bernard, Seth (2018). Building Mid-Republican Rome: Labor, Architecture, and the Urban Economy. New York. Biard, Guillaume (2017). La Représentation Honorifique Dans Les Cités Grecques Aux Époques Classique et Hellénistique. Athens. Biliński, Bronislaw (1961). “‘Fornix Calpurnius’ e la morte di Tiberio Gracco (Un contributo alla topografia del Colle Capitolino),” Helikon 1, 264–282. Chioffi, Laura (1995). “Fornix Fabianus,” in: E.M. Steinby (ed.), Lexicon topographicum urbisRomae II, Rome, 264–266. Coarelli, Filippo / Crawford, Michael H., trans. (1977). “Public Building in Rome between theSecond Punic War and Sulla,” Papers of the British School at Rome 45, 1–23. Coarelli, Filippo (1988). Il Foro Boario: dalle origini alla fine della Repubblica. Rome. Davies, Penelope (2017). Architecture and Politics in Republican Rome. New York. De Maria, Sandro (1988). Gli Archi Onorari di Roma e Dell’Italia Romana. Rome. Diffendale, Daniel (2016). “Five Republican Monuments. On the Supposed Building Program of M. Fulvius Flaccus,” in: P. Brocato, M. Ceci and N. Terrenato (eds.), Ricerche nell’area dei Templi di Fortuna e Mater Matuta (Roma), Rome, 141–166. Diffendale, Daniel / Brocato, Paolo / Terrenato, Nicola / Brock, Andrea L. (2016b). “Sant’Omobono: An Interim Status Quaestionis,” JRA 29, 7–42.

 On the seamy associations of the word fornix, see Wallace-Hadrill 1990, 145–146.

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Evans, Jane DeRose (2011). “The Restoration of Memory: Minucius and his Monument,” in: N. Holmes (ed.), Conference Proceedings, XIVth International Numismatic Congress, 1. to 3. Sept., Glasgow, 1–5. Fejfer, Jane (2009). Roman Portraits in Context. Berlin. Flower, Harriet I. (1996). Ancestor Masks and Aristocratic Power in Roman Culture. Oxford. Forbes, S. Russell (1895). Rambles in Rome: An Archaeological and Historical Guide to the Museums, Galleries, Villas, Churches, and Antiquities of Rome and the Campagna. London. Højte, Jakob Munk (2005). Roman Imperial Statue Bases: From Augustus to Commodus. Aarhus. Hölkeskamp, Karl-Joachim (2018a). “Memoria by Multiplication: The Cornelii Scipiones in Monumental Memory,” in: K. Sandberg and C. Smith (eds.), Omnium Annalium Monumenta: Historical Writing and Historical Evidence in Republican Rome, Leiden, 422–476. Hölkeskamp, Karl-Joachim (2018b). “Mythen, Monumente und die Multimedialität der memoria: Die ‘corporate Identity’ der gens Fabia,” Klio 100.3, 709–764. Hölscher, Tonio (1978). “Die Anfänge römischer Repräsentationskunst,” RM 85, 315–357. Hölscher, Tonio (1990). “Römische Nobiles und hellenistische Herrscher,” Akten des XIII. Internationalen Kongresses für Klassische Archäologie, Berlin 1988, Mainz, 73–84. Hrychuk Kontokosta, Anne (2013). “Reconsidering the Arches (Fornices) of the Roman Republic,” JRA 26, 7–35. Klar, Laura (2006). “The Origins of the Roman Scaenae Frons and the Architecture of Triumphal Games in the Second Century B.C.,” in: S. Dillon and K.E. Welch (eds.), Representations of War in Ancient Rome, New York, 162–183. Kleiner, Fred (1985). The Arch of Nero in Rome: A Study of the Roman Honorary Arch Before and Under Nero. Rome. Kleiner, Fred (1989). “The Study of Roman Triumphal and Honorary Arches 50 Years after Kähler,” JRA 2, 195–206. Kondratieff, Eric (2004). “The Column and Coinage of C. Duilius: Innovations in Iconography in Large and Small Media in the Middle Republic,” Scripta Classica Israelica 23, 1–39. Lahusen, Götz (1983). Untersuchungen zur Ehrenstatue in Rom literarische und epigraphische Zeugnisse. Rome. Leoni, Tommaso (2020). “The Arch (Fornix) of Lucius Stertinius in the Circus Maximus (Liv., XXXIII, 27, 3–5): Some Reflections on Its Significance and Its Likeliest Topographical Location,” Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma CXXI, 67–82. Longfellow, Brenda (2015). “Architectural Settings,” in: E.A. Friedland, M.G. Sobocinski, and E. Gazda (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Roman Sculpture, Oxford, 343–347. Marszal, John R. (2000). “Ubiquitous Barbarians: Representations of the Gauls at Pergamon and Elsewhere,” in: N.T. de Grummond and B.S. Ridgway (eds.), From Pergamon to Sperlonga: Sculpture and Context, Berkeley, 191–234. Olivito, Riccardo (2013). Il Foro nell’atrio: immagini di architetture, scene di vita e di mercato nel fregio dai Praedia di Julia Felix (Pompei, II, 4, 3). Bari. Orlin, Eric M. (2002). Temples, Religion, and Politics in the Roman Republic. Boston. Pietilä-Castrén, Leena (1987). Magnificentia Publica: The Victory Monuments of the Roman Generals in the Era of the Punic Wars. Helsinki. Pollini, John (2007). “Ritualizing Death in Republican Rome: Memory, Religion, Class Struggle, and the Wax Ancestral Mask Tradition’s Origin and Influence on Veristic Portraiture,” in: N. Laneri (ed.), Performing Death: Social Analyses of Funerary Traditions in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean, Chicago, 237–285. Popkin, Maggie L. (2016). The Architecture of the Roman Triumph: Monuments, Memory, and Identity. Cambridge. Richardson Jr., Lawrence (1992). A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome. Baltimore. Ridley, Ronald (2014). “The Arch of Scipio Africanus,” Classical Philology 109, 11–25.

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Russell, Ben (2015). “Transport and Distribution,” in: E.A. Friedland, M.G. Sobocinski, and E. Gazda (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Roman Sculpture. Oxford, 189–205. Sehlmeyer, Markus (1999). Stadtrömische Ehrenstatuen der republikanischen Zeit: Historizität und Kontext von Symbolen nobilitären Standesbewusstseins. Stuttgart. Stewart, Peter (2003). Statues in Roman Society: Representation and Response. Oxford. Tanner, Jeremy (2000). “Portraits, Power, and Patronage in the Late Roman Republic,” JRS 90, 18–50. Volpe, Rita (2014). “Sepolcro degli Scipioni. Indagini nell’area archeologica,” Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma 115, 175–191. Wallace-Hadrill, Andrew (1990). “Roman Arches and Greek Honours: The Language of Power at Rome,” Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 36, 143–181.

Faya Causey

An Amber Augustus at Olympia Of the statues set up in the round structures, the amber one represents Augustus the Roman emperor . . . 1

Pausanias, writing about the Temple of Zeus at Olympia in his mid-second century CE Description of Greece, selects a number of dedications among those located in the pronaos, or porch, of the temple.2 Among them is a portrait (eikon) of Augustus made from amber and now lost. This is the only statue of amber recorded from the ancient world. Although a number of scholars have noted the existence of this Augustus, there has not been an investigative study.3 That this portrait was carved from amber, in Greek elektron, treasured in antiquity as a rare, precious, glowing, translucent material, made it a wonder to behold, a thauma idesthai. From early Greek times, amber was associated with the sun and in

 In context: Paus. 5.12.7. “Of the statues set up in the rounded structures, the amber one represents Augustus the Roman emperor, the ivory one they told me was a portrait of Nicomedes, king of Bithynia. After him the greatest city in Bithynia was renamed Nicomedeia; before him it was called Astacus, and its first founder was Zypoetes, a Thracian by birth to judge from his name. This amber of which the statue of Augustus is made, when found native in the sand of the Eridanus, is very rare and precious to men for many reasons; the other ‘amber’ is an alloy of gold and silver.” The translation is adapted from those of Frazer (1898) and Jones and Ormerod (1918–1935). Lapatin (2001) also translates the location in terms of round structures. αἱ δὲ εἰκόνες αἱ τοῖς κατασκευάσμασι τοῖς περιφερέσινἐγκείμεναι, ἡ μὲν τοῦ ἠλέκτρου βασιλέως Ῥωμαίων ἐστὶν Αὐγούστου, ἡ δὲ τοῦ ἐλέφαντος βασιλέως Νικομήδους ἐλέγετο εἶναι Βιθυνῶν. ἀπὸ τούτου δὲ καὶ τῇ μεγίστῃ τῶν ἐν Βιθυνίᾳ πόλεων μετεβλήθη τὸὄνομα, Ἀστακῷ τὰ πρὸ τούτου καλουμένῃ: τὰ δὲ ἐξ ἀρχῆς αὐτῇΖυποίτης ἐγένετο οἰκιστής, Θρᾷξ γένος εἰκάζοντί γε ἀπὸ τοῦὀνόματος. τὸ δὲ ἤλεκτρον τοῦτο οὗ τῷ Αὐγούστῳ πεποίηνται τὴνεἰκόνα, ὅσον μὲν αὐτόματον ἐν τοῦ Ἠριδανοῦ ταῖς ψάμμοιςεὑρίσκεται, σπανίζεται τὰ μάλιστα καὶ ἀνθρώπῳ τίμιον πολλῶνἐστιν ἕνεκα: τὸ δὲ ἄλλο ἤλεκτρον ἀναμεμιγμένος ἐστὶν ἀργύρῳχρυσός.  The occasion of this Festschrift provides an opportunity to discuss the Augustus eikon, and it is a great pleasure to dedicate this contribution to Professor Pollini. From my earliest contact with him as a graduate student through to the present day, he has been a wonderful colleague and great resource, always ready to share his encyclopedic knowledge on Roman art, especially that of the Augustan age. His cultural archaeologist approach was especially significant for my research on amber in the ancient world. His explanation of how, in the critical period between Republic and Empire the Romans, it is essential to understand “their religion, culture, and history in terms of their art and how they used, projected, and disseminated visual imagery as a means of honoring and commemorating themselves and their achievements” and how this is evidenced in “a new artistic vocabulary, [one which] was developed to give form and meaning to a new ideology” (Pollini 2012, 3).  Arafat 2004, 52–53, is one of the few scholars to comment on it: “Although it is unspoken, there may be a feeling of appropriateness of such “rare and valuable” material for a statue of an emperor and perhaps of Augustus in particular.” https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111182919-003

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Rome was connected to the sun god Helios/Sol.4 Pausanias does not recount how the amber princeps was represented, but since he describes it as eikon, and not agalma, it probably represented him without a radiate crown, the customary accoutrement of his images after deification upon his death in 14 CE,5 and thus the terminus ante quem for the portrait. Both ancient documentation and surviving works are proof of the existence of thousands of portraits of Augustus, both antemortem and posthumous, made from a variety of materials, notably bronze, marble, silver, ivory, obsidian, or agate in addition to this singular amber example. Was he nude, partially draped, in ceremonial dress or military gear? Standing or seated? Was he figured as Pontifex Maximus or as a sacrificant, officiant, orator, or general? In Augustan Rome, amber, imported from the Baltic, was an exceptionally rare material, as it had been for millennia in ancient Italy, Greece, Egypt and the Ancient Near East—always prized for objects of adornment and for inlay, especially in ivory. A century and half later, when Pausanias composed his Description, although much more amber was available in the Roman world, exceptionally high value was accorded to large, clear lumps (now termed jewelry-grade), the largest of which (then as now) were probably no more than 30 cm at the greatest measurement.6 These would be used for the finest images and jewelry. Thus, we might expect that the visitors to the Zeus Temple pronaos who saw the amber Augustus or the armchair travelers reading Pausanias’ Book Five to have had some familiarity with the material. They might have read about amber in a long section in Book 37 of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History (c. 77 CE) or have been familiar with earlier mentions dating as far back as Homer. They may even have seen amber jewelry items, small vessels, or even handsized carved figures. To give some idea of the rarity of the Augustus at the time of its making, we should note that it is Pliny who provides the only other surviving literary mention of an amber carving in human form. “[Amber’s] rating among luxuries is so

 On amber in the ancient world, see for example Causey 2020, Nava and Salerno 2007, Palavestra and Krstić 2006 and Neer 2018. Ross 1998, 3: In describing the amberization process, he points to the critical element of the kinds of sediments in which the resin was deposited. “[B]ut what is not so clear is the effect of water and sediment chemistry on the resin.” In the ancient world, amber does not seem to have been considered a fossil like other records of preserved life such as petrified wood, skeletal material, and creatures in limestone, as Mayor 2011 outlines.  On the various Greek terms for images of rulers and deities, including discussions of Pausanias’ vocabulary, see for example, Keesling 2017 and Pirenne-Delforge 2004.  Plin. HN 37.12.50 Although large pieces of mainly opaque, inclusion-filled amber were known in the ancient world, these were unsuitable for translucent, glowing carvings. An established trade in the material from the Baltic Sea sources began in the time of Nero (54–68 CE). In recent times, huge lumps of opaque, inclusion-rich dark amber have been found (the largest known, mined in Poland, weighs 68 kilograms).

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high that a human figurine [hominis quamvis parva effigies], however small, is more expensive than a number of human beings, alive and in good health . . . ”7 And now to Olympia! Here was a sanctuary exceptionally rich in dedications. While readers of the Description of Greece could virtually venture around Olympia through Pausanias’ words, the temples and their dedications were rarely opened for visitors. As Josephine Shaya reminds us, the times when temples were opened and “treasure could be viewed were eagerly anticipated and must have come with the thrill of penetrating the privacy of the sacred. Pausanias knew . . . the days when the temples could be visited, some only once a year . . . [The treasures] were produced through ritual veneration and closely associated with the blessings of the gods. They were sacred possessions . . . offerings [that] urged viewers to look on with devotional eyes . . . This then was a kind of collection that was very much part of the ritual of worship—a collection production through devotion that encouraged devotion.”8 But before entering into the pronaos of the Zeus Temple with Pausanias as guide, it is important to remember that his Description of Greece is a curated one. Throughout his ten books, Pausanias selects itineraries, places, buildings, and works of note. “By the time Pausanias visited Olympia around 173 CE, it was by any standards a crowded sanctuary,” as Karim Arafat underlines and reminds us that here, as at other sites, “he records a selection of what he sees . . . and lists only those parts of the contents worthy of his description.”9 Throughout, Pausanias makes choices that tell stories and provide histories of objects and places, of structures and collections. For example, in the Altis at Olympia, Pausanias explains, The statues I will mention afterwards, but first I will turn to the dedicatory offerings and go over the most remarkable of them.10

And elsewhere at Olympia, Pausanias makes clear that his is not a list of athletes who have won Olympic victories, but an account of statues and of votive offerings generally. I shall not even record all those whose statues have been set up . . . Those only will be mentioned who themselves gained some distinction, or whose statues happened to be better made than others.11

The amber Augustus must have been among the “most remarkable” of the pronaos dedications Pausanias selected, but the portrait was in good company. Of the numerous objects standing on the floor, attached to the walls, placed on tables, or in furnish-

 Plin. HN 37.12.49. See for example Causey 2020; Nava and Salerno 2007; Palavestra and Krstić 2006; Strong 1966.  Shaya 2015, 27–28.  Arafat 1996, 462.  Paus. 5.21.1.  Paus. 6.1.3.

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ings, Pausanias selected a millennium’s worth of objects varying in function, scale, and materials, an important length of time spanning the establishment of the sanctuary.12 Dedicants include Etruscan and Thracian royalty, Roman emperors, and Olympic victors of both sexes. The earliest in date coincides with the sanctuary’s earliest history and the latest is Hadrianic. The oldest is a Geometric period tripod, “plated with bronze, upon which, before the table was made, were displayed the crowns for the victors.” Next in date (eighth century BCE) is a throne dedicated by Arimnestus, king of Etruria, “the first foreigner to present an offering to Olympian Zeus.” Twentyfive bronze shields used for the race in armor, the hoplitodromos, are listed next (the event first appeared in 520 BCE). A number of stone tablets, one of which (the stone type not noted) is inscribed with an oath of allegiance by “the Eleans to the Athenians, the Argives, and the Mantineans, that they would be their allies for a hundred years”13 (420 BCE), is next in date, followed by the under-life-sized bronze horses dedicated by the Spartan princess Cynisca, the first woman to breed horses and to win in two Olympics (late-fourth century BCE). Subsequent in time is the Hellenistic ivory portrait of Nicomedes I (c. 279–255 BCE) followed by the amber Augustus and then by four garlands offered by Nero, of which three were Olympian olive crowns (Nero won in musical and chariot racing circa 66 CE) and one of oak leaves (awarded at the Roman games, the Neronia), possibly displayed on a table, perhaps the one previously noted by the author in connection with the tripod. Then there are the two marble statues of Roman emperors (Pausanias uses the term andriantes),14 one of Trajan (marble type not noted) “dedicated by all the Greeks” and a Parian marble emperor Hadrian “dedicated by the cities of the Achaean confederacy.”15 Thus, Pausanias chose dedications in the porch of the temple that punctuate the history of the Altis, the sacred precinct area of Olympia: They date to each of the 100-year spans between the ninth and third centuries BCE,16 with the Augustus to the late-first century BCE to early-first century CE (if it was dedicated during his lifetime), and the others to the first, second and third centuries CE. In Pausanias’ first words concerning the amber and ivory portraits (5.12.7), he makes clear that he has selected from among those in the “round structures.”17 Were the Augustus and Nicomedes situated together or enwrapped by different housings? Translating the statues’ location with the words “round structures,” rather than using  The offerings are described in 5.12.4–5.12.8. From the first mention of “the offerings inside” in section 4 to the stone tablets set up in 8, all appear to be dedications in the pronaos. Throughout the Description Pausanias shows a keen interest in materials and their sources, as Arafat 1996 has wonderfully outlined.  Paus. 5.12.7.  On Pausanias’ use of terms for statues, see note above.  Paus. 5.12.6.  That is, if the Nicomedes I ivory was a contemporary dedication in his lifetime. However, as Lapatin notes (see below and n. 29), there is the possibility that it is a posthumous sculpture.  This translation follows Frazer.

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Jones and Ormond’s “round buildings,” is a best attempt based on what is known of Pausanias’ Greek and the lack of any physical evidence for round (stone) buildings or relevant architectural interventions at the Zeus Temple. Below, following a discussion of the two statues, and their possible poses and size, is a hypothesis for their likely housing. Pausanias seems to have recognized the likeness of Augustus, but he tells us that a guide informed him of the identity of the ivory. What size were the two portraits? He does not describe them as under-life-size, for example, as he did for the bronze horses dedicated by Cynisca in the pronaos. He does not use a diminutive as he does elsewhere in the Description, for example, in his listing of some divine silver statuettes (algamata) from Thera. Pausanias was inconsistent in his size and type assessments of sculpture, which may allow the hypothesis that the amber Augustus and the ivory Nicomedes I were of small scale, that is, statuettes. They may have been composites or one-piece carvings. These size hypotheses are extrapolated from three large corpora: extant ivory works dating from throughout antiquity and ancient sources on ivories; ancient (seventh century BCE to third century CE) amber carvings and evidence from written sources; and modern era carved amber and ivory works from circa 1600–1800.18 As Kenneth Lapatin has argued, some small heads from Ephesos, for example, could have belonged to free-standing statuettes.19 On figures carved from whole tusks, “[t]he sculptor of statues and statuettes . . . was able to carve small and even mediumsized figures whole from elephants’ tusks of less than extraordinary size.” This is evidenced by the largest of the Minoan ivory figures, the Neopalatial Knossos Acrobat L (29.9 cm)20 and three extant early Greek ivory works of between 22.5 and 24 cm tall. Lapatin adds that these pieces were not carved as free-standing figures, but rather as components in larger compositions, musical instruments, or furniture, for example, but “large one-piece carvings were possible . . . [as evidenced from] an eighteenthcentury Christ . . . whose body measures over 70 cm tall.”21 Thus, it might be proposed that the height of the portrait image of Nicomedes I could have been as tall as 22.5 to even 70+ cm, if made from extraordinary tusks. It is possible that an extraordinary composite of ivory pieces could even have been somewhat taller. The type of amber used for the Augustus had to have been amber from the Baltic Sea littoral, the most important source of the fossil resin in the ancient world. What would the eikon have looked like? What would have been a fitting statue type for a

 The literature in these corpora is significant. Pausanias discusses numerous chryselephantine sculptures throughout his Description and provides a long excursus on the sources for and nature of ivory, as Lapatin has outlined.  Lapatin 2001, 48.  See for example, Hemingway 2000.  Lapatin 2001, 18.

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dedication placed in the Temple of Zeus? Was it a bust or was it a standing or seated statuette? And once again, since Pausanias uses the term eikon rather than agalma, it was likely not an image of the deified Augustus. Because of the geological nature of the formation of amber lumps, a spectacular translucent specimen (or perhaps an amalgamation of several pieces) with a relatively consistent structure (that is, without large inclusions) must have been used. Amber, before its fossilization, originates as a resin formed in the heartwood (the inner, live part of the tree) and is exuded over a period of time, from hours to years, on the outside of trees. It is produced in response to wounds or insect or animal incursions. This is why it often includes entrapped floral and faunal inclusions and why the polymer is a usually a layered material. If made from one piece, the Augustus could have been similar in size to the largest surviving amber carvings dating from the seventh century BCE to the sixth century BCE, or to Roman works of the second century CE. As mentioned above, amber lumps could be of great size, but not those of jewelry grade quality. The largest ancient pre-Roman amber carving and the largest Roman example known to me are each about 9 cm at their maximum measurements.22 A potential alternative is that the eikon was formed from several pieces of amber joined together. Although there are no extant composite ancient amber carvings, comparisons may be made with pieced Greek and Roman ivory and marble works as well as amber sculptures of the early modern era. If the Augustus at Olympia was a composite, it could have been made up with a separate base, with the body as the largest piece and a separate, joined head with individual limbs. An outstanding modern era example of such a piece is the Standing Madonna with Child of 1600–1610 in the Museo Argenti, Florence. It is 20.3 cm tall, including the multipart base: her halo, head, body, hands, and base were joined together to form the whole.23 There are others of the period that are 25 cm in height. Comparison with some ancient marble statuettes offers insight into how an amber or ivory sculpture may have been constructed. For example, the arms of the fragmentary Hellenistic marble statuette of Alexander the Great of the second century BCE in the Getty Museum were separately attached to the body. Its original height (without the base) may have been around 40 cm. What did the ivory image of Nicomedes I look like? Although Lapatin suggests that “its size and appearance are unknown,”24 it must have been a statuette, in the size range proposed above, and thus not larger than any known ancient or early modern ivory statuette:

 These are the Etruscan c. 500 BCE Morgan Amber in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 17.190.2067, Gift of Pierpont Morgan, 1917 and the Roman Cupids with Chariot in Holland.  Florence, Museo degli Argenti, 0900349306: https://catalogo.beniculturali.it/detail/HistoricOrArtistic Property/0900349306 [accessed 1 February 2024].  Lapatin 2001, 121.

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[While] the occasion for the dedication is unknown, perhaps his association with the Antigonids is responsible for his positive reception at Olympia, or like other monarchs, he might have been thought to merit such an honor or account of some euergesia. Benefactions earned Hellenistic monarchs their epithets and their vast power to do good or harm raised them above ordinary mortals even to divine status according to Euhermeros . . . Nicomedes might have been responsible for his own portrait . . . it is also possible that this image was posthumous.25

Pausanias describes the portrait image of Nicomedes I as an eikon, not as agalma, once again an important distinction. He includes possible reasons for Nicomedes I’s positive reception at Olympia and refers to Euhemerus on Hellenistic monarchs’ epithets and even to their possible divine status, but ends his comments with the suggestion that the monarch may have been responsible for his own portrait image or that it was posthumous. What were Pausanias’ reasons for selecting the Augustus and Nicomedes I? Because they were “worthy of description,” had “gained some distinction,” “were better made than others,” were “the most remarkable,” or even all of the above? In Arafat’s opinion, “[Pausanias] does not admire precious materials per se, but is struck by the techniques involved in making artifacts from them.”26 Of the other portraits located there, were they also made from rare and precious materials, and what size were they? The fragile materials of the two portraits would have required an environment that would protect them from light and fluctuations in temperature and humidity. Pausanias is well-aware of the importance of a stable humidity for ivory and possibly was aware of the necessary protections needed to preserve amber’s color, glow, transparency, and structure.27 In modern conservation practice, the susceptibility of amber and ivory to environmental effects directs safe exhibition and storage procedures. . . . all amber is susceptible to the effects of light, temperature, relative humidity, and oxygen, as well as exposure to certain chemicals, and will deteriorate over time in collections if left unprotected. A stable storage environment is essential to mitigate or avoid deterioration of amber, which often manifests as crazing, spalling, breaking and color changes. Based on previous conservation studies of fossil resins, we generally recommend storage in a climate-monitored environment with a relative humidity of ca. 50%, 18° C, and stress that light exposure must be kept to a minimum.28 Ivory is very reactive to its environment, including light exposure, but the most severe changes are linked to changes in relative humidity and temperature. Low relative humidity causes desic-

 Lapatin 2001, 121.  Arafat 2009, 591.  For example, he discusses throughout the Description various efforts to protect wooden statues and also chryselephantine statuary.  Sadowski et al. 2021.

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cation, shrinkage, and cracking, while high relative humidity can cause warping and swelling. Heat fluctuations induce similar expansion and contraction.29

This takes us to back to Pausanias’ description of the “round structures” (κατασκευάσμασι τοῖς περιφερέσιν ἐγκείμεναι). To fit in the pronaos along with the large bronze tripod, a table piled high with victor’s crowns, twenty-five bronze shields, a throne, and marble statues of Hadrian and Trajan noted by the periegete, it is proposed here that the round structures may have been of a comparable scale to the tripod, throne, table, and statues and may have been, like the table, constructed of wood. It might be imagined as a curved front, doored cupboard or cabinet, perhaps constructed of cedar. As Margaret Miles and Alexandria Bouania have shown, “extant inventories of Greek temples reveal the existence of chests, dedicated furniture, and cupboards for the storage of votives.”30 Roman household shrines, sacella or aediculae (now commonly called lararia) evidenced in archaeological finds may provide useful comparanda for the pronaos structure, keeping in mind that these were for household gods and not temple dedications. Alexandra Sofroniew categorizes three basic types of household shrines from various Italian sites, including a simple curved or rectangular niche built into a wall of the house, an aediculae (niche or standalone cupboard decorated to resemble a miniature temple), or a wall-painting . . . 31

Among the stand-alone cupboards, Sofroniew highlights the remarkable wooden shrine found in the House of the Wooden Shrine at Herculaneum.32 It is in the form of a miniature temple with Corinthian columns set onto a wooden cupboard holding terracotta and glass vessels. Why posit that the pronaos round structures were of cedar? This wood, which had a long history of high value for ships, buildings, and furnishings in Egypt, the Ancient Near East, and Levant, was much appreciated in Greece and Rome. For chests and other furnishings, it was treasured for its strength, scent, and durability because of its anti-rot and insecticidal properties. A doored cupboard in the pronaos of the Zeus Temple could have long offered significant protection for the eikones from light and environmental temperature and humidity fluctuations. Their state of preservation may be a significant reason behind Pausanias’ highlighting the already-antique amber Augustus and ivory Nicomedes I as dedications “worthy of distinction” and among “the most remarkable” to be found in the pronaos of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia.  Smithsonian Conservation Research Institute, n.d.: https://mci.si.edu/care-and-handling-ivory-ob jects [accessed 1 February 2024].  Miles 2016, 211.  Sofroniew 2016, 31, and n. 49.  From the House of the Wooden Shrine in Herculaneum, in the care of the Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei. See Sofroniew 2016, 32, fig. 15. In the top portion, the shrine included numerous household gods of various scale.

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Bibliography Arafat, K.W. (1992). “Pausanias’ Attitude to Antiquities,” The Annual of the British School at Athens 87, 387–409. Arafat, K.W. (1996). “Archaic Sculpture,” The Classical Review 46 (2), 340–341. Arafat, K.W. (2009). “Treasures and Value in Pausanias,” The Classical Quarterly 59.2, 578–592. Causey, Faya (2012). Amber in the Ancient World. Los Angeles. Causey, Faya (2020). Catalogue of the Carved Amber in the J. Paul Getty Museum. Los Angeles. Hemingway, Seán (2000). “The Place of the Palaikastro Kouros in Minoan Bone and Ivory Sculpture,” British School at Athens Studies 6, 113–122. Keesling, Catherine M. (2017). “Greek Statue Terms Revisited: What does àvdpiás mean?” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 57, 837–861. King, Rachel (2013). “Finding the Divine Falernian: Amber in Early Modern Italy,” V&A Online Journal 5, http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/journals/research-journal/issue-no.-5-2013/finding-the-divinefalernian-amber-in-early-modern-italy [accessed 15 July 2024]. Neer, Richard (2018). “Amber, Oil and Fire: Greek Sculpture beyond Bodies,” Art History 41.3, 466–491. Lapatin, Kenneth D.S. (2001). Chryselephantine Statuary in the Ancient Mediterranean World. Oxford. Mayor, Adrienne (2011). The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times. Princeton. Miles, Margaret A. (2016). “The Interiors of Greek Temples,” in: M.M. Miles (ed.), A Companion to Greek Architecture. London, 202–222. Nava, Maria Luisa / Salerno, Antonio (2007). Ambre: Trasparenze dall’Antico, exhibition catalogue. Naples. Palavestra, Aleksandar / Krstić, Vera (2006). The Magic of Amber. National Museum of Belgrade. Pollini, John (2012). From Republic to Empire: Rhetoric, Religion, and Power in the Visual Culture of Ancient Rome. Norman, OK. Ross, Andrew (1998). Amber: The Natural Time Capsule. London. Sadowski, Eva-Maria / Schmidt, Alexander R. / Seyfullah, Leyla J. / Solórzano-Kraemer, Mónica M. / Neumann, Christian / Perrichot, Vincent / Hamann, Christopher / Milke, Ralf / Nascimbene, Paul C. (2021). “Conservation, preparation and imaging of diverse ambers and their inclusions,” EarthScience Reviews 220, 103653, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2021.103653 [accessed 1 August 2024]. Shaya, Josephine (2015). “Greek Temple Treasures and the Invention of Collecting,” in: M.W. Gahtan and D. Pegazzano (eds.), Museum Archetypes and Collecting in the Ancient World. Leiden, 24–32. Smithsonian Conservation Research Institute (n.d.). “The Care and Handling of Ivory Objects.” https://www.si.edu/mci/english/learn_more/taking_care/ivory.html [accessed 1 February 2024]. Sobecka, Anna (2015). Bursztyn I Forma/Amber and Form, exhibition catalogue. Gdansk. Sofroniew, Alexandra (2016). Household Gods: Private Devotion in Ancient Greece and Rome. Los Angeles. Strong, Donald E. (1966). Catalogue of the Carved Amber in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities. London. Vinciane, Pirenne-Delforge (2004). “Image des dieux et rituel dans le discours de Pausanias. De l’«axiologie» à la théologie,” MEFRA 116.2, 811–825.

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Tiberius in the Michael C. Carlos Museum: A Portrait Masterpiece Description of the Portrait In 2003, the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University in Atlanta acquired a magnificent, over life-size, unprovenanced portrait carved in a fine-grained white marble (Figs 1, 2).1

Fig. 1: Portrait of Tiberius. Atlanta: Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, inv.2003.055.001. Photo: Bruce M. White, with permission of Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University.

Fig. 2: Portrait of Tiberius, profile. Atlanta: Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, inv. 2003.055.001. Photo: Bruce M. White, with permission of Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University.

The portrait, which has been identified as Tiberius Caesar, Rome’s second emperor (14–37 CE), was in several private collections before being acquired by the Carlos Mu-

 Mus. inv. 2003.055.001. Total height: 52 cm. Height from chin to top of head: 30 cm. Acquired from the New York art market. All translations of Latin are my own, unless otherwise specified. Abbreviations of ancient authors and their works are to be found in the fourth edition of the Oxford Classical Dictionary (2012). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111182919-004

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seum. Nothing else of the portrait’s history is recorded.2 Aside from some passing mentions in non-scholarly sources such as museum guides and a very brief catalogue entry in the principal monograph on Tiberius’ portraiture by Dieter Hertel, this important portrait has not been formally studied or published in any detail, making use of comparative material and setting the portrait in its proper cultural and historical context.3 In addition to presenting a full scholarly analysis of the Emory Tiberius, I propose a new interpretation for the stylistic changes in imperial portraiture that took place from the principate of Augustus to that of Tiberius. In terms of both the state of preservation and quality of workmanship, this portrait is one of the finest surviving likenesses of Tiberius, so its obscurity is surprising. The marble type is Parian lychnites with a light yellowish-beige patina.4 The head is in good condition with the following exceptions: the tops of the rims of the ears are broken off; the tip of the nose is abraded (as opposed to being broken off in a single piece); there are chips on the surface of the cheeks, chin, and bottom edge of the neck, and large chipping of the marble along the front rim of the tenon. Although the entire head would have originally been painted, only faint circles of dark pigment can be seen in the eyes today.5 According to Pliny the Elder (HN 1.142), Tiberius’ eye color was caesius, a blue-gray color, but this information does not necessarily mean that the eyes of the Emory Tiberius were painted in that color. There is no evidence that information about an emperor’s hair color, eye color, or facial complexion would have been included with the official portrait model, nor should it be assumed that his coloring would have been faithfully copied by the artist every time even if it were included.6 The neck of the Emory Tiberius is not broken off irregularly but has a definite regular curve to its bottom edge, indicating that the termination of the neck was purposefully carved as a shallow tenon for insertion into the mortise, or cavity, of a separately carved statue body, as was commonly done in the case of Roman portrait statues. There is a deep, rough, vertical cylinder-shaped hollow on the back side of the neck. The absent rear portion of the head was probably carved separately in the form of a section of the toga worn over the back of the head (capite velato, i.e., “with head veiled”), marking Tiberius as performing/offering a sacrifice, according to Roman custom.7 In the case of a portrait representing Tiberius, capite velato probably indicated his status as Pontifex Maximus, Rome’s most important priestly office. In Roman por-

 I thank Annie Shanley, Associate Registrar at the Carlos Museum, for information on the portrait.  See Hertel 2013, 69, 226–227; Jaques 2012, 42; Highlights 2011, 54; LeMon 2006; Gaunt 2005a and 2005b. The portrait is treated only very briefly in Hertel’s work, since he came to know about it at too late a stage in his project.  For the scientific analysis of the marble, see Tykot et al. 2018, 506.  No testing of the pigments used has yet taken place.  For these issues, see Pollini 2015, 908–909.  See Gaunt 2005a and 2005b. Cf. a portrait of Tiberius’ son Drusus Minor from Centuripe, in Boschung 2002, 57–58, no. 12.3, pl. 38.2, 4.

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trait sculpture, the veil and togate body were often carved in a lesser quality marble (usually Luna/Carrara), with the head and exposed fleshy parts of the body carved in a high-quality marble such as Parian lychnites and then joined to the rest of the statue. This method of working was quite common, as large blocks of high-quality statuary marble were not always available, cost a great deal, and sometimes revealed flaws during the process of sculpting.8 When analyzing portrait heads, one must always consider at what angle the face was meant to be viewed, which is known as the “optimum view.” The Emory Tiberius’s neck musculature indicates that his head is averted to his right side but only slightly. Therefore, the face of the statue was not meant to be viewed straight-on but rather at a slight three-quarter view. Judging from the size of the head, the entire statue was originally just over life-size and likely would have been displayed on a base inscribed with Tiberius’ titles and other information, so that an ancient viewer would have looked up at the head from below.9 For these reasons, the optimum view of the Emory Tiberius posits a viewer looking up from an angle where the face is seen turned slightly to its proper right side (Fig. 3). The Emory Tiberius is the product of a master sculptor working in a center of artistic production, most likely a leading workshop in Rome itself. The overall carving

Fig. 3: Optimum view of the Emory Tiberius. Photo: author.

 See Claridge 1990.  See Fejfer 2008, 25–33. For a statue that has been preserved with its original ancient base, see Pollini 2017.

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style is marked by an interplay of different textures in the surface treatment of the marble: the eyelids and eyebrows are sharply and crisply delineated, while the rest of the face is more softly modeled. The locks of hair are close-cropped and rendered in a low relief, in contrast to the more detailed and plastically carved locks often seen in portraits of Augustus.10 The Emory Tiberius shows the closest stylistic affinity to the “Copenhagen 624” head of Tiberius (Fig. 4).11

Fig. 4: Portrait head of Tiberius known as “Copenhagen 624.” Copenhagen, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, inv. 1750. Photo: author.

Both of these heads, with their somewhat disproportionate and asymmetrical features, are a step away from the formula of Augustan classicism and give the impression of a more individualized physiognomy. Tiberius’ facial physiognomy is known from coins, which have aided in the identification of his portraits in the round due to their inclusion of his name alongside depictions of his face in profile.12 Tiberius possesses one of the most distinctive and recognizable faces among the Julio-Claudians. Characteristic features of Tiberius present in the Emory portrait are the large, wide forehead; long, arched brows; unusually large, prominent (or protruding) eyes; a large, aquiline nose; a small, thin-lipped mouth; slightly flared-out ears; and a pronounced chin. Other distinctive traits of Tiberius seen in the portrait are the emphasized naso-labial creases and the downward For the Prima Porta Augustus, with additional views, see Boschung 1993a, cat. 171, pl. 69, 213.  Copenhagen, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, inv. 1750. See Johansen 1994, I, 118–119 (no. 47).  For a historical overview of the research carried out on Tiberius’ portraiture thus far, see Hertel 2013, 1–4.

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sloping creases at the corners of the mouth. There is a general idealized ennoblement to the head, but this idealization does not mask Tiberius’s highly individualized physiognomy. On a similar note, although traits of age have undoubtedly been downplayed and smoothed over, the head gives the impression of a mature man (unlike portraits of the forever youthful-looking Augustus), especially through the rendering of the lines around the nose and mouth and the sagging lower eyelids. Nonetheless, the Emory Tiberius is still idealized, which becomes apparent in comparison to a head in the Römisch-Germanisches Museum in Cologne, one of several portraits of Tiberius that appear to be more veristic looking (Fig. 5).13

Fig. 5: Portrait of Tiberius. Cologne: Römisch-Germanisches Museum. Loan from a private collection. After Hertel 2013, pl. 94.

Portraits such as the Cologne example show Tiberius with a recessive lower lip, more obvious signs of aging, and eyes and forehead so large as to give the face a disproportionate, triangular appearance. The probable explanation for these distinctive, rather idiosyncratic facial features is that they accurately reflect Tiberius’ actual features. It is interesting to note that portraits of Tiberius generally conform to Suetonius’ description of him (Tib. 68.2) as having “a handsome face with unusually large eyes” (facie honesta . . . cum praegrandibus oculis); this consistency raises questions about the relationship between statues, literary biography, and reality. For example, from what sources did Suetonius take his information on the emperors’ physical appearances? Especially since

 Hertel 2013, cat. 100.

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Tiberius is not the only emperor whose portraits match Suetonius’ description, it seems likely that portrait sculpture was one of Suetonius’ sources.14

The Life of Tiberius and his Portrait Typology Portraits of Tiberius almost certainly were manufactured throughout the greater part of his fairly long life and were displayed in various contexts such as forums, baths, temples, theaters, and residences.15 Tiberius rose to prominence at least thirty years before his accession as princeps after the death of Augustus in 14 CE and held this position until his own death in 37 CE, one of the longest tenures in power of any Roman emperor.16 While it can be assumed that only a very small fraction of portraits representing Tiberius have survived to the present day, the 137 examples known to us exhibit a wide range of iconographic features, showing him with various hairstyles and at visibly different stages of his life.17 Due to this puzzling and diverse body of evidence, scholars are divided on some important issues in Tiberius’ portrait typology. The vast majority of provenanced portraits have been found in Italy, followed by the Greek East, and finally, the Latin West.18 In the scholarly reconstruction of the Roman imperial portrait “industry,” portraits of a single individual that conform to one another in details of hairstyle and facial features and are of a high quality constitute the core group (Kerngruppe) of a given official portrait type, and it is assumed that all of these corresponding portraits must therefore adhere closely to some lost prototype (Urbild).19 These presumed official prototypes, or  See especially the cervice obesa and comam in gradus formatam seen in portraits of Nero’s last type (Suet. Ner. 51.1).  For the two monographs dedicated to Tiberius’ portraiture, see Polacco 1955 and Hertel 2013 (the most recent and comprehensive catalogue); other notable works Tiberius’s portrait typology are Boschung 1993b, 56–58 and Pollini 2005, with further bibliography. On the display contexts, see Fejfer 2008, 384.  For the life of Tiberius, see in general Levick 1999, Shotter 2004, and Seager 2005.  Hertel 2013 includes 137 confirmed sculptural portraits of Tiberius, including those that have only recently been documented and those that do not belong to any of Tiberius’ established types, nine whose identification as Tiberius is uncertain, and twenty-seven that have been falsely identified as Tiberius.  Hertel 2013, 107–108. Hertel counts sixty-nine from Italy, twenty from the East (nine from Asia Minor, six from Greece, four from Egypt, one from Israel), and sixteen from the Latin West (six from Gaul, six from Spain, and four from western North Africa). Moreover, the geographical distribution of Tiberius’ six portrait types is not uniform and seems significant: no examples of the accession type (Copenhagen 624) come from the Greek East, where most of the examples are his earlier types (Basel, Copenhagen 623), and examples of Tiberius’ early-career types are rare in the West.  For portrait typology in general, see Zanker 1978, 9–12, and Pollini 1987, 8–11. For a summary and critique of theories regarding the creation and distribution of imperial portrait types, see Fejfer 2008, 407–419.

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models, would most likely have been created to celebrate important events in an individual’s lifetime such as marriage, accession as princeps, military victories, or acquisition of new titles. Copies of the prototype in clay, plaster, or even wax are thought to have been made available via the art market and distributed throughout the empire for further replication. Studying the iconography of hairstyles, which are easier for sculptors to reproduce than more nuanced facial features, is especially important in determining which portraits constitute representatives of the same type. It is generally agreed that Tiberius had six portrait types (Fig. 6): 1) the “Basel” type, 2) the “Copenhagen 623” type, 3) the “Ephesus-Munich” type, 4) the “BerlinNaples-Sorrento” type, 5) the “Chiaramonti” type, and 6) the “Copenhagen 624” type.20

Fig. 6: Sketch of the hairstyles of Tiberius’ six portrait types. After Boschung 1993b, 56.

How, then, do these six types relate to Tiberius’ biography? Determining the date and reason for the creation of a portrait type can be rather speculative. Dates for certain types can occasionally be determined from portraits closely associated with statue bases bearing inscriptions (which can often be easily dated), but many other dates are based only on hypotheses. Although coins can often be narrowly dated, they are not terribly helpful for dating portrait types because coins typically show profile portraits, which may obscure the most important diagnostic feature of a portrait type—the pattern of the fringe of locks over the forehead. The material evidence does not seem to signal a close relationship between the commissioning of portrait types in the round and portrait types seen on coins.21 Unfortunately, ancient literary and epigraphic evidence for the processes involved in the Roman imperial portrait industry is notably lacking.

 This nomenclature follows that developed by Boschung 1993b and adopted by Hertel 2013; while Pollini 2005 accepts the existence of these six types, he gives them different names.  Fejfer 2008, 411.

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The dating of Tiberius’ first official portrait type is a matter of debate. Born Tiberius Claudius Nero on November 16, 42 BCE, his life was destined to be eventful from the very start, due to the chaos of the times as well the socio-political status of his parents.22 Both his mother and father belonged to gens Claudia, which had supplied Rome with military and political leaders since the earliest days of the Republic.23 Given this ancestral background, Tiberius would have been expected to pursue a career in politics. In 39 BCE, when Tiberius was only four years old, his mother, Livia Drusilla, divorced his father (also named Tiberius Claudius Nero) in order to marry Octavian, a rising political star later known as Augustus. When Tiberius was nine years old his father died, and he was thereafter brought up as Octavian’s stepson. While Tiberius was still an adolescent, Octavian (soon to be Augustus) clearly planned for him to participate in his regime. Thus, in the Actium triumph commemorating the defeat of Cleopatra (a foreign ruler, rather than the defeat of Mark Antony, a fellow Roman), Tiberius rode on the left trace horse (the more prestigious right position was reserved for Marcellus, Augustus’ beloved nephew and intended heir). Tiberius then traveled to Spain as a military tribune in 26 BCE at the age of sixteen, but his first real successes were the important diplomatic victories that he secured in the East in 20 BCE, including the negotiated return of the standards lost by Crassus and Mark Antony in Parthia and the establishment of Tigranes as the ruler of the client kingdom of Armenia.24 Tiberius’ mission to the East and subsequent victories may have been the occasion for the creation of Tiberius’ first official portrait type, most likely the Basel type.25 Tiberius was a man of great promise and ability, but he possessed a character that many ancient and modern commentators have deemed peculiar and enigmatic. From the ancient sources, one may gather that Tiberius had difficulty in forming close personal relationships, but the few that he did have were particularly intense (Suet. Tib. 7.3).26 Therefore, it must have been especially devastating and traumatic for him when one of those relationships was dissolved—his first marriage to Vipsania Agrippina, the daughter of Agrippa, Augustus’ son-in-law and essentially second-incommand. In 12 BCE, Agrippa died, leaving Augustus’ daughter Julia a widow. Augustus then needed a new right-hand man as well as a guardian for Gaius and Lucius Caesar, his grandsons whom he had adopted in 17 BCE while both Julia and Agrippa were still alive.27 Augustus found a solution by compelling Tiberius to divorce Vipsa-

 For Tiberius’ early life and career, with references to primary sources, see Levick 1999, 8–17; Shotter 2004, 4–16; Seager 2005, 5–14.  For Tiberius’ family background, see Levick 1999, 1–5.  Seager 2005, 13–14.  For a discussion of this portrait type, see Boschung 1993b, 56–57 and Pollini 2005, 64.  Shotter 2004, 12. For the most comprehensive study on the singular topic of Tiberius’ personality that is not solely a study of Tacitus’ historiographical methods, see Thiel 1935–37.  For the life of Gaius and Lucius and their portraiture, see Pollini 1987, with further references.

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nia and marry Julia. This marriage made Tiberius the most important man in the Empire after Augustus and was likely the reason for the creation of one of his most frequently found portrait types, the Copenhagen 623 type.28 The marriage was unhappy (Suet. Tib. 7.3) and, likely due to the various stressors in his life at that moment, Tiberius retired to the island of Rhodes in 6 BCE (Suet. Tib. 10.2).29 Augustus was not pleased, as Tiberius’ move was disastrous for his dynastic plans, which depended on a show of familial unity. Augustus did not initially allow Tiberius to return to Rome, even after he asked. Only when Lucius Caesar died in 2 CE was Tiberius allowed to return, but on the condition that he remain a private citizen. It is unlikely that any official portrait types of Tiberius were commissioned during this period of disgrace. Tiberius’ status was immediately elevated upon the death of Gaius Caesar in 4 CE. Bereft of both of his (adopted) sons and with no other suitable candidates of his own blood to succeed him as princeps, Augustus adopted both Tiberius and Agrippa Postumus, his last surviving grandson, that same year.30 Tiberius Claudius Nero thus became Tiberius Julius Caesar. Scholars are in general agreement that Tiberius’ official adoption by Augustus was the occasion for the creation of the Berlin-Naples-Sorrento type.31 During the following decade, Tiberius saw additional military activity, and by a consular law of 13 CE, his official powers were increased and made equal to those of Augustus himself (Suet. Tib. 21.1; Vell. Pat. 2.121.1). Most likely, at least one additional official portrait type was created during this period, but the matter of which type is one of the most contentious problems in Tiberius’ typology, with Pollini arguing for the Ephesus-Munich type while Boschung and Hertel believe it is the Chiaramonti type.32 When Augustus died in 14 CE, Tiberius was fifty-four years old and had accumulated extensive military and administrative experience.33 By law, he already held power equal to that of Augustus.34 What Augustus had possessed that Tiberius did not, however, was auctoritas, which became apparent when the Senate first met to

 Boschung 1993b, 57; Pollini 2005, 65; Hertel 2013, 99.  His motives for retiring to Rhodes have been fiercely debated in ancient and modern times (see Levick 1972). There is no reason, in my opinion, to completely dismiss the reason that, according to Suetonius (Tib. 10.2), Tiberius himself gave for his retirement: “at that time, however, he asked for a leave of absence, alleging a rest from labors and a repletion of honors (tunc autem honorum satietatem ac requiem laborum praetendens commeatum petit).” Throughout his life, Tiberius showed an inability to handle the pressures of office and a discomfort with honors that he deemed excessive. Moreover, his retirement seems in keeping with his reclusive nature. He plainly did not enjoy being in the public eye.  Agrippa Postumus was never taken seriously as a contender for the succession and was executed while in exile shortly after the death of Augustus and possibly even on his orders; see Seager 2005, 40–41.  Pollini 2005, 61; Hertel 2013, 100. Boschung 1993b does not discuss reasons for the type’s creation.  Pollini 2005, 61–63; Boschung 1993b, 58; Hertel 2013, 101.  Seager 2005, 46.  Levick 1999, 63; Seager 2005, 39.

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officially confirm Tiberius’ position as princeps.35 Auctoritas may be defined as a kind of tactful authority based on personal prestige and charisma, as well as a certain subtlety in interpersonal communication which Tiberius lacked. Unlike a legal power of command (imperium) to which others were obligated to defer (i.e., the potestas of an individual), auctoritas was the ability to make one’s desire known in a way that others felt compelled to obey.36 It must also be remembered that the principate was a novel form of government, meaning that Tiberius’ only model for the role of princeps was Augustus, which is likely the reason Tiberius often followed the precepts of Augustus during his own principate.37 For instance, Tiberius displayed reluctance to assume sole power, perhaps sincerely or perhaps in imitation of Augustus’ example, but his lack of charisma meant that his reluctance was not well received.38 Tiberius’ becoming princeps required a new official portrait type, which all scholars believe is the Copenhagen 624 type.39 Scholarly opinion is divided on whether Tiberius had a second portrait type during his principate.40 Tiberius, who was capable but not well-liked, had a strained relationship with the Senate throughout his principate. In 26 CE, he retired to Campania where he remained throughout the last decade of his life, never returning to the city of Rome (Suet. Tib. 39; Tac. Ann. 4.58). Unlike Augustus, Tiberius was not deified and Suetonius (Tib. 75.1) reports that he was so unpopular in Rome that upon his death, some of the urban populace shouted Tiberium in Tiberim! (“To the Tiber with Tiberius”), a reference to the treatment of corpses of condemned criminals. Posthumous portraits of Tiberius were produced, although not to honor him as a divus; rather, they appear in Julio-Claudian dynastic statuary groups to emphasize the unity and continuity of the dynasty.41

 For the “accession” of Tiberius, see Levick 1999, 49–59; Shotter 2004, 17–23; Seager 2005, 42–47. Nothing official was conferred on Tiberius during these meetings, which were really only a formality, considering that Tiberius already had the imperium and had in fact immediately made use of it after the death of Augustus.  On the difference between potestas and auctoritas, see especially Brunt and Moore 1967, 83–85.  Levick 1999, 82–83.  For sincerity, see Seager 2005, 46–47; for both views, see Shotter 2004, 21.  Pollini 2005, 67; Hertel 2013, 102.  For Tiberius’ “First” and “Second” Princeps type, see Pollini 2005, 66–68, who considers the Chiaramonti type to be a second princeps type. Adding weight to this theory is the fact that the Chiaramonti type is frequently used for Tiberius’ posthumous images, suggesting that this must be his last portrait type. Since the only portraits of Tiberius wearing a corona civica are of the Chiaramonti type, and since Tiberius refused that crown while alive (Suet. Tib. 26.2), it is reasonable to conclude that all portraits of Tiberius wearing the corona civica are posthumous and that the Chiaramonti type is therefore his last one.  Rose 1997, 36–37. There is no evidence that new posthumous portrait types were ever created for individuals who became divi, not even for Divus Augustus (see Boschung 1993a, 91 and Vierneisel/ Zanker 1979, 64).

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Analysis of the Emory Tiberius The Emory Tiberius is an excellent example of the Copenhagen 624 type. In this type, the fringe of hair over the forehead consists of a straight line of short, reversed comma-shaped locks that switch direction at two points: a forking over the right eye and a pincer at the outer corner of the left eye (Fig. 6). The uniform, straight line of curls continues uninterrupted over the middle of the forehead. The Emory Tiberius is such a fine representative of the Copenhagen 624 type that it should probably be considered part of the Kerngruppe for that type. The Emory Tiberius’ hairstyle conforms very closely to the hair on those portraits of Tiberius that Hertel categorized within the Kerngruppe: the Lansdowne Tiberius in the Getty Museum in Malibu, a head in Toulouse, a colossal head in Tripoli, and the eponymous head in Copenhagen (Fig. 4).42 Indeed, Hertel himself tentatively made this suggestion, but at the time of his publication, he was familiar with the Emory Tiberius only from photographs.43 Therefore, the Emory Tiberius must be an extremely faithful representative of the prototype and should be counted among those in the Kerngruppe. Scholars concur that the Copenhagen 624 type was created in 14 CE on the occasion of Tiberius’s accession, providing a terminus post quem for the creation of the Emory Tiberius. However, there are still some uncertainties surrounding the type’s distribution and meaning. For example, although this type is the best represented of all Tiberius’ portrait types, with at least thirty examples known, very few provenanced examples have been found outside of Italy.44 Also, if the Copenhagen 624 type is Tiberius’ primary princeps type, then why do no examples of this type represent him wearing the corona civica, which curiously appears only on replicas of the Chiaramonti type?45 These important questions must remain for future research; in the present paper, I would like to discuss the overall appearance of the Copenhagen 624 type. As Tiberius’ first (and perhaps only) official portrait type representing him as princeps, the Copenhagen 624 type must be interpreted in its political and arthistorical context. In general, the appearance of an imperial portrait in relation to the portraiture of the preceding princeps would have immediately signaled to ancient viewers either innovation or a continuation of tradition.46 Therefore, when attempt Hertel 2013, 69, Kat. 104 (Malibu), Kat. 114 (Toulouse), Kat. 115 (Tripoli), Kat. 102 (Copenhagen).  Hertel 2013, 69, 227.  For the five examples from outside of Italy, see Hertel 2013: Cat. 96, 114, 115, 117, 119.  Hertel 2013, 124 n. 393. Hertel believes that all three-dimensional portraits of Tiberius wearing the civic crown are posthumous creations, on the grounds that this finding would agree with the historical fact that Tiberius refused the honor of this crown while he was alive (Suet. Tib. 26.2), though it was an emblem used in Caligula’s portraits. At the moment, I see no reasons to disagree with this statement by Hertel, which seems to be a logical assertion. See also n. 40 above for the dating of the Chiaramonti type.  Fejfer 2008, 404.

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ing to determine how the Copenhagen 624 type may have been received in its day, one must consider not only Augustus’ portraiture, which had been the dominant influence for over forty years, but also the nature of the Tiberian principate from a political standpoint. Tiberius was not Augustus, and his portraiture needed to serve a different ideological function for a very different princeps. The Copenhagen 624 type signifies the difference between the two principes through the use of two iconographical details: the hair and the inclusion of signs of aging. Tiberius himself supposedly said that he treated every word and deed of Augustus as if it were law (Tac. Ann. 4.37), but apparently, his reverence for the Augustan precedent did not extend to his official representations in visual media. Tiberius became princeps as an older man, was reserved and aloof by nature, and had fewer political and military achievements than Augustus had. Thus, the visual rhetoric of Augustus’ portraiture suited his youth when he took power as well as his charismatic personality; when Tiberius became sole princeps, such rhetoric would not have worked in the same way given his age and demeanor and might even have created a sort of dissonance for ancient viewers. Surviving portraits of Tiberius dating from the Augustan period are fully in the Augustan mold. These portraits appear youthful and calm; the facial features are regular, smooth, and symmetrical.47 Individualized physiognomy is present but largely masked under “Augustan classicism,” the artistic convention based on Classical Greek idealism that characterized the new style of political portraiture introduced under Augustus.48 The resulting portraits are idealized representations in which the physiognomies of the different individuals portrayed look quite similar to each other. For example, the similarity between Tiberius’ Copenhagen 623 type and the portraiture of Augustus, evoked through both the facial features and hairstyles, is clearly purposeful and was probably meant to convey the unity of Augustus and Tiberius on the basis of imagined shared traits between the two of them.49 Once Tiberius became princeps and the Copenhagen 624 type was created, though, the visual similarity to Augustus’ portraiture was partially dissolved. The most obvious departure of the Copenhagen 624 type from Augustan portraiture is in the hairstyle. The Copenhagen 624 type distinguishes itself from Tiberius’ other five portrait types through the lack of a central forking of the hair locks. Instead, the fork in this portrait type is moved far to the viewer’s left, over the right eye (Fig. 6). The clear break of this hairstyle with the previous types seems to suggest that a new type of image was sought for the new princeps. Although there is no evidence for Tiberius’ direct involvement in shaping his portraiture, this new hairstyle was a conscious choice. It is certainly possible that Tiberius had a hand in the construction

 Of course, it must be noted that Tiberius himself was younger at this time.  Zanker 1988, 98–100.  See Massner 1982, 48–51.

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of his image. He is known to have taken an interest in art, especially sculpture (Plin. HN 34.62), and this interest extended to his own image (Suet. Tib. 26.1). One is even tempted to make a connection between Tiberius’ retirement to Rhodes, his apparent preference for the Hellenistic models of the Rhodian school (as evidenced by the style of the Sperlonga group), and the greater verism in his portraiture as princeps.50 The close-cropped, flat-lying locks of the Copenhagen 624 type stand in marked contrast to the more plastically rendered locks over the forehead of Augustus. This difference is because the hairstyle of the Copenhagen 624 type takes its inspiration not from the Augustan model but from the aristocratic portraiture of the late Republic. Hertel points out that this hairstyle is very sober and republican, in keeping with Tiberius’ character and the character he attempted to give to his principate.51 It has been argued that the politics of Tiberius were generally conservative. It is therefore possible that his awkward interactions with the Senate can be explained in this light; in other words, Tiberius may have wanted the Senate to act with more free will and function in a way more similar to how it had functioned before the principate.52 Jane Fejfer has argued that, while it is highly unlikely that ancient viewers would have stood in front of a Julio-Claudian portrait and counted the individual locks of hair (as modern scholars do), they likely would have noticed the hairstyles on portraits and considered them an important part of what made the princeps recognizable.53 Viewers, then, would have noticed the new hairstyle of the Copenhagen 624 type, even if they did not understand the nuances of its meaning. Although the hairstyle of the Copenhagen 624 type departs from Augustan iconography, the Emory Tiberius still evokes portraits of Augustus: the face is smooth, the features regular, the expression calm. The sculpture conforms to an ideal of beauty derived from Augustan classicism rather than Tiberius’ actual appearance. This visual convention would have been familiar to contemporary viewers used to seeing portraits of Augustus; new to them, however, would be the traits of age plainly present in the Copenhagen 624 type. Because different representatives of the Copenhagen 624 type show varying degrees of age, it is most likely that such traits were actually present in the Urbild and that the decision to emphasize or even include them was based on workshop practices and the variable abilities and interests of sculptors in rendering such details. Those portraits of Tiberius showing more signs of aging and fewer idealized features (such as the one in Cologne) are probably more faithful to the original prototype, if only because it would have been more conceptually difficult for the sculptor to invent imperfections than to artistically smooth them over (see Fig. 5). The highly variable lev-

   

For Tiberius and the Sperlonga group, see Stewart 1977. Hertel 2013, 115–118. See Levick 1999, 83, 92–93; Seager 2005, 104–105. Fejfer 2008, 406.

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els of idealizing features found in replicas of the Copenhagen 624 type indicate how different workshops interpreted the original model. Most representatives of the Copenhagen 624 type, including the Emory Tiberius, exhibit a mix of age-traits and idealization that is inconsistent with Tiberius’ actual age in 14 CE. Hertel argues that this dialectic was deliberately evoked in Tiberius’ portraiture in order to show Tiberius as strong and powerful despite his age, which would be in accordance with anecdotes about Tiberius’ own attempts to show himself as vigorous and physically capable in old age and even near death.54 This explanation rests on the speculation that either Tiberius had a direct hand in the creation of his portraits or that the creators of the Copenhagen 624 type were both conscious of Tiberius’ self-image and chose to convey it in his official portraiture. A more concrete and technical explanation for why the Copenhagen 624 type looks the way that it does seems more likely. Rather than a purposeful choice on the part of Tiberius’ regime, this mixture of realism and idealism should be attributed to individual artists and workshops. Accustomed to carving idealized heads of Augustus for the past forty years, artists were unused to working from a more realistic model representing an older man, i.e., the lost Urbild of the Copenhagen 624 type. Through the inclusion of traits of age as well as a new hairstyle, the prototypical image of the Copenhagen 624 type purposefully departed from earlier convention in order to represent a man who could not emulate Augustus even if he tried. We cannot say for sure how imperial portraits were received by their varied audiences, but it is likely that the visual rhetoric used in images of Augustus would not have been as convincing to viewers if used for Tiberius. It is my belief, therefore, that the creators of Tiberius’ official portraiture consciously departed from Augustus’ model. However, when the image created for Tiberius was copied by workshops, the sculptors carved the portraits in the manner to which they had become accustomed, resulting in images that are somewhat in the mold of Augustan art yet are also notably different.

The Date of the Emory Tiberius It is difficult to determine a narrow range of time for the creation of the Emory Tiberius.55 Nevertheless, some basic conclusions can be reached about the portrait’s terminus post quem and terminus ante quem. As the Copenhagen 624 type was created for Tiberius’ accession in 14 CE, the Emory Tiberius cannot have been made before this date. Determining the terminus ante quem is more complicated. Portraits of Tiberius were made after his death but no later than the principate of Claudius, and it is possible to identify posthumous portraits of Tiberius on stylistic grounds. One need only

 Hertel 2013, 120–123.  For the problems associated with dating portraits by style, see Boschung 1993a, 66.

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look at representations of Tiberius dated to the principate of Caligula, such as those in the Museo Chiaramonti, Museo Gregorio Profano, and the Louvre.56 The Caligulan portraits of Tiberius lack the Emory Tiberius’ crisp delineation of eyebrows and eyelids, and yet their hair is more plastically rendered. Highly idealized, these portraits lack even the slightest signs of aging. Thus, the Emory Tiberius can probably be dated stylistically to the period between Tiberius’ accession to the principate and his death, that is, between 14 and 37 CE. The artwork produced during the age of Tiberius, which lasted more than twenty years, deserves to be studied as its own phenomenon. It should not be seen as a mere continuation of Augustan art or as undifferentiated from art under other JulioClaudian emperors. The character of Tiberius and his principate defined a crucial point in Roman history and had an impact on the visual culture of his regime. Tiberius was in a singular and difficult predicament. He had been called upon to continue the political system created by Augustus, yet he was fully conscious that he was not Augustus, even going so far as to declare himself unequal to him (Tac. Ann. 1.11). The style of the Emory Tiberius, we might say, is emblematic of the tension resulting from a simultaneous continuation of and break with the precedent of the recent past. Nevertheless, it is a masterpiece of Roman portrait sculpture.

Bibliography No Author (2011) Michael C. Carlos Museum: Highlights of the Collections. Atlanta. Boschung, Dietrich (1993a). Die Bildnisse des Augustus. Berlin. Boschung, Dietrich (1993b). “Die Bildnistypen der iulisch-claudischen Kaiserfamilie: ein kritischer Forschungsbericht,” JRA 6, 39–79. Boschung, Dietrich (2002). Gens Augusta: Untersuchungen zu Aufstellung, Wirkung und Bedeutung der Statuengruppen des julisch-claudischen Kaiserhauses. Mainz. Brunt, P. A. / Moore, J. M. (1967). Res Gestae Divi Augusti: The Achievements of Divine Augustus. Oxford. Claridge, Amanda (1990). “Ancient Techniques of Making Joins in Marble Statuary,” in: M. True and J. Podany (eds.), Marble: Art Historical and Scientific Perspectives on Ancient Sculpture, Symposium organized by the Department of Antiquities and Antiquities Conservation, J. Paul Getty Museum, 28–30 April 1988, Malibu, 135–162. Fejfer, Jane (2008). Roman Portraits in Context. Berlin. Fittschen, Klaus / Zanker, Paul (1985). Katalog der römischen Porträts in den Capitolinischen Museen und den anderen kommunalen Sammlungen der Stadt Rom I. Mainz. Gaunt, Jasper (2005a). “New Galleries of Greek & Roman Art at Emory University: The Michael C. Carlos Museum,” Minerva 16, 13–17. Gaunt, Jasper (2005b). “Masterworks: The Classics – Monumental Art,” Veranda March-April, 122. Hertel, Dieter (2013). Die Bildnisse des Tiberius. Wiesbaden. Jaques, Susan (2012). A Love for the Beautiful: Discovering America’s Hidden Art Museums. Guilford. Johansen, Flemming (1994). Catalogue: Roman Portraits I, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. Copenhagen.

 Hertel 2013 cat. 74 (pl. 73), 76 (pl. 74, 125.2), 88 (pl. 82).

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LeMon, Joel M. (2006). “Through the Museum with the Bible,” SBL Forum, n.p. https://www.sbl-site.org/ publications/article.aspx?ArticleId=545 [accessed 4 February 2024]. Levick, Barbara (1972). “Tiberius’ Retirement to Rhodes in 6 B.C.,” Latomus 31, 779–813. Levick, Barbara (1999). Tiberius the Politician. London. Massner, Anne-Kathrein (1982). Bildnisangleichung: Untersuchungen zur Entstehungs- und Wirkungsgeschichte der Augustusporträts (43 v. Chr. – 68 n. Chr.). Berlin. Michael C. Carlos Museum (2011). Michael C. Carlos Museum: Highlights of the Collections. Atlanta. Polacco, Luigi (1955). Il Volto di Tiberio. Rome. Pollini, John (1987). The Portraiture of Gaius and Lucius Caesar. New York. Pollini, John (2005). “A New Marble Head of Tiberius: Portrait typology and ideology,” Antike Kunst 48, 55–72. Pollini, John (2015). “Some Observations on the Use of Color on Ancient Sculpture, Contemporary Scientific Exploration, and Exhibition Displays,” in: P. Pensabene and E. Gasparini (eds.), Interdisciplinary Studies on Ancient Stone: ASMOSIA X, International Conference of ASMOSIA, 21–26 May 2012, Rome, 901–910. Pollini, John (2017). “The Bronze Statue of Germanicus from Ameria (Amelia),” AJA 121, 425–437. Rose, Charles Brian (1997). Dynastic Commemoration and Imperial Portraiture in the Julio-Claudian Period. Cambridge. Seager, Robin (2005). Tiberius, 2nd ed. Malden, MA. Shotter, David (2004). Tiberius Caesar, 2nd ed. London. Stewart, Andrew F. (1977). “To Entertain an Emperor: Sperlonga, Laokoon, and Tiberius at the DinnerTable,” JRS 67, 76–90. Thiel, J. H. (1935–37). “Kaiser Tiberius (ein Beitrag zum Verständnis seiner Persönlichkeit),” Mnemosyne 2–4, 245–270, 177–218, 17–42. Tykot, Robert H. / Herrmann, John J. / Stein, Renée / Gaunt, Jasper / Blevens, Susan / Skinner, Anne R. (2018). “Analysis of Classical Sculptures in the Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, Atlanta,” in: D.M. Poljak and K. Marasović (eds.), Interdisciplinary Studies on Ancient Stone: ASMOSIA XI, Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference of ASMOSIA, 18–22 May 2015, Split, 501–508. Vierneisel, Klaus / Zanker, Paul (1979). Die Bildnisse des Augustus: Herrscherbild und Politik in kaiserlichen Rom. Munich. Zanker, Paul (1978). Studien zu den Augustus-Porträts: I Der Actium-Typus, 2nd ed. Göttingen. Zanker, Paul (1988). The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, trans. by Alan Shapiro. Ann Arbor, MI.

Susan Walker

The Priest’s Tale Introduction This short essay in honour of John Pollini is intended (as I am sure John would wish) to begin a conversation by posing some questions about a remarkable Roman marble portrait now in the collections of the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.1 The portrait bust represents a man of mature years, naked but for a wreath of laurel on his head (Fig. 1a–c). It was purchased by the Ashmolean Museum in 2005. In the same year, the portrait was briefly noted in the Ashmolean Magazine by R.R.R. Smith and Michael Vickers; it has since awaited a full academic publication.2

Description The bust, 52 cm high and 36 cm wide, is carved in a medium-large grained marble of overall greyish tone, with no obvious bands of colour or mineral inclusions. No analysis has been undertaken as there are no sites on the sculpture that could be sampled without visible damage. The observations that follow are therefore visual. If cut in a Greek island quarry, the size of the crystals and the colour tone would favour Thasos over Paros; there is none of the translucency and tonal warmth of the tunnelled Parian lychnites, though a surface quarry on that island could have produced a marble of

 I thank Julie Candy of Historic Environment Scotland for advice on maps of Fife; Paul Collins of the Department of Antiquities, Ashmolean Museum for facilitating access to the bust and its archive; Bethany Hamblen, Archivist of Balliol College, and the staff of the British Library and the Archives, Heritage and Photography Service at the Birmingham Library, Jan-Marc Henke and Mrs. Tzimi of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Athens, and Eugenio La Rocca of the Musei Capitolini for offering every assistance with access to archives and photographs. I am grateful to Thorsten Opper of the Department of Greece and Rome, British Museum, for checking the Biliotti archives and providing images of the letter concerning the purchase of the portrait head of a priest from Cos. I thank Michael Vickers, Manana Odischeli and Alexander Rubel for providing an opportunity to air some of the content in public, and Bert Smith and John Wilkes for their advice on the Ashmolean portrait and the inscription of Pythodoris in the Musei Capitolini. I am most grateful to Dyfri Williams for his advice on the Elgin Collection and alternative sites for the bust’s location in Scotland.  Registered as AN2005.11, the bust was purchased with the aid of the Victoria and Albert Museum Purchase Grant Fund, the Friends of the Ashmolean, the Central Purchasing Fund, the France Fund and two anonymous donors: Smith and Vickers 2005. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111182919-005

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(a)

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Fig. 1a–c: Portrait of a man wearing a solid wreath, front, rear and profile views. Ashmolean Museum AN2005.11. © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.

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greyish tone.3 The choice of stone surely influenced the sharp, almost harsh appearance of the portrait, a work of exceptional quality. The bust is mounted on a modern moulded base 12 cm high, made of fine-grained marble, most likely from Carrara. The portrait head measures 21 cm from the chin to the base of the wreath, and 16 cm at the widest point of the face below the eyes. The subject is sharply turned to his right, his arresting gaze evidently intended to attract attention. The eyes protrude beneath deep, shadowed brows. The pupils and irises are uncut. Deeply incised lines at the inner end of each eyebrow draw the viewer’s eye to the high forehead, where two lightly incised wrinkles repeat the arch of the eyebrows. Beneath the eyes the skin is bagged. The nose is lost below the bridge, but deep nasolabial folds survive in the flesh to each side of the nostrils. The thin lips are closed and slightly pursed, the flesh slightly folded at each end. There is a slight cleft in the strongly rendered chin. The muscles in the turned neck are clearly modelled. The joints of the upper arms with the shoulders are naturalistically rendered. The bust is cut above the breast, with a trapezoidal recessed strip 1.5–2 cm high appearing beneath the lightly scalloped lower edge. The hair is richly detailed around the clean-shaven face, falling in four curved double locks, each 2 cm wide, forming a fringe at the centre of the brow. These shade on either side into well-defined, sharply-modelled curls 3 cm in width, each accentuated by a drilled hole, some breaking over the lower edge of the wreath. The hair is long and luxuriant, falling to the base of the neck on the proper right side. On the crown and at the back of the head the individual locks are defined but not detailed, suggesting that those areas were not intended to be seen at close quarters. On his head the subject wears a substantial wreath of rounded profile, 4 cm high. The surface is lightly incised to represent a continuous band, probably of laurel leaves with no apparent sign of berries. Though the surface of the wreath has weathered smooth above the centre of the subject’s face, there is no break in the leaves to admit any additional features such as a medallion or jewel, nor is there any sign of the ribbon on which the leaves were threaded. On the upper surface no trace remains of any figures having been added to the wreath, nor of a second wreath placed above it. Nor is there any trace of trailing ribbon where a taenia would have been tied at the back of the head. The front edge of the underside of the wreath is visible at the centre front of the head. In form, this substantial, plain wreath of leaves was most likely modelled on those made of metal and held in place by its weight.

 Schilardi and Kasonopoulou (2000) offer a series of interdisciplinary papers on the exploitation of Parian marble.

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Condition Visible damage to the bust is limited to the nose, which is lost below the bridge, and the proper left side, where an area of the surface of the bust is lost at the shoulder. On the same side, part of the earlobe has been lost. This was once restored in marble; a small pinhole remains in the smoothly trimmed broken edge. There is also a cut (currently unfilled) in the proper left eyelid, running through the eyebrow. The broken surface of the marble beneath the lost nose bears traces of iron residue, suggesting that it was restored in modern times. 2 cm below the ancient, worked side and rear edges of the bust, the under-surface is crossed by regularly spaced horizontal lines cut with a bull-nosed chisel. These are not typical of ancient work and are most likely secondary, perhaps intended to cut the weight and bulk of the piece for shipment and display in later times, or to tidy a broken surface. Indeed, the recess below the front of the bust suggests that the bust was once connected to a base, now lost, that was most likely carved in one piece with the portrait.4 Root marks survive, notably on the left side and at the back of the head; their limited extent is probably the result of focusing recent cleaning on the principal viewpoint of the portrait rather than an indication of burial conditions. Long displayed in an English (and perhaps previously a Scottish) garden, the surface has been subject to weathering and more recently to over-cleaning with corn husks by a commercial restorer unaware of the bust’s antiquity.

The Date of the Portrait The shape of the portrait bust and the sharp turn in the subject’s pose indicate a date in the last decades of the first century CE or at the turn of the second. The face is clean-shaven, and the pupils and irises of the eyes are left uncut, both features suggesting a date before the reign of the emperor Hadrian (117–138 CE). The subject’s hairstyle does not follow Roman imperial court fashion but draws upon Hellenistic Greek styles of presentation for cultured elite individuals.5 Some comparable portraits are briefly reviewed here in support of the proposed date. Notwithstanding the Hellenistic hairstyle, the form and arrangement of the central locks above the brow resemble the lower row of locks of a much younger man, whose marble portrait bust with inscribed plinth is kept in the Musei Capitolini, Rome (Fig. 2a–c).6

 In the style of the portrait bust of the physician from Asia, Marcus Modius Asiaticus (Paris, Cabinet des Médailles), discussed further below.  As observed by Smith and Vickers 2005. See Smith 1998 for the complex cultural allusions carried by second-century portraits from the Greek east. For honours to Hellenistic worthies, see Ma 2013.  Rome, Musei Capitolini, Sala dei Filosofi, inv. No. 578: Fittschen, Zanker and Cain 2010, 68–69, no. 63, with earlier bibliography.

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Fig. 2a–c: Portrait of Pythodoris. Rome, Musei Capitolini, inv. 578. Front, right and left side views. Photos: Zeno Colantoni, by courtesy of Eugenio La Rocca. With the permission of the Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali.

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This portrait is the closest comparable ancient work to the bust under study: its subject wears a similar style of wreath, with the same arresting turn of the head to his right, exaggerated by sinking the bust at an angle into the plinth (see further below). The brow and temples are edged with two rows of strongly rendered locks of hair, a style close to images of Domitian made in the eastern empire.7 The lively modelling of the hair also recalls images of Nerva. The hairstyle thus suggests a date for the portrait between 90 and 100 CE, a date that also suits the form of the bust and the style of the beard. The nose is wholly restored. The unusual relationship of this bust with its plinth has dictated the unique form of the back of the sculpture, in which a rectangular supporting pillar (not apparently intended to have been cut into free-falling ties for the wreath) falls from the top of the wreath onto the surface of the roughly worked back of the block, where the bust appears as a solid form above a narrow gap separating it from the plinth. An iron ring nailed into the centre does not appear to be ancient and may have been used to stabilise the block in shipment or on an earlier display.8 Another bust in the Musei Capitolini of comparable design portrays the imperial freedman T(itus) Flavius Eucarpus.9 This portrait, dedicated by his nephew, C. Julius Euros, is also dated to 80–100 CE. Here the lower edge of the bust, which resembles that of the Ashmolean portrait, is set into a plate, which acts as a tang to join the bust to an inscribed circular base. This portrait conveys a similar sense of authority, the subject offering a comparable intense gaze. The hairstyle, of different form, offers a similar level of detail, diminishing away from the centre of the face. There is no wreath. The bust of the doctor Modius Asiaticus, now in Paris, Cabinet des Médailles, was sent from Smyrna at the end of the seventeenth century to M. le Chancelier de Pontchartrain. This bust has been dated to the Late Trajanic or early Hadrianic period. As noted above, a recessed edge below the curved bust line, comparable to that of the Ashmolean bust, joins the portrait to an inscribed semi-circular base.10 Two portrait statues discovered with many other sculptures in a secondary, late antique context in the Odeion of Cos in 1929 offer similar images of mature men with serious expressions, wearing large, solid wreaths (Fig. 3a–d). Dated to the mid-first century CE or the Flavian period, these are of special interest in giving the appearance of a complete figure of this type. Generously draped in Hellenistic-style tunic and himation, the feet clad in elaborate sandals, both figures convey a sense of moral authority and purpose.11 Though the facial features are un-

 Fittschen and Zanker 1985, 35, no. 31, pls. 32–33.  Fittchen, Zanker and Cain 2010, pl. 72.  Fittschen, Zanker and Cain 2010, 65–66, no. 60, pls. 68–69, appendix 30a.  Inan and Rosenbaum 1979, 160–162, no. 114, pls. 93–94.  Kabus-Preishofen 1989, 217–218, no. 37, 224–225, no. 42 (mid-first century CE); Laurenzi 1932, 98–104, pls. V-VIII (Flavian). See comments in the concluding section of this paper regarding the dates.

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Fig. 3a–d: Portrait statues of two men found in the Odeion at Cos, now in the Archaeological Museum, Palace of the Grand Master, Rhodes. © Greek Archaeological Service and Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Athen, I.N. 1971-1439, 1984-0035, 1971-1440, 1984-0028.

mistakably Roman, the style of drapery and the longish, curled hair clearly express Hellenistic civic traditions. The heads and forearms of the Coan figures are separately worked in Parian marble, and a significant difference in quality has been observed

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between the finish of the heads and that of the drapery, carved in local stone.12 The same might be said of the carving of the bust of Pythodoris in the Musei Capitolini and its plinth, though in this case both are cut from the same block, apparently of Parian marble. It is noteworthy that, where these comparable portraits have a Mediterranean provenance, it lies in western Asia Minor or a nearby Aegean island, and that the heads and busts are carved in Greek-island marble. Portraits of officials or priests recorded in the publications of mainland Greek museum collections or excavations offer a somewhat different style of presentation, characterised by softer modelling of the face, where it survives, and a distant gaze, not addressing the viewer. Examples include a life-sized head of an Isthmian official found in the theatre at Corinth and dated to the early Augustan era, and a fragmentary wreathed male head of Flavian date from the same site.13 In the Agora excavations in Athens was found the over-life-sized head from the statue of a Flavian priest, wearing a wreath of large laurel leaves fixed to a visible taenia.14 His fleshy, oval face, slightly turned to the right, is dominated by his huge eyes. This figure, carved at the scale of an imperial portrait, suggests aloof disengagement with the viewer. Two realistic portraits of un-wreathed men with close-cropped hair, sagging flesh and strongly wrinkled brows were dated to the late Flavian or Trajanic period.15 A third century portrait head of a wreathed man, possibly a priest, was characterised by Harrison as very Roman, not Athenian, in style. The wreath is of interest in its clear delineation of every leaf, threaded onto a taenia. This unusually crisp and focused portrait might have been a stone version of a bronze head, recalling in its sharpness the Trajanic bronze imago clipeata of a wreathed man found in Ankara.16 Also very Roman in presentation is the Thasian marble bust of the bearded priest Lucius Titonius Primus, dedicated in Latin by his son Valens.17 Now in the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki, this sculpture is dated to the reign of Trajan. The sculptor has captured a somewhat unflattering image of a corpulent man turned to his right, with shallow wrinkles on the brow and neck and deep nasolabial folds. His thick hair is luxuriant above the brow and arranged in tiers above the nape of the neck. There is no

 See Fig. 3a and c. The proper left hand has been restored to the figure with the laurel wreath, while the cuttings for additions can be clearly seen on the other statue. Recent photographs of the sides and backs of the statues suggest that the marble bodies were thinly cut to be stacked for ease of shipment, so they may not be of local stone. One had to be cut at the back, below the neck, to receive the head safely, though it remains unclear whether the latter intervention is ancient or modern. I am grateful to Rina Huang for sharing her photographs with me.  Sturgeon 2004, 133–136, no. 27, pls. 43, 44a; 139–140, no. 30, pl. 47, b-c.  Harrison 1953, 27–28, no. 17, pl. 12.  Harrison 1953, 28–31, nos. 18–19, pls. 13–14.  Harrison 1953, 56–57, no. 43, pl. 30. For the Ankara portrait, see Inan and Rosenbaum 1966, 208, no. 286, pl. CLXI.  Despinis, Stephanidou-Tiberiou and Voutyras 2003, 146–147, no. 162, pls. 781–784.

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wreath. His mantle is tucked into the circular base where the dedicatory text is carved. A priest of Isis from the same family is known at Philippi.

Identifying the Subject Since it lacks an inscription, the subject of the Ashmolean’s portrait cannot be identified by name or specific role. The subject is evidently a man of mature years, his face bearing the lines and sagging flesh of old age, but he nonetheless retains a strong chin and a full head of hair worn long. The combination of the prominent laurel wreath, the long hair and the carefully delineated signs of age suggests that the subject is to be identified as a priest.18 However, the single, solid form of the wreath poses a difficulty in providing a precise identification: at least from the second century CE, priests serving in the imperial and other significant cults are shown wearing two or more wreaths, of which the lowest could be of laurel, while the uppermost wreath supported miniature portrait busts of the emperor and his family or other significant deities.19 Nor is the heavy, continuous wreath typical of a crown of victory won in competition: these were rendered more naturalistically, with free-standing leaves and fruit threaded onto an adjustable taenia, tied to fit the head at the nape of the neck with ribbons falling onto the shoulders. As is the case with the comparable portraits cited above as evidence for the date of the Ashmolean’s bust, most of the archaeological and epigraphic evidence for the representation and use of similar wreaths comes from the cities of western Asia Minor and nearby Aegean islands. Some significant comparable examples are reviewed below.

Images of Similar Wreaths Pythodori[o]s As noted above, the closest comparable portrait to the bust in the Ashmolean is that of a younger man now displayed in the Musei Capitolini, Rome (Fig. 2a–c). On the plinth is incised in Greek the name Pythodoris (sic), in epigraphic publications under-

 Smith and Vickers 2005, drawing on Smith 1998. On the restricted use of laurel wreaths, see Hurschmann 1999. On the imperial cult in western Asia Minor, see Price 1984.  Rumscheid 2000. For two statues of priests from Aphrodisias wearing such wreaths and dated to the mid-second century CE, see Smith et al. 2006, 164–166, no. 45, pls. 35–37 and 179–180, no. 51, pl. 47. See also Datsouli-Stavridi 1985, 69, no. 356, pl. 85 for a mid-second century Athenian portrait of a young man wearing a triple wreath.

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stood as a misspelling of Pythodoros.20 This bust was bought by the seventeenthcentury dealer Fouquier in Smyrna, along with an early Hadrianic portrait of the Greek astronomer Theon; significantly, it was seen and drawn in Marseilles by Jacob Spon, who gives the findspot as Ephesus.21 The bust was sold to Cardinal Albani, and entered the Musei Capitolini as a founding gift of Pope Clement XII in 1734.22 In Fittschen, Zanker and Cain’s catalogue of 2010, the bust is identified as a portrait of a young man wearing a victor’s or priest’s crown.23 There, the name is read as it appears on the stone, in the female form Pythodoris; the authors suggest that the name refers not to the subject but to the donor of the portrait. The inscription appears to be contemporary with the portrait and not a later Roman or seventeenth-century addition to the plinth. However, there is a noteworthy difference in the quality of the workmanship of the portrait and the plinth. The portrait was cut by an accomplished sculptor, while the plinth, including the inscription, was cut by a relatively unskilled mason, who misjudged the size of the field for the text. It may be that this part of the commission was unfinished and the name intended as a temporary placement, or that Pythodoris was simply the first name in a longer text (see further below). Excluding the unusually high plinth, the bust is of similar size to the Ashmolean portrait, at a height of 49.5 cm, with a chin to crown height (including the wreath) of 29.5 cm (approximately equivalent to a Roman foot). The high base retains the form of the rectangular block from which the whole sculpture was cut. The name is inscribed directly on the block with no framing tabula, as was often the case for portraits of eastern Mediterranean origin. The exaggerated turn of the head has raised the question of whether the inscribed side of the base was intended as the sole viewpoint. Fittschen, Zanker and Cain concluded that a corner view was intended, the base set at an angle, most likely within a tomb. However, recent examination of the right side of the base (Fig. 2b) reveals that it was carefully worked with a small point, with the faint suggestion of a drafted margin. Just below the centre is a small, circular cutting for a dowel with some lead still surviving within it. This appears to be ancient and offers evidence that the block was once joined to another. In contrast, the left side of the block (Fig. 2c), including the upper surface of the plinth and the underside of the bust up to the left shoulder, was roughly finished with a larger point and contains no dowel holes. The roughly worked surface appears to be ancient and suggests either that the work was left unfinished or that the lower left side was concealed in its original setting. (The two small holes in the front of the block (Fig. 2a) were surely intended to fix a museum label.)

 Corsten 2010, 387 s.v. Πυθόδωρος, where an omicron replaces the iota, rendering the inscription as the name of the male subject of the portrait.  Theon: Fitttschen, Zanker and Cain 2010, 94–96, no. 89, pls. 109–110. Spon 1685, 137.  Richter 1965, 288.  Fittschen, Zanker and Cain 2010, 68–69, no. 63.

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Though questions remain concerning the left side of the block, it seems reasonable to conclude that this portrait bust formed the left end of a larger monument, more likely a private funerary monument than a civic commemoration. The position of this block at the left end of a longer sequence would explain the unusual angle of the bust and the brief text. It may be that Fittschen, Zanker and Cain were correct in their reading of Pythodoris as the name of a female donor; the individual(s) commemorated in the monument and the reason for the commission could have been explained in text cut into the next block or blocks in the sequence, which have not survived. Recontextualising this bust remains difficult, but is worthy of further investigation. A family of Pythodoroi from Tralleis were prominent in the civic life of their region in the first century BCE.24 Among them, a woman named Kallinoe served as priestess of Artemis at Ephesus.25 It is very likely that Pythodoris belonged to this family, some of whose members were still prominent in the second century CE.26 A surviving inscription records the commissioning of a funerary monument for herself, her children and future generations of Pythodoroi in Tralleis by a member of the family named Antonia, sometimes identified as a daughter of Mark Antony. The text was incised in Greek on a stone block 46 cm high, close in scale to the portrait bust.27 Though the bust of Pythodoris was noted in the seventeenth century as having come from Ephesus, where the Pythodoroi are known to have been active in the religious and civic life of the city, it is not out of the question that it could have come from nearby Tralleis, the name of the better-known city of Ephesus having been used to boost its value for sale to a European collector. However, there is no surviving evidence concerning the form of Antonia’s monument or of its development to accommodate memorials to future generations of Pythodoroi, which she had intended to include within it. Moreover, though the working of its base suggests that the bust now in the Musei Capitolini once belonged to a more complex monument, there is no known association of it with the family tomb in Tralleis commissioned by Antonia about a century earlier. The head is crowned with a large laurel wreath, the leaves thickly cut with no sign of having been threaded on a ribbon. Berries appear amidst the rounded form of the leaves. Without knowledge of the context in which the bust was displayed, it is difficult to interpret the significance of the wreath, which, like the Ashmolean example, may have been modelled on those made of metal. Most scholars have taken the wreath to represent a prize for victory in a contest, most likely athletic given the subject’s youth and apparent fitness. However, victory crowns awarded to athletes are

   

Corsten 2010, 387. See also Campanile 1994, 33–34, no. 7. Börker and Merkelbach 1979, no. 615a. Campanile 1994, 134. Poljakov 1989, 163, no. 179.

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usually shown as natural wreaths supported by a ribbon.28 This type of crown is more often worn by civic priests, although it lacks cultic insignia.29

Portraits from Cos Two wreathed statues of men were discovered in a room of the Odeion of Cos in 1929 (see above, n. 10 and Fig. 3). The context is best explained as a late antique accumulation of statues of men and women of late classical, Hellenistic and Roman date, previously displayed elsewhere, perhaps in a portico of the nearby Agora. The two wreathed portraits were displayed against a wall.30 One of the men wears a heavy laurel wreath, very similar to that of the Ashmolean bust, with no sign of any taenia and most likely imitating in stone a metal wreath. The wreath of the other figure is large in scale and solid, but uncut; detail was possibly added in paint, for even a textile crown would have been rendered with folds or pleats.31 Like a portrait head in the British Museum, the heads of these two figures were designed to fit into draped torsos. The British Museum head was purchased in 1872 from Alfred (later Sir Alfred) Biliotti, then British Vice-Consul at Rhodes and an archaeologist trained by Charles Newton.32 An undated letter from Biliotti to Newton briefly records the purchase made at Cos, without further information on the head’s provenance. Biliotti believed the subject to be “some emperor”, and his (ill-founded) identification was presumably sufficient reason for purchase.33 The head was clearly intended to be set into a statue, which has not survived. The subject is a balding, mature man with a clean-shaven, fleshy face, visible wrinkles in the brow, light naso-labial folds, and a down-turned mouth. The pupils of the eyes are carved, but the date of the head is contested.34 Like one of the two full figures from Cos, and the subjects of the Musei Capitolini and the Ashmolean portrait, this unidentified man wears a heavy wreath of laurel with no sign of a supporting ribbon. Judged too mature and fleshy to have enjoyed athletic success, he has been identified as a priest.

 Compare Fittschen, Zanker and Cain 2010, no. 101.  Rumscheid (2000, 4) also notes the difficulty of identifying the purpose of wreaths without insignia. On the sustained popularity of wreaths in the Greek provinces of the Roman empire, see Fittschen 2021, 7–8.  Laurenzi 1932, 65; Kabus-Preisshofen 1989, 217–218, no. 37, 224–225, no. 42.  Neither Laurenzi nor Kabus-Preisshofen discusses the form of the wreaths.  British Museum GR1872, 0705.1. Smith 1904, 181, no. 1968. On Biliotti, see Barchard 2006.  From its sequence within the Biliotti papers, we can say that this undated letter was written in 1872.  Smith 1904: mid-third century CE; Smith 1998: mid-late second century CE. I agree with the latter judgement.

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Inscribed Wreaths from Aezani and Didyma Though scholarly attention has been focused upon wreaths supporting identifiable insignia, two inscribed blocks from Roman monuments set up in Aezani and Didyma include thick laurel wreaths of comparable form to those worn by the subjects of the Ashmolean, Musei Capitolini and British Museum busts and the heads from Cos.35 On the relief from Aezani, a thick wreath, apparently of laurel, with no attached portraits is associated with the ninth prytany of M. Ulpius Appuleianus Flavianus, the father of the builder of the monument, M. Ulpius Appuleius Eurykles. Like Pythodoris, these men were members of a local family known to have been prominent since at least the first century BCE.36 In the later second century CE, the family commemorated their civic service, personal wealth, and regional influence in this monument, which has been restored to its original position on the east wall of the south façade of the tribune lining the entrance to the stadium. On this wreath a taenia is visible. A marble relief from Didyma, perhaps the underside of a cornice, was found out of context near the church in 1912. There is no surviving association with any named individual. It is decorated with two rows of three crowns bearing inscriptions. The inscriptions of the eirenarch (a judicial official) and the tamias (a treasury official) do not have portraits mounted on the thick wreaths of (probably) laurel leaves, which are very comparable in form to the wreaths worn by the subjects of the Ashmolean, Musei Capitolini and British Museum busts. The third crown on the lower row has lost its text, and the wreath itself is badly damaged. The upper row shows three double crowns, of which the topmost is decorated with mounted busts worn by the archiprytaneos (the leading officer of local government), the agonothete (director of the games) and the panegyrarch (leader of the religious assembly). Above the representation of the wreaths is a moulded edge decorated with lotus buds and palmettes. The block is dated to the later empire on grounds of palaeography; the form and quality of the decorated moulding suggests to me the third century.37 These examples (including the bust from Ephesus in the Musei Capitolini) show the use of this type of laurel wreath in imperial times in three cities of western Asia Minor and on the neighbouring island of Cos. The inscribed representations also demonstrate that solid laurel wreaths of this sort were worn by senior officials serving in local governing councils, the judiciary or finance. However, there is some inconsistency of representation: the wreath associated with the leadership of the prytany does have added portraits at Didyma but not at Aezani. This may be an indication of date (the Didyma block is likely to be a century later than that of Aezani), or it may

 Rumscheid 2000, 113–114, cat. No. 1, pl. 1,1 a (Aezani); 119–120, cat. No. 12, pl. 6,2 (Didyma).  Kearsley 1987; Wörrle, in Hoffman 1993, 447, SEG 2009, 454–455, no. 1479C for a link between the early second century CE Appuleius and a first century BCE forebear. See also Campanile (1994), 108–110, nos. 110, 110a, with stemma XIII.  Rehm 1958, no. 157.

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simply reflect local variation. Though any such official may also have served—and indeed is likely to have served—in a religious cult, none of the solid wreaths without busts is explicitly associated with priestly office. The statues found in Cos are in civic dress and were most likely displayed in a civic context. Here an inscription of ca. 100 BCE links the use of a laurel crown to an official in the Samothracian mystery cult of the Theoi Megaloi.38 The sale of priesthoods to raise money for public buildings is especially well-attested on Cos and may have been a factor in the commissioning of large-scale statues of the sort reviewed above.39 Certainly in the case of Aezani the monument commemorates historic commitments by generations of a single family to civic and religious office and to considerable personal expenditure on behalf of the local and wider provincial community.

Collection History From the comparable examples reviewed above and in the preceding section, it seems likely that the Ashmolean bust originated in western Asia Minor or on a nearby island. Like the similar bust in the Musei Capitolini, the Ashmolean bust could have been purchased in Smyrna, an historic centre for trading antiquities. Before its acquisition by the Ashmolean Museum, the bust had spent some eighty years in gardens owned by the vendor’s family, who had moved from Scotland to various homes in central and southern England in the course of the twentieth century. A photograph was supplied of the vendor with the bust barely visible in the background of his parents’ garden in the late 1950s. The vendor stated in a sworn affidavit, now kept in the archive of the Department of Antiquities at the Ashmolean, that his grandfather had served in the First World War with the Factor of Lord Elgin’s estate at Broomhall, Fife, and at the war’s end was offered work on the estate. In about 1920, the team was asked to clear a pile of stone rubble from the village of Culross, the pile having become a hazardous playground for local children. In the rubble were pieces of ornamental stone, including this portrait bust. The Factor was said to have permitted the vendor’s grandfather to take the portrait and other ornamental stones to serve as garden ornaments. From the reported association with Culross it was later assumed—or the story was promoted—that the bust had once been in the collection of the 7th Lord Elgin at nearby Broomhall, from which it had been discarded, most likely, it was speculated, for the loss of its nose.40 The apparent Aegean origin of the head matched the content

 IG XII, 4,323, l.13; Paul 2014, 263–264.  Maier 2014, 48, also citing evidence of the practice in Ephesus (140 CE) and Prusias ad Hypium (early third century CE).  Vickers, in Smith and Vickers 2005.

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of Lord Elgin’s collection, and the rubble pile stood on land owned by the Elgin family. However, there are difficulties in accepting this proposal. At the time of its acquisition by the Ashmolean, I was concerned that the bust was not included by Adolf Michaelis in his detailed account of the Broomhall collection, published in 1885.41 In preparation for this paper, I contacted my fellow-contributor and former colleague Dyfri Williams, who has worked extensively on the Elgin archives.42 His response is quoted below: 1.

2. 3. 4. 5.

There is no trace of the head among the Lusieri papers. It would have had to have been a late find, after about 1810/11, to have not gone straight to the B[ritish] M[useum]. At that late date, Lusieri was only excavating tombs on the outskirts of Athens. If he had found it, its quality and distinctiveness would have made it very likely indeed that he would have mentioned it in a letter or, indeed, recorded its presence in the final shipping lists of cases (1817–18). It is not in the illustrated Broomhall catalogue of the Elgin collection made in c. 1860 (Lord Elgin double-checked this for me). It is not mentioned in Michaelis’ article on what was in Broomhall in 1884. The Elgin family only began to dispose of some pieces from c. 1950 (and it was not one of those). The Elgin family was clearly always extremely careful of their ancestor’s collection and would hardly have disposed of any of it casually.

Williams suggested investigating another possible source closer to the location of the rubble pile. Culross Abbey House, located immediately east of Culross Abbey, is not labelled on the map (Fig. 4). The house was originally built for the Elgin family in the seventeenth century and passed by marriage in the later eighteenth century to the Cochrane family, the Earls of Dundonald. In the early nineteenth century, Culross Abbey House was sold to the 7th Earl of Dundonald’s cousin, Sir Robert Preston (1740–1834), owner of the nearby estate of Valleyfield.43 Sir Robert, who had made his fortune through service and investment in the East India Company and marine insurance, and not least by marriage to the very wealthy Elizabeth Brown, daughter of a London merchant, moved to Fife from London about 1800 and commissioned the remodelling of Valleyfield and its grounds according to a design by Sir Humphrey Repton. Meanwhile, the roof of Abbey House was removed and left unrestored until 1830, when an extension to the house was added, following the restoration of the adjacent abbey. “To what use it is destined,” commented Sir Walter Scott on a visit to Culross recorded in his diary for June 19, 1830, “is not very evident to me. It is too near his own comfort Michaelis 1885, 143, updated by Vermeule 1955, 132; Vermeule/von Bothmer 1959, 141–142.  Williams to Walker, 17/6/2022.  On Culross Abbey House, see https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/designation/GDL00123 [accessed 16 August 2024]. For early photographs, plans and drawings of Valleyfield House and the estate, see https://canmore.org.uk/site/49435/valleyfield-estate-valleyfield-house [accessed 16 August 2024]. Sir Robert Preston, see https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1790-1820/member/preston-rob ert-1740-1834 [accessed 16 August 2024].

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Fig. 4: Detail of a map of the southern coast of Fife drawn by James Knox and published in 1828. The Valleyfield Estate, just east of Culross, is marked as the property of Sir R(obert) Preston and Broomhall, on the right, as that of Lord Elgin. With the permission of the National Library of Scotland.

able mansion of Valleyfield to be useful as a residence, if indeed it could be formed into a comfortable modern house. But it is rather like a banqueting house.”44 In 1834 Sir Robert died childless aged 94, leaving the Valleyfield estate and Culross Abbey House to his three nieces. On the death of the last niece in the 1860s, ownership of the land passed to the Elgin family. Abbey House was left to the Honourable Robert Preston Bruce, younger brother of the ninth Earl, and was abandoned after his death in 1896. The house remained unoccupied and in a poor state prior to 1952, when it was restored by the 10th Earl of Elgin, whose widow Katherine, Dowager Countess of Elgin (née Cochrane) then resided in it. The history of Culross Abbey House clearly illustrates the close ties between the Elgin, Cochrane and Preston families, maintained for nearly two centuries. It could have been a site for the display of the bust, amidst “terraces, slopes and platforms of great antiquity, some with stone steps, balustrades and vases,” according to the report of a gardening tour visiting the estate in 1842. Meanwhile at Valleyfield, the same tour reported that “The kitchen-garden is on a sloping bank and exhibited at one time a fine display of terraces, fruit trees, and ornamental borders; but the whole is now comparatively neglected, and some of the terrace walls have actually fallen down.”45

 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/14860/pg14860-images.html#JUNE_1830 [accessed 17 August 2024].  Loudon 1842, 592 (Abbey House) and 590 (Valleyfield).

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At the turn of the twentieth century, the house at Valleyfield became the headquarters of the Fife Coal Company. Significantly, the company abandoned the house in 1918, having stripped its roof of copper, and the house and its landscaped garden fell further into ruin at exactly the time that the pile of rubble became a local hazard for the children of Culross. The abandonment of the Valleyfield house and garden offers a possible context for the vendor’s grandfather to have been given permission to take the bust, which could have been displayed in the house or garden along with the other ornaments he removed. However, Culross Abbey House, unoccupied since 1860, also the site of decayed garden terraces, could have been the source. Sir Robert Preston is not known to have collected antiquities, though he and his wife were cultured people and friendly with significant contemporary writers and artists; they owned a collection of seventeenth-century Italian paintings. On his visit to Culross in 1830, Sir Walter Scott quipped that the then ninety-year-old Preston, widely known as “floating Bob” for his substantial girth and long years at sea with the East India Company, “is as big as two men and eats like three.”46 If Sir Robert did not purchase the bust himself, it could have been given to him by Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald (1775–1860), who lived as a child in the Abbey Manor House in the years before the sale to Sir Robert. As an adult, the 10th Earl enjoyed great success as a captain in the Napoleonic Wars: known to his foe as “le loup des mers,” he was to become the model for the fictional characters of Horatio Hornblower, the hero of twelve novels by C. S. Forester (1899–1966), and Jack Aubrey, the hero of a series of popular novels by Patrick O’Brien (1914–2000), one of which was made into the film Master and Commander, starring Russell Crowe (2003).47 Cochrane was dismissed from the British navy in 1814 for alleged fraud, a charge he successfully appealed. He went on to lead navies for the emerging nations of Brazil, Chile and, most significantly for the history of the portrait bust, Greece.48 Uncharacteristically, Thomas Cochrane is not known to have made a significant impact in the Greek War of Independence; letters to his philhellene friend J. C. Hobhouse M.P., preserved in the British Library, detail his frustrations with the difficulties of obtaining ships of sufficient power and finding Greek seamen who would submit to military discipline and not fight amongst themselves.49 He was poorly treated, it was claimed, by  https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/14860/pg14860-images.html#JUNE_1830 [accessed 17 August 2024].  There is a large literature on Thomas Cochrane. On his parliamentary career and legal battles, see https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1790-1820/member/cochrane-thomas-1775-1860 [accessed 17 August 2024].  Cochrane wrote his own autobiography to 1814; his later years were chronicled by his son. For his service in Greece, see Cochrane and Fox Bourne 1869, 1–196. Cochrane’s travels in the south-east Aegean and south-western Turkey are recounted on p. 101. The aftermath of an abortive expedition to Alexandria may have afforded an opportunity for the acquisition or presentation of the Roman portrait bust.  British Library, Add MS 36464, 238, 310–316, 328, 330.

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the Greek President Capodistrias, and lost much money due to his support for Greece.50 No evidence has yet emerged to show that Cochrane had any personal interest in classical art and archaeology. However, Cochrane’s patronage of the young David Urquhart (1805–1877), a Scottish writer and diplomat who was commissioned by Cochrane to fight in the Greek War of Independence, offers a possible context for the acquisition of the portrait bust. Surviving sketches made during his service with Cochrane demonstrate Urquhart’s serious interest in the classical past, the art, archaeology (notably of fortifications) and epigraphy of Greece.51 Urquhart visited Smyrna and Constantinople in 1829/30 and, as a diplomat, became a passionate supporter of Turkey against Russia.52 Nonetheless, although there is plenty of evidence for close and friendly links between David Urquhart, the wider Urquhart family, and Sir Thomas Cochrane, with whom he co-authored a book, no evidence has yet emerged to associate David Urquhart directly with the purchase of the bust. Examination of the letters of Cochrane’s secretary William Jackson, held by Birmingham City Library and Archives, shows that he was responsible for managing the shipment of goods on Cochrane’s behalf, but the only mention of a specific shipment concerns cotton.53 At the time of writing, it has not been possible to examine the personal papers of the Cochrane family held in Edinburgh in the National Archives of Scotland or to visit the home of Preston’s heirs at Bonawe, Argyll. These suggestions for clarifying the bust’s nineteenth-century history must therefore remain speculative.

Conclusions There can be little doubt of this striking portrait’s date in the last decades of the first century CE, or of its likely origin in the tomb of a member of an elite family residing in one of the cities of western Asia Minor or a nearby Aegean island. The subject is a senior civic official, serving in local magistracies and/or priesthoods, portrayed in maturity at the summit of his career or at the time of his death. Comparing the appearance of the Ashmolean bust with other portraits of individuals wearing similar wreaths and with the epigraphic records of the families of Pythodoris of Ephesus and Tralleis and Appuleius of Aezani, it may be suggested that the

 British Library, Add MS, 36464, 464–465.  For the sketches, see Balliol College Library, Urquhart Papers IB 5; account of his travels: Urquhart 1839.  Balliol College Library, Urquhart Papers IB 2.6 for the journey to Smyrna. For a summary of Urquhart’s life and career, see Taylor 2004.  Birmingham Library, archive of William Jackson MS 1749/2/22.

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Ashmolean portrait commemorates a member of a family that had held priestly and/ or civic office for several generations. The ambiguous associations of wreath types with named offices in the inscribed monuments of Aezani and Didyma means that we cannot be certain of the association of a solid wreath with a specific office. The group of statues from Cos, sadly bereft of their inscribed bases, also express strong links in dress and hairstyle with Hellenistic forebears, combined with a Roman veristic portrait. From the photographs (Fig. 3), but without personal inspection, it looks as though the mid-century and Flavian dates offered by Kabus-Preisshofen and Laurenzi could both be right, in that the individual wearing the laurel wreath appears to be of mid-first century (probably Claudian) date, imitating the emperor’s elongated neck and jug ears, while the head with the uncut wreath resembles the emperor Titus. The verism of the latter portrait extends to the inclusion of a growth, possibly a goitre, on the proper right side of the neck. The folds of drapery on this figure are rendered with deeply slashed channels, while the earlier portrait has more subtle folds. All these portraits, whether stand-alone or grouped busts or heads slotted into draped torsos, were expertly carved in Greek island marble. Regarded by Bert Smith as capturing the characteristics of members of an assimilationist elite,54 such portraits may have served a performative function. Like Roman veristic portraits, they expressed the continuity of status of a particular family, a status that had been earned and maintained by centuries of civic and religious service on the part of its members, who steered their families through the transition to Roman imperial rule. None of the group wearing single solid wreaths may be dated later than the turn of the second century CE, which is also the date of Appuleianus of Aezani, commemorated in the Stadium inscription. As it has survived, the Didyma monument appears to commemorate the offices themselves rather than the individuals who held them. In the later second century CE, both families in Aezani and Ephesus/Tralleis remained prominent. It seems likely that any changes in the nature of the offices marked by the wearing of a solid metal wreath were not detrimental to the position of the families associated with them. The circumstances of the passing of the Ashmolean’s portrait bust into the possession of the vendor’s family suggest a nineteenth-century connection with Sir Robert Preston’s house and garden at Valleyfield, abandoned shortly before the bust was removed from the rubbish dump at Culross. It is a reasonable inference that the Preston and/or Cochrane and Urquhart families played a role in the bust’s nineteenth-century acquisition and display. There is no evidence of any direct association with the 7th Earl of Elgin. It is hoped that further archival work will provide clear evidence of the bust’s eventual journey from the eastern Aegean to Scotland.

 Smith 1998, 89.

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Abbreviations IG

Inscriptiones Graecae Consilio et Auctoritate Academiae Scientiarum Berolinensis et Brandenburgensis Editae, Volumen XII, Fasciculus IV, Pars I. Inscriptiones Coi Insulae, ediderunt Dimitris Bosnakis / Klaes Halloff / Kent Rigsby. Berlin 2010.

Bibliography Barchard, David (2006). “The Fearless and Self-reliant Servant: The Life and Career of Sir Alfred Biliotti (1833–1915), an Italian Levantine in British Service,” Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology 48, 5–53. Börker, Christoph / Merkelbach, Reinhold (1979). Die Inschriften von Ephesos, Teil II. Bonn. Campanile, Maria Domitilla (1994). I sacerdoti del koinon d’Asia (I sec.a.C.- III sec.d.C.): contributo allo studio della romanizzazione delle élites provinciali nell’Oriente Greco, Studi Ellenistici VII. Pisa. Cochrane, Lord Thomas, Eleventh Earl of Dundonald / Fox Bourne, H.R. (1869). The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet etc etc. completing “The Autobiography of a Seaman”, vol. II. London. Corsten, Thomas (2010). A Lexicon of Greek Personal Names, Volume V.A. Coastal Asia Minor: Pontos to Ionia. Oxford. Datsouli-Stavridi, Alkmene (1985). Romaika Portraita sto Ethniko Archaiologiko Mouseio tes Athenas. Athens. Despinis, Georgios / Stephanidou-Tiberiou, Thea / Voutyras, Emmanuel (2003). Katalogos Glypton tou Archaiologikou Mouseiou Thessalonikis II. Thessaloniki. Fittschen, Klaus (2021). Privatporträts mit Repliken: zur Sozialgeschichte römischer Bildnisse der mittleren Kaiserzeit. Wiesbaden. Fittschen, Klaus / Zanker, Paul (1985). Katalog der römischen Porträts in den Capitolinischen Museen und den anderen Kommunalen Sammlungen der Stadt Rom I: Kaiser- und Prinzenbildnisse. Mainz. Fittschen, Klaus / Zanker, Paul / Cain, Petra (2010). Katalog der römischen Porträts in den Capitolinischen Museen und den anderen Kommunalen Sammlungen der Stadt Rom. Band. II, Die männlichen Privatporträts. Berlin. Harrison, Evelyn B. (1953). The Athenian Agora I. Portrait Sculpture. Princeton. Hurschmann, Rolf (1999). “Kranz,” in: H. Canik and H. Schneider (eds.), Der Neue Pauly 6, Stuttgart, 806–807. Hoffman, Adolf (1993). “Zweiter Vorbericht über die Arbeiten im Stadion 1987, 1988 und 1990,” Archäologischer Anzeiger, 437–473. Inan, Jale / Rosenbaum, Elisabeth (1966). Roman and Early Byzantine Portrait Sculpture in Asia Minor. London. Inan, Jale / Rosenbaum, Elisabeth (1979). Römische und frühbyzantinische Porträtplastik aus der Türkei: neue Funde I, II. Mainz. Kabus-Preisshofen, Renate (1989). Die hellenistische Plastik der Insel Kos. Berlin. Kearsley, Rosalind (1987). “M. Ulpius Eurykles of Aezani: Panhellene, Asiarch and Archiereus of Asia,” Antichthon 21, 49–56. Laurenzi, Luciano (1932). “Monumenti di scultura del Museo Archeologico di Rodi III e dell’Antiquarium di Coo (Scultore di Coo),” Clara Rhodos V.2, Rhodes. Loudon, J. C. (1842). The Gardener’s Magazine, N.S. vol. VIII, London. Ma, John (2013). Statues and Cities: Honorific Portraits and Civic Identity in the Hellenistic World. Oxford.

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Maier, Ludwig (2014). “Priests and the funding of public buildings in Cos and elsewhere,” in: M. Horster and A. Klöckner (eds.), Cities and Priests: Cult Personnel in Asia Minor and the Aegean Islands from the Hellenistic to the Imperial Period, Berlin, 41–48. Michaelis, Adolf (1885). “Ancient Marbles in Great Britain. Supplement I,” Journal of Hellenic Studies V, 143–161. Paul, Stephanie (2014). “The roles of civic priests in Hellenistic Cos,” in: M. Horster and A. Klöckner (eds.), Cities and Priests: Cult Personnel in Asia Minor and the Aegean Islands from the Hellenistic to the Imperial Period, Berlin, 247–252. Poljakov, Fyodor B. (1989). Die Inschriften von Tralleis und Nysa I. Die Inschriften von Tralleis. Bonn. Price, Simon R. F. (1984). Rituals and Power: The Roman imperial cult in Asia Minor. Cambridge. Rehm, Albert (1958). “Die Inschriften,” ed. R. Harder, in: T. Wiegand (ed.), Didyma II Teil, Berlin. Richter, Gisela M. (1965). The Portraits of the Greeks III. London. Rumscheid, Jutta (2000). Kranz und Krone. Zu Insignien, Siegespreisen und Ehrenzeichen der römischen Kaiserzeit. Istanbuler Forschungen Band 43. Tübingen. Schilardi, Demetrios U. / Kasonopoulou, Dora, eds. (2000). Paria Lithos. Athens. Smith, Arthur H. (1904). A Catalogue of Sculpture in the British Museum, Greek, Etruscan and Roman III. London. Smith, Roland R. R. (1998). “Cultural Choice and Political Identity in Honorific Portrait Statues in the Greek East in the Second Century A.D.,” JRS LXXXVIII, 56–93. Smith, Roland R. R. / Dillon, Sheila / Hallett, Christopher / Lenaghan, Julia / van Vorhees, J. (2006). Aphrodisias II: Roman Portrait Statuary from Aphrodisias. Mainz. Smith, Roland R. R. / Vickers, Michael (2005). “A Roman Priest from the Eastern Mediterranean,” The Ashmolean Magazine 49, 5–6. Spon, Jacob (1685). Miscellanea eruditae antiquitatis IV. Lyon. Sturgeon, Mary C. (2004). Corinth IX. III. Sculpture: The Assemblage from the Theater. American School of Classical Studies. Athens. Taylor, Miles (2004). “Urquhart, David (1805–1877),” Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, https://doiorg.ezproxy-prd.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/10.1093/ref:odnb/28017 [22 August 2024]. Urquhart, David (1839). The Spirit of the East illustrated in a Journal of Travels through Roumeli during an Eventful Period. 2 vols. Philadelphia. Vermeule, Cornelius C. (1955). “Notes on a New Edition of Michaelis: Ancient Marbles in Great Britain,” AJA 59, 129–150. Vermeule, Cornelius C. / von Bothmer, Dietrich (1959). “Notes on a New Edition of Michaelis: Ancient Marbles in Great Britain, AJA 63, 139–166.

Eric Varner

Intellectualizing Images? Private Male Portraits and the Second Sophistic in Rome While scholarship on bearded male portraiture and the Second Sophistic has often focused on Athenian images of the kosmetai, the public officials in charge of rhetorical and philosophical education in the gymnasium, these portraits were actually part of a much larger, empire-wide phenomenon of intellectualized representations that were not limited to Athens or the Greek-speaking east but were directly enmeshed in portrait production in metropolitan Rome. In his Sather lectures delivered in 1991, Paul Zanker famously framed these images as “masks of Socrates.” He argued that Hadrian’s beard marked a profound turning point in portrait production that was intended to evoke a “cult of learning” of gentlemen scholars in the second century.1 Zanker’s formulation proved seductive in broader Roman portrait studies, but Bert Smith raised some important caveats in his seminal 1998 article exploring the cultural choices and political identities portrayed in Greek portrait statues in the second century. In particular, Smith cautioned against succumbing to the circular “biographical fallacy,” where known details of an individual’s biography are mapped directly onto a portrait, and he noted that it was a mistake to interpret beards in second century likenesses as one-to-one markers of intellectual interests or philosophical pursuits.2 Caroline Vout also decoupled Hadrian’s beard from his philhellenism and suggested a wider range of potential meanings.3 Barbara Borg reasserted the cultured allusions to paideia and the Second Sophistic in second-century bearded images that instantiated the “glamorous intellectual” of the period, and Eve D’Ambra underscored the general typological references to earlier images in the representations of the Athenian kosmetai, both bearded and unbearded.4 Ralf Krumreich parsed the specific intellectual types cited in the bearded kosmetai portraits (‘Aeschylus’, Plato, Xenophon, Aeschines), as did Marina Prusac-Lundhagen, who pointed out that many of the kosmetai were actually recarved, often from earlier philosopher or kosmetai portraits.5 Several elite portraits from Rome of remarkably high artistic quality and largely in the collections of the Musei Capitolini provide an additional lens through which to view the problem of the “intellectualized image.” Second century male portraits from the capital employ a variety of hair and beard styles, as well as other attributes and retrospective references that create sophisticated and nuanced sculpted representa-

    

Zanker 1995, 201–203. Smith 1998, 59–61. Vout 2003; 2006. Borg 2004; D’Ambra 2005. Krumreich 2004; Prusac-Lindhagen 2018.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111182919-006

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tions. Portraits of the philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius and his co-ruler Lucius Verus, with their richly curled coiffures and beards, are emblematic of these trends at the imperial level. The shared visual language of the likenesses intended to instantiate the cultivated and cosmopolitan vir sapiens coincide with the height of the Second Sophistic, which also witnessed the production of hundreds of replicas of portrait types associated with famous Greek intellectuals from the past including Menander (more than 70 replicas), Epicurus (more than 50), Demosthenes (more than 50), PsuedoSeneca (more than 40), Homer (about 40, of three types), Socrates (40 in two types), Sophocles (40 in two types), Euripides (30), Metrodoros (more than 20), Plato (approximately 20), Aristotle (approximately 20), Zeno (20), and Chrysippus (approximately 10), as well as dozens of as yet unidentified philosophical figures.6 Like the private and imperial portraits, these images of philosophers, poets, dramatists and orators were produced throughout the empire, but the largest number come from Rome and its environs, making Rome the most significant center for their production. As noted, Hadrian’s beard has become a locus of debate about the semiotics of self-fashioning in the second century and the construction of a portrait habitus. Hadrian’s beard undoubtedly held multiple meanings, and its impact should not be underestimated. Hadrian was not the first emperor to feature a beard in his representations. Nero, whose principate witnessed the birth of the Second Sophistic, features a light beard in versions of his final two portrait types. Like Hadrian’s beard, Nero’s carried a range of associations, among which were pointed allusions to earlier depictions of Greek artists and intellectuals.7 Nero’s beard also contributes to the studied elegance of his later images. Hadrian’s carefully trimmed and curled beards also add a decided air of elegantia to his representations and, from a formal standpoint, they provide additional surface area for sculptors to showcase their virtuoso carving abilities. While Hadrian’s beard could not help but conjure up, at least tangentially, the world of Greek bearded portraits, it also clearly evokes the images of mature bearded deities like Zeus or Aesculapius.8 Hadrian’s portraits offer a classic example of the biographic fallacy: Because it is known from his biography that he was a philhellene, interested in Greek culture, particularly at Athens, and even nicknamed Graeculus (Greekling), his beards are therefore artistic indices of his own personal history.9 Tonio Hölscher has demonstrated that Greek and Roman portraits are complex exercises in self-styling and image making that negotiate (personal) identity.10 Hadrian’s portraits are no different. Six replicas, largely from Rome and its environs, of the

 Di Cesare 2011, 103–104.  Bergmann 2011.  Vout 2003, 448.  SHA Hadr. 1.X. It is important to note, however, that even the term Graeculus needs to be nuanced in terms of its appearance at the start of Hadrian’s biography, as the diminutive term is most often a sign of disapprobation.  Hölscher 2018, 159.

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emperor’s Imperatori 32 type combine the elaborated curled coiffure and beard with a dedicated bust with an archaizing medusa head and giant figures, effectively eliding his elegant, Hellenizing portrait with his traditional role as military commander.11 The images operate within an augmented scope capable of reconciling multiple meanings and forging a composite and cosmopolitan image; Klaus Fittschen has associated these busts with his assumption of the title Olympios and his visit to Athens in 129/ 130 CE.12 The portraits of Hadrian’s initial heir, Aelius Caesar, are the first to actually feature a fuller and longer beard that is closer to traditional Greek philosophers’ beards. The widespread association of longer beards with philosophers is underscored in an epigram attributed to Lucilius in the Palatine Anthology: “If you think of growing a beard to acquire wisdom, a goat with a fine beard is as much a complete Plato.”13 Dio Chrysostom of Prusa also stresses the importance of contemporary Greek philosophers with long flowing hair and beards imitating Homer.14 Like Hadrian, Aelius was known for his intellectual accomplishments. According to the Historia Augusta, he was well educated in terms of literature (litteris eruditus).15 He was an orator of notable eloquence, adept at poetry, and not unaccomplished in public affairs (eloquentia celsioris, versu facilis, in re publica non etiam non inutilis); he was also well dressed, elegant, of regal beauty and with a face commanding respect (comptus, decorus, pulchritudinis regiae, oris venerandi).16 The Historia Augusta biography is generally negative in its assessment of Aelius and it also paints him as a voluptuary who invented a number of improbable luxuries including couches and tables made of roses and lilies.17 The linkage of paideia and luxury, however, are not atypical in biographies of the Sophists of the second century. Aelius’s portraits, including a head in the Uffizi, present him with a deeply drilled curly coiffure and long, full beard (Fig. 1).18 The horizontal furrows in the forehead endow his images with a thoughtful expression reminiscent of many Greek philosopher portraits. Aelius’ images were created after his adoption by Hadrian very late in the principate c. 136/137 CE. Despite its late Hadrianic or even Antonine date, the Uffizi head omits carved pupils and irises as well as eyebrows, giving the portrait an anti-

 Rome, Musei Capitolini, Stanza degli Imperatori 32; Rome, Museo Torlonia, 545; Florence, Gallerie degli Uffizi, inv. 1914.8; Copenhagen, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, 682 (from Nemi); Paris, Musée du Louvre, MA 3131 (from Heraklion); Madrid, Museo Arqueologico Nacional, inv. 1999/99/177.  Fittschen 2001.  Lucil. Anth. Pal. 11.430; Vout 2003, 446.  Dio Chrys. Or. 37.17; on the importance of beards, see also 70; Walker 1991, 272.  SHA Ael. 5.1.  SHA Ael. 5.2.  SHA Ael. 5.8.  Inv. 1914.164, h. 0.685 m.; Mansuelli 1961, 93, no. 103, fig. 103a-b; Fittschen/Zanker 1985, 136, no. 113, n. 1; Fittschen 1999, 72–74; Romualdi/Lizzeri/Palumbo 2006, 109–113; Fittschen/Zanker/Cain 2010, 110, no. 107, n.2; Pellino 2011, 208–209, figs. 10–13.

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Fig. 1: Aelius Verus, Florence, Gallerie degli Uffizi, inv. 1914.164. Photo: author.

quated aspect, again pulling it closer to older images of Greek orators, poets, philosophers and statesmen. The portrait presents a notable combination of elegance and intelligence that characterizes many of the bearded male likenesses of the second century. Aelius’s refined bearded representations have also been seen as a reference point for some of the Athenian kosmetai portraits.19 The number of surviving portrait replicas for Aelius attests to the importance of his images, both during his brief period as Hadrian’s heir and posthumously; the Historia Augusta reports that Hadrian ordered colossal statues of Aelius to be set up throughout the empire following his death.20 The biographical fallacy raised by Hadrian’s portraits and their putative intellectualizing implications can cut both ways. Objections are often raised to the interpretation of beards as intellectual or philosophical markers by pointing to the biographical histories of Antoninus Pius and Lucius Verus as not particularly philosophical emperors, or, in the case of Antoninus Pius, even as potentially anti-intellectual. In the Lives of the Sophists, Philostratus records a personal encounter between Alexander of Seleucia and Antoninus. Alexander was renowned for his “god -like” (θεοειδὴς) and elegant appearance, enjoying a distinguished philosophical career and eventually serv-

 Krumreich 2005, 140, fig. 6.  SHA Ael. 7.1: Statuas sane Aelio Vero per totum orbem colossas poni iussit.

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ing as the imperial secretary for Greece.21 When Alexander unceremoniously chided the emperor for not paying close enough attention to an oration, Antoninus Pius derided the Sophist for his excessive and exaggerated elegance, pointing out that he was very well aware of how much time Alexander spent on his coiffure, teeth cleaning and nail polishing, and his overuse of perfume. The emperor’s mocking tone has been said to be proof of his anti- philosophical attitudes, but it also underscores direct involvement with the Sophists, and his criticism is clearly aimed at Alexander’s selfstyling and not his intellectual achievements. The Historia Augusta, likely written by a single author at the end of the fourth or early in the fifth century, presents a generally negative portrayal of Aelius’s son, Lucius Verus, as a dissolute playboy, a dramatic foil to his sober philosopher coemperor, Marcus Aurelius. As a result, Lucius’s bearded likenesses have been seen as not possessing any serious intellectual content or intent. The Historia Augusta is notoriously difficult to use as a reliable source, but the life of Lucius does include some positive details about the emperor, especially in terms of his early paideia, youthful deportment and handsome physical appearance. In addition to Fronto and Herodes Atticus and his tutor Nicomedes, his other teachers included the Latin grammarian Scaurinus (the son of Scaurus, who had been the grammarian of Hadrian), the Greek grammarians Hephaistion, Telephus, and Harpocratio, the rhetoricians Apollonius and Caninus Celer, and the philosophers Apollonius and Sextus, all of whom he is said to have cherished; despite not being especially brilliant in his literary studies, Lucius in turn was beloved by all his tutors and as a boy he enjoyed writing verses and later orations.22 Significantly, he is said to have always kept around him many erudite and eloquent advisers.23 Antoninus Pius loved the simplicity and purity of his adopted son and urged Marcus to imitate his brother’s deportment.24 Lucius is described as having a genial visage (vultu geniatus); like his father, he is elegant (decorus) in form and his projecting forehead lent him a countenance worthy of respect (venerabilis).25 Lucius’s beard and hair are also singled out. His beard is noted for its length, which makes it almost like that of a foreigner, and the emperor is said to have taken such care of his blond hair that he sprinkled gold dust on his head

 Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists 2.5: θεοειδὴς δὲ ὁ λέξανδρος καὶ περίβλεπτος ξὺν ὥρᾳ, γενειάς τε γὰρ ν αὐτ βοστρυχώδης καὶ καθειμένη τὸ μέτριον ὄμμα τε ἁβρὸν καὶ μέγα καὶ ῥὶς ξύμμετρος καὶ ὀδόντες λευκότατοι δάκτυλοί τε εὐμήκεις καὶ τ το λόγου ἡνίᾳ ἐπιπρέποντες.  SHA Verus 2.5–7: hos omnes amavit unice, atque ab his invicem dilectus est, nec tamen ingeniosus ad litteras. Amavit autem in pueritia versus facere, post chool.  SHA Verus 2.8: multos disertos et eruditos semper secum habuisse dicitur.  SHA Verus 3.7: amavit tamen Antoninus Pius simplicitatem ingenii puritatemque vivendi hortatusque est ut imitaretur et fratrem.  SHA Verus 10.6–7: Fuit decorus corpore, vultu geniatus, . . . procerus et fronte in supercilia adductiore venerabilis.

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to further enhance its shining qualities.26 While Lucius’s use of gold dust enhancements in his coiffure can be read as a trivializing aspect of his character as a dandy emperor, it actually fits well within the contemporary culture of exaggerated elegance of the Second Sophistic. It also underscores Lucius’s personal investment in his own self-styling and presentation and suggests that he was well aware of the powerful significance of coiffures and beards. Lucius’s main portrait types in use while he co-ruled with Marcus present him with full, curly coiffure and longer beard, which link his images with those of his father. The distinctive elongated and narrow shape of his eyes are also similar to those of Aelius and help to distinguish him from Marcus, whose likenesses throughout his lifetime depict him with the wide, heavy-lidded and bulging eyes of biological members of the gens Annia like Faustina Maior and Faustina Minor. Lucius’s richly curled coiffure and beard also provided sculptors with ample opportunities to exploit the possibilities of extensive drillwork, creating dramatic chiaroscuro effects, and his marble portraits stand at the apogee of Antonine portrait arts. A portrait in Parian marble of extremely fine quality in the Palazzo Massimo underscores the difficulties inherent in trying to strip Lucius’s images of any intellectual implications (Fig. 2).27 The portrait shares a similar long configuration of the face and elongated eye with Lucius, so much so that the portrait has in the past been identified as the emperor himself, but combines these features with long tousled locks, more reminiscent of Antoninus Pius, and a shorter curled beard fitting close to the cheeks and chin. Zanker reads the portrait as more unkempt in its self-styling and relates it to Apuleius’s deliberately disordered physical appearance at his witchcraft trial in Carthage, where the author countered charges of his being a philosophus formosus by pointing out his uncombed and unkempt hair and beard.28 The hair and beard of the Roman head, however, are consciously stylized and coiffed especially in the flatter, delicate and decorative curls of the beard, contrasting with the dramatically drilled locks framing the face, which are also clearly combed out. Apuleius himself also noted the handsome physical appearance of earlier intellectuals like Pythagoras (excellentissima forma) and Zeno (decorissimum). The Palazzo Massimo head can be compared to an explicitly intellectualizing bust in Copenhagen of a young man, allegedly from the Aventine in Rome.29 The bust de-

 SHA Verus 10.6: barba prope barbarice demissa; SHA Verus 10.7: dicitur sane tantam habuisse curam flaventium capillorum, ut capiti auri ramenta respergeret, quo magis coma inluminata flavesceret.  Rome, Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, inv. 58561, h. 0.27m.; Göktepe white marble; Zanker 1995, 239–240, fig. 131; Gasparri/Paris 2013, 201–202, no. 139 (G. Scarpati); Attanasio/ Bruno/Prochaska 2019, 257, no. 224.  Apul. Apol. 4; Zanker 1995, 234–235.  Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, inv. 789, h. 0.7 m.; supposedly from a palace-like structure with newly minted coins of Lucius Verus; Zanker 1995, 239–249, fig. 132; Johansen 1995, 222–223, no. 91; Borg 2004, 164, fig. 10; Borg 2009, 222, fig. 9.

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Fig. 2: Private Antonine portrait, Rome, Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, inv. 58561. Photo: author.

picts him with bare upper torso and himation, employing a format introduced in the second century, seen also in an early Antonine portrait in the Capitoline Museum.30 The down-turned head and thoughtful expression of the Copenhagen portrait enhance its intellectualizing aspects. The bust is an unambiguous evocation of a pepaideumenos, the well-educated man who consciously displays his mastery of paideia.31 The likeness exhibits the longer, luxuriant and deeply drilled beard of Lucius’s portraits, as well as his longer and thinner eyes. With their clear proximities to the public images of Lucius Verus, both portraits are excellent examples of the phenomenon of the period face (Zeitgesichte) and confirm Galen’s account that the supporters of Lucius and Marcus imitated their hair and beard styles.32 The eighteenth century excavations at the “Villa of the Antonines” near Lanuvium yielded an extensive series of high-quality imperial portraits, including representations of Antoninus Pius, Lucius Verus, Marcus Aurelius, Faustina Maior, Faustina Minor, Lucilla and Commodus, as well as a statue of a “Cynic” philosopher.33 The

   

Fittschen/Zanker/Cain 2010, 100–101, no. 96, pls. 117–118. Borg 2004, 165, n. 42; Newby 2021. Galen 17.2; Hölscher 2018, 160. La Rocca/Parisi Presicce/Lo Monaco 2012, 280–281 (M. G. Picozzi).

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statue, discovered in 1701, depicts the philosopher with bare upper torso and himation and bare feet, clear indications of philosophical status that have prompted his identification as Diogenes (Fig. 3).34 The head of the statue, with its full beard and curving locks swept forward from the back of the head, recalls representations of Antoninus Pius, especially in the arrangement of the locks over the forehead. A contemporary male togate bust in the Galleria of the Palazzo Nuovo exhibits clear affinities with the

Fig. 3: “Cynic” philosopher, Rome, Musei Capitolini, Sala del Galata, inv. 737. Photo: author.

 Rome, Musei Capitolini, Sala del Galata, inv. 737, h. 1.85 m.; La Rocca/Presicce 2010, 456–461, no. 7 (M.G. Picozzi); La Rocca/Parisi Presicce/Lo Monaco 2012, 285, no. 1.34.10 (M. G. Picozzi).

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philosopher portrait from the “Villa of the Antonines” as well as with Antoninus’s main (Gabii-Sala a Croce Greca) portrait type (Fig. 4).35 The portrait is exquisitely carved, with the long curving locks swept forward from the back of the head to form a syncopated pattern of locks over the forehead. The interstices between the locks on the side of the head are deeply drilled, creating striking calligraphic curves enlivening the coiffure. The mustache is carefully arranged with curved ends blending into the combed and styled curving segments of the beard. The beard itself is deeply drilled in its lower sections with heightened chiaroscuro. The physiognomy itself finds clear echoes in Antoninus’s sculpted likenesses, and the modeled furrows in the forehead contribute a thoughtful air to the portrait.

Fig. 4: Private Antonine portrait, Rome, Musei Capitolini, Galleria, inv. 242. Photo: author.

A second portrait, more youthful and also in the Galleria of the Palazzo Nuovo, adopts a similar approach with even longer curved locks separated by deeply drilled channels combined with curled beard and carefully combed mustache (Fig. 5).36 Its philo-

 Rome, Musei Capitolini, Galleria, inv. 242, h. 0.73; Fittschen/Zanker/Cain 2010, 99–100, no. 95, pls. 115–116.  Rome, Musei Capitolini, Galleria, inv. 570, h. 0.53, Fittschen/Zanker/Cain 2010, 109–110, no. 105, pls. 130–131.

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sophical and intellectual aspects were clearly appreciated in the early modern period, when the head was restored as a herm.37 The Antonine era has proven especially fertile ground for investigating of the period face and self-styling in portrait images, and this bust, taken together with the philosopher statue from the “Villa of the Antonines” and Antoninus’s own portraits, suggests a range of possible readings that do not exclude intellectual or philosophical intimations.

Fig. 5: Private Antonine portrait, Rome, Musei Capitolini, Galleria, inv. 570. Photo: author.

Another Antonine bust now in the Sala dei Filosofi of the Palazzo Nuovo is often cited as unambiguously straightforward in its intellectual and philosophical ambitions (Fig. 6).38 Like the philosopher statue from the “Villa of the Antonines,” the bust employs the philosopher costume of a himation worn over a bare upper torso. The fullcurled coiffure and elongated beard with corkscrew curls that fall onto the breastbone have been characterized by Zanker as particularly philosophical in their uncombed and unkempt appearance.39 The clumps of curls that make up the hairstyle are similar to those of Aelius Verus, and there is a distinct tension between the alleged disarray of the hair and beard and the finely carved and drilled details of the marble

 The portrait was in the Capitoline Collections by the eighteenth century.  Rome, Musei Capitolini, Sala dei Filosofi, inv. 563, h. 0.67; Fittschen/Zanker/Cain 2010, 119–121, no. 120, pls. 148–149, 152; La Rocca/Parisi Presicce/Lo Monaco 2015, 346, no. 1.28 (G. Colugnati).  Zanker 1995, 227, fig. 129.

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Fig. 6: Private Antonine portrait, Rome, Musei Capitolini, Sala dei Filosofi, inv. 563. Photo: author.

surfaces. The artful disarray is highly stylized and pointedly studied. The hair at the temples is more regularly curled, and the hair is fairly short on the nape of the neck and does not cover the ears, indicating that the entire ensemble has been carefully created and maintained. There is also a decidedly mannered aspect to the way that the curls of the beard fall over the breastbone. The physiognomy itself is highly individualized and, as in the togate bust, the modeled furrows of the forehead contribute to the thoughtful attitude of the portrait. Ultimately, the bust is a finely wrought exercise in luxurious Sophistic self-styling. Several second-century portraits from Rome can also project an intellectualizing demeanor through the combination of beards and receding hairlines, including an inscribed bust of Marcus Aurelius Anatellon (Fig. 7).40 The work is of extremely high quality and depicts Anatellon with bare upper torso. The realistically aged facial features are sensitively modeled and include a wart over the bridge of the nose. The complex network of furrows and creases in the forehead serve to create a notably thoughtful expression. Anatellon’s nomen and praenomen suggest imperial freedman status, clear linkages with the imperial house and familiarity with Antonine portrait strategies. An early Severan bust that adopts the philosopher’s habitus of bare upper torso and himation in the Centrale Montemartini also depicts an older man with re-

 Stanza Terrena a Destra 1, inv. 710; h. 0.X; Zanker 1995, fig. 122 c; Fittschen/Zanker/Cain 2010, 121–122, no. 121, pls. 150–152; La Rocca/Presicce 2010, 270–271, no. 21 (F.P. Arata). For other balding portraits, see Zanker 1995, figs. 121a-f, 122 a-f.

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Fig. 7: Marcus Aurelius Antellon, Rome, Musei Capitolini, inv. 710. Photo: author.

ceding hairline.41 Another Severan portrait of an older man from the Albani Collection (restored as a herm bust) in the Sala dei Filosofi employs a receding hairline that is emphasized by the fuller, curlier hair at the sides of the head and over the temples.42 In his 1741 publication of the portraits in the Capitoline, Bottari identified this herm as the renowned second century Sophist Aelius Aristides.43 The actual portraits of Greek philosophers, historians, poets, orators, intellectuals and statesmen that were produced in the imperial period were in direct dialogue with these ostensibly intellectualizing images, and they served as touchstones against which the Roman likenesses could be read. Although the Roman portraits are most often characterized by their retrospective references to past images, the Greek philosopher portraits themselves often speak in a remarkably contemporary idiom in terms of sculptural style and technique. For instance, the Farnese Pindar in Naples is close in style to portraits of Hadrian and Antinous and has been updated with carved pupils

 Rome, Museo Nazionale Romano, Centrale Montemartini, inv. 2411, h. 0.59 m., discovered at the Piazza Augusto Imperatore 30 December 1936; Fittschen/Zanker/Cain 2010, 122–123, no. 122, pls. 152–153; La Rocca/Parisi Presicce/Lo Monaco 2015, 343, no. 1.23 (G. Colugnati)  Rome, Musei Capitolini, Sala dei Filosofi, inv. 513, h. 0.55; Zanker fig.122 a; Fittschen/Zanker/Cain 2010, 123–124, no. 123, pl. 154.  Bottari 1741, 18.

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and irises.44 Representations of Aristotle in the Uffizi and Plato in the Musei Capitolini have been similarly updated with carved pupils and irises.45 A herm of Socrates from the Orsini/Farnese collections from the Severan period has also been given carved pupils and irises, as well as particularly rich and full coiffure.46 Particularly elegant depictions of Metrodorus and Epicurus, including an inscribed double herm of both, and a bust with himation for Metrodorus, were created in the second century and also reflect reciprocal interactions with the Roman portraits (Fig. 8).47 These portraits depict the philosophers with richly styled coiffures and beards, and the bust represents Metrodorus with inclined head and thoughtful expression. As with the Uffizi representation of Aelius Verus, private Roman portraits could also be enter into dialogue with the earlier Greek images by anachronistically leaving pupils and irises (and eyebrows) blank, as can be seen with a portrait in Rome and replicas of the same individual in Paris and Atlanta (Fig. 9).48 As has been abundantly noted by Zanker, Ewald, Borg, Smith, D’Ambra, Birke, Di Cesare and others, the performative aspects of the second century intellectualizing portraits in Rome are carried on into the third century, especially in the sarcophagi that include likenesses of the deceased in recognizably philosophical roles.49 The sarcophagus of Lucius Pullius Peregrinus, an Equestrian legionary, c. 240–250, depicts Peregrinus with the shorter hair and beard characteristic of the mid-third century but surrounded by a full intellectual panoply of Muses and philosophers.50 The longer, fuller “philosopher’s beard” also remains a consistent option for male portraits of the third century. The metropolitan Roman portraits of the second century are all notable for the high quality of their carving, and they underscore Rome as the major center for their production. Indeed, Aelius Aristides configured the Empire as Rome surrounded by a constellation of suburbs.51 As Ewen Bowie has noted, there is no real discernible geographical center for the Second Sophistic, but Athens and Rome are its main theaters;

 Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, inv. 6144, h. 0.52; Gasparri (ed.) 2009, 22–23, no. 7, pl. 7.1–4 (M. Caso); Prusac 2018, fig. 2.  Florence, Gallerie degli Uffizi, inv. 1914.9, h.; Mansuell 1961, 21, no. 1, Fig. 2; Rome, Musei Capitolini, Sala dei Filosofi, inv. 571.  Naples, Museo Nazionale Archeologico, inv. 6415, h. 1.75 m.; Gasparri 2009, 26–27, no. 10, pl. 10.1–5 (M. Caso).  Rome, Musei Capitolini, Sala dei Filosofi, inv. 576, h. 0.6; Richter 1965, vol. 2, 195, fig. 201; Rome, Musei Capitolini, Sala dei Filosofi, inv. 575, h. o. 55; Richter 1965, vol. 2, 201, no. 2, figs. 1233–1235.  Rome, Centrale Montemartini, Magazzino, inv. 1745, h. 0.83 m; Fittschen/Zanker/Cain 2010, 111, no. 108, pls 134–135; La Rocca/Parisi Presicce/Lo Monaco 2012, 285–286, no. 1.35 (F. Licordari); Paris, Louvre, MA 4696, h. 0.67 m; De Kersauson 1996, 294, no. 133; Atlanta, Emory University, Michael C Carlos Museum, inv. 2004.013.001, h. 0.381 m.  Zanker 1995, 268–284; Ewald 1999; Borg 2004; Borg 2009; Di Cesare 2011, 93; Birk 2013 73–94.  Rome, Museo Torlonia, inv. 424; Settis/Gasparri 2021, 179–180, no. 27 (S. Tuccinardi).  Ael. Ar. Or. 26.94.7; Ando 2010, 45.

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Fig. 8: Metrodorus, Rome, Musei Capitolini, Sala dei Filosofi, inv. 575. Photo: author.

Fig. 9: Private late Antonine/early Severan portrait, Atlanta, Emory University, Michael C. Carlos Museum, inv. 2004.012.001. Photo: author.

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what defined the Sophists was not local identities, but rather their virtuoso performances, and the Roman portraits are virtuoso performances in their own right.52 The semiotics of these performative portraits was not monolithic or unidirectional, but rather complex and nuanced. Elegant intellectual inflections are just one powerful strand in the sophisticated strategies that comprised elite self-fashioning in the cultivated and cosmopolitan culture of the Second Sophistic.

Bibliography Alston, Richard (2008). “History and Memory in the Construction of Identity in the Second Century,” in: S. Bell and I.L. Hansen (eds.), Role Models in the Roman World. Identity and Assimilation, Ann Arbor, 147–159. Ando, Clifford (2010). “Imperial Identities,” in: Timothy Whitmarsh (ed.), Local Knowledge and Microidentities in the Imperial Greek World, Cambridge, 17–45. Attanasio, Donato / Bruno, Matthias / Prochaska, Walter (2019). “The Marbles of Roman Portraits. New Data on the Marble Provenance of 261 Imperial and Private Portraits from Mid 1st Century B.C. to the Early 6th Century A.D.,” JDI 134, 167–278. Bergmann, Marianne (2011). “Portraits of an Emperor–Nero, the Sun and Roman Otium,” in: E. Buckley and M. Dinter (eds.), A Companion to the Neronian Age, Oxford, 332–362. Birk, Stine (2013). Depicting the Dead: Self-representation and Commemoration on Roman Sarcophagi with Portraits. Aarhus. Borg, Barbara (2004). “Glamorous Intellectuals. Portraits of Prepaideumenoi in the Second and Third Centuries A.D.,” in: B. Borg (ed.), Paideia: The World of the Second Sophistic, Berlin, 157–178. Borg, Barbara (2009). “Das Bild des Philosophen und die römischen Eliten,” in: E. Amato and H.G. Nesselrath (eds.), Dion von Prusa: Der Philosph und sein Bild, Tübingen, 211–240. Bottari, Giovanni Gaetano (1741). Il Museo Capitolino, Tomo 1. Rome. Bottini, Angelo, ed. (2006). Musa Pensosa. L’immagini dell’Intelettuale nel’antichità. Rome. Bowie, Ewen (2004). “The Geography of the Second Sophistic. Cultural Variations,” in: B. Borg (ed.), Paideia: The World of the Second Sophistic, Berlin, 65–84. D’Ambra, Eve (2005). “Kosmetai, the Second Sophistic, and Portraiture in the Second Century,” in: J. Barringer and J. Hurwit (eds.), Periklean Athens and its Legacy: Problems and Perspectives, Austin, 201–216. De Kersauson, Kate (1996). Catalogue des portraits romains, Tome II. Paris. Di Cesare, Riccardo (2011). “Ritratti di intellecttuali tra mondo greco e romano,” in: E. La Rocca, C.P. Presicce, and A. Lo Monaco (eds.), Ritratti: Le tante facce del potere, Rome, 93–107. Dillon, Sheila (1996). “The Portraits of a Civic Benefactor of Second-Century Ephesos,” JRA 9, 261–274. Ewald, Bjorn (1999). Der Philosoph als Leitbild: Iknographische Untersuhungen an römischen Sarkophagreliefs RM Erg. Mainz. Ewald, Bjorn (2011). “Myth and Visual Narration in the Second Sophistic,” in: J. Elsner and J. Huskinson (eds.), Life, Death and Representation: Some New Work on Roman Sarcophagi, Berlin, 261–307. Feijfer, Jane (2008). Roman Portraits in Context. Image and Context 2. Berlin. Fittschen, Klaus (1992–3). “Ritratti maschili privati di epoca adreanea: Problemi dell loro varietà,” Scienze dell’antichita 6–7, 445–485.

 Bowie 2004, 68–69, 72.

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Fittschen, Klaus (1999). Prinzenbildnisse Antoninischer Zeit. Mainz. Fittschen, Klaus (2001). “Eine Werkstatt attischer Porträtbildhauer im 2. Jh. n. Chr.,” in: C. Reusser (ed.), Greichenland in der Kaiserzeit. Neue Funde und Forschungen zu Skulptur, Architektur und Topographie, Bern, 71–77. Fittschen, Klaus / Zanker, Paul (1985). Katalog der römischen Porträts in den Capitolinischen Museen und den anderen kommunalen Sammlungen der Stadt Rom 1. Kaiser- und Prinzenbildnisse. Mainz. Fittschen, Klaus / Zanker, Paul / Cain, Petra (2010). Katalog der römischen Porträts in den Capitolinischen Museen und den anderen kommunalen Sammlungen der Stadt Rom 2. Beiträge zur Erschliessung hellenistischer und kaiserzeitlicher Skulptur und Architektur 4. Berlin. Fleury, Pascale (2011). “L’orateur oracle: une image sophistique,” in: T. Schmidt and P. Fleury (eds.), Perceptions of the Second Sophistic and Its Times, Phoenix Supplementary, vol. 49, Toronto, 65–75. Francis, James A. (2003). “Living Icons: Tracing a Motif in Verbal and Visual Representation from the Second to the Fourth Centuries,” American Journal of Philology 124, 575–600. Gasparri, Carlo, ed. (2009). Le Sculture Farnese II: I ritratti. Milan. Gasparri, Carlo / Paris, Rita, eds. (2013). Palazzo Massimo alle Terme: Le Collezioni. Milan. Hölscher, Tonio (2018). Visual Power in Ancient Greece and Rome: Between Art and Social Reality. Berkeley. Johansen, Flemming (1995). Roman Portraits III: Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. Copenhagen. Krumreich, Ralf (2004). “Klassiker’ in Gymnasion. Bildnisse attischer Kosmeten der mittleren und späten Kaiserzeit zwischen Rom und griechischer Vergangenheit,” in: B. Borg (ed.), Paideia: The World of the Second Sophistic, Berlin, 131–155. Krumreich, Ralf (2008). “Vergangenwärtigung einer ‘grossen’ Vergangenheit. Zitate älterer Bildnisse und retrospektive Statuen berühmter Athener im Athen der römischen Kaiserzeit,” in: K. Junker and A. Stähli (eds.), Original und Kopie: Formen und Konzepte der Nachahmung in der antiken Kunst. Akten des Kolloquiums (Berlin 17–19 Februar 2005), Wiesbaden, 159–175. La Rocca, Eugenio / Parisi Presicce, Claudio, eds. (2010). Musei Capitolini: Le Sculture del Palazzo Nuovo 1. Rome. La Rocca, Eugenio / Parisi Presicce, Claudio / Lo Monaco, Annalisa, eds. (2012). L’Età dell’Equlibrio. Rome. La Rocca, Eugenio / Parisi Prescicce, Claudio / Lo Monaco, Annalisa, eds. (2015). L’Età dell’Angoscia. Rome. Mansuelli, Guido Achille (1961). Galleria degli Uffizi. Le Sculture Parte II. Rome. Newby, Zahra. “Depicted Lives: The Role of the Visual Arts in Sophistic Self-Representation,” in: K. de Temmerman (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Biography, Oxford, 492–508. Pellino, Giuseppe (2011). “Un nuovo ritratto di Lucio Elio Cesare da Lecce e l’immagine della città nella media età imperiale,” RM 117, 201–220. Prusac-Lindhagen, Marina (2018). “The Kosmētai Portraits in Third Century Athens. Recutting, Style, Context and Patronage,” Acta ad Archeologiam et Artium Historiam Pertinentia 30, 139–167. Richter, Gisela (1965). The Portraits of the Greeks. London. Romualdi, Antonella / Lizzeri, Gilberto / Palumbo, Stefano (2006). “Ritratto di Elio Cesare,” in: Romualdi, A. (ed.), Studi e Restauri: I marmi antichi della Galleria degli Uffizi, vol. 1, Florence, 109–113. Smith, R. R. R. (1998). “Cultural Choice and Political Identity in Honorific Portrait Statues in the Greek East in the Second Century A.D.,” JRS 88, 56–93. Vout, Caroline (2003). “A Revision of Hadrian’s Portraiture,” in: The Representation and Perception of Roman Imperial Power: Proceedings of the Third Workshop of the International Network Impact of Empire (Roman Empire c. 200 B.C.-A.D.476), Netherlands Institute in Rome (March 20–23, 2002), Amsterdam, 442–457. Vout, Caroline (2006). “What’s in a Beard? Rethinking Hadrian’s Hellenism,” in: S. Goldhill / R. Osborne (eds.), Rethinking Revolutions through Ancient Greece, Cambridge, 96–123. Walker, Susan (1991). “Bearded Men,” Journal of the History of Collections 3, 365–377. Zanker, Paul (1995). The Mask of Socrates: The Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity. Berkeley.

Part II: Gods, Myths, and Ritual Practice

Alan Shapiro

Peleus and the φθόνος θεῶν The honorand of this volume has by all accounts led a charmed life. Blessed with striking good looks, a long and happy marriage, a keen intelligence and encyclopedic knowledge, a remarkable talent for languages (both ancient and modern) and inexhaustible energy, he has known success and happiness that one can but envy. But for the Greeks, happiness and success could be a double-edged sword.1 In early Greek thought, the idea that the gods are jealous of mortals who are too successful, too rich, or too happy is pervasive. A forerunner of this idea is embodied in the well-known parable told by Achilles to Priam near the end of the Iliad (24.527– 533): two urns stand in the house of Zeus, one full of miseries and sorrow, the other of blessings. If we are fortunate, we get a mixture of the two in our lives, but if not, we have only misery. Clearly, there is no one to whom Zeus doles out only from the urn of blessings; no one lives a life of pure, unalloyed happiness. The same sentiment is expressed in the advice given by the Egyptian king Amasis to Polykrates, tyrant of Samos, as reported by Herodotos (3.40): the gods are jealous (φθονερόν), therefore a mixture of good and bad is preferable to good fortune (τὸ εὐτυχέειν) in everything. For there is no man of unbroken good fortune who does not end badly and in his own destruction. These words are echoed in the warning of Solon to Kroisos, perhaps the most famous real-life example of someone who considered himself the most fortunate of all men but came to a very bad end. The divine, says Solon, is φθονερόν (Hdt. 1.32). Another overweening monarch, Xerxes of Persia, is warned by his uncle Artabanos that the gods smite men of greatness, not the “little people” (Hdt. 7.10.5). As the messenger in Aischylos’s Persians comments, Xerxes recklessly attacked the Greeks because he did not understand the θεῶν φθόνος, “envy of the gods” (362). The word φθόνος (envy) and its verbal and adjectival forms occur in both epic and lyric poetry of the Archaic period,2 notably in Hesiod’s Works and Days (25–26), when he describes the good kind of Eris, that is, the competitive spirit: the potter begrudges (κοτέει) the potter, the carpenter the carpenter, and the beggar envies (φθονέει) the beggar and the singer the singer. The use of φθόνος and its forms becomes especially frequent in the poetry of Pindar and the Attic tragedians. Often the connotation is the idea, made explicit by Amasis, that the gods would be envious of the man who enjoys too much good fortune. For Achilles, there is no better example of this fundamental truth than his own father Peleus:

 I would like to thank the editors of this volume in honor of John Pollini for the opportunity to pay tribute to an old friend. I am grateful to my fellow contributor Beryl Barr-Sharrar for helpful discussion, and I am especially indebted to Dr. Argyro Grigoraki for help in obtaining a photo from the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.  See Sanders 2010, 47–49 for a survey of φθόνος in the Archaic period. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111182919-007

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What glittering gifts the gods rained down from the day he was born! He excelled all men in wealth and pride of place, he lorded the Myrmidons, and mortal that he was, they gave the man an immortal goddess for a wife. Yes, but even on him the father piled hardships, no powerful race of princes born in his royal halls, only a single son he fathered, doomed at birth, cut off in the spring of life—and I, I give the man no care as he grows old (Hom. Il. 24.534–541, trans. R. Fagles).

As we shall see, there are many other ways in which Peleus’s life was a curious blend of great honor and success with great sorrow and tragedy. The earliest occurrence of the phrase φθόνος θεῶν is in a passage in Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis that also has the ring of a parable (1097).3 Foreseeing the coming sacrifice of Agamemnon’s daughter, the chorus laments that modesty, virtue, and the rule of law have been driven out by godlessness (τὸ ἄσεπτον) and lawlessness (ἀνομία). No one any longer says, “let no one incur the jealousy of the gods” (μή τɩς θεῶν φθόνος ἔλθῃ). The words sound like a proverb (and indeed they are placed in quotes in the Loeb edition). Another line that has the ring of a proverb is spoken by the chorus in Sophokles’ Ajax (157): πρὸς ɣὰρ τὸν ἔχονθ’ ὁ φθόνος ἕρπεɩ (“Phthonos creeps toward the one who has [sc. good fortune]”). Yet another gnomic saying of similar sentiment is Pindar’s [φθόνος] ἅπτεταɩ δ᾽εσθλῶν ἀεɩ χεɩρόνεσσɩ δ᾽οὐκ ἐρίζεɩ (“Envy fastens on the good but has no quarrel with lesser men;” N 8.24, trans. W. H. Race). There is an early implication of Phthonos’s divinity in Sophokles’ Philoktetes (776): in giving his famous bow to Neoptolemos, Philoktetes admonishes him to propitiate (πρόσκυσον) Phthonos. The earliest instance of a personified Phthonos, however, appears in Euripides’ Trojan Women (768–769). Andromache hurls an insult at Helen: “you were not born from Zeus, but you have many fathers, Alastor (vengeance), Phthonos (jealousy), Phonos (slaughter), and Thanatos (death).” A similar kind of allegory in which Phthonos may have appeared was the famous painting Diabolê (Slander) by Apelles, known only from a description in Lucian.4 While the other personifications (Anger, Distrust, Slander, Treachery, Deception, Repentance, and Truth) are all identified with certainty, the speaker only surmises that the man who leads Diabolê to the king—ugly, with a pale complexion, piercing eye, and emaciated as if wasting away from illness—is Phthonos. This last feature, the emaciation, will recur when we come to Roman depictions of Phthonos. In extant visual art, there is only a single depiction of Phthonos before the Late Hellenistic and Roman periods—the image that will bring us back to the figure of Peleus. On an Apulian volute-krater in Naples of the mid-fourth century BCE, Peleus is a seemingly marginal figure (Fig. 1).5

 For references to the φθόνος θεῶν see Aellen 1994, 162 and, more generally on φθόνος, the sources collected by Aellen 1994, 160–162 and in LIMC VIII (Suppl.), 992, s.v. Phthonos [J.-R. Gisler].  Lucian, Calumniae non temere credendum 2–5. Cf. Mielsch 2012, who assembles arguments against the existence of such a painting.  Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, inv. 80854 (SA 11); RVAp I 424, no. 54; LIMC I 579, s.v. Althaia, no. 4 [E. Simon]; LIMC VIII (Suppl.) 995, s.v. Phthonos, no. 24; Dunbabin/Dickie 1983, 9, n. 7; 31; Aellen

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Fig. 1: Apulian Red-figure Volute-krater, Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, inv. 80854 (SA 11), Side A: Death of Meleager. c. 350–340 BCE. After Aellen 1994, pl. 142.

The subject is the death of Meleager, and this is the earliest representation of that story, which was known already to Homer (Il. 9.543–599). Within an elaborate structure that must represent the interior of a palace, the dying Meleager slumps into the arms of his siblings Deianeira and Tydeus. Both are labelled, though Meleager is not. His mother, Althaia, rushes in from the left, her frantic appearance suggesting that she now regrets being the cause of his death. This implies that the painter is following the version of the story that we have first fully attested in an ode of Bacchylides (5.93– 154). Althaia was instructed by the Moirai at the birth of her son that he will live until a certain log, kept hidden in a chest, is consumed by fire. Meleager angers his mother by killing two of her brothers in a war that breaks out between his city, Kalydon, and

1994, 216, cat. 113; 160–162, 180–181, 190 and pls. 142–143, with earlier references; most recently, Taplin 2007, 197–198. The scene is generally believed to derive from the lost Meleager of Euripides.

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its neighbors, the Pleuronians, and she impetuously hurls the log on the fire.6 Meleager’s father Oineus looks on in distress from the lower right (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2: Detail of the Volute-krater in Fig. 1: Aphrodite and Phthonos; Oineus below. After Aellen 1994, pl. 143.

Below the main scene are the labeled figures of Peleus and Theseus, the latter depicted deep in mourning, bent over and completely enveloped in his garment. They are ostensibly here as Meleager’s hunting companions, as suggested by their hunting dogs and the net and stakes between them, but we shall consider whether there may be additional motivations for their presence. Last but not least, looking on from the upper right is the pair of Aphrodite and Phthonos (Fig. 2). If he were not labeled, we would take this winged youth to be Eros. This has led some scholars to doubt that the painter really meant for him to be Phthonos, while others argue that a confusion arose in the transition from a hypothetical lost wall-painting to the vase. But as Aellen and others have shown, there is no need

 See Gantz 1993, 328–331 for this and other versions, starting with the speech of Phoenix to Achilles in Book 9 of the Iliad.

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for such conjecture, as Phthonos’s presence can be understood in several different ways.7 Erika Simon took Phthonos as a symbol of Aphrodite’s hatred of Meleager for not worshipping her as his favorite goddess (recalling the vengeful Aphrodite of Euripides’ Hippolytos).8 For Karl Schefold, Phthonos signifies that Meleager’s passion for Atalanta, his companion in the Hunt for the Calydonian Boar, led to his uncles’ jealousy, their deaths at the hands of Meleager, and ultimately his own death.9 Over a century ago, Reinhard Kekulé proposed that Phthonos refers to the anger of Althaia and her sisters at Meleager for giving the Boar’s hide to Atalanta.10 The last two interpretations suffer from the fact that Atalanta does not appear on the vase, as pointed out by Aellen.11 For Aellen, who follows most closely the meaning of φθόνος outlined in the passages cited above, he conjures up the union of Meleager and Atalanta, a union that was too happy.12 By destroying it, Phthonos shows that their love was not a divine love, but rather a mortal one. The resemblance of Eros and Phthonos is not accidental, as the one unites the lovers while the other separates them.13 Aellen, whose book collects and studies all personifications of abstract concepts in South Italian vase-painting, makes the interesting observation that those figures who appear in the margins of the picture often allude to past events in the story being depicted.14 This is surely the case here, since any of the proposed interpretations of Phthonos refers to earlier events in the story of Meleager and even to the figure of Atalanta, who is not included here but would have been present in the mind of the viewer. But I wonder if we might go a step further and ask whether Phthonos can also refer to events in the lives of the other figures on the vase. This is certainly true of Oineus, who has been betrayed by his wife and loses the son who was no doubt a source of great pride. But what about the two figures below, Theseus and Peleus? Theseus, like Meleager, was a brave young hero who accomplished a great feat, the killing of a dangerous creature, in his case the Minotaur. Theseus had the additional special status of being, in one version of his story, the offspring of a divine father, Poseidon. This version of the myth is most fully told in Bacchylides 17, which is the story of Theseus’s journey to Crete, his confrontation with King Minos onboard his ship, his claim to be

 Aellen 1994, 161, n. 47. Cf. Simon 1970, 27, n. 38, who posits a lost wall-painting on the analogy of one from Pompeii (rejected by Aellen) but does not deny that Phthonos belongs here.  Simon 1970, 26–27.  Schefold/Jung 1989, 55.  Kekulé 1867, as reported by Aellen 1994, 160.  Aellen 1994, 161, n. 47.  Taplin 2007, 198 offers a similar interpretation, that Phthonos represents Althaia’s jealousy of the happiness of Atalanta and her son. Thus, this is not a case of the φθόνος θεῶν, but of envy within a family, an all-too-common situation.  Aellen 1994, 161. Taplin 2007, 180 adds that Meleager is not only too happy, but he is an ἄωρος, someone who dies young, citing funerary epigrams for the prematurely deceased that invoke φθόνος.  Aellen 1994, 161.

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the son of Poseidon, and his visit to his father’s undersea palace.15 And yet, like most heroes, Theseus came to a bad end: his throne was claimed by a usurper, he was exiled from Athens, and he met an ignominious death at the hands of his ostensible host, King Lykomedes of Skyros.16 This is not Theseus’s only appearance on the krater. The reverse depicts a panoramic scene of the underworld, a popular theme on large Apulian vases (Figs. 3, 4).17

Figs. 3 and 4: Side B of the Volute-krater in Fig. 1: Underworld scene. After Aellen 1994, pls. 32–33.

In a naiskos (funerary shrine) stands Persephone with a young male figure whom Trendall and Cambitoglou identify as Hades, even though he looks nothing like the mature bearded god we would expect.18 He sits on a backed chair (klismos), the seat spread with a panther skin, very different from the throne on which the bearded Hades sits in Apulian underworld scenes.19 His loose garment leaves his torso exposed, again unlike the voluminous patterned drapery of the familiar Hades. He wears a laurel wreath and holds a scepter in his raised right hand. Henri Metzger interpreted the figure as a parallel to the youthful god rising out of the earth within a

 For the imagery of this subject, see LIMC VII 939, s.v. Theseus, nos. 219–222 [J. Neils].  Plut. Thes. 35.3–4.  Aellen 1994, 205, cat. 27, pls. 32–33; Pensa 1977, 25, cover and pl. 7; Schauenburg 1958, 64, fig. 11. Lohmann 1979 collects a great many of the Underworld vases but does not include this one. He does, however, discuss it briefly elsewhere (see below n. 22).  RVAp I 424, no. 54, citing a parallel for a beardless Hades.  See LIMC V 384–386, s.v. Hades nos. 122–135 [R. Lindner].

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grotto on an Attic bell-krater of the fourth century.20 The latter had been identified as Dionysos (which is impossible, since Dionysos is shown elsewhere on the vase) or the Eleusinian Iakchos, but Metzger argued that this figure and the one on the Naples krater are, as it were, two sides of the same coin, a youthful Underworld god.21 Below the naiskos, Herakles wrangles Kerberos as a winged Fury holds out a torch toward one of Kerberos’s heads and makes a distinctive gesture with her raised right index finger, as if trying to calm the beast.22 At the upper left is a figure who looks very much like Apollo, a beardless youth holding a large kithara in one hand and a wreath in the other, and is so identified by Aellen,23 though Schauenburg and Metzger had earlier claimed that he must be an Apollo-like Orpheus, on the grounds that Apollo never descends to the Underworld.24 A herm sits at the lower left behind Herakles. At the upper right are two youths, one standing and one seated on a folding stool.25 Though their names are not inscribed either, the most likely identification is Theseus and Perithoös, the pair who foolishly went down to Hades to abduct Persephone and instead got stuck there.26 Only Theseus was rescued by Herakles, while Perithoös was not so fortunate. Though this is more a story of hubris than of phthonos, the pair were severely punished, as we see depicted on another Apulian krater, where Hades commands a Fury to tie up the hapless Theseus, while Perithoös sits already bound on the ground.27 The episode underlines the unbridgeable gulf between gods and mortals that is at the heart of the gods’ envy of mortals’ good fortune, as in the advice of Amasis to Polykrates cited above. This leaves the figure of Peleus on the Naples krater. His participation in the Calydonian Boar Hunt is attested as early as the sixth-century BCE François Vase, on which he is depicted fighting alongside Meleager directly opposite the snout of the

 British Museum 1917.7–25.1; Tillyard 1923, 97–99, no. 163; Bérard 1974, 104–110; Metzger 1976, 637–638, figs. 1a-b.  Metzger 1976, 630. Metzger also adduces the series of Locri pinakes of the fifth century BCE that show Kore being abducted by a beardless youth (Sourvinou-Inwood 1973; Metzger 1976, 631–633, 640, fig. 3). Ruth Lindner, in LIMC V 386, no. 136, inclines to the identification of the figure as a young Hades, but she lists the vase as “Deutung unsicher.” Lohmann 1986, 78 had proposed Adonis without further discussion.  Aellen 1994, 60–61.  Aellen 1994, 61.  Schauenburg 1958, 72, followed by Metzger 1976, 630.  Pensa 1977, 25 identifies the seated figure as a bearded, white-haired man, but damage to the surface of the vase may have given this impression. She does not attempt to name the figures.  This story may be alluded to in the Odyssey (11.630–631), when Odysseus in the Underworld asks to see Theseus and Perithoös. It was almost certainly told in a lost epic, Minyas, referred to by Pausanias, in his description of Polygnotos’s Nekyia at Delphi (10.28.2). LIMC VII 238–239, s.v. Peirithoös [E. Manakidou] collects the Attic and South Italian vases that depict the pair in Hades.  Volute-krater, Ruvo 1094; Aellen 1994, 205, cat. 24, pls. 28–29.

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Boar.28 During the hunt, Peleus accidentally kills Eurytion of Phthia, who had given him his daughter Antigone to wed. This is neither the first nor the last time Peleus was responsible for a death, whether accidental or deliberate. In fact, he had come to Eurytion to seek expiation for the murder of his half-brother Phokos, which he carried out together with his full brother Telamon (father of Ajax). Their motive is variously reported as jealousy because Phokos was the better athlete or as a favor to their mother Endeis because their father, Aiakos, had fathered Phokos by another woman (or rather by a Nereid called Psamathe: Hes. Th. 1003–1035).29 After killing his host in Phthia, Peleus is forced to flee again, this time to King Akastos at Iolkos in Thessaly, a participant in the Calydonian Boar Hunt on the François Vase where he fights alongside another Thessalian king, Admetos (written “Asmetos”).30 Here one of the best-known stories about Peleus takes place. The wife of Akastos, who goes by the name Astydameia or Hippolyte in different sources, tries to seduce Peleus and, when she fails, tells her husband that it was Peleus who made advances on her (recalling both Phaidra in Euripides’ Hippolytos and Potiphar’s wife in the Old Testament Book of Genesis [39:17–18]). Reluctant to kill a suppliant outright, Akastos devises a scheme to bring about Peleus’s death. He takes him hunting on Mt. Pelion and steals his sword while he is asleep. This leaves Peleus at the mercy of the centaurs and wild beasts who infest Pelion, but, luckily for Peleus, there is also the one benevolent centaur, Chiron (in some versions his grandfather), who saves the hero’s life by returning his weapon to him. A lighter side to the story is told on a few Attic vases that show Peleus clinging to the upper branches of a tree as a lion and boar prowl around the trunk (Fig. 5).31 In revenge, Peleus later returned to Iolkos, stormed the place, and killed both Akastos and his wife (Hes. fr. 211 MW; fr. 152 Most; Pi., N 3.32–34; N 4.54–56). This is one side of Peleus’s life, which is filled with bloodshed and flight from one place to another. The other side is a life of extraordinary virtue and good fortune, as his son Achilles says in the Iliad passage quoted above. Most famously, the gods gave Peleus the Nereid Thetis as his bride, a person exceedingly dear to the gods (Hom. Il. 24.61; Hera even claims that she herself had raised the young Thetis and given her to Peleus to wed). Pindar tells the best-known version of this story, in which Peleus is given  Florence, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 4209; ABV 76, 1; BAPD 300000. See Shapiro/Iozzo/LezziHafter 2013, pl. 17 for a detail of this section of the frieze. Peleus and Meleager are also paired on the slightly later cup signed by Archikles and Glaukytes, Munich J333; ABV 163, 2; BAPD 310552; CVA (Munich 11) pls. 2–6.  For all the sources on the wives and sons of Aiakos and the murder of Phokos (too many to go into here), see Gantz 1993, 220–223.  Shapiro/Iozzo/Lezzi-Hafter 2013, pl. 17. H.  White-ground oinochoe, Metropolitan Museum of Art 46.11.7; ABV 434, 3; BAPD 320454; LIMC VII 253, s.v. Peleus, no. 9 [R. Vollkommer]. Only two other depictions of the story are preserved, a neck amphora in the Villa Giulia (LIMC VII 253, s.v. Peleus, no. 10) and an olpe at Haverford College (not included in the LIMC but published in Ashmead 1999, cover and 24–25).

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Fig. 5: Attic Black-figure, white-ground oinochoe, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 46.11.7, Purchase, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, 1946. c. 520 BCE. Photo: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Thetis because he was the most pious of men (εὐσεβέστατος).32 In this version, Zeus and Poseidon had quarreled over who should marry the beautiful Thetis, until the goddess Themis told them that Thetis was destined to bear a son greater than his father. Elsewhere, however, Pindar tells a different version, that Zeus gave Thetis to Peleus as a reward for virtuously rejecting the advances of Hippolyte, wife of Akastos (N 5.25–37). While Thetis was unquestionably the most precious gift that the gods gave to Peleus, there is a long list of other gifts that suggest just how much they favored him. The knife with which he defended himself from the wild beasts on Mt. Peleion was, in one version, a gift from Hephaistos, in another a gift from all the gods and in yet another a wedding gift.33 Peleus also received from the gods a magnificent set of armor, a wonder to behold (θαῦμα ἰδέσθαι), as a wedding gift on the day of his marriage to Thetis (Hom. Il. 18.82–85). He then passed on the armor to his son when he was too old to need it (Hom. Il. 17.191–197). This is the very armor that plays such a fateful role in the epic: borrowed by Patroklos and stripped from him by Hektor, leading to the replacement set forged by Hephaistos.

 Pi. I 8.40.  Pi. Sch. N 4.92. Cf. LIMC VI 251, s.v. Peleus for various versions of the story of this knife.

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The gods also gave Peleus a pair of immortal horses, Xanthos and Balios, which Peleus likewise passed on to his son to take to Troy (Hom. Il. 16.886–887; 17.443–444; but cf. 23.277–278, where the horses are said to be the gift of Poseidon). They are portrayed with great sympathy as mourning the death of Patroklos, and Xanthos speaks to Achilles to remind him that his horses, divine though they are, cannot save him from the early death in battle that awaits him (Hom. Il. 19.399–417). We may be reminded of the splendid pair of horses that Achilles is shown harnessing on a large kantharos from the Acropolis by the potter/painter Nearchos (who might also be the dedicator); the names of these horses, Chaitos and Pedasos, do not match the names of Achilles’ divine horses in the Iliad.34 Yet another gift to Peleus that figures prominently in the Iliad came not from the gods but from none other than Peleus’s benefactor Chiron, who presented him with a mighty ash spear. This, too, Achilles brought to Troy, but it was so massive that he alone could lift it. Thus, when Patroklos borrowed Achilles’ armor, he did not take the spear (Hom. Il. 16.140–144; 19.390–391), or lose it to Hektor, so that when Achilles eventually returned to the battle in the new set of armor made by Hephaistos, he wielded his father’s spear (Hom. Il. 19.389–391)—the spear that would take the life of Hektor. The point here is that Peleus is a paradoxical figure, showered by the gods with gifts for his piety and virtue, yet at the same time responsible for several deaths. This is what makes him the complex figure that Achilles describes. It is as if the gods, having made him the most fortunate of men, then grew envious of his good fortune and punished him with the early death of his only child. Returning to the Naples krater (Figs. 1, 2), I wonder whether the figure of Phthonos could also be understood as referring to Peleus. We may conclude by briefly taking a look at the later development of the figure of Phthonos in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. This material has been collected and carefully studied in a paper by Katherine Dunbabin and Matthew Dickie in 1983, inspired by the discovery in 1957 of a Roman mosaic on the island of Kephallenia bearing an unexpected image of Phthonos.35 It depicts a young man attacked from either side by pairs of wild animals, a lion and leopard on one side, a tigress and leopardess on the other. They have already done considerable damage; with blood flowing and the figure’s abdomen torn open, he writhes in agony and grasps his throat with both hands, as if choking himself. A lengthy inscription in Greek addresses the figure as Phthonos and also gives the name of the mosaicist, Krateros. We learn two things about Phthonos in the second half of the inscription, one that was familiar from earlier sources and one that is new. Phthonos begrudges those who are fortunate (θνητῶν ὄλβοις βασκαίνων), and, at the same time, he who is envious (the φθονερός).

 Athens, National Museum, inv. 15155 (Akr. 611), ABV 82, 1; BAPD no. 300767; Mommsen 2009.  Dunbabin/Dickie 1983, pls. 1–2, with full references to earlier publications at p. 8, n. 3. Cf. LIMC VIII (Suppl.) 994, s.v. Phthonos, no. 16.

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Phthonos is himself miserable and, as we might say, his envy eats away at him (in Ovid’s description of Invidia, Envy, she is consumed by her own envy: Met. 2.779).36 On the mosaic, this is vividly expressed not only in the beasts that tear him apart, but in the motif of self-strangulation. The best literary parallel for this is in the Punica of Silius Italicus. As the Cumaean Sibyl gives Scipio a tour of Hades, she points to a group of various ills, including Grief (Luctus), Strife (Discordia), Pallor, and many others. Among them is Livor (another Roman equivalent of Phthonos) clutching his throat with both hands: hinc angens utraque manu sua guttera Livor (13.584).37 It is as if the phthoneros, the envious, is so consumed by envy that he can no longer live with himself. This is an aspect of Phthonos that we do not find in the Greek sources but which forms the basis of much of his later iconography. These images appear in a variety of media, including terracotta statuettes, lamps, terracotta plaques and molds, bronze statuettes, and gold amulets. All of them, according to Dunbabin and Dickie, come from the Eastern half of the Roman world, including Greece and Asia Minor, Cyprus and Egypt, and Palestine.38 One unusually striking example is a bronze statuette in Athens, said to have been acquired in Alexandria (Fig. 6).39 The figure is nude, with grotesquely exaggerated phallus and testicles. His body is emaciated, his head balding, and his huge mouth is open in a grimace, exposing some teeth. He stands bent forward, precariously balanced on slightly raised feet.40 The identification as Phthonos is secured by the gesture of clutching his throat with both hands. The figure belongs to a tradition of Hellenistic and Roman statuettes of “pathological grotesques” in both terracotta and bronze.41 The emaciated body is one feature

 Dunbabin/Dickie 1983, 9.  As pointed out by Dunbabin/Dickie 1983, 12. The passage suggests that there could have been a wall-painting of the Underworld (like the Nekyia of Polygnotos) that included the figure of Livor. Demosthenes, Against Aristogeiton 1.53 seems to be referring to such a Nekyia painting when he says that painters have depicted such evils as Blasphemia, Ara (Curse), Phthonos, Stasis (Faction), and Neikos (Quarrel) along with the damned in Hades. But there is no figure of Phthonos on the Underworld vases of Apulia such as our Naples krater.  Dunbabin/Dickie 1983, 27.  Athens, National Archaeological Museum 447; Dunbabin/Dickie 1983, 22 and pl. 4a-b LIMC VIII (Suppl.) 993, s.v. Phthonos, no. 10; most recently illustrated and described in detail by A. Grigoraki and A. Klonizaki, Noemata/Meanings: Personifications and Allegories from Antiquity to Today, exh. cat. Acropolis Museum, Athens, ed. N. Stampolidis 2024, 354–55, cat 111. Alexandria has often been posited as the origin of the so-called Hellenistic grotesques, and Himmelmann 1983, 59–64 sees influence from Egyptian iconography going back to the Old Kingdom.  As Dunbabin/Dickie 1983, 22 observe, the statuette could not have stood unsupported, and there is in fact the trace of a hole for suspension. He would thus have dangled in the air, and a hole in the phallus, they suggest, was for attaching a bell.  The term was introduced by Stevenson 1975, and, as Muratov 2012, 56 observes, is preferable to the simple “grotesque,” which she describes as a “convenient yet dangerous umbrella term.” Recent studies of these figures, along with that of Muratov, include Fowler 1989, 66–70 and Süvegh 2014.

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Fig. 6: Bronze statuette of a man choking himself; possible personification of Pthonos. Ptolemaic period. From the donation of the Ioannis Dimitriou Collection, an expatriate settled in Alexandria, Egypt. National Archaeological Museum, Athens, inv. ΑΙΓ 447. Photo: Eleftherios Galanopoulos, © Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports/ Hellenic Organization for Cultural Resources Development.

that characterizes a number of the pathological grotesques and is found in some terracotta statuettes of Phthonos.42 Particularly noteworthy is the enormous phallus of our bronze Phthonos. Again, some other images of Phthonos have this feature, as do a variety of grotesques, including dwarfs and hunchbacks. The enlarged phallus has long been recognized as a kind of charm for warding off the evil eye.43 It is not an integral part of Phthonos’s nature, but rather implies that, along with the warning to the would-be φθονεροί, the figure could serve an apotropaic function. We have come a long way from the Eros-like Phthonos of the Apulian krater to the contorted and agonized figures of the Hellenistic and Roman periods. The young Phthonos of the mosaic from Kephallenia has somewhat disheveled long hair, but could otherwise be described as attractive, especially in comparison to the various Phthonos types we have just seen. This led Dunbabin and Dickie to suggest that the young Phthonos of the mosaic, along with a few other images of him in other media

 Dunbabin/Dickie 1983, 20–21, pls. 2–3. We may be reminded that the Phthonos of Apelles’ painting was said to be emaciated above, p. 98.  Cf. the classic studies of Wace 1903–1904 and Levi 1941.

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as youthful, could be better understood if we posited a prototype like that of the Apulian krater,44 though this seems rather speculative. We are left with a corpus of representations that would seem to have little continuity from the Classical Greek to the Roman world. Frank Brommer, in his brief study of Phthonos, argues that with only three labeled representations of Phthonos over 600 years (and only two of them preserved), we cannot speak of a “fester Typus” for the figure.45 This reflects the fact that the very concept of envy and its effect on people had evolved over the course of time. In the Middle Ages, Envy will be one of the Seven Deadly Sins, and, as such, she is still with us today. May she stay far from our honorand as he moves into the next phase of his charmed life.

Abbreviations ABV BAPD CVA LIMC Most MW RVAp

Beazley, J. D. 1956. Attic Black-figure Vase-painters. Oxford. Beazley Archive Pottery Database. Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum. Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae. Most, G. W. 2007. Hesiod, The Shield, Catalogue of Women, Other Fragments. Loeb Classical Library 503. Cambridge, MA. Merkelbach, R. / West, M. L. 1967. Fragmenta Hesiodea. Oxford. Trendall, A. D. / Cambitoglou, Alexander. 1978. The Red-figured Vases of Apulia. Oxford.

Bibliography Aellen, Christian (1994). À la recherche de l’ordre cosmique. Forme et Fonction des Personnifications dans la Céramique Italiote. Kilchberg. Ashmead, Ann H. (1999). Haverford College Collection of Classical Antiquities. Philadelphia. Bérard, Claude (1974). Anodoi: essai sur l’imagerie des passages chthoniens. Neuchâtel. Brommer, Frank (1974). “Phthonos,” Archäologischer Anzeiger 89, 169–170. Dunbabin, Katherine / Dickie, M. W. (1983). “Invidia Rumpantur Pectora: The Iconography of Phthonos/ Invidia in Greco-Roman Art,” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 26, 7–37. Fowler, Barbara H. (1989). The Hellenistic Aesthetic. Madison, WI. Gantz, Timothy (1993). Early Greek Myth. Baltimore. Himmelmann, Nikolaos (1983). Alexandria und der Realismus in der griechischen Kunst. Tübingen. Kekulé, Reinhard (1867). “Vaso dipinto della raccolta già Santangelo ora nel Museo Nazionale di Napoli,” in: Strenna Festosa offerta a Guglielmo Henzen, Rome, 5–15. Levi, Doro (1941). “The Evil Eye and the Lucky Hunchback,” in: R. Stillwell (ed.), Antioch-on-the-Orontes III: The Excavations 1937–1939, Princeton, 220–232. Lohmann, Hans (1979). Grabmäler auf unteritalischen Vasen. Berlin.

 Dunbabin/Dickie 1983, 31.  Brommer 1974, 170.

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Lohmann, Hans (1986). “Der Mythos von Amphiaraos auf apulischen Vasen,” Boreas 6, 65–82. Metzger, Henri (1976). “Création conscient ou image greffée? À propos d’une figure de jeune dieu chthonien des arts de l’Italie méridionale,” in: Mélanges offerts à Jacques Heurgon: L’Italie préromaine et la Rome républicaine, Rome, vol. II, 627–640. Mielsch, Harald (2012). Die Verleumdung des Apelles: ein frühhellenistisches Gemälde? Paderborn. Mommsen, Heide (2009). “Die Entscheidung des Achilleus auf dem Nearchos-Kantharos Akr. 611,” in: E.H. Moorman and V.V. Stissi (eds.), Shapes and Images: Studies on Attic Black Figure and Related Topics in Honour of Herman A. G. Brijder, Leuven, 51–61. Murtatov, Maya (2012). “‘The World’s a Stage . . . ’ Some Observations on Four Hellenistic Terracotta Figurines of Popular Entertainers,” Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 2.9, 55–65. Pensa, Maria (1977). Rappresentazioni dell’ oltretomba nella ceramica apula. Rome. Sanders, Edward A. (2010). Envy and Jealousy in Classical Athens. Diss. University College London. Schauenburg, Konrad (1958). “Die Totengötter in der unteritalischen Vasenmalerei,” JDI 73, 48–78. Schefold, Karl / Jung, Franz (1989). Die Sagen von den Argonauten, von Theben und Troia in der klassichen und hellenistischen Kunst. Munich. Shapiro, Harvey Alan / Iozzo, Mario / Lezzi-Hafter, Adrienne (2013). The François Vase: New Perspectives. Kilchberg. Simon, Erika (1970). Meleager und Atalanta: ein spätantiker Wandbehang. Bern. Sourvinou-Inwood, Christiane (1973). “The Young Abductor of the Locri Pinakes,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 20, 12–21. Stampolidis, Nicholaos Chr. (2024). Noemata/Meanings: Personifications and Allegories from Antiquity to Today, exh. cat. Akropolis Museum. Athens. Stevenson, William E. III (1975). The Pathological Grotesque Representation in Greek and Roman Art. Diss. University of Pennsylvania. Süvegh, Ezster (2014). “Hellenistic Grotesque Terracotta Figurines: Problems of Iconographical Interpretation,” Dissertationes Archeologicae ex Instituto Archaeologico Universitatis de Rolando Eötvós Nominatae 3.2, 143–156. Taplin, Oliver (2007). Pots & Plays: Interactions between Tragedy and Greek Vase-Painting of the Fourth Century BCE. Los Angeles. Tillyard, Eustace Mandeville Wetenhall (1923). The Hope Vases. Cambridge. Wace, Alan J. B. (1903/4). “Grotesques and the Evil Eye,” Annual of the British School of Archaeology at Athens 10, 103–114.

Patricia A. Butz

Aphrodite, Pan, and Eros and an Inscription at the Établissement of the Poseidoniastai of Berytos: Internationalism in the Cult Sanctuaries of Delos The subject of this contribution is a sculptural manifestation of the goddess Aphrodite as the embodiment of the phenomenon of internationalism and how that phenomenon affected the arrangement of cult sanctuaries and cult presences at Delos.1 Delos achieved its preeminence as an omphalos of the Greek world early in antiquity due to its sacred identity as the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis. The island’s high status as a panhellenic religious site was promised by Leto, mother of the divine twins in the Homeric Hymn to the Delian Apollo, and it never waned.2 But Delos’s fame only grew in the Hellenistic and Roman periods with an international presence achieved through trade and religion. A new visual prominence was given to the island in the second century BCE by the development of the Terrace of the Foreign Gods on the west slope of Mt. Kynthos as well as the major agoras.3

The Aphrodision at Delos Below the Terrace in the relative seclusion of the declivity of the Inopus stream and just outside the Quartier du théâtre is a simple naos in solid marble known as the Aphrodi-

 A paper about Aphrodite at Delos is a fitting addition to a festschrift honoring John Pollini. Not only is Roma attested at the Établissement of the Poseidoniastai of Berytos, but there was a major Roman and Italian component within the Delian population, both permanent residents and traders coming to the greatest emporium in the Hellenistic Mediterranean world. A version of this paper was originally delivered at the International Congress of Sanctuaries and Cults in the Aegean, held on Lemnos and organized by Pavlos Triantafyllides, Director of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Lesbos. My appreciation goes to the NAM for permission to study the statue of Aphrodite, Pan, and Eros from Delos (MN 3335) when it was in conservation in 2019, as well as the Altar of Aphrodite Hegemone from the Athenian Agora. I thank Nikolaos Kaltsas, Despina Ignatiadou, Evridiki Leka, and the conservators Yannis Panagakos and Pepi Tsakri for their assistance. Thanks are also owed to the Ephoria of the Cyclades and the École Française d’Athènes. Finally, for his ongoing scholarship and mentorship, I am grateful to John Pollini and dedicate this essay to him.  Homeric Hymn to the Delian Apollo ll. 83–90.  Bruneau/Ducat 2005, no. 98 and fig. 87 for the plan of the Sanctuary of the Syrian Gods; Bruneau/ Ducat 2005, no. 100 and fig. 89 for the plan of Serapieion C, which includes the Temple of Isis (ca. 130 BCE for the Athenian dedication). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111182919-008

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sion (Fig. 1),4 epigraphically connected with the archon Stesilaos (founder of the Stesileia in 302 BCE) and his family.5 This connection begins with the dedications made by Stesilaos to his parents, inscribed on two statue bases flanking the entrance to the pronaos of the Aphrodision.

Fig. 1: The Aphrodisian at Delos. After Hadjidakis 2003, fig. 547, p. 302, with permission of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture.

Here, the dominant presence of the statues (now missing) with their inscribed bases reinforced the aspect of the goddess Aphrodite, connected with marriage, procreation, and the stability of the family. Despite the small size of the sanctuary, the quality and appearance of the building materials, including the fitted, trapezoidal masonry of its

 Bruneau/Ducat 2005, no. 88 and Dépliant VII for the plan.  IG XI.4, 1166, 1167 for the father and mother of the archon Stesilaos; IG XI.4, 1277 for his daughter, same name as his mother. My thanks to Cécile Durvye for discussion of these family-related inscriptions. See also IG XI.4, 1278 dedicated by Ktesonides, important for its stoikhedon layout; and IG XI.4, 1279, dedicated by Ierakos of Paros.

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marble construction,6 attest to the elite aspects of its dedication. The temple is accompanied by a series of adjoining oikoi and a pediment-style altar to the south of the entrance (Fig. 1, right foreground). This arrangement, although far more substantial than, for example, the North Slope sanctuary of the goddess at Athens, recalls Rachel Rosenzweig’s observation that “by their very nature, Aphrodite sanctuaries were usually simple, outdoor sites lacking major architecture. . . .”7 Although the Delos sanctuary of Aphrodite is modest, statues and statuettes of Aphrodite outnumber those of any other deity on Delos; this attests to the goddess’s impressive popularity during the Hellenistic period, which undergirds the importance of this temple and the major festival inaugurated in Aphrodite’s honor.8

Aphrodite and the Établissement of the Poseidoniastai Aphrodite, in fact, achieves her own unique form of internationalism, although not by “climbing the hill” to the Terrace of the Foreign Gods, which would not be impossible for the Olympian goddess. The temple of Hera occupied the space on the south end of the Terrace, on axis with the Temple of Isis and across from the Hydreion of Serapieion C,9 and Athena Kynthia occupies the summit with her father Zeus. Rather than joining the other sanctuaries on the Terrace, Aphrodite travelled north and a little west across the island to the Établissement of the Poseidoniastai of Berytos in the Quartier du lac, inspiring one of the most famous statues of the entire Hellenistic period: the statue of Aphrodite, Pan, and Eros, also known as the “Slipper-Slapper Aphrodite,” whose dedicatory inscription records that the benefactor was Dionysios, son of Zenon.10 The date given for the statue group by most scholars is c. 100 BCE.11 Catering to a specific merchant community, the Établissement is a preeminent structure on the island, not only because of this statue but also for its size, the preservation of its furnishings and inscriptions, and the sophisticated functionality of the floor plan (including cult spaces

 Bruneau/Ducat 2005, 66, fig. 2.  Rosenzweig 2004, 39.  Hadjidakis 2003, 277 lists the popular types. Havelock 1995, 106 discusses two terracotta workshops on Delos, one connected to a house in the nearby Quartier du théâtre, first published in Laumonier 1956.  Siard 2007, 417–447.  Athens, National Archaeological Museum, MN 3335 and ID 1783.  Ridgway 2000 discusses the name of the dedicator as “allowing for a date at the end of the century on prosopographical and epigraphic grounds, although a slightly earlier date was proposed by some scholars.” See 147 and 174, n. 12, where Marcadé is cited for such a date, some 25 years earlier. Hadjidakis dates the group from 150–125 BCE.

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and storage areas as well as housing).12 Dated to the first half of the second century BCE, the Établissement embodies the hybrid spirit of Hellenistic-Roman Delos.

The Statue’s Archaeological Context The statue of Aphrodite was not found in the series of religiously-oriented communal rooms designated in the published plans of the Exploration archéologique de Délos, three of which are securely identified as cult spaces to the gods Roma, Poseidon of Berytos, and Astarte. Nearby, the main court has a peristyle in the Doric order with a large cistern in the middle. One of the three official “building” inscriptions in the court, ID 1774, is on the architrave of the west stoa or portico of the peristyle and is cut in two lines of monumental lettering, the letterforms recorded as 7.0 cm in height. The inscription records that the koinon (the communal organization) of the Poseidoniastai of Berytos, shipowners, and financial lenders were the official donors who dedicated the oikos, the west stoa, and the mobilier “to the gods of the fatherland.” The east, south, and north stoas carry dedicatory inscriptions in their architraves from individually named members of the koinon. One of these members is Dionysios, son of Zenon, whose monumental inscription ID 1772 runs in a single line of letterforms, 9 cm in height, across the east and south architraves;13 Dionysios is the same dedicant as for the statue of Aphrodite, Eros, and Pan. The southeast segmentation of the building has been interpreted as living quarters and storage for when members of the koinon were on Delos. There is a change in level as the street on the south side of the Établissement descends to the east. The rooms on this south side were interpreted as storage rooms, the “sous-sol,” in Ch. Picard’s excavation report of 1921. The floor above these storage areas has completely collapsed. The Aphrodite was found in one of the storage rooms, Room N, having fallen through the floor of the étage level (Fig. 2).14 Picard referred to the area where the statue originally stood variously as “la salle de habitation,” the ξενών, and a “salle d’honneur” because of the fragments of fine furnishings and decoration found in the storage areas.15 Following Picard’s lead, like Havelock and other scholars, I find the concept of a “salle d’honneur” on the étage level appropriate for the cult implications of the Aphrodite, Pan, and Eros statue, but I return to this at the end of the article.

 Picard 1921 and pl. 1 for the État général de l’état actuel. This is the plan that generated all others and is marked clearly with the room designations. Bruneau/Ducat 2005, 227–231, no. 57, and fig. 63 for the plan, retaining the same room designations.  ID 1772: “Lettres 0m,09, bien gravées, à apices.”  Picard 1921, 121.  Picard 1921, 121.

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Fig. 2: View of the complex of Rooms M-N-O on the south side of the Établissement. Room N in back, on left. West portico or stoa of the cistern court in the background. Photo: author, with permission of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture.

The Orientation of the Statue and Its Inscription The composition of this statue, atop its short rectangular platform base and carrying a 3line Greek inscription, has always been considered arresting and highly original rather than a copy of a lost original. The entire figural group and inscription provided in the photographic study of Delos by Panyiotis Hadjidakis (Fig. 3) shows the inscription headon and emphasizes the subtle pull of Aphrodite to her right, following the Praxitilean Scurve away from Pan.16 In contrast, an official photo of the National Archaeological Museum (https://www.namuseum.gr/en/collection/ellinistiki-periodos-2/) gives a fully frontal view of the goddess, which emphasizes her Knidian stance but leaves the inscribed base at a slight angle. The comparison of these images suggests that the optimum views for the statue and for the inscription might differ but that the inscription unquestionably governs the final orientation. While Brunhilde Ridgway argued that the composition serves

 Hadjidakis 2003, 303, no. 548.

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Fig. 3: Aphrodite, Pan, and Eros and the inscribed base. Athens, National Archaeological Museum, inv. MN 3335. After Hadjidakis 2003, fig. 548, p. 303, with permission of the Hellenic National Archaeological Museum of Greece.

to show “how ‘flat’ arrangements were created, perhaps to be set up deliberately for a single viewpoint,”17 it is clear that the statue was conceived in the round and intended for viewing from all sides (as Picard also concluded).18

The Internal Arrangement of the Sculptural Group Viewed frontally, the chiastic structure of the sculptural group is bold in its positioning of the figures in what could easily have resulted in a top-heavy, V-based composition. Achieving balance in an extremely complex composition is surely one major challenge the sculptor set from a technical point of view. All three figures are doing something different, and the eye of the viewer moves through these actions and makes, on one level, a

 Ridgway 2000, 149.  Picard 1921, 123.

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narrative that unifies the piece. At the heart of the composition is the Knidian Aphrodite. Significantly, however, Aphrodite’s weight-bearing right leg is on the same side as the weight-bearing right arm (if we count the upheld sandal in Aphrodite’s proper right hand rather than the weight of Pan’s handhold gripping her left wrist). This break from the Polykleitan contrapposto formula creates a strong, pure diagonal forming the left side of the V, while the body of Pan forms the right side. The hand gestures of Pan alongside Aphrodite and Eros flying in at his mother’s shoulder create intricate chiastic crossings at the center of the composition that contrast sharply with the clean diagonal of the right oblique stroke of the V. From the front, Aphrodite appears to be the most upright and grounded of the three figures, but viewed from a three-quarters or profile view of her right side, the transformation of her subtly crouching position offers a completely new dimension and interpretation.19 From these angles, the goddess’ energy is different; rather than erect and elongated, she is compressed and robust—like Pan—and the strength to fend him off resides in her own body rather than in the seemingly weightless sandal that first seizes the viewer’s attention. In this respect, the sandal is something of a red herring that inspired the nickname for the group, the “Slipper-Slapper,” which, I would argue, has grossly distorted the reception of the work. There are, of course, additional meanings in the sandal and the bare foot, including, as Ridgway noted, the word akolouthe written in studs on the bottom of a courtesan’s sandal, so that her footprint would leave the beguiling message “Follow” imprinted on unpaved byways.20 In fact, the underside of this sandal, which faces the viewer, is a work of art in itself, with five holes around the periphery for the lead nails needed in the construction of the sole. Lead is visible in at least one of the holes. Today, significant traces of pigment survive on both sides of the sandal, and it is not difficult to understand how it became a focal point of modern studies.21 The proper right profile of the sculpture, far more than the frontal or threequarters, actually minimizes the sandal and shows the powerful build of Aphrodite’s lower body, which appears disproportionate in regard to the refinement of her upper body and face. In this light, Aphrodite’s is a hybrid body, not unlike her opponent, Pan. Having examined the statue in conservation, I am very aware of how the gnarled toes of

 Bonato/Yiakoumis 2005, 150–151; I am grateful to Irène Papaikonomou, who provided the translation of the Bonato/Yiakoumis publication, and who spoke with me about her contribution at the Lemnos Congress. The pages noted included three exceptional photographs, one of which is a cropped version of our Fig. 5.  Ridgway 2000, 147–148. I am grateful to Jenifer Neils for discussing the sandal and the inscription on the sole.  One speculates whether there might be evidence for a written inscription, maybe a casual dipinti for akolouthe, on the sole, even if added later by someone else. See Butz 1990, 36 for the possible manipulation of the inscription in a Roman grave relief, perhaps for comic effect.

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Fig. 4: The feet of Aphrodite and Pan side-by-side on the base of the statue. Photo: author, with permission of the Hellenic National Archaeological Museum of Greece.

Aphrodite’s proper left bare foot, shown next to Pan’s cloven hoof, appear as though transformed by him (Fig. 4). Part of Aphrodite’s left foot rests under Pan’s as if they were touching; her right foot, in contrast, is sandaled and smoothly fashioned with perfectly graduated toes, all controlled by the strap. A similar transformation occurs in the hands, centrally placed over Aphrodite’s pubes; Pan grasps Aphrodite, his fingers encircling not just her wrist but part of the lower arm. The back of Aphrodite’s hand, together with her fingers, all look to possess a masculine strength and have the look of age, in contrast with the rest of her body. Moving to the back of the statue, a most remarkable transformation unfolds between Aphrodite and Pan. As Figure 5 makes clear, the diagonals from the back soften the composition and operate entirely differently than on the front (Fig. 5). From the back, the figures look as if they have been reconciled and are visibly leaning into each other. Pan’s arm embraces Aphrodite, his animal legs likewise shield her. Pan’s hand on Aphrodite’s waist appears to touch her gently and, like Aphrodite’s sandaled foot, is perfect in form. When examined closely, the illusion of his desirous assault was only created by the strut seen from the front. The sculptor has created a composition in which each deity is capable of transforming the other. The back of the statue shows something quite different in

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Fig. 5: Back of the sculptural group. EFA/auteur non connu; with permission of the Hellenic National Archaeological Museum of Greece.

their physical relationship, and unquestionably it is meant to be seen and contemplated. Pan and Aphrodite, in fact, could be the married couple.22 As the intensity of the relationship between the principal participants appears more complex from the back than from the front, the role of Eros must be addressed. Eros crowns the sculpture, uniting the other figures even while holding them apart. As Ph. Bruneau has pointed out, there is an extensive iconography of Eros flying between individuals without touching them, including the fine mosaic from the Maison des tritons at Delos.23 In this statue group, however, Eros touches the other figures in a way that is playful but also serious, inasmuch as he reaches out and almost fondles one of Pan’s horns. Is this a  I thank Nikolaos Stampolidis for his support in this observation and his comment made during the Lemnos Q&A, to the effect that the position of Pan and Aphrodite together from the back conveys that of an engaged couple more than a married couple.  Bruneau 1995, 61. See also Bruneau/Ducat 2005, 234 and fig. 30.

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Fig. 6: Back view of Pan and Aphrodite with Eros between them. Photo: author, with permission of the Hellenic National Archaeological Museum of Greece.

stand-in for his mother doing the same? Jean Marcadé described Eros thus: “l’Amour joufflu et souriant met quelque mignardise;”24 but he is more than a “pretty little thing” in this composition. Eros, as Fig. 6 brilliantly reveals, is going about his business, on his own trajectory—he seems to be flying by his legs.25 Eros’ power is in reconciling opposites, here Aphrodite and Pan, and affirming the legitimacy of the sculpture’s hybrid message. How different is his gesture in the striking amphora stamp from the Maison des Sceaux from Delos, on which he hangs on the back of his mother’s neck, his wings lowered and subdued.26

Alexandria and Delos The sophistication of the Alexandrine school of the Hellenistic period is widely recognized and appears to have left its mark on the Aphrodite, Pan, and Eros statue. In dis Marcadé 2005, 106.  According to the NAM conservators in 2019, the wings were being re-evaluated. The Convert photographs of 1904 show no wings on the Eros.  Hadjidakis 2003, 305, no. 559, and published by Stampolidis in 1992.

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Fig. 7: Aphrodite and Eros from second register, central panel of Tomb 2. After Guimier-Sorbets et al. 2017, fig. 15. Photo: A. Pelle (c) CEAlex Archives.

cussing the Hellenistic sculpture of Delos, Marcadé mentions the shared ground between Aphrodite and Dionysos, who were both highly honored in the period.27 In this sculpture, Pan might easily stand for the Dionysiac element proper. I will return to Dionysos in discussing the inscription, but a comparandum from the Graeco-Roman tombs at Kom al-Shuqafa at Alexandria is particularly relevant to this statue.28 The authors of Resurrection in Alexandria recently reanalyzed two Roman-period (first to mid-second century CE) painted tombs from the Hall of Caracalla with new technology and techniques.29 In reviewing this book, I remarked on the truly unique contribution these tombs make in terms of Egyptian and Greek iconography, especially the manner by which Aphrodite and Eros, armed on her shoulder, activate the rape of Persephone.30 As can be seen in Tomb 2 (the better preserved of the two), a majestic and clothed Aphrodite and winged Eros are shown in a very similar configuration to the Delos sculpture (Fig. 7), but in the tomb, they trigger both the kidnapping of Persephone and Hades’s subsequent redemption when he crowns Persephone Queen of the Underworld. In the Delos statue, there is an obvious dynamism between Aphrodite and Eros in addition to the primary dynamic between Eros and Pan and Aphrodite and Pan.31 Eros is

 Marcadé, “III. La sculpture hellénistique” in Bruneau/Ducat 2005, 106.  Guimier-Sorbets et al. 2017, especially 106–140.  Guimier-Sorbets et al. 2017, 153.  Butz 2018, 73. Also, Guimier-Sorbets et al. 2017, 18, fig. 15.  Contra Ridgway’s (2000, 148) statement “Eros is here simply symbolic of an amorous atmosphere, rather than a participant . . . in the action . . .”.

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Fig. 8: The dedication of Dionysios, son of Zenon, son of Theodoros, of Berytos. Photo: author, with permission of the Hellenic National Archaeological Museum of Greece.

between the two, part of the central chiasmos, and fully engaged in the outcome. Originally, Eros may have held an attribute in his right hand, which is now broken off together with his wrist and arm up to the elbow. It is quite possible, in fact, that Aphrodite brandishes her sandal not at Pan but at Eros.32

Dionysios’ Dedication and its Palaeography The inscribed base of the Aphrodite, Pan, and Eros group is a simple, precisely cut rectangular socle with a hollowed-out depression to accommodate the statue. The socle has a width of 54.7 cm (front) and 54.6 cm (back), and a depth of 31.5 cm (left side) and 31.0 cm (right side); the height on all sides is consistently 12.5 cm.33 The dedicatory inscription, ID 1783 (Fig. 8), occurs on the front of the base in three lines and names Dionysios, son of Zenon, son of Theodoros, from Berytos as benefactor. The spacing of the lines and disposition of the letterforms is peculiar, with some spaces wider than others and occurring in the middle of words. In the absence of a facsimile drawing, it may be useful to transcribe the layout of the three lines as closely as possible: ΔΙΟΝΥΣΙΟΣ ΖΗΝΩΝΟΣ ΤΟΥΘΕΟΔΩΡΟΥ ΒΗΡΥΤΙΟΣ Ε ΥΕΡΓΕ ΤΗΣ ΥΠΕΡΕΑΥ ΤΟΥ ΚΑΙΤ Ω ΝΤΕΚΝΩΝΘΕΟΙΣΠΑΤΡΙΟΙΣ

27 letters 27 letters 25 letters

Διονύσιος Ζήνωνος τοῦ Θεοδώρου Βηρύτιος εὐεργέτης ὑπὲρ ἐαυτοῦ καὶ τῶν τέκνων θεοῖς πατρίοις.

 On Aphrodite disciplining Eros, see Bruneau 1995, 61–62, referring to Lucian and other written sources and Ridgway 2000, 148, who also alludes to evidence from vases.  The measurements for the base and the inscription are my own, taken on 3 September 2019.

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Dionysios, son of Zenon, son of Theodoros, of Berytos, benefactor, on behalf of himself and of his children, to the gods of the fatherland. (transcription, layout, and translation by the author)

The text is disposed very consciously: Dionysios’s nomen and patronymic, with a visible space between them, are the first words of the first line. Zenon’s patronymic, “Son of Theodoros,” occupies the second part of this line with no internal spacing between the genitive of the article and Theodoros’ name. The second line opens with the word Berytios, the equivalent of the demotic, and completes the nomenclature in the genitive, all of which is capped by the word euergetes in the nominative, which confirms that the name of the dedicator is Dionysios in the nominative and not a genitive of Dionysos. The dedicatory formula follows, reflecting back on the donor “on behalf of himself” at the end of Line 2. This portion of the line has an internal space halfway through the last word. The letterforms are greater in height and width than those in the first line and, although the number of letters in both lines is the same and could easily have been arranged stoikhedon, the second line is allowed to spread. Line 3 maintains the larger letter size of Line 2 and opens with the names of Dionysios’s children as co-beneficiaries of the dedication. The recipients of the dedication, the gods of the fatherland, close the formula in the dative. Although there are only 25 letters in Line 3, it matches the length of Line 1.34 All three lines are left justified with no visible punctuation. There is a strong sense of the quadrata underlying the structural formation of these letterforms, yet they are heavily serifed, the prominent forks conveying both an ornamental pattern and a strong visual impact. Red pigment remains visible in many of the letterforms of Lines 1 and 3, and close inspection of Line 2 shows remnants of dark residue lodged in the channels and corners of certain letters, indicating that it was inpainted, probably in blue, even as the statue proper retains important evidence of the polychromy noted at the time of excavation, including the blue on the strut.35 The irregular letter spacing creates its own visual dynamic. Even without measuring, the letterforms pertaining to Dionysios’s children are visibly larger than those of his own name. In Line 2, the added width of the juxtaposed Υ and Π of ὑπὲρ contributes to extending this line far to the right, despite its having the same number of letterforms as Line 1. The pi in Line 2 is not just built on a quadrata; it is, practically speaking, a quadrata in its own right, nearly squared because of its width, its full-

 The length of the three lines are as follows: Line 1, 42.7 cm; Line 2, 46.0 cm; Line 3, 43.1 cm. Lines 1 and 3 are comparable.  The NAM conservators confirmed there are significant traces of color everywhere on the statue. Egyptian blue has been identified on the background of the base and on the skin. Blue was originally found on the strut between Aphrodite and Pan, which Picard’s colleague, Marcel Bulard, took as evidence that the statue had once been installed in a stuccoed niche painted in this color. See Picard 1921, 121 n. 10.

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length right orthostat, and powerful serifs. The pi in Line 3, almost directly below the pi of Line 2, is slightly narrower with a truncated right orthostat; it stands high on the line, its serifs touching the guideline. All six of the finely incised guidelines are visible at various points in the inscription and are used more for anchoring the extended serifs than for grounding the body of the letterforms (except for curved or rounded letterforms). Line 1, which best preserves some of the color and the guidelines, is set close to the top edge of the socle. The delta of Dionysios is 0.8 cm from the top edge, and the final upsilon of the line is 1.2 cm from the top edge. Although the guideline appears to slant slightly downward, this minimally affects the appearance of the whole body of text. With an average letter height of 1.4 cm, Line 1 is slightly shorter in height than the averages of Lines 2 (1.5 cm) and 3 (1.6 cm),36 except towards the end, where the last third of the line picks up height. Overall, Line 1 is the most modest and controlled of the three, yet its proximity to the sculpture elevates its text in importance. In terms of visual impact, however, Lines 2 and 3, referencing Berytos, the donors’ children, along with the gods of the fatherland, are the inscription’s real focus; these lines have an almost a climactic visual effect in their gradual increase in letterform size and the strength of the serifs. I suggest that Lines 2 and 3 may have been cut on a different day from Line 1, perhaps after further consultation with Dionysios. Clearly all three lines were cut by the same letter cutter, but variations in the treatment of the nu can serve as a diagnostic letterform for this inscription. The nu in Dionysios’s own name (Ν1 in Line 1) shows a high oblique connected to the short right orthostat, almost archaizing in its formation, and the foot of the left orthostat and the head of the right carry ample forked serifs. The same holds for N2 and N3 in Dionysios’s patronymic, “son of Zenon,” although N3 is less well-formed. There is no nu in Line 2, but passing on to Line 3 there are three. There is a palpable change in this line. These are bold letterforms. The oblique is still elevated but less so, with that of N3 perilously close to the groundline. Of the three, N2 most closely adheres to the aesthetic established in Line 1. The purpose of the inscription is to show four generations of a family incorporated into a single dedication honoring the hereditary, paternal gods of the donor’s homeland. Flagged by its opening word, each one of the three lines is orchestrated to accomplish this feat: Dionysios’s own name stands in the nominative at the beginning of Line 1; the ethnic marker, “of Berytos,” which helped define the building for future archaeologists, stands in the genitive at the beginning of Line 2; and the acknowledgement of Dionysios’s children, the fourth generation (Dionysios’s father and grandfather were named in Line 1) stands in the genitive at the beginning of Line 3. The benefaction itself devolves upon the gods of the fatherland in the dative, reinforcing the patriarchal hierarchy through to the end. The inscription reads as serious and con-

 The upsilon can pick up extra height no matter which line of the inscription, and both the omicron and omega are undersized: the omicron is carefully rounded, and the omega is a wide, ellipticallyshaped lunette with generous serifs.

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ventional in tone, yet like a puzzle: the placement of the formulaic parts (particularly the nominative of the donor’s name and his status as euergetes, so masterfully delayed and centrally placed in line 2) is unique in its combination with the exuberant palaeography. Dionysios is set within the genealogy of ancestors in Line 1 and with the future of his family—his children—in Line 3. Given his name, there may also be a play on words or even a hidden, personal level of meaning, with the Dionysiac element present in the sculptural composition. The difference in aesthetic and epigraphic import from the familial inscriptions on the Stesilaos statue bases at the Aphrodision are not just a matter of chronology and style, which becomes evident in the three other inscriptions recording Dionysios’s benefactions at the Établissement. The most impressive of them is ID 1772, discussed above, on the east and south porticoes of the cistern courtyard, which states that Dionysios, son of Zenon, son of Theodoros, of Berytos dedicated the two stoas to the koinon of Berytos. On the west and north, Berytos is referenced once on each architrave, all four together securing the cardinal points of the Établissement’s world. Another dedication, ID 1784, although partially restored, is considered proffered by Dionysios for his son. The simplest of the series in terms of wording, ID 1785, occurs on a base, probably from Delos, with Dionysios’s own personal dedication to the gods of the fatherland. This is a prominent level of patronage, reminiscent of other families that celebrated their affiliations to specific gods at Delos, such as the Pyrrhakidai (to the Tritopatores and the Nymphs) and Stesilaos himself (to Aphrodite).

Internationalism and Cult The inclusion of the gods of the fatherland on the base of the statue of Aphrodite, Pan, and Eros as well as its location in the Établissement prompts the question of whether Dionysios’s dedication can be considered cultic. Havelock drew attention to the statue’s display in a supposedly private sector of the “house,” away from the designated cult chapels, and believed that the statue was the first rearticulation of the famed stance of the Knidian Aphrodite. As such, the statue not only attests to the appreciation of Aphrodite on Delos in general but is an early attestation of the appreciation of the Knidian type, and may, indeed, have been cultic.37 However, the function of the room where the statue originally stood (i.e. the upper level of N) is debatable. The Établissement had a public aspect inasmuch as it was a major player on the international commercial scene.38 None of the rooms are hidden, and it is hard to believe

 Havelock 1995, 57 and n. 5, delineating her sources, which do not include the initial and critical publication by Ch. Picard of 1921. On the cult spaces of the Établissement and the statue and base of the goddess Roma, see Trümper 2002.  Rauh 1993, 29.

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that the quality of the furnishings of Room N were not known—they may, in fact, have attracted an audience. Dionysios’s gift, as Havelock points out, was not only “devout” but also smart: “To paraphrase [Alfred] Laumonier, the decorative component as opposed to the religious function of these Delian objects might be differently quantified according to the degree of culture of the owner, but even in this late Hellenistic period, which was one of skepticism, neither one nor the other can be excluded.”39 Unpacking plurality, one of the themes of the original 2019 Congress on Lemnos, is exactly what we are dealing with in this statue group. It can be admired on multiple counts: its composition and workmanship, its clever narrative, its context influenced by its donor, its donor’s ethnicity and history of dedications at the Établissement (the very building that housed the sculpture), and the divinities themselves, Aphrodite above all. The visual quotation of the Knidian Aphrodite prototype, this time joined with Eros, as the goddess was at her birth, will have held powerful religious resonance to the knowledgeable viewer. Aside from the Phoenician connections that have been suggested with the goddess Balaat via the sandal,40 the birth of Aphrodite on Cyprus already puts the goddess in the Eastern orbit, and Cyprus is far closer to Berytos than is Delos. Pan is likewise a famously multi-layered god. In this statue group, Pan’s eyes are wideset and admiring, and his smile, with firmly closed lips, is genuine.41 The back of the sculpture, as we have seen, tells a different narrative about the protagonists than does the front, a transformation and unexpected metamorphosis that is a worthy theme for a cult statue. The Knidian Aphrodite of c. 340 BCE fulfilled its destiny as a cult statue even though its original commissioners deplored it. A ground-breaking cult statue designed some 200–250 years later should look different as well. Rosenzweig points out the ways that Aphrodite’s power differs from the powers of other gods. In the Lysistrata, for example, Aphrodite, who never appears, is invoked together with Eros and Peitho (Persuasion), both arousing and simultaneously holding off the husbands until peace is achieved.42 The great altar of Aphrodite Hegemone from the Athenian Agora, dated to the third century BCE, attests not only to her affiliation with Peitho but also to the Demos and the Charities, and to her strong civic role.43 Aphrodite’s two principal aspects, Pandemos and Ourania, are not polar opposites but intertwine with an internal unity. The goddess has the “power to unite disparate realms” (like Pan himself) and Eros is part of that unifying force.44 I  Havelock 1995, 107.  Havelock 1995, 56, n. 3 for a fragmentary hand of Aphrodite holding a sandal from Samos.  Contra Havelock 1995, 56, who described Pan as a “grinning beast and the picture of lust” (although she also described him, in something of a contradiction, as “good-humored and nonviolent”).  Rosenzweig 2004, 11.  Parker 1996, 268, 272–273. Although I was not able to include a detail of the altar of Aphrodite Hegemone and its stoikhedon inscription in the article (see Havelook 1995, fig. 14), the altar adds a significant dimension to the discussion, as does the inscription honoring Aphrodite Pandemos from Rhenia, presented by Zozi Papadopoulou of the Greek Ministry at the 2019 Lemnos Congress.  Rosenzweig 2004, 78.

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would here again mention the Alexandrine tomb paintings featuring Aphrodite and Eros bringing about the rape of Persephone and the sorrow of Demeter and the Earth itself; yet the redemption, also made possible by Persephone’s role as Queen of the Underworld, would hold greatest weight in the hybrid societies of Alexandria or Delos.

Cultural Hybrids Not unlike Alexandria, Delos is totally in tune with this sophisticated mixing of religious and commercial interests.45 As the patroness of those magistrates that affect and effect the entire trade environment on Delos and the Mediterranean at large, Aphrodite embodies this fluidity. To quote Hadjidakis: On Delos, as at Cnidos, Aphrodite was worshiped as Euploia, i.e., she who gives ships fair voyages. She was worshiped by Syrian and other Levantine inhabitants of the island as Agne Aphrodite, Astarte Palestrini, Urania Aphrodite, Isis Aphrodite Dicaea, Isis Soteira Astarte Aphrodite Euploia.46

The phenomenon of Aphrodite’s worship at Delos is subtle despite the piling on of epithets, something like the island itself, seen and unseen, provocatively international and internal in her appeal, shoreless and inexhaustible. The Aphrodite, Pan, and Eros sculpture from the Établissement of the Poseidoniastai manifests this complexity. There is an irony in the range of responses the statue has elicited. R.R.R. Smith, in enumerating the categories of Hellenistic sculpture represented at Delos, writes, “There are good examples from most of the major categories . . . and some Dionysian sculpture, including a famously disliked erotic group of Aphrodite and Pan;”47 Havelock countered, “The expressive content of the group is of utmost importance. It has never elicited praise,” which she follows with the unattributed quotation, “Insensitive in quality and overpoweringly vulgar.”48 Bruneau expresses his feelings with these words: Nous ne saurons jamais ce que ce Bérytien avait en tëte en dédiant cette mise en cene statuaire d’un sujet si exceptionnel. Mais elle ne me semble pas détonner dans l’imagerie héllenistique où se décèle le goût d’une sorte de mythologie non seulement domestique, mais même burlesque.49

Despite these views, it is remarkable that the editors of one of the most respected survey textbooks of art history, Janson’s History of Art: The Western Tradition, admit that

    

Rauh 1993, v. Hadjidakis 2003, 307. Smith 1991, 242. Havelock 1995, 55. Bruneau 1995, 62.

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this sculptural group could have been a cult image: “Still, it is unclear whether the sculptural group was a cult image or a decorative piece.”50

Assessments Both the sculpture and the dedicatory inscription by Dionysios, son of Zenon, in the Établissement of the Poseidoniastai of Berytos on Delos are most fortunately preserved; both are needed to make a final determination as to the monument’s and the space’s cultic status. We can guess what was in the mind of Dionysios: through the sculpture and through the inscription he tells different stories about the purpose of his dedication. The statue is a hybrid, presenting multiple aspects (including marriage) of the great goddess of Delos and of the trade community in recognizably Greek terms. Written in Greek, the inscription itself is nevertheless broader in its ethnicity. The gods to whom the statue is dedicated are not Aphrodite, Pan, and Eros but the ancestral, patriarchal gods of Berytos, modern day Beirut. The inscription could easily have been in Phoenician or bilingual—there are numerous Phoenician inscriptions on Delos. The dedication could have been set stoikhedon, whether rectified or offset,51 especially since Lines 1 and 2 are equal in their letter count and could furthermore have maintained the principle of word-end, which clearly was required. But stoikhedon, that most Greek of displays, was not chosen. Dionysios’ inscription achieves its visual purpose by exploiting the serifs in a Greek alphabetic display, asserting his ethnicity and that of his family through the ornamental text of the inscription. Perhaps the most striking letterforms to compare in this respect are the two taus in ton teknon, the genitive plural referring to his children at the beginning of Line 3. The first tau is standard, although amply serifed at the left and right ends of the horizontal crossbar as well as at the foot and with a straight horizontal. On the second tau, the horizontal crossbar bar is extremely wide and not at all straight, dipping on the left and rising on the right like a flourish. The serifs of this second tau are massive. Whether Dionysios ordered this flourish or whether it happened at the hand of the cutter cannot be determined, but the taus stand on the stone and make Line 3 the most dynamic line of the inscription in its ductus for these reasons. In the end, it may be observed that Room N is on symmetrical axis with the cistern court and its cardinal inscriptions. The north end of Room N shares the south end of the court’s wall at midpoint. This, in my opinion, goes beyond calling Room N a salle d’honneur. It arguably qualifies as a cult space of its own. Aphrodite, Pan, and Eros can best be understood as the cult statue defining that space. Equal partner with

 Davies et al. 2016, 159 and fig. 5.75. The symposiast potential of the sculptural group could also be explored, similar to homoerotic scenes discussed in Pollini 1999.  Butz 2010.

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the statue, the inscription of Dionysios articulates brilliantly the themes of family, metamorphosis, and Hellenistic internationalism in this absolute, one-of-a-kind work.

Bibliography Bonato, Lucie / Yiakoumis, Haris (2005). Mykonos et Délos à l’aube du XXe siècle. Paris. Bruneau, Philippe (1995). “Deliaca (X),” BCH 119, 35–62. Bruneau, Philippe / Ducat, Jean, eds. (2005). Guide de Délos, 4th ed. Paris. Butz, Patricia (1990). “The Relief of C. Popillius Salvius and Calpurnia Nice,” in: Roman Portraiture: Images of Character and Virtue, Los Angeles, 36–37. Butz, Patricia (2010). The Art of the Hekatompedon Inscription and the Birth of the Stoikhedon Style. Monumenta Graeca et Romana 16. Leiden. Butz, Patricia (2018). “Review: Resurrection in Alexandria: The Painted Greco-Roman Tombs of Kom al-Shuqata,” Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections 20, 71–74. Davies, Penelope / Denny, Walter B. / Hofrichter, Frima Fox / Jacobs, Joseph / Roberts, Anna M. / Simon, David L. (2016). Janson’s History of Art: The Western Tradition. Boston. Guimier-Sorbets, Anne-Marie / Pelle, André / Seif el-Din, Mervat (2017). Resurrection in Alexandria: The Painted Greco-Roman Tombs of Kom al-Shuqafa. Cairo. Hadjidakis, Panayiotis (2003). Delos. Athens. Havelock, Christine Mitchell (1995). The Aphrodite of Knidos and Her Successors: A Historical Review of the Female Nude in Greek Art. Ann Arbor, MI. Laumonier, Alfred (1956). Les figurines de terre cuite. EAD XXIII. Marcadé, Jean (2005). “III. La sculpture héllenistique,” in: Ph. Bruneau and J. Ducat (eds.), Guide de Delos, 4th ed., Paris, 101–113. Parker, Robert (1996). Athenian Religion: A History. Oxford. Picard, Charles (1921). EAD VI, L’Établissement des Poseidoniastes de Bérytos. Paris. Pollini, John (1999). “The Warren Cup: Homoerotic Love and Symposial Rhetoric,” The Art Bulletin 81, 21–52. Rauh, Nicholas K. (1993). The Sacred Bonds of Commerce: Religion, Economy, and Trade Society at Roman Hellenistic Delos. Amsterdam. Ridgway, Brunilde Sismondo (2000). Hellenistic Sculpture II: The Styles of ca. 200–100 B.C. Madison, WI. Rosenzweig, Rachel (2004). Worshipping Aphrodite: Art and Cult in Classical Athens. Ann Arbor, MI. Siard, Hélène (2007). “L’ Hydeion du Sarapieion C de Délos: la divinization de l’eau dans un sanctuaire isiaque,” in: L. Bricault, M.-J. Versluys, and P.G. Meyboom (eds.), Nile into Tiber. Egypt in the Roman World: Proceedings of the IIIrd International Conference of Isis Studies (Leiden 2005), Amsterdam, 417–447. Smith, R. R. R. (1991). Hellenistic Sculpture: A Handbook. London. Trümper, Monika (2002). “Das Sanktuarium des ‘Établissment des Poseidoniastes de Bérytos’ in Delos. Zur Baugeschichte eines griechischen Vereinsheiligtums,” BCH 126, 265–330.

Dyfri Williams

The Judgement of Orestes and the Agamemnonidae: Some Observations on Transmission and Transformation in Roman Art This essay is offered to John Pollini in recognition of his scholarship and in gratitude for his friendship and encouragement. Our paths overlapped in connection with the so-called Warren Cup, a remarkable Roman silver cantharus with homoerotic scenes.1 Here I follow up on that academic intersection to examine two Roman silver cups that display one and the same mythological theme. We begin with the famous, ovoid-shaped silver cantharus found in the harbor area of ancient Antium in 1759 and now in the Corsini collection in Rome (Fig. 1).2 The subject of the relief scene was first identified in 1767 by J.J. Winckelmann as the “Iudicium Orestis,” the Judgement of Orestes, in which Athena cast her vote on the Areopagus of Athens to free Orestes from his blood-guilt and the Furies.3 He linked it with Pliny’s mention (HN 33.156) that a silversmith named Zopyrus made two scyphi showing the Areopagitae and the Judgement of Orestes, valued at 1,200,000 sestertii. Pliny does not make clear whether the two cups had different scenes—the members of Areopagus council on one, the Judgement on the other—or how such elements were combined on two similar cups.4 He does, however, seem to place Zopyrus in a group of other artists, beginning with Pasiteles, roughly in the time of Pompey the Great and thus perhaps in the third quarter or middle of the first century BCE.5

 Pollini 1999; Williams 2003 and 2015.  Rome, Palazzo Corsini inv. No. 671: Hafner 1958; De Luca 1976, 127–132, no. 73, pls. 106–109. More recent discussions: Froning 1980, 332–334; Knoepfler 1993, 100; Moret 1997, 263–266; Oliver 2004, 20–21; Bielfeldt 2007, 151–152; Tiverios 2017 (with a different interpretation). Entries in LIMC, s.v. Aletes no. 3 (E. Simon), Erinyes no. 75 (H. Sarian), Erigone II no. 5 (R.M. Gais), Athena/Minerva no. 389 (F. Canciani), Elektra I no. 76 (I. McPhee), Orestes no. 64 (V. Machaira).  Winckelmann 1767, 203–207, esp. 203, with pl. 151.  For discussion Moret 1997, 263–264.  Dating cf. Moret 1997, 263 with n. 206. Pasiteles: DNO V, 154–159, nos 3749–3755; note his cup commissioned by Q. Roscius Gallus, died 62 BCE (Cic., Div. 1.79). Acknowledgements: I am very grateful to a number of friends and colleagues for help with information and images, especially Simon Aaron (London), Elena Dmitrieva (London), Cécile Evers (Brussels), Ittai Gradel (Rudkøbing), Guntram Koch (Marburg), Daria Lanzuolo (Rome), Natacha Massar (Brussels), Anastasia Mikiliaeva (St. Petersburg), Kate Morton (London), Olga Novoseltseva (St. Petersburg), and Georg Plattner (Vienna). Finally, I should like to thank most warmly ‘my editor,’ Dr. Sarah Yeomans, for both her patience and her enthusiasm. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111182919-009

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Fig. 1: Silver cantharus; late first century BCE—early first century CE. Rome, Palazzo Corsini inv. 671. Photo: DAI Neg. 31.1159, courtesy of the DAI Rome.

A second cantharus of the same shape and with the same scenes as the Corsini vase has been known for some years in a London private collection, but has not been fully fully published (Figs. 2a–f).6 Although its findspot is not recorded, it is clearly a metropolitan work like the Corsini version. This London cantharus, probably the work of a different craftsman, seems in fact finer than the Corsini vase, richer in scenic elements and with some different iconographic details that, as we shall see, are important for the understanding of both. In the center of one side, as defined by the handles, stands Athena, set in three-quarter view, her feet frontal. Her head is slightly bowed and her right arm (lost, but understandable due to the Corsini cup) was extended to drop the psephos (only the tip is discernible) into a footed but handleless urn set on a three-legged table that stands on a low plinth. The urn has a short neck with a heavy rim and vertical grooving, all originally gilded; there are many slight  Oliver 2004, 20, fig. 28. Simon Aaron kindly provided the following provenience information: “English family private collection, said to have been acquired in 1980 from a Swiss institute which had acquired it in the 1960s.” Attributed by Oliver (2004, 21) to the same hand as the Odysseus cup, Getty 96 AM 57. Also mentioned in Williams 2015, 177; Tiverios 2017, 308.

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(b)

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(c)

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Figs. 2a–f: Silver cantharus; late first century BCE—early first century CE. London private collection. Photos: courtesy of the owner.

traces of gilding on the cantharus. Athena is heavily draped and wears an open-faced crested helmet (without cheekpieces; possibly double-crested). Her left hand is down near her left hip, index and middle fingers extended. There are no clear remains of the goddess’s gorgoneion, only a raised area within the same peculiar, bib-shaped aegis with curled-over edges that occurs on the Corsini vase: it must have been brought out with gilding (there is a clear suggestion of a circular form preserved on

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the aegis on the Corsini cantharus), and, indeed, other representations of the theme with a similarly designed aegis preserve such a gorgoneion.7 On the left, in profile to the right, is a female wearing a fringed sleeveless garment and a wrap tied around her waist with the knot at the back. Her hair seems to be short but with a braid encircling its lower edge. She has a large, unlit torch tucked under her left arm, angled up towards the rim of the vessel, and a leafy branch held low in her right with its leaves below the level of the table set between her and Athena. The woman stands before the wider end of the table, one corner rendered in high relief. Under the table is a second vertically ridged urn, lying on its side. This urn is not visible on the Corsini vase, but it is clear in other representations: it is the akuros urn for the “guilty” votes, and, on the table, is the kurios.8 The young woman may be identified as one of the Furies, just as the corresponding figure on the Corsini cantharus always has been; the torch is a frequent accoutrement of the Furies, along with snakes.9 Behind Athena, seated on a rock, is another female figure, her face seen in threequarter view. She is dressed in a fashion similar to the standing Fury, although her garment is now short-sleeved and her soft shoes or boots can be seen to have a rolledover top; her hair also has a braid tied around her head. She can only be a second Fury.10 This figure on the Corsini vase has regularly been thought to be disconsolate at the loss of the case against Orestes and her new, imposed role as a result of Athena’s casting vote.11 She recalls the description in the Eumenides, “dishonoured, unhappy, deeply angry,” although there is little sense of anger in the representation.12 The leafy branch held by the first Fury, not to be seen on the Corsini cantharus or any of the other preserved examples of the scene, requires explanation. The Corsini vase only preserves a short stick, repeated on some of the other representations, which has been interpreted as the handle of a scourge.13 The London cup, however, clarifies the object’s identity: it was a leafy olive branch complete with small olives (on the Corsini vase these details were presumably rendered with gilding). Such

 E.g. St. Petersburg cameo, inv. ГР-12687 (Hafner 1958, 17, fig. 6; Neverov 1971, 82, no. 36; Knoepfler 1993, 100–101, fig. 87; Moret 1997, pl. 71, fig. 52); Madrid sarcophagus, inv. 2839 (Hafner 1958, 15, fig. 7; Froning 1980, 334, fig. 9; Bielfeldt 2005, 335, no. I 4, pl. 9, 2 ); lost cameo (cast—Hafner 1958, 17, fig. 8; Richter 1955, 94, fig. 268); Vienna lamp, V3059 (Hafner 1958, 27, fig. 16; Knoepfler 1993, 101, fig. 83).  E.g. Madrid sarcophagus (see n. 7); lost cameo (see n. 7); Vienna lamp (see n. 7). Akuros amphoreus: schol. Ar., Eq. 1150; Poll. VIII, 123.  Furies, e.g. Sarian 1986; Ogden 2013, 254–257.  For various mistaken identifications, Hafner 1958, 6.  Cf. Hafner 1958, 6. Ctr. Gauer 1969, 79, “wie aus unruhigem Schlaff erwachend,” but this suggests Delphi.  A., Eu. 780.  E.g. Bielfeldt 2005, 153, encouraged perhaps by Cavaceppi’s restoration of the relief fragment in the Vatican, Cortile Ottagono inv. 1025—Andreae 1998, 210 PS 1; Bielfeldt 2005, 152, fig. 50. For the sole use by a Fury of a whip on sarcophagi see Bielfeldt 2005, no. I.1.

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branches (thalloi) frequently appear in religious processions, although they were also held by suppliants.14 Here we may surely imagine that a freshly cut olive branch, complete with its fruit, has been brought by Orestes as a hiketeria apo tēs hieras elaias for Athena, who has handed it over to the Fury before reaching forward to drop her psephos into the jar. This three-figure group on the “front” of the London cantharus is completed on the right by a tree. It has large broad leaves with pointed ends and large fruit, suggesting perhaps quinces.15 Behind the standing Fury, but beyond the handle, is a second tree set next to a rock, the handle root with its palmette decoration covering the right hand side of the rock (the relief work was done before the handles were added and made no particular accommodation for them): it is a vine with a bunch of grapes. The Corsini cantharus has neither tree, but, instead, has a pillar with a sundial on top beyond the handle behind the seated Fury. Such pillared sundials are known from sanctuaries, including, for example, that on top of an Ionic column in front of the temple of Apollo at Pompeii, but may also have had a particular function in court settings, where the measuring of time was important and thus might here be intended to indicate the Areopagus and its court as much as Athena’s sanctuary.16 The use of framing trees by the maker of the cantharus in London and his interest in the rocky landscape help create the setting of the scene on the Areopagos, itself a large rocky outcrop. The creator of the Corsini vase appears less interested in such natural features and has instead introduced a significant constructed feature, the sundial. Neither craftsman, however, had probably ever seen the Areopagus, even if of Greek origin. Beyond the tree, on the “back” of the London vase, as on the Corsini vessel, are two figures linked by pose and action. On the left, a young man starts to move vigorously forward, a chlamys wrapped round his left arm, his right hand down on his bent right knee. His right foot rests on a rock, a feature not seen on the Corsini vase but one that is included in other versions.17 He seems driven to action by Athena’s vote on the other side. Behind him is a woman with billowing cloak and hands joined in front of her left breast. Her right leg is bent and she seems drawn forward like the young man, although not perhaps so forcefully. Her right foot is pointed down beyond a small rock and is perhaps to be thought of as pushing against it. Behind the woman and at the right-hand end of the scene on the London cantharus is first a vertical shaft-monument or stele and then a youth facing away to the

 Cf. Plut. Thes. 18, 1. For an earlier representation of such branches being handed to Athena cf. Ferrara, inv. 3031 (T 579): BAPD 207095. On supplicant boughs see Naiden 2006, 56–57, and 7 for Orestes in Athens. For another Fury (named Teisiphone) with a branch, this time at Delphi and in a window, see Trendall 1987, 245, no. 971, pl. 150.  The same type of tree occurs on the Getty cantharus (see n. 6).  For comments, see De Luca 1976, 130. Sanctuary of Apollo, Pompeii: CIL 10.802 and cf. 831 (Augustan). Zanker 1998, 79–80.  Cf. St. Petersburg cameo (see n. 7); Beirut sarcophagus (see n. 63).

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right. He has a cloak over his left forearm and bunched over his left shoulder. His right hand is bent up, with thumb and forefinger coming together in front of his nose and mouth, seemingly a gesture of some emotion, while his left hand appears clenched as if from holding an object. The short, square-sectioned monument of the Corsini version has here become as tall as the youth and now has a decorative moulding at both top and bottom. It also has what may be a decorated and fringed fillet tied around its middle, indicating its funerary nature and hence that of its smaller counterpart on the Corsini vase. Finally, we should note the way that the youth has his heel up against the base of the monument, as on the Corsini cup. For the pair of figures, man and woman, most scholars have turned to the linked individuals involved in the story, especially Electra with Orestes (or Pylades), but also Erigone (daughter of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus) with Aletes (son of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus) or Perilaus (a cousin of Clytemnestra), who will have come to Athens to bring their case against Orestes.18 Others, however, have considered the pair as either non-specific witnesses or personifications.19 In the case of the solitary youth by the pillar, he is most often seen as Orestes, although some have argued for the accuser Aletes or Perilaos.20 A number of elements, however, seem to combine together to offer a different wholistic reading that does not allow the placement of handles to inhibit our understanding. The solitary youth standing immediately behind the Fury with the suppliant’s olive branch closely observes the action of Athena that is to determine Orestes’ fate. This youth is surely Orestes. His left hand is empty; it presumably once held the olive branch. Furthermore, the gesture of his right hand in front of his mouth might even have had a particular meaning beyond the obvious one of anxiety or surprise. Perhaps it was intended to refer more particularly to Orestes’s terrible torment by the Furies, his mania. We might think of disorders such as dermatophagia and onychophagia driven to a higher level of actual self-mutilation.21 Indeed, the image in Euripides of Orestes with a bloodied mouth as a result of the Furies’ persecution could be connected with such self-harming, rather than suggesting a metaphor of a horse rid-

 Erigone: prosecution of Orestes, Dangel 1995, 326; suicide after Orestes’ acquittal, Etym. Magn. 42 s. v. Aiōra; rescue by Artemis, Hyg., Fab. 122); in general, LIMC iii, s.v. Erigione II, 824–825 (R.M. Gais). Aletes, Hyg., Fab. 122; Perilaus Pausanias viii, 34; Simon 1981 prefers Perilaus as Aletes is not recorded in our literature as having brought the case to the Areopagus, whereas Perilaus (following Pausanias) is; but this does not allow for the existence and content of Hyg. Fab. 122 and Sophocles’s (?) Aleites (=Aletes; attributed by Stobaeus). Note that Simon (1964, 93–94 n. 18) earlier argued for Aegisthus’ ghost beside the stele and Orestes with the ghost of Clytemnestra as the couple.  Non-specific witnesses: Hafner 1958, 7. Personifications: Hafner 1958, 10–11. See also: Gauer 1969, 79–80; De Luca 1976, 130–131.  See discussions in: Hafner 1958, 6–8; Simon 1964, 93–94 n. 18; Gauer 1969, 86; De Luca 1976, 128–131; Moret 1997, 264–265.  For an example of such violent biting in an aggressive context cf. Drummond and McKay 1999.

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den too hard.22 Furthermore, between Megalopolis and Messene, Pausanias recorded seeing a sanctuary of the Maniai (Furies) connected with the madness of Orestes and, not far away, “a mound of earth, of no great size, surmounted by a finger made of stone; the name, indeed, of the mound is the Tomb of the Finger. Here, it is said, Orestes on losing his wits bit off one finger of one of his hands.”23 With this lone youth as the tormented Orestes, it leaves the couple who begin to move forward in the other direction as Erigone with Aletes or Perilaus, spurred into action by Athena’s imminent vote. The funerary nature of the monument that acts as a backdrop to both the solitary youth and the woman of the couple surely alludes to the funerary monument of their mother, Clytemnestra, whom Orestes had killed in revenge for her murder of his father Agamemnon, an act that ultimately led to his presence in Athens as a suppliant and hers as accuser. This monument, in reality back in Argos, very neatly serves double duty for Clytemnestra’s children, whether by Agamemnon or Aegisthus. It also completes the circle of the composition. We can thus see that there is really just one continuous scene, the handles being merely functional rather than mechanisms to divide “front” from “back.” The funerary stele forms the initial narrative focus, the archē, and the voting urn its final dénouement: together they frame the tragic story of Orestes. Orestes has arrived in Athens as a suppliant to Athena and the Athenians, seeking asylia with his olive branch.24 A trial has been arranged on the Areopagus, its rocky outcrop suggested by the large rock in front Orestes, behind which grows a tree, providing shade; the votes have been cast, counted and found to be equal; Athena steps forward to drop her psephos into the kurios jar to ensure Orestes’s acquittal; the akuros jar lies beneath the table, symbolically discarded and overturned. Orestes is watching the process, his pose suggesting derangement, his mother’s tomb, with all its conflicting memories, at his back. The reactions of the two Furies differ: that on the left seems reconciled to the loss of the case against Orestes and to the new role promised by Athena in Aeschylus’s Eumenides. Her torch is unlit and in a sort of “at ease” position, while Orestes’s suppliant’s branch has been accepted and appears below the table, almost as if it has symbolically knocked over the akuros jar. The Fury on the right, however, still indulges in despair at the loss of her old powers. Further on, Aletes/Perilaus reacts aggressively to Athena’s vote, springing forward in, it would seem, outraged protest, while Erigone is shown wringing her hands in anxiety but also beginning to move forward, the memory of her mother’s funerary stele in Argos spurring her on. But there is to be no “overturning” of Athena’s vote, no possibility of a recount; she is the ultimate, supreme judge. A series of very similar representations based on the same scene have been noted on objects ranging from engraved gems and carved cameos to mould-made clay

 E. IT 934–935.  Paus. 8.34.1–3.  Cf. A. Eu. 43.

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Fig. 3: Arretine krater fragment; late first century BCE—early first century CE. Brussels, Royal Museums of Art and History, inv. R 2275. Photo: courtesy of the Royal Museums of Art and History.

lamps to marble reliefs and even free-standing statuettes of marble and bronze. To these we may now add a fragment in Brussels of a grand Arretine pottery crater from the workshop of Ateius, probably dating to between c. 10 BCE and CE 10 (Fig. 3).25 At the ends of the double stirrup handles, set at the junction of wall and offset rim, were heads: a frontal mask of Dionysos in the centre and a three-quarter one of a satyr on the right side are preserved. In the figured zone are parts of two figures. On the left, Athena faces to the left, left hand at hip, right arm outstretched and somewhat bent up at the elbow with an arched wrist. She wears a crested Attic-style helmet, chiton and cloak, with what seem to be traces of a gorgoneion in a bib-like aegis on her chest. In front of her, at knee height, is a curved object with vertical lining, presumably the urn into which she is dropping her vote. Beyond a group of filling ornaments is a male starting to move forward to the left, his right knee raised. His right arm rests along his raised thigh and his left is down by his side, entwined in a cloak. He is the first figure from the “back” of the Corsini and London canthari, our Aletes/Perilaus. Further to the right is the beginning of the maker’s stamp in a rectangular box. This grand crater, of a shape and with a scene seemingly unparalleled in the workshop of Ateius, thus, clearly, shows extracts from the “Iudicium Orestis.”  Brussel, Royal Museums of Art and History, inv. R 2275: gt. ht. 11.5 cms, gt. width 11.0 cm. Cn. Ateius: Porten Palange 2009, 171–221 (chronology 174). Shape: Oxe 1933, no. 117, pl. 27–28 (Louvre 436, M. Perennius Tigranus); Porten Palange 2009, 29 Per a/8 (Phase 3, M. Perennius Bargathes, CE 25–30, see p. 33). Stamp: rectangular with AT (close set) and vertical of E. For dating cf discussion in Williams 2015, 179.

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If we now turn to the other Roman representations of this scene in a variety of media, we might note first the tendency to focus on the core element, Athena’s vote, whether alone at the urn-topped table, with the standing Fury to the left, or with the seated Fury too.26 We even find the reduced scheme of Athena and one Fury on the end panels of two metropolitan sarcophagi of the later second century, the main decoration of which concentrates on the saga of Orestes.27 The details of the Giustiniani end-panel follow those of the London silver cantharus closely: the head and drapery of the Fury, the lower end of her torch, the end of the olive branch in her hand, the akyros urn beneath the table, the pose of Athena and the bib-like form of her aegis with a trace of the gorgoneion (Fig. 4). The Madrid end-panel also has all the same details, but the workmanship is cruder. It should be noted that in the scene on the other end panel of the Giustiniani sarcophagus, which shows the reunion of Iphigenia with Orestes and Pylades in the land of the Taurians, one of the youths, despite his very different pose, has his hand to his mouth in the manner of Orestes on the silver canthari: a sign, it would seem, of his mania.28 One other, much earlier example of this reduced scheme is particularly remarkable, not only for its scale and its location, but also for the manipulation of its participants. This is the re-imaging or re-mixing of the pair of Athena and the compliant Fury on one face of the lowest preserved member of the great Jupiter column in Mainz dedicated to the emperor Nero and currently dated CE 65–67.29 On the right, Athena is in her correct pose and dress, although her aegis has been made more apparent, the mount for her helmet crest more elaborate and her right arm rather more lowered (and a small owl appears behind her legs). Furthermore, her psephos would seem to have become a piece of incense to add to a thymiaterion set on a block. On the left, however, the Fury has been completely transformed; she now stands in three-quarter back view, in classical dress, her torch a cornucopia and her right hand, which held the suppliant branch, supports a rudder, the symbol of the goddess Fortuna. In fact, she is no longer the Fury at the Judgement but is actually depicted in the

 Athena and one Fury: lost cameo (see n. 7); lamps, e.g. Vienna, inv. V3059 (Hafner 1958, 27, fig. 16; Knoepfler 1993, 101, fig. 83). Both Furies: lost fragmentary cameo, once Strozzi (Hafner 1958, 31 n. 3, no. 4). Athena with voting table: lamps, e.g. Olympia (Gauer 1969, 81, fig. 5) and Philadelphia Mus. L64–233 (Amyx 1974, 116, no. 89, fig. 118); engraved gem (helmet, aegis, vessel and table all different; head profile; shield and spear added; is it ancient?), Vienna IXa 42 (Hafner fig. 17; Zwierlein-Diehl 1973, no. 418, pl. 70; Oberleitner 1985, 14, fig. 8; Zwierlein-Diehl 2007, 428, fig. 576). The identification of a number of engraved gems and glass pastes as showing Orestes standing beside a stele (Martini 1971, cat. Nos. 86, 134, 158; Zazoff 1975, no. 318; V. Machaira, LIMC vii, Orestes no.1) seems mistaken, as the fine gem from Amphipolis reveals (Daux 1961, 820 with p. 823, fig. 13).  Rome, Palazzo Giustiniani: Bielfeldt 2005, 334–335, no. I 3, figs. 47 and 63b, and pl. 7. Madrid inv. 2839: Bielfeldt 2005, 335, no. I 4, pls. 8–9. See Koch 1993, 78.  Cf. also Bielfeldt 2005, II.6, pl. 5, 3 and II.9, 13 and 14.  Mainz, Mittelrheinisches Landesmuseum, inv. S. 137 and 157 (lowest rectangular member): Bauchhenß 1984, esp. 3, pl. 2, discussion of source p. 21.

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Fig. 4: Sarcophagus end-panel; second quarter second century CE. Rome, Palazzo Giustiniani. After Robert 1890, pl. 55, no. 156.

pose and dress of Iphigenia among the Taurians as shown on scenes of the recognition between her and Orestes on sarcophagi of the later second century CE.30 This remix demonstrates something of the complexity of images and their wide distribution even by the mid-first century CE.31 What is interesting here is that the two sources for the figures are not random but are drawn from the same nexus of stories, what we might think of as the Agamemnonidae. Two more extended versions also deserve notice. The first is on a fine sardonyx cameo, alluded to above, now in St Petersburg and probably Augustan in date like the silver canthari and Arretine crater, although it could predate them (Fig. 5).32 It shows, from left to right, Athena dropping her psephos into a handleless jar set on a table, Aletes/Perilaus about to surge forward, Erigone with her clasped hands now set under a large olive tree and finally a frontal statue of armed Athena raising her spear (a Palladion) set on a low columnar base. The figure of the seated Fury has been omitted, as on the Arretine fragment in Brussels, but the olive tree and statue of Athena are additions to the scheme seen on the Corsini and London canthari; they presumably

 Bielfeldt 2005, II. 9, 13–15. The altar and incense burner in front of her also echo the vessel regularly found on the ground in front of Iphigenia.  The flight to the ship in the land of the Taurians, as seen on sarcophagi, was also used for provincial grave reliefs: Bielfeldt 2005, 218–221.  St. Petersburg ГР-12687: see above n. 7.

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Fig. 5: Sardonyx cameo; late first century BCE—early first century CE. St. Petersburg, Hermitage, inv. ГР12687. Photo: courtesy of the Hermitage.

reference the goddess’s sanctuary as mentioned in Aeschylus’s Eumenides and in Pausanias’s tour of Athens.33 The omissions and additions to the scheme of the scene on the cameo suggest that it is a pastiche that condensed the narrative while juxtaposing non-contiguous figures with seemingly additional elements. The second early Roman, extended version that should be noted is a fragment of a large marble ara with low relief figures. It probably dates to the early first century CE and is said to have been found on the Esquiline (Fig. 6).34 Here we see the seated mourning Fury in her typical dress and the bent right knee and right arm of the advancing figure of Aletes/Perilaus. Details of the figure of the Fury, however, differ somewhat from those on the silver canthari; her hair is thicker, coarser and cut short, and her right hand rests on top of her forehead instead of lower and in front of her face. The craftsman would seem to be copying but at the same time simplifying details. Nevertheless, there is also, in front of the Fury, a close-wrapped stationary fig-

 A. Eu. 235–243 and 445–446, with 753; Paus. 1.28.5. For Orestes seeking sanctuary at a statue of Athena apparently set on the Areopagus, cf. Berlin 4565: Trendall and Cambitoglou 1978, 12, no. 32; Knoepfler 1993, 104 fig. 90.  Rome, Mus Capitolini, Braccio Nuovo 1719 (ht. 62.3 cm): Hafner 1958, 11, fig. 5; Gauer 1969, 81–82, fig. 7 on 83; Bielfeldt 2005, 152, fig. 51.

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Fig. 6: Marble ara fragment; late first century BCE—early first century CE. Rome, Musei Capitolini, Palazzo Conservatori Museo Nuovo, inv. 1719. Photo: DAI Neg. 37.540, courtesy of the DAI Rome.

ure, head tilted downwards. The long chiton makes it clear that the figure is female, while the drapery enclosing her left shoulder and elbow indicates that she is not Athena but a figure absent from both the silver canthari. She would seem to be closely observing Athena’s vote. We may identify her as Peitho or, perhaps, rather the more significant deity, Dike.35 We should note, however, that there is no preserved scenic element, whether natural or constructed, separating the Fury from the figure of Aletes/Perilaus, as on the canthari; there is only the rock required for the seated Fury. This simplification suggests that the sculptor of the Capitoline relief is unlikely to have added the figure of Dike as part of an attempt to elaborate the scheme on a larger surface. Rather, it encourages us to think that she was indeed part of an “original” composition on which

 Peitho: A. Eu 885. Dike/Iustitia: temple/altar established by Tiberius in CE 13; LIMC III, s.v. Dike, 388–391 (H.A. Shapiro). Hafner (1958, 12) identified the figure as Apollo, Gauer (1969, 81–82) and Simon (1981, 485, Aletes no. 1) as Athena.

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the silversmiths themselves selectively drew, preferring perhaps decorative detail to a character they deemed not immediately essential to the narrative. Alongside such relief sculptures, however, there would seem to have been the creation of a small-scale version fully in the round consisting solely of Athena dropping her vote into the urn, a type known to us from three statuettes, one of marble, two of bronze. The marble example is in Athens and is perhaps of the early second century CE rather than the first century.36 It reveals not only the pose and drapery of the Athena of our canthari but also a very similar treatment of the gorgoneion and the bib-like aegis with its edges beginning to curl over. The back of the figure is only roughly delineated, presumably because the model used was not fully three-dimensional. The flattened ovoid base of this Athens statuette has room to Athena’s right for a further element, which one might well imagine to be the voting table and urn (without the Fury), unless it was merely intended to protect her outstretched hand.37 This extremely abbreviated scheme recurs on a number of lamps and on a large, engraved carnelian, all of the first century CE.38 Of the two smaller bronze statuettes, one is in Besançon, the other in Vienna.39 The Besançon example has little connection with the Athena of the silver canthari; she has no aegis and has very different drapery, but in the goddess’s hand is preserved her psephos. The Vienna bronze statuette, however, is of the same pattern as the Athens marble statuette and clearly connected with the silver canthari (Fig. 7). It is currently attributed to a 16th-century Italian workshop, but form and details suggest that it might be ancient. From this survey, let us return to the two scyphi made by Zopyrus. If we admit their former existence, to which Pliny’s valuation (perhaps taken from Marcus Terentius Varro, 116–27 BCE) adds verisimilitude, and that our silver canthari derive from them, what were Zopyrus’s possible sources, visual or literary, and under what circumstances did he create these works of art? One answer as to his visual source might be that he himself simply drew on an earlier vessel or pair of vessels, real “antiqui” or “pocula archetypa” as mentioned by Pliny and Martial, created by greatly admired masters like Mentor or his Hellenistic successors.40 Another solution might be that Zopyrus was specifically commissioned to produce such a scene because it had a  Athens NM 3279 (ht. 52.8cms.): Gauer 1969, 76–79, figs. 1–3; Ghedini 1983, fig. 19. Bielfeldt 2005, 150 n. 393 prefers not to identify the type.  Ctr. Gauer 1969, 77 and 81: he oddly misreads what Athena holds on the Mainz Jupiter column (see n. 31) and would reconstruct the Athena statuette with a phiale.  Cf n. 26 above.  Besançon, coll. Montbéliard, Mus. Du Chateau 896.2; Gauer 80 n. 17; LIMC Athena/Minerva no. 395, pl. 811. Vienna VI418: Sacken 1871, 33–34, pl. 10, 3 (ht. 11.5cm); Planiscig 1924, no. 127 (judged 16th century, now Kunstkammer, inv. 7340).  Plin. HN 33.53; 33.55; 7.39. Mart. 14.93 and 8.34. Mentor: DNO iii, 509–510, no. 2370 (the date of the first half of the fourth century BCE may be incorrect, if the fire was a later one than that of 356 BCE; the temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline was destroyed in the fire of 83 BCE).

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Fig. 7: Bronze statuette; first century CE. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. VI418 (Kunstkammer inv. 7340). Photo: courtesy of the Kunsthistorische Museum.

particular significance for the commissioner.41 Given the immense respect in which the Areopagus was held by the Romans, one might imagine a wealthy Roman jurist or lawyer in such a role.42 One might almost even think of M. Tullius Cicero (106–43 BCE), whose brother Quintus (102–43 BCE) actually wrote some four tragedies, Greek in style and subject, including an Electra and an Erigona.43 If, instead, we were to imagine a more political motive, although equally personal, we might contemplate the possibility that the commissioner was someone keen to secure justification and pardon for the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE as the Second Triumvirate sought revenge on the “Liberatores”—Minerva would judge him justified in killing a tyrant. A somewhat similar suggestion, centering instead on Octavian, was made by Tonio Hölscher, who argued that Caesar’s heir and avenger made early and brief use

 Cf. discussion in Williams 2015, 184. For personal motivation cf. the case of the actor Q. Roscius Gallus, who had a cup made for him recording an episode from his childhood—see above n. 5.  Roman respect for the Areopagus: cf. Oliver 1983, 53–55.  Cic. QF 3.5.7.

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of Orestes as a self-representational and legitimizing persona.44 Hölscher’s arguments, however, were based on dubious evidence for Octavian’s interest in the hero, while, very oddly, he did not even mention the Zopyrus scyphus with Minerva’s release of Orestes from his revenge killings.45 Even such special commissions no doubt required the craftsmen to look for inspiration to either or both visual/material and literary/aural sources. A particular visual source for the scene on the Corsini cantharus was long held by scholars to have been a lost, late Classical painting by Timanthes.46 The connection was based purely on a supposed similarity in emotional intensity between the figure of Orestes on the Corsini cup and the description given by Pliny of a painting by Timanthes of the “Sacrifice of Iphigenia,” in which Agamemnon hid his tears in his cloak while Iphigenia stood at the altar. The theme of the Sacrifice is, in fact, well-known in Roman art, from many representations in a wide variety of media. None, however, corroborate the priority of Timanthes’s painting, while Agamemnon’s reaction had, of course, already been imagined in Euripides’s Iphigeneia in Aulis.47 Nevertheless, the impact of Classical and Hellenistic art, whether through metal-work or paintings, was clearly enormous, but so too was the Roman fascination with fifth-century Greek tragedians and their Roman successors, especially Marcus Pacuvius (c. 220–130 BCE) and his successor Lucius Accius (170–80 BCE). Pacuvius wrote a Dulorestes and a Chryses, Accius an Agamemnonidae and an Erigona.48 In the case of the Judgement, it is clear that the scenes in Roman art in no way present the on-stage action created in our one preserved Greek drama, Aeschylus’s Eumenides. There, votes are cast by the Areopagitae, they are counted, a tie is proclaimed and Athena asserts that this must mean that the accused is acquitted. We may perhaps conclude that later versions of the story had a particular impact on the craftsmen. One of these may be reflected in Cicero’s defense of his friend Milo in 52 BCE: “he, who for the sake of avenging his father had killed his mother, when the opinions of men varied, was acquitted not only by the voices of the

 Hölscher 1990. Cf. more recently Koch Piettre 2009, 240–243 (bones of Orestes) and 256–257 (statue): she does not mention Hölscher’s article, or the silver cups.  Hölscher relied on a statue mentioned in Paus. 2.17.3, which is better understood differently: Blanck 1969, 19 and 23 and Keesling 2010. He also relied on the report of the moving of the bones of Orestes to Rome, but the source is really the much later Servius on Verg. Aen. 2.116, which is wrongly attributed to the Augustan Hyg. Fab. 261. Hölscher’s arguments have been accepted by Smith 2013, 248 with n. 108, and 302, but surely it is the Apollo-Augustus connection that is in the mind of the designer of the group of reliefs before Sebasteion South Portico Room 11, as he specifically added the seated figure of the god.  Hafner 1958, 18 and 23–30. Timanthes: DNO ii, 800–809, esp. no. 1 (800–805).  E. IT 1559.  Pacuvius: Schierl 2006, esp. 192–239 (Chryses frr.), 240–279 (Dulorestes frr.; note also 6–8 for a possible Orestes) and 57–61 (on the reception of Pacuvius and other playwrights from the later first century BCE until end of first CE); Manuwald 2011, 209–216. Accius: Dangel 1995; Manuwald 2011, 216–225.

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gods, but even by the very wisest goddess.”49 It could even have been one of his brother’s dramas. It is very difficult to identify the influence of such Roman drama because of the gaps in our knowledge of both the works of Greek tragedians and those of their Roman successors. We can see how representations of some of the episodes suggest reliance on Euripides, while others point to Aeschylus, but there are sometimes notable deviations that we may perhaps attribute to Roman sources. In the case of the Taurian adventure initiated by Apollo, the capture of Orestes and Pylades by the Taurians, following one of Orestes’s manic episodes, Iphigenia’s eventual recognition of her brother, an audience with king Thoas, and finally the trio’s escape with the cultstatue of Artemis are all Euripidean episodes that appear not only on several secondcentury sarcophagi but are also reflected, with differences, on a small bronze calyxkrater from Dionysopolis now in Varna.50 On this vessel, we see on the left of one side Iphigenia dictating her letter home to the freed Pylades as Orestes, still bound, stands with his back to the action; to the right, Orestes is being led away bound, either to be purified before sacrifice, as on a relief from a funerary structure at Sens, or perhaps to an audience with King Thoas in the manner of some sarcophagi.51 On the other side, after some apparent confusion among the Taurians (this area is damaged), Orestes and Pylades are shown in their ship, together with a seated and hooded Iphigenia, while Apollo intervenes to stop Thoas and his band.52 Sarcophagi and the bronze vessel thus reveal a version of the story that appears at variance at several points with Euripides, who has, for example, the letter written earlier by a captive and Athena, not Apollo, as divine intercessor.53 The pose of Iphigenia in the ship and the focus on Apollo require explanation. Significantly, they recur on the splendid, calyx-shaped silver cantharus in the British Museum that depicts the final episode of the Taurian adventure set on the island of

 Cic. Mil. 3.8.  Sarcophagi: Bielfeldt 2005, II.1–3, 5, and 13–14. Varna krater: Froning 1980, 334–336 with fig. 10; Schindler 1980; LIMC Iphigenia 725–726, no. 85 (P. Linant de Bellefonds); Bielfeldt 2005, 183, fig. 57. For the manic episode cf. E. IT 307–308. Note also the scene on the reused capital from West Sussex (identified by M. Henig): Black et al. 2012.  Sens, Mus. Municipale inv. 98–99–100: LIMC s.v. Iphigenia no. 74, pl. 475; Bielfeldt 2005, 181–182, fig. 56. Cf. also the scene and sequence on Bielfeldt 2005, II.9. For the purification cf. E. IT 622, and a Herculaneum fresco (LIMC s.v. Iphigenia no. 73). Thoas audience: Bielfeldt 2005, II.13–14. Cf. also fresco from House of the Citharist, Pompeii (I.4.25), Naples Mus. Naz. 9111: LIMC s.v. Iphigenia no. 59, pl. 476.  For Apollo’s role cf. sarcophagus lid fr., Bielfeldt I.18, pl. 13, 3.  Cf. Froning 1980, 335. Letter written earlier by a captive: E. IT 585. Cf. images of her holding it out to Pylades and Orestes: Bielfeldt 2005, II.13 and 14 and I.8/II.8 (end panel: LIMC s.v. Iphigenia no. 57, pl. 473).

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Sminthe/Chryse.54 This episode is only recorded among Hyginus’s Fabulae and so presumably featured either in the lost Sophoclean Chryse (with links perhaps to his lost Iphigenia) or indeed in the second-century BCE version by the Roman dramatist Marcus Pacuvius (c. 220–130 BCE). This source or combination of sources may also be responsible for the deviations from Euripides in the earlier Taurian episode.55 On the British Museum cantharus Iphigenia is clutching the diminutive statue of Taurian Artemis while her covered head points to what seems a hopeless situation that will see Chryses, the young priest of Apollo, hand her and her companions over to Thoas, until, that is, Chryseis tugs at the hair on the back of her son’s neck and reveals their identities and his own connection to them. This remarkable scene, with its action spinning right around the vase is also found, with all the same details, on Arretine pottery from the workshops of both M. Rasinius and Cn. Ateius.56 It is not, however, yet known among later second century sarcophagi, which seem content with the adventure in the land of the Taurians itself—indeed the Sminthe/Chryse episode may have been an “add-on” conceived by a Roman dramatist to honor Apollo and bring his involvement full circle.57 We have seen that one visual version of an episode or sequence of episodes may reflect elements of an Aeschylean or Euripidean plot, while also sometimes containing “new” features that probably reflect the impact of Roman fusions and re-imaginings. In addition, we should observe how sometimes figures can echo or match others set in different scenes, what we might call “image-migration,” a good example of which is the figure of Aletes/Perilaus being used in recognition scenes for Orestes/Pylades.58 A primary method of transmission, especially for smaller scale objects, was the use of plaster positives made from clay moulds, seemingly called mnemosuna (records), which must have been created (at least in the case of the moulds) in the original craftsman’s workshop before hand-over or sale of his finished work: accessing them later would, no doubt, have been very difficult.59 Such plaster positives will have en-

 London, British Museum, 1960,0201.1: Corbett and Strong 1961; Haynes 1961. For the identity of the islands of Sminthe and Chryse, see Haynes 1961, 32 (noting App. Mith. 9.77); it would seem that on Sminthe/Chryse there was a cult of Apollo that included Philoctetes; cf. also Harrison 1989.  Hyg. Fab. 120 (exit from Taurian lands with statue) and Fab .121 (arrival on Sminthe the home of Chryse, priest of Apollo, pursuit by Thoas); see now Cropp 2021, 399–403. Pacuvius: Schierl 2006, 192–239 (Chryses frr.).  Arretine versions: Rasinus, see Porten Palange 2009, 148–149 (with Komb Ras 1 on pl. 69). Note also oinochoe fr., Alexandria Museum, inv. 24056: Froning 1980, 337, fig. 14; Porten Palange 2009, 149 with n. 1010. By Cn. Ateius, Porten Palalange 2009, 191–192.  Note similarities between Orestes gripping the sacred tree on the silver vessel and his apparent holding of a branch of a tree at Delphi: Bielfeldt 2005, I.2–11, esp. I.3 and 10.  See Gauer 1969, 85–86, (notes Robert 1890, nos. 155, 156a, 167a and b, 172, 177 and 178).  Plaster positives: Richter 1958; Froning 1980, 337–341; Vnukov et al. 1990; Menninger 1996, esp. 206; Ghedini 1997, 833–834; Frederiksen 2010; Landwehr 2010. On methods of and ideas about transmission in general, see e.g. Froning 1980; Koch 1993, 53–55; Ghedini 1997; Reinhardt 2019.

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abled the creation of abbreviated or re-arranged versions as well as image-migration. They were clearly also put to use by craftsmen working in other media on a similar scale. To enable the scaling up or down of an image, however, drawing the image out on a flat surface would have been required, presumably on a cheap and easily alterable surface such as a waxed or whitened board. Subsequent transferal onto papyrus will have enabled a wider dispersal both through space and across time. Craftsmen were clearly skilled in transforming images into drawings and back into threedimensional forms—this was, after all, the key process in relief carving.60 Perhaps in this way we can explain the transfer, for example, of the figure of Athena voting between cameo, pottery lamp, silver vessel, statuette and sarcophagus, as well as her migration to sarcophagus scenes centering on Prometheus.61 In conclusion, we might look at one final, mid-second century representation of the Judgement created through the agency of such “memoria materializzata” (as Salvatore Settis has called them) some 150 or more years after the creation of the Zopyran-inspired Corsini and London canthari.62 On a sarcophagus of Attic type found in Berytus we see four figures completely and carefully transmitted from the Corsini/ London canthari (Fig. 8).63 On the right-hand half of the front panel appear the figures of the Fury seated on a rock (her chin now resting on her hand in contemplation rather than on her head in despair), a tree (as on the London cantharus), Aletes/Perilaus with Erigone, and, on the far right, Orestes (but without a funerary monument between him and Erigone). Although the source of these figures has long been recognized, the iconography of the scene as a whole is disputed, with most recent scholars setting it in the Underworld as a second, unrecorded (and unnecessary) trial of Orestes.64 The center of the scene on the Beirut sarcophagus, however, seems to suggest that the whole was actually intended for the trial of Orestes on the Areopagus. In Euri For comments on the methods of Roman two-dimensional artists see Clark 2010 and 2021; for marble relief work, Birk 2012, esp. 21–25. Cf. also Ghedini 1997, 834–835.  For the Judgement of Athena on three Prometheus sarcophagi see Gauer 1969, 81 (Robert 1919, nos. 351, 352 and 355).  Settis 2006, 35.  Beirut, National Museum: Hafner 1958, 15–17 with 19, figs. 9–10; Froning 1980, 331–332, fig. 7; Koch and Sichtermann 1982, 417–418, fig. 436; Simon 1981, ol. 368; Oakley 2011, 56–59 with fig. 4, and 98–99, pls. 60, fig. 1, 62–63 and 64, figs. 1–4, with pl. 59, 2 (lid); Tiverios 2017, 309–311, with fig. 6; Strocka 2017, 372–374, with pl. 64, 2.  Simon (1981, 485)—judgement of Orestes in the Underworld, after his death (Minos seated left of the table, Rhadamanthys standing frontally behind the table, Aiakos seated on a rock on the right and the figures to the right as Orestes, Erigone and Aletes with his back to the events); cf. Oakley 2011, 56–59. Only Strocka (2017, 372–374) denies this and reads it as a version of the Judgement. The trial at Argos on a sarcophagus: Thesaloniki P 116: Koch and Sichtermann 1982, 418, fig. 437; StefanidouTiveriou 1998; Strocka 2017, 369–372. Pylades, it seems to me, stands beyond the vessel-topped pillar observing things before reporting to Orestes, who is shown weak from the Furies’ attacks and supported by Electra: cf. Eu. Or. 730.

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Fig. 8: Marble sarcophagus; early second-quarter second century CE. Beirut, National Museum. Photo: courtesy of Guntram Koch.

pides’ Iphigenia in Tauris, Orestes describes how he “took one of the seats and the eldest Fury the other” and “spoke and heard arguments on the murder of my mother.”65 On the sarcophagus, Orestes is seated on what is surely a stone seat and holds a scroll in his left hand as he gestures with his right over the urn.66 He is clearly not depositing a psephos, but seems to be making his defence as he holds his deposition. The Fury seated opposite him listens and considers her response, chin in hand. If we continue with this possible interpretation, we might identify the woman with her hand on the back of his chair as Dike.67 The central, frontal bearded figure, between Orestes and the Fury, could be intended for the presiding officer, the Archon Basileus, who supervised the presentation of petitions to the court.68 The frontal, full-bearded figure behind Dike, who wears a short chiton and holds a sword in its scabbard, may then be Ares, without helmet or other armor but with the sword of justice, his foot resting symbolically on a miniaturized version of his Hill where his court held juris-

 E. IT 962–964. The word bathra can mean base or dais, but also seats in the Boulē, cf. Lys. 13.37.  Strocka (2017, 373–374) sees him as Apollo.  Simon (1981, 485) identifies her as Dike; Strocka (2017, 374) sees her as the personification of the Hill of the Nymphs.  On the role of the Archon Basileus: Ath. Pol. 57.4. Strocka (2017, 374) sees him as a representative Areopagite.

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diction over homicides, a court originally set up by Zeus to cleanse Ares’s own bloodguilt.69 If this reading of the figures is correct, the sarcophagus would seem to present an interesting pastiche that inevitably brings to mind Zopyrus’ pair of scyphi and the question posed at the beginning of this paper as to whether they depicted two different scenes or just one with minor differences. The sarcophagus has combined the human, reactive part of the final judgment on the Corsini and London canthari with part of a scene representing the pleading of Orestes and his cross-examination in the presence of the gods, including Ares and Dike. In such a Zopyran court scene Apollo will most probably also have appeared, since he was in a sense both a co-defendant and a witness. One might even wonder then if, among other elements, the Palladion and olive tree seen on the Hermitage cameo might similarly have found a place, thus indicating that the cameo might also be a pastiche of both original scyphi.70

Abbreviations BAPD DNO LIMC CIL

Beazley Archive Pottery Database Der Neue Overbeck, Berlin/Boston (2014) Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, Zurich etc. (1981–1999 and 2009) Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, Berlin (1893- ongoing)

Bibliography Amyx, Darryl A. (1974). Echoes from Olympus: reflections of divinity in small-scale classical art. Berkeley. Andreae, Bernard, ed. (1998). Bildkatalog der Skulpturen des Vatikanisches Museums II: Museo Pio Clementino. Cortile Ottagono. Berlin. Bauchhenß, Gerhard (1984). Die große Iuppitersäule aus Mainz (CSIR Deutschland II, 2: Germania Superior). Mainz. Bielfeldt, Ruth (2005). Orestes auf römischen Sarkophagen, Berlin. (Also available at https://www.academia. edu/2091040/Orestes_auf_r%C3%B6mischen_Sarkophagen_Berlin_2005 [accessed 8 February 2024]). Birk, Stine (2012). “Carving sarcophagi: Roman sculptural workshops and their organization,” in: T.M. Kristensen and B. Poulsen (eds.), Ateliers and Artisans in Roman Art and Archaeology (JRA Supplement 92), Portsmouth, RI, 13–37. Black, Ernest / Edgar, Jon / Hayward, Kevin M. J. / Henig, Martin (2012). “A New Sculpture of Iphigenia in Tauris,” Britannia 43, 243–249. Blanck, Horst (1969). Wiederwendung alter Statue also Ehrendenkmäler bei Griechen und Römern. Rome.

 The murder of Hilarrothius, son of Poseidon: Dem. 23.66. Hafner (1958, 16) saw the figure as Ianitor Orci, Oakley (2011, 57) as Hades and Strocka (2017, 374) as Ares.  Moret 1997, 264 also wondered if the shrine on the St. Petersburg cameo might have come from the second scyphus.

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Clark, John R. (2010). “Model-book, Outline-book, Figure-book: New Observations on the Creation of NearExact Copies in Romano-Campanian Painting,” in: I. Bragantini (ed.), Atti del X Congresso Internazionale dell’AIPMA (Associazione Internazionale per la Pittura Murale Antica, Naples, 17–21 September 2007; Annali di Archeologia e Storia Antica, 18, 1), Naples, 203–214. Clark, John R. (2021). “How did Roman wall-painters work?,” in: M. Grimaldi (ed.), The Painters of Pompeii: Roman Frescoes from the National Archaeological Museum Naples, exhibition catalogue. Rome, 48–55. Corbett, Peter E. / Strong, Donald E. (1961). “Three Roman Silver Cups,” BMQ 23, 68–86. Cropp, Martin J. (2021). Minor Greek Tragedians II. Liverpool. Dangel, Jacqueline (1995). Accius. Oeuvres (fragments). Paris. Daux, Georges (1961). “Chronique des fouilles 1960,” BCH 85, 601–953. De Luca, Gioia (1976). I Monumenti antichi di Palazzo Corsini in Roma. Rome. Drummond, John R. / McKay, Gavin S. (1999). “Biting off more than you can chew: a forensic case report,” British Dental Journal 187.9, 466. Frederiksen, Rune (2010). “Plaster Casts in Antiquity”, in: R. Frederiksen and M. Eckart (eds.), Plaster Casts. Making, Collecting and Displaying from Classical Antiquity to the Present, Berlin, 13–33. Froning, Heide (1980). “Die ikonographische Tradition der kaiserzeitlichen mythologischen Sarkophagreliefs,” JDI 95, 322–41. Gauer, Werner (1969). “Eine Athenastatuette des Athener Nationalsmuseums: Zum ‘Iudicum Orestis,’” AA, 76–88. Ghedini, Francesca (1983). “Il gruppo di Atena e Poseidon sull’Acropoli di Atene,” RdA 7, 12–36. Ghedini, Francesca (1997). “Transmissione delle Iconografie: Grecia e mondo romano,” Enciclopedia dell’arte antica, classica e orientale, 2 Suppl. V, Rome, 825–837. Hafner, German (1958). Iudicium Orestis. Klassisches und klassizistisches (BWPr 113). Berlin. Harrison, Stephen J. (1989). “Sophocles and the Cult of Philoctetes,” JHS 109, 173–175. Haynes, Sybille (1961). “Drei neue Silberbecher im British Museum,” AK 4, 30–36. Hölscher, Tonio (1990). “Augustus and Orestes,” Études et Travaux 15 (Travaux du Centre d’Archéologie Méditerranéenne de l’Académie Polonaise des Sciences, 30), 163–168. Keesling, Catherine (2010). “The Hellenistic and Roman Afterlives of Dedications on the Athenian Akropolis,” in: R. Krumeich and C. Witschel (eds.), Die Akropolis von Athen im Hellenismus und in der römischen Kaiserzeit, Internationales Kolloquium vom 16. Bis 17. Juni 2006 in Bonn, Wiesbaden, 303–327. Knoepfler, Denis (1993). Les imagiers de l’Orestie: Mille ans d’art antique autour d’un mythe grec. Kilchberg. Koch, Guntram / Sichtermann, Hellmut (1982). Römische Sarkophage (HdArch 3). Munich. Koch, Guntram (1993). Sarkophage der römischen Zeit. Darmstadt. Koch Piettre, Renée (2009). “Oreste, un héros grec dans la religion romaine,” in: C. Batsch and M. Vârtejanu-Joubert (eds.), Manières de penser dans l’Antiquité méditerranéenne et orientale. Mélanges offerts à Francis Schmidt par ses élèves, ses collègues et ses amis, Leiden, 239–268. Landwehr, Christa (2010). “The Baiae Casts and the Uniqueness of Roman Copies,” in: R. Frederiksen and E. Marchand (eds.), Plaster Casts. Making, Collecting and Displaying from Classical Antiquity to the Present, Berlin, 35–46. Manuwald, Gesine (2011). Roman Republican Theatre. Cambridge. Martini, Wolfram (1971). Die Etruskische Ringsteinglyptik. Heidelberg. Menninger, Michael (1996). Untersuchungen zu den Gläsern und Gipsabgüssen aus dem Fund von Begram/ Afghanistan. Würzburg. Moret, Jean-Marc (1997). Les pierres gravées antiques représentant le rapt du Palladion. Mainz. Naiden, Fred S. (2006). Ancient Supplication. Oxford. Neverov, Oleg (1971). Antique Cameos in the Hermitage Collection. Leningrad. Oakley, John H. (2011). Die attischen Sarkophage. Andere Mythen (ASR 9, 1,3). Berlin. Oberleitner, Wolfgang (1985). Geschnittene Steine: Die Prunkkameen der Wiener Antikensammlung. Vienna. Ogden, Daniel (2013). Drakōn: Dragon Myth and Serpent Cult in the Greek and Roman Worlds. Oxford.

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Oliver, Andrew (2004). “The Changing Fashions of Roman Silver,” Record of the Art Museum, Princeton 63, 2–27. Oliver, James H. (1983). The Civic Tradition and Roman Athens. Baltimore. Oxe, August (1933). Arretinische Reliefgefässe vom Rhein (Materialien zur römisch-germanisch Keramik, Heft 5). Frankfurt a.M. Planiscig, Leo (1924). Die Bronzeplastiken. Statuetten, Reliefs, Geräte und Plaketten. Vienna. Pollini, John (1999). “The Warren Cup: Homoerotic Love and Symposial Rhetoric in Silver,” Art Bulletin 81, 21–52. Porten Palange, Francesca P. (2009). Die Werkstätten der arretinischen Reliefkeramik. Mainz. Richter, Gisela M. A. (1955). Ancient Italy. Ann Arbor, MI. Richter, Gisela M. A. (1958). “Ancient Plaster Casts of Greek Metalware,” AJA 62, 369–377. Reinhardt, Arne (2019). Reproduktion und Bild. Zur Wiederholung und Vervielfältigung von Reliefs in römischer Zeit. Wiesbaden. Robert, Carl (1890). Die Antiken Sarkophagreliefs. Mythologische Zyklen (ASR 2). Berlin. Robert, Carl (1919). Die Antiken Sarcophagreliefs. Einzelmythen. Niobiden bis Triptolemos (ASR 3, 3). Berlin. Sacken, Eduard von (1871). Die antiken Bronzen des K.K. Münz- und Antiken-Cabinetes in Wien I: Die figuralischen Bildwerke classischer Kunst. Vienna. Sarian, Haiganuch (1986). “Erinyes,” LIMC III, 825–843. Schierl, Petra (2006). Die Tragödien des Pacuvius. Berlin. Schindler, Wolfgang (1980). “Allegorie der Iulia Augusti als Iphigenie auf dem Bronze-Krater in Varna,” Klio 62, 99–110. Settis, Salvatore (2006). “Il Papiro di Artemidoro: un libro di bottega e la storia dell’arte Antica,” in: C. Gallazzi and S. Settis (eds.), Le tre vite del Papiro di Artemidoro, Voci e sguardi dell’Egitto grecoromano, exhibition catalogue, Milan, 20–65. Simon, Erika (1964). “Die Wiedergewinnung der Helena,” AK 7, 91–95. Simon, Erika (1981). “Aletes,” LIMC I, 485–486. Smith, Roland (“Bert”) R. R. (2013). The Marble Reliefs from the Julio-Claudian Sebasteion. Aphrodisias, 6. Mainz. Stefanidou-Tiveriou, Theodosia (1998). “Iphigenie in Aulis. Ein neuer Mythos im Repertoire Der attischen Sarkophage,” in: G. Koch (ed.), Akten des Symposiums “125 Jahre Sarkophag-Corpus”, Mainz, 216–239. Strocka, Volker M. (2017). “Zwei Orestes-Sarkophage,” in: H. Schwarzer and H.-H. Nieswandt (eds.), “Man kann es sich nich prächtig genug vorstellen!” Festschrift für Dieter Salzmann zum 65. Geburtstag, I, Marsberg, 369–376. Tiverios, Michaelis (2017). “Ē mania tou Aiantos kai ē nikē ‘tēs apatēs epi tēs aretēs’. Ē coppa Corsini kai ē sarkophagos tou ‘Katō Kosmou’ stē Bēruto,” in: E. Voutiras, E. Papagianni, and N. Kazakidi (eds.), Bonae Gratiae Essays in Honour of Professor Theodosia Stephanidou-Tiveriou, Thessaloniki, 307–323. Trendall, A. Dale / Cambitoglou, Alexander (1978). The Red-Figured Vases of Apulia, I: Early and Middle Apulian. Oxford. Trendall, A. Dale (1987). The Red-figured Vases of Paestum. London. Vnukov, Serguei Ju. / Sergey A. Kovalenko / Treister, Mikhail Ju. (1990). “Moulages en plâtre de Kara-Tobe (Crimée),” RA, 27–50. Williams, Dyfri (2003). The Warren Cup. London. Williams, Dyfri (2015). “A Cantharus from ancient Betar near Jerusalem (the so-called Warren Cup) and Roman Silver Plate,” BABESCH 90, 155–198. Winckelmann, Johann J. (1767). Monumenti Antichi Inediti, 2. Rome. Zanker, Paul (1998). Pompeii, Public and Private Life. Cambridge, MA. Zazoff, Peter, ed. (1975). Antike Gemmen in Deutschen Sammlungen, IV: Hannover und Hamburg. Wiesbaden. Zwierlein-Diehl, Erika (1973). Die antiken Gemmen des Kunsthistorischen Museums in Wien I. Vienna. Zwierlein-Diehl, Erika (2007). Antike Gemmen und ihr Nachleben. Berlin.

Carol C. Mattusch

Amazons at Herculaneum According to legend, Amazons were the first to seek asylum in the Temple of Artemis at Ephesos. Statues of them in that temple are the subject of an anecdote told by Pliny, who associates them with some of the most famous bronze artists of the Classical period. Whether the story of a contest is true or not has been of less interest to scholars than the debate over who made which of the several types represented in about 100 large-scale standing statues and parts of statues that are today recognized as Amazons. All of them appear to be Roman in date, and almost all of them are carved from marble, not cast in bronze. Many of these Amazons are wounded, though the wounds are not all in the same place. Most of the marbles have supports, whether they were needed or not, because they contribute to the notion of wounded Amazons. This paper addresses questions raised by the marble head of an Amazon discovered in the Villa dei Papiri in 1997, and by a second head of the same type discovered in Herculaneum’s so-called Basilica Noniana in 2006. Was she a “wounded” Amazon, or was this another unwounded Amazon by Polykleitos? Can we learn anything further about the local popularity of marble Amazons from the plaster casts found at Baia? What can we deduce about bronze reproductions of the heads of Polykleitan statues from the Villa dei Papiri? How did a collector decide on bronze versus marble statues?

Introduction The recent discovery of two marble heads of Amazons, one at the Villa dei Papiri and one in Herculaneum, provides an excellent opportunity to revisit questions raised by Pliny’s account of the famous Amazons of Ephesos. Long ago, Brunilde Ridgway assigned a paper-topic to my undergraduate class on Greek sculpture, in which we were supposed to write about Pliny the Elder’s account of the famous fifth-century BCE competition for the best statue of an Amazon (HN 34.53–54). Needless to say, it was all about Pliny and about matching his text with the several distinct types of Amazons known from Roman marble sculptures. None of us was able to untangle the threads of that story. As I began to prepare this topic again, I searched for my undergraduate paper in vain, hoping that scholars had learned much more on this topic during the intervening years. I remember how difficult it was to follow the reasoning of any number of scholars who had been debating for years the question of which Roman type copied which Greek original, basing their evidence primarily upon Pliny, who lived five centuries after the competition which he describes and who mentions only that the statues represented Amazons, not that they were wounded. The first time around, I never wondered what he could have known, being so far removed from the https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111182919-010

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event and from the statues. All I could take for granted was that the “originals” were bronzes, because they appear in Pliny’s book 34, which is about bronzes. When first reading that book, many of us thought that there was a single “Greek bronze original,” but that notion has been set aside in light of discoveries of bronze multiples and the recognition that ancient bronzes were reproducible.

Amazons at Ephesos In literature, Amazons are closely connected with Ephesos. In the third century BCE, Kallimachos writes that Amazons set up an image honoring Artemis beside an oak tree at Ephesos and danced around it in full armor, and that later a large shrine was built there to house the statue (Hymn 3 to Artemis, 240ff.). The same story had apparently been mentioned by Pindar in the fifth century BCE, and, six centuries later, Pausanias believed that Pindar was mistaken to think that the Temple was founded by the Amazons on their way to invade Athens (Pausanias 7.2.6), where they were defeated by Theseus. Pausanias believed that the Amazons sacrificed to Artemis at the temple, but that her sanctuary had been in that location for a long time. They also sacrificed there when they fled from Herakles, who had taken the girdle/belt of their queen Hippolyta. Some Amazons had sought asylum and sacrificed there in still earlier times, when they were fleeing Dionysos. Pausanias firmly believed that Amazons did not found the sanctuary, saying that was accomplished by Koresos and Ephesos. Whatever the case, the association of Amazons with Ephesos was well established. The warlike Amazons were immensely popular at all periods among both Greeks and Romans. Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic, Greco-Roman, archaizing, and classicizing Amazons appear in paintings, sculptures, and reliefs, battling from horseback, on foot in hand-to-hand combat, wounded, dying, or lying dead.1 They are usually portrayed as horsewomen wearing a short tunic, one breast bared, often armed with bow and arrow or spear. When they chose to have children, they trained the girls for war and made the boys into slaves. A recently discovered over-life-size marble head of an Amazon from the Villa dei Papiri (SAP 80499) is the second Amazon in the corpus of sculpture from that Villa (Fig. 1), the first being a bronze herm-head. A marble Amazon’s head of the same type as the marble from the Villa was also recently excavated in the town of Herculaneum (Fig. 2). Both marble heads raise interesting questions about the production of sculpture in the Roman world (Figs. 1, 2).

 Tyrrell 1989; Bol 1998.

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Fig. 1: Marble Head of Sciarra Amazon type from Villa dei Papiri. Herculaneum, Antiquarium, inv. SAP 80499. With permission of the Parco Archeologico di Ercolano.

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Fig. 2: Marble Head of Sciarra Amazon type from Basilica Noniana. Herculaneum, Antiquarium, inv. SAP 87021. With permission of the Parco Archeologico di Ercolano.

Pliny’s Five Amazons Given the Amazons’ close association with Artemis and with Ephesos, there must have been numerous statues of Amazons installed there. Pliny the Elder tells his story about Amazons (HN 34.53–54) after listing chronologically the most famous Greek bronze artists who worked from the 83rd Olympiad (448–445 BCE) to the 121st Olympiad (295–292 BCE). He reports that five fifth-century artists made statues of Amazons that were set up in the Temple of Artemis at Ephesos and that they had competed with one another. The artists were asked to vote for the statue that they thought was the best one, and of course each one voted for his own work. They all gave second place, however, to the Amazon by Polykleitos (90th Olympiad, 420–417 BCE), who thus became the winner. Next came Pheidias (83rd Olympiad, 448–445 BCE), third was Kresilas, who does not appear in Pliny’s introductory list of famous artists but who may be the artist named Ktesilaos whom Pliny mentions later as having made a wounded Amazon (HN 34.75). Pliny places Kydon next, who is also not on his previous list, and

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it may be that Kydon was meant to be Kydonia where Kresilas was born, and fifth comes Phradmon (90th Olympiad, 420–417 BCE, or later).2 If we assume that there was an actual competition, and that it was represented by five bronze statues of Amazons in the temple of Artemis or in the sanctuary, could all the artists have been present at once and voted, given that some flourished in the 83rd Olympiad with others in the 90th? Surely each of the designers would have known about the other Amazons and the famous artists who had designed them. Pliny dates Pheidias as working twenty-eight years before the others, but is his chronology accurate? Is the story even true? Maybe Pliny was just listing the statues that were in the temple, possibly in the order in which they stood—Polykleitos, Pheidias, Kresilas, Kydon, Phradmon. Were they lined up? Did the statues all stand on a single base? Could they all have been part of a single enterprise, as Pliny implies? Were those bronze Amazons still in place in Pliny’s day, five hundred years after their production? Whether they were or not, molds had likely been made of them and taken to Roman workshops for reproduction. This was common practice in a world where sculpture was a major industry. At least one hundred statues and fragments of standing Amazons have been cataloged, all Roman in date, and most of them made of marble.3 At most, five types of Amazons have been identified, conveniently matching the number of bronze statues that Pliny counts in the Temple of Artemis at Ephesos: three of those types are wounded. The statues of Amazons are usually a little over life-size; their hair is parted in the middle and rolled up behind; and their facial features are difficult to distinguish. The freestanding figures wear a tunic; they have one weight-bearing leg and one free leg, one raised arm, the other arm used for support. Many have one bare breast, some have two. Their attributes may include a bow, quiver, battle-axe, or crescent-shaped shield and a tree trunk or a pillar. These, as well as major portions of arms and legs, tend to be restorations, many of them misleading. More to the point, Amazons are often restored as leaning on a spear. Two types are wounded in the side, one in the leg, leading scholars to categorize a wound as one of the features characteristic of Pliny’s five Amazons. Other Amazons are not wounded, however, nor does Pliny say that the statues in the Temple of Artemis at Ephesos represented wounded Amazons. So: what did Pliny’s five Amazons look like? Scholars debate who made which “original” version of each statue, and date each one variously between the middle of the fifth century BCE and the late first century BCE. As Andrew Stewart has remarked: “Faithfulness to the original took second place to the copyists’ own notions of decor and the period style of their own time.”4

 Brunilde S. Ridgway disagrees with Pliny’s story on the grounds of style: she dates the major types to the fifth century (Capitoline type), the fourth century (Mattei type), and the first century BCE (Lansdowne and Doria-Pamphili): Ridgway 1974, 1–17; Ridgway 2004, with updates, 71–110, 750–753.  See Bol 1998.  Stewart 1990, 262.

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The so-called Capitoline or Sosikles type of Amazon wears a cloak over a tunic, the right shoulder and breast are bare, and she looks down at a wound under the right breast, holding her tunic away from the wound with her left hand (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3: Capitoline or Sosikles Amazon. Rome, Musei Capitolini, inv. MC0651. With permission of the Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali, Rome.

Her right arm is raised in a gesture of apparent dismay. On the example in the Capitoline Museum, a tree-trunk support is prominently inscribed with the name of Sosikles, the Greek who carved the statue. The extensive restorations include most of the right arm and hand, as well as the left forearm and hand. The left arm may be accurately restored, but the figure is more likely to have once been grasping a spear in the right hand. This type of Amazon is what scholars find to be distinctly Polykleitan in style. The styles of the other Amazons are far more difficult to interpret, making chronology controversial and attribution next to impossible. A narrow bit of cloth crosses the right shoulder of the so-called Lansdowne or Sciarra Amazon, the tunic falling in graceful catenary folds below both bare breasts (Fig. 4). There is a wound on the right side next to the breast. The right foot bears her weight; the left forearm rests on a support. The Mattei Amazon has a left thigh-wound in most but not all cases. Her tunic bares her left breast, and both hands grasp a spear, the right arm crossing above her

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Fig. 4: Lansdowne or Sciarra Amazon. Lower legs, feet, and part of right arm restored. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 32.11.4. Photo: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

head. Doria Pamphili has her tunic fully in place, neither breast bared, but one arm up and the other forearm resting on something. This may in fact be Artemis, rather than an Amazon. Finally, a young woman from Ephesos wearing a tunic and a kneelength cloak raises her left arm, probably to hold a spear, her right forearm extended forwards from the elbow. Three of these Amazon-types are bare-breasted and wounded, two on the right side of the chest, the third on the left thigh. The few that retain their heads appear to look down at the wound or simply to incline the head as if in exhaustion. In most cases, however, heads are missing. Modern restorations complicate matters, for the concept of what an Amazon should look like was often more important than what the original pose and attributes might have been. Restored arms, hands, legs, and feet make it very difficult to imagine what any of these statues once looked like. And struts, regular components of Roman marbles, are rarely known in ancient bronzes. A restorer’s addition of a spear might seem reasonable to modern viewers, whereas there is little or no evidence for bow, quiver, battle-axe, shield, or dog, additions which have become integral to the modern view of Amazons and are hard to disregard.5 In fact, scholars tend to forget that there were other types  For a detailed study of wounded Amazons, see Bol 1998.

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of Amazons besides those that are associated with Ephesos. Lucian especially liked the Amazon leaning on a spear which he said that Pheidias had made, but he does not mention that the primary version of that statue was in Ephesos, or that there were other types as well which did not hark back to one of the statues at Ephesos. Which statue did he like? Pliny, the primary source of our scholarly confusion on this subject, mentions a fifth-century bronze Amazon with beautiful legs (euknemon) made by Strongylion, which Nero carried around with him (HN 34.48, 34.82). Brunilde Ridgway joined the fray in the 1980s, arguing against a contest and proposing “that the Roman period could produce first-rate works of high artistic value after the manner of classical Greek masters,” dating some Amazons to the early first century CE. “These works were not necessarily true copies or even variants of Greek prototypes, but new originals which did not pedantically quote, but paraphrased and, as it were, translated into a new idiom, the styles of the major Greek sculptors.”6 This brings to mind the widespread Roman preference for marble over bronze. Contrary to traditional scholarly beliefs, marble sculpture was much more expensive to produce than bronze. Bronzes could be produced in quantity, depending on the commissions; marbles were always produced one at a time. Once an artist delivered his model to a stone-carving workshop, or once a workshop had molds of a wellknown statue, mold-makers copied the model, stone was bought and shipped for each copy to be made, measurements were taken, and skilled carvers and detailers were required to produce it. A single life-size work would take at least six months to carve, depending upon how many carvers could work simultaneously and upon the complexity of the job. It is important to remember that the surfaces of those marbles were enlivened by paint. In contrast, an artist “making” a bronze could simply make a model and deliver it to the foundry, where workers molded from it and cast it by the indirect lost wax process, making multiple versions of a model from the same reusable master molds, a purely technical job, with no additional intervention needed by the artist. Alternatively, variations to a model could be introduced through changes made directly in the wax working model that came from molds of the original model. In this way, an artist could produce more than one version of a basic model, rather like a three-dimensional edition of prints. Modern bronze and marble sculpture industries are not so different: carving consumes far more time and requires a high degree of skill; casting ranges from being a technical process of replication to variations introduced in the wax. In addition, different sizes of a work can be produced by measurements taken from the model and by the eye of a skilled artisan.7 Given the widespread familiarity of the Doryphoros by Polykleitos, we can imagine that there were numerous bronze examples of that statue, now lost, in addition to the many marbles that have survived from antiquity until today. The cost of a marble

 Ridgway 1974, 17.  Mattusch 2014; Mattusch 2015b; Mattusch 2018.

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copy, however, would have been far greater than the cost of a bronze. The owners of the Villa dei Papiri collected primarily bronzes, locally made, most of them classicizing in style, plus three portraits, at least two of which represent Romans. No “Greek originals” can be identified. So far as is known, there were far fewer marbles, but among them is a series of paired marble herms, most of which were copies of portraits of famous Greek warriors and intellectuals.8 Bronze herms with the heads of the Doryphoros (MANN 4885) and the Polykleitan Amazon (MANN 4889) are the only matched pair of bronze herms from the Villa: the life-size herms were found where they had been installed, at opposite corners of the large courtyard in the Villa dei Papiri (Figs. 5, 6).9

Fig. 5: Bronze herm with head of so-called Polykleitan Amazon. Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, inv. 4889. Photo: author. With permission of the Ministero della Cultura—Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli.

Fig. 6: Bronze herm with head of Doryphoros by Polykleitos, signed by Apollonios. Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, inv. 4885. Photo: author. With permission of the Ministero della Cultura— Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli.

The Amazon-herm was found on 31 August 1753 in the northwest corner of the colonnade of the Villa’s square courtyard, opposite the bronze herm bearing the head of the Doryphoros (MANN 4885), which had been found on 28 May of the same year in the southwest corner of that courtyard. The head of that herm is turned slightly to its right, as is true of the statues reproducing that famous work, of which there are many examples, including at least three unsigned marbles from the region around the Bay

 The marble of the 23 marbles originally found in the Villa dei Papiri has been variously identified as Pentelic, Parian, or Carrara. See Mattusch 2005, 182–183, and 186–187 fn. 5.  Mattusch 2005, 276–282; Lapatin, 2019, 214, cat. No. 43 (F. Sirano). For a ground plan of the Villa dei Papiri with find spots of sculptures, see Lapatin 2019, 138–140.

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of Naples. The Doryphoros-herm was mounted on a marble post, as was presumably the Amazon. But there are differences: the bronze Doryphoros-herm is conspicuously signed by its maker on the front, “Apollonios the son of Archias, Athenian.” It may seem curious that this herm is identified as the work of the person from whose workshop it came, but that man had credentials: he was a Greek, and an Athenian, which were credentials worthy of advertising.10 Although it is not clear why there is no signature on the Amazon, there is no reason to doubt that this prestigious workshop also cast the Amazon. They are both just over life-size; they have high sloping bases and unusually large bosses. Furthermore, the trace elements in the copper alloys of the two heads are a close enough match to allow us to conclude that they were commissioned and purchased together—two famous fifth-century statues, heads only. We do not know, however, why the Amazon is not signed. In today’s market, a buyer may request a signature, or not. Since these two herms were close to one another in the peristyle of the small courtyard, asking for a signature on one of them would have no doubt satisfied the buyer. Statues of Amazons were popular among local buyers, but which Amazon is this one? She is different from all the others, apart from her standard Amazonian hairstyle, parted severely down the middle and rolled up tightly at the nape of the neck, confirming that she is an Amazon. The head turns slightly to its right, but it is upright, not down-turned as if to examine a wound in the manner of many other Amazons. Her heavy immobile features confirm that she is what we call “Polykleitan” in style. Could she be a reproduction of another Amazon by Polykleitos, one that was not wounded? The owner of the Villa dei Papiri must have been a devoted philhellene, considering his many bronzes, which were preferred in Greece, rather than the more expensive marbles, which were purchased by many Romans and which were well within reach of the owner of this villa.11 Many of the bronzes in the Villa followed the Roman fashion, being heads only, and not full statues, like the bronze herms with the heads of Greeks derived from portrait-statues that also decorated the square courtyard. The heads of the Doryphoros and the Amazon, after famous Polykleitan statues, complemented one another.

 Members of the same family may be represented on a base from the Theater of Dionysos in Athens signed by Archias of Marathon, the son of Apollonios, and on one from the Bouleuterion in Athens signed by Apollonios of Marathon, the son of Archias. See Overbeck 1868, nos. 2216 and 2218.  For recent discussions of the likely owner of the Villa dei Papiri, see Fish 2019, 5–9; Mattusch 2010; Sider 2005.

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The Plasters from Baia In 1954, at Baia on the Gulf of Pozzuoli, several hundred fragments of plaster casts were found in an undated dump beneath the Baths of Sosandra. The plasters had evidently come from a Roman workshop in which reproductions of antique Greek statues were produced, some of which are represented by marbles from the region, all of high quality. The workshop has not been found. The casts, or the molds for them, were imported from wherever the molds had been taken, and marbles were then produced in Baia for wealthy clients in the region.12 Lucian confirms the practice of molding from statues in the second century CE. He writes satirically about living statues, in particular an Archaic bronze statue of Hermes in the Athenian Agora, who complains about being covered with pitch13 from all the molds being taken from him for use by sculptors. They cover his torso, front and back, and the molds that they take look like a cuirass, one piece for the front, the other for the back (Lucian Zeus Tragoidos 32–33). Such molds were taken to Roman workshops for the production of positive plaster casts and subsequently copied in marble or bronze. By the 1980s, Christa von Hees-Landwehr had matched up fragmentary plaster casts from the dump at Baia with copies of the Tyrannicides, the Doryphoros, the Polykleitan Herakles, a severizing Kore, and a classicizing Aphrodite of the so-called Syon House type. Several examples of the Syon House Aphrodite have been found in the area, all of them made of Pentelic marble from Athens. Two of those Aphrodites were signed by their carvers, “Afrodisios, Athenian,” and Karos Puteanos, also a Greek name. It is likely that marbles were carved at Baia for Augustus, who redesigned the architecture on the nearby acropolis of Rione Terra at Pozzuoli, where marbles of two or more of the statue-types known from Baia were found in 2002, one of them being the Syon House Aphrodite.14 According to Landwehr, the dump at Baia also yielded plaster casts from three different types of standing Amazons, all wounded: four toes and part of the foot of the Polykleitan Amazon (the Sosikles Amazon); the bare breast, forearm, knee, and part of a foot of the Pheidian Amazon (the “Sciarra” Amazon); and two pieces of chiton, part of the right hand, the left calf, and four toes of the right foot of the Amazon by Kresilas (the “Mattei” Amazon). The most easily recognizable of the Baia casts is part of the face of Aristogeiton. Here again Lucian contributes to our knowledge of Roman collections. In his “Lover of Lies,” he mentions a private collection that includes πλάσματα—material that can be modeled—of the Tyrannicides by Kritios and Nesiotes (Lucian Philops. 18). The implication is that a private collection might include not just marbles or bronzes but  See Landwehr 1985, 27–46; Gasparri 2000; Landwehr 2010.  This was probably the agent used to separate molds from the model, or in this case, from the statue of Hermes.  See Valeri 2005.

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also plasters, a respectable medium for reproductions in modern collections as well, both public and private.15 There is to date no evidence of where the actual workshop at Baia was located. It was certainly a prestigious one, but how large was it? Did it produce only marbles? A modern analogy suggests otherwise. During the 1900s, the successful Chiurazzi workshop in Naples billed itself as “Fonderie—Ceramica—Marmeria”: clients chose the medium, the size, and the coloring that they preferred. If they wished, they could buy a bronze copy of a marble; for the patina, they could choose “Pompei,” “Ercolano,” or “Rinascimento.”16 In antiquity as well, it was the buyer’s choice. A client could choose a work from the showroom—in marble or in bronze—and the proprietor would order the work from one of the adjacent or affiliated studios, marble shops or foundries producing that particular model. And a successful workshop might have had an in-house specialist, a Greek, perhaps one with name-recognition and costing more, to carve in stone or to model in wax the finishing touches of a marble or a bronze that a client had ordered. Pliny refers to bronzes, marbles, and chryselephantine statues by Lysippos, some of them singles, others, such as athletes, produced in multiples. He also mentions the Sikyonian workshop of his brother Lysistratos in connection with both bronze—in his book on metal (metallum: HN 34.61), and plaster (gypsum)—in his book on stone (lapis: HN 35.153). Surely the implication is that the workshop offered clients its products in more than one material. Lysippos made an Apoxyomenos, and his workshop undoubtedly fulfilled requests for the statue more than once. Today, the bronze Apoxyomenos, presumably the one by Lysippos, survives in three examples, and provides a clue to the enormous output—as many as 1500 statues—from his family’s workshop (Plin. HN 34.37).17 Size, alloy, style, and placement suggest that the two bronze herms from the Villa dei Papiri, one representing the head of the Doryphoros and the other that of an Amazon, were made as part of one commission, in a local workshop. Could they too have been produced at Baia, wherever that workshop was? Or were they made in another as-yet undiscovered workshop, one which was closer to Herculaneum? Either way, there were undoubtedly several workshops servicing the extraordinarily wealthy villas near ancient Neapolis, some on the Bay of Naples, others on the Gulf of Pozzuoli. Nor is it surprising that these shops profited from offering clients a wide range of products, as did Chiurazzi, one of numerous modern counterparts in the region.

 See Haskell/Penny 1981.  See Chiurazzi n.d.  See Mattusch 2015b, 110–125 and 271–281, nos. 40–44; Mattusch 2015a, 91–95.

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Newly Discovered Sculptures from the Villa dei Papiri New finds from the Villa dei Papiri include frescoes, furniture, and two exquisitely carved Pentelic marble sculptures, a Peplophoros, and the head of an Amazon from another statue, recognizable from her distinctive hairstyle (Fig. 1). Both are slightly over life-size. They come from the excavations of 1997.18 The marbles were found in a large pavilion on the lowest terrace of the Villa, which was evidently added in the first twenty years of the first century CE. Outside was a swimming pool, and stairs leading down to the shore, where visitors presumably arrived by boat. The building itself was nearly 9 m (29 ft.) wide, with marble veneer on the interior walls. Brick bases faced with marble were found in two corners of the structure, one for the Peplophoros, the other, it seems, for the Amazon. The Peplophoros still has yellow fringe on the peplos and on the light-blue mantle, and a red-to-violet hem; painted sandal straps are lost. Reddish paint is preserved on the hair of the Amazon. In 2006, yet another head from a statue, with precisely the same Amazonian hairstyle was found in Herculaneum, this one in the Basilica Noniana (Fig. 2). It is of the same size and type as the marble from the Villa. Both are Pentelic marble; both heads are turned slightly to the Amazon’s right. The inclination of the second head, however, may be greater, and that head has more color preserved: red hair and eyebrows; brown lashes; and brown/black eyes.19 Their features are more delicate than those of the bronze “Polykleitan” Amazon. They may or may not be related to the famous Amazons from Ephesos. Francesco Sirano proposes that the two heads combine the Polykleitan and Pheidian types. He also suggests that both marble heads were made in the as-yetunlocated workshop at Baia.20 It is easy to conclude that they both come from the same high-end studio, but it is entirely possible that there were plaster models of these and other popular types available from more than one Roman workshop in the area. But surely there were workshops on the Bay of Naples, as well as farther off at Baia on the Gulf of Pozzuoli. Furthermore, the plaster casts in Baia are too fragmentary to determine which types of Amazons these heads represent. After all, the plaster for the Polykleitan Amazon consists only of four toes and part of the foot, and the Pheidian Amazon is represented by the bare breast, forearm, knee, and part of a foot. There are no bits of an Amazon’s head or face. The models themselves may not have

 Peplophoros: PA-Erco 4331/81595. H 1.88 m. From Building VPSO. Head and neck of Amazon: PAErco 4296/80499. H 34 cm. See Lapatin 2019, 212–215, cat. Nos. 42 and 43, with bibliography (F. Sirano).  Pliny writes that colors were imported from Eretria, Melos, Armenia, Tyre, North Africa, and elsewhere, a natural red being iron oxide from Sinope in Pontus, to the east of the Black Sea (HN 35.30).  See Lapatin 2019, 214, cat. no. 43 (F. Sirano); Sirano 2017; Gasparri 2000.

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been specific to the original types, and the carvers catering to the wealthy clientele of coastal Campania were capable of referencing the famous Classical Amazons without actually copying them. An idea can lead to infinite variations on a single theme, and that may well have been the case with these two marble Amazons from Herculaneum. Or were they derived from another fifth-century bronze Amazon? Do they recall not a wounded Amazon, but rather the Amazon with beautiful legs (euknemon) by Strongylion (HN 34.48, 34.82)? Why marble? To produce a marble sculpture could easily take six months or more, for it had to be measured off the plaster model, roughed out in a block of stone, which was often imported marble, carved, finished, and painted, involving perhaps half a dozen skilled artisans, not counting assistants, apprentices, and shipping costs.21 If the workshop was a large one, with a lot of employees, a few marbles could be produced at once, but nothing like the output of multiples that is possible in a bronze foundry. A marble cost more than a bronze to produce, and that is still true today. A marble was more to Roman taste than bronze. These two recent finds, the marble Peplophoros and the Amazon, might have been what visitors saw first when they stepped ashore and entered the pavilion on the lowest terrace of the Villa dei Papiri. Both marbles are exquisitely carved—classical Roman statuary made of imported Pentelic marble. Another Pentelic-marble sculpture greeted guests as they entered the so-called tablinum of the Villa dei Papiri, an armed, attacking, archaistic Athena of the distinctive Panathenaic type.22 Like the Peplophoros and the Amazon, she demonstrates a strong Greek bias on the part of the owner of the Villa. This statue was matched by one like it in central Athens, which can be explained if the Villa’s owner was, as is widely thought, Lucius Calpurnius Piso, who served for two years as proconsul of Achaia (57–55 BCE). During that time, he had traveled widely in that province, and he had left his mark.23 An inscription honored him in Samothrace; and a dedication was installed in Athens in honor of his son, further cementing the family’s ties with Greece. Piso may have paid for both statues of the Panathenaic Athena, or perhaps he saw the one in Athens and chose to order one for himself as a reminder of his two years spent in Greece. Whatever the reason, the Athena in Herculaneum is not carved as skillfully as the one in Athens.24 The ninety-plus sculptures from the Villa dei Papiri are further evidence that the wealthy owner of this vast home, with 65,000 square feet of space in which to entertain, spared no expense on décor. About twenty-five of the sculptures were marble, mostly Pentelic, and primarily images of Hellenistic dynasts, Macedonian generals,

 I am grateful to Raymond Caskey and Harold C. Vogel for discussing these points with me many years ago.  For discussion and location of this statue, see Mattusch 2005 and Lapatin 2019.  See Mattusch 2010.  For further discussion and bibliography, see Mattusch 2007.

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Greek intellectuals, a herm of Athena, as well as the statue duplicating the Panathenaic Athena in Athens, and one Amazon. Why bronze? Why were there sixty-five bronzes—busts, herms, classical athletes, reproductions, portraits of Greeks, animals, and another Amazon? If it was Piso who built the Villa, bronze had been the preferred medium in ancient Greece, and Piso’s décor, along with his Greek library,25 tied him to the Classical past. Never mind that his bronze herms were just the heads of famous statues, not the whole statue, they came from a Greek’s workshop. Let us assume that Piso knew that the designer of the Doryphoros was Polykleitos and not Apollonios, who signed Piso’s Doryphoros. Who knew what the “original” Amazons had looked like? As for the three Amazons from Herculaneum, the marbles that look like a combination of two types, and a bronze herm that looks Polykleitan, should we be looking at them as copies of the Ephesian Amazons, or as references to the popular story about the contest among five great Classical sculptors, updated for Roman buyers? May the two exquisite marbles be derived from another statue altogether, the Amazon by Strongylion, known for her beautiful legs, and beloved by Nero? The questions about Pliny’s five Ephesian Amazons remain unanswered, but the popularity of Amazons, wounded or unwounded, never flagged in the Roman world.

Bibliography Bol, Renate (1998). Amazones Volneratae: Untersuchungen zu den Ephesischen Amazonenstatuen. Mainz. Chiurazzi, Salvatore (n.d.). Chiurazzi: Riproduzioni di opera classiche in bronzo e marmo. Naples. Fish, Jeffrey (2019). “Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus: A Philosophical Statesman of the Late Roman Republic,” in: K. Lapatin (ed.), Buried by Vesuvius, exhibition catalogue. Los Angeles, 5–9. Gasparri, Carlo (2000). “The plaster casts of Baia. The exceptional evidence for an ancient sculptors’ workshop,” in: P. Miniero (ed.), The Archaeological Museum of the Phlegrean Fields in the Castle of Baia, Naples, 33–44. Haskell, Francis / Penny, Nicholas (1981). Taste and the Antique. New Haven. Landwehr, Christa (1985). Die antiken Gipsabgüsse aus Baiae: Griechische Bronzestatuen in Abgüssen Römischer Zeit. Archäologische Forschungen 14. Berlin. Landwehr, Christa (2010). “The Baiae Casts and the Uniqueness of Roman Copies,” in: R. Frederiksen and E. Marchand (eds.), Plaster Casts: Making, Collecting and Displaying from Classical Antiquity to the Present, Berlin, New York, 35–46. Lapatin, Kenneth, ed. (2019). Buried by Vesuvius: The Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum, exhibition catalogue. Los Angeles. Mattusch, Carol C. (2005). The Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum: Life and Afterlife of a Sculpture Collection. Los Angeles. Mattusch, Carol C. (2007). “Athens and Herculaneum: The Case of the Panathenaic Athenas,” in: The Panathenaic Games, Proceedings of an international conference held at the University of Athens, 2004, Olga Palagia and Alkestis Choremi-Spetsieri (eds.), Oxford, 159–164.

 See Sider 2005.

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Mattusch, Carol C. (2010), “L. Calpurnius Piso: Greece and Herculaneum”, in: O. Palagia and B.D. Wescoat (eds.), Samothracian Connections: Essays in honor of James R. McCredie, Oxford, 179–185. Mattusch, Carol C. (2014). Enduring Bronze: Ancient Art, Modern Views. Los Angeles. Mattusch, Carol C. (2015a). “Considering Large Bronzes: Old Finds, New Problems,” in: E. Deschler-Erb and P. Della Casa (eds.), New Research on Ancient Bronzes, Acta of the XVIIIth International Congress on Ancient Bronzes, Zurich Studies in Archaeology 10, 91–95. Mattusch, Carol C. (2015b). “Repeated Images: Beauty with Economy,” in: J.M. Daehner and K. Lapatin (eds.), Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World, Florence and Los Angeles, 110–125. Mattusch, Carol C. (2018). “La tecnica del bronzo in Grecia e l’idea degli ‘originali’” (trans. by Marcello Barbanera), in: M. Serlorenzi, M. Barbanera, and A. Pinelli (eds.), Il classico si fa pop: di scavi, copie e altri pasticci, exhibition catalogue, Rome, 178–187. Overbeck, Johannes Adolf (1868). Die antiken Schriftquellen zur Geschichte der bildenden Künste bei den Griechen. Leipzig. Ridgway, Brunilde S. (1974). “A Story of Five Amazons,” AJA 78, 1–17. Ridgway, Brunilde S. (2004). “A Story of Five Amazons,” in: Second Chance: Greek Sculptural Studies Revisited, London, 71–110, 750–753. Sider, David (2005). The Library of the Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum. Los Angeles. Sirano, Francesco (2017). “Copiare il Greco. La scultura come sistema di ri-creazione/produzione dell’immaginario nell’area del Golfo di Napoli nel 1 secolo d.C.,” in: M. Osanna and C. Rescigno (eds.), Pompei e i Greci, Milan, 253–258. Stewart, Andrew (1990). Greek Sculpture: An Exploration. New Haven. Tyrrell, William Blake (1989). Amazons: A Study in Athenian Mythmaking. Baltimore. Valeri, Claudia (2005). Marmora Phlegraea: Sculture del Rione Terra di Pozzuoli. Rome.

Ambra Spinelli

Spectacle and Society: Mythological Wall Paintings in the Tablinum of Houses at Pompeii and Herculaneum Introduction In a previous study of the mythological frescoes in a large sample of atrium houses at Pompeii and Herculaneum, I challenged the accepted reading of the tablinum’s figurative imagery in terms of social norms and expectations.1 I demonstrated that this room was decorated like many other domestic, civic, religious, and commercial spaces, thus reflecting the presence of a shared Campanian visual culture. Rather than explaining the mythological frescoes on the walls of the tablinum in relation to the room’s supposed social function, I asked why such scenes are found in all kinds of domestic rooms as well as in commercial and civic buildings and what the broader implications of this phenomenon might be. By examining the widespread popularity of mythological narratives across the urban context, I pointed out the role of oral, written, and visual traditions in the promotion of a visual thesaurus familiar to people from all social classes. Such narratives, indeed, were not limited to the elite but were also available to people from all social classes through some sort of schooling, oral discourses, mythological handbooks, and certainly from artifacts, wall paintings, and mosaics, as well as performances in theaters and amphitheaters. In the present study, I continue to explore mythological wall paintings from tablina, in Pompeii and Herculaneum in particular.2 To limit the scope of this paper, I concentrate on the local and performative context in which these mythological frescoes circulated and argue that the increasing passion for contemporary theatrical entertainments, and especially the popularity of pantomime fostered by Augustus and his successors during the Early Empire, might have played an important, if not dominant, role in what I called the “democratization” of mythological narratives in the urban fabric.3 While prior scholarship has been especially interested in discussing the extent to which ancient theater influenced wall paintings (i.e., their styles or icono-

 Spinelli 2022, with extensive bibliography on the tablinum and its decoration in earlier scholarship.  This essay is dedicated to Prof. John Pollini. I am forever indebted to John, who remains my best role model for a scholar, a mentor, and a teacher. His endless support, tireless efforts, and good humor, as well as our broad conversations and loud laughs will stay with me forever. Con tanta stima, riconoscenza ed affetto.  Spinelli 2022, 188–189. While the oral and written traditions would have contributed to the “democratization” of mythological tableaux, I have narrowed the scope of this study to the visual tradition— and especially theatrical entertainments—due to practical limitations. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111182919-011

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graphic motifs),4 my focus is on the role of contemporary theatrical performances in making certain narratives quickly recognizable and appealing to a large audience. In this paper, therefore, I will not discuss how different media may have influenced each other, but I will concentrate on the contribution of the most popular forms of entertainment in the broader dissemination and circulation of mythological subjects in contemporary society. My argument further shows that there is not a special category of decoration for the tablinum, but rather that this space reflects the cultural and performative life of the Vesuvian region.

Entertainments, Myths and the Development of a “Shared” Campanian Visual Culture Mythological images decorate the walls of numerous private and public buildings at Pompeii and Herculaneum. The popularity of scenes portraying mythological figures comes in the so-called Third and Fourth Styles, that is, from the Augustan to the Vespasianic periods. It is, however, the Fourth Style, the one in vogue at the time of the eruption and which developed during the Claudian and Neronian periods that dominates the domestic and public landscape at Pompeii and Herculaneum.5 A central vehicle for the promotion of a mythological visual canon was the ubiquitous presence of various public spectacles in these towns.6 Different forms of popular entertainment very likely contributed to the development and dissemination of this mythological canon derived from epic and classical drama. Mythic narratives, indeed, were performed in a variety of media that were deeply integrated into everyday social and cultural life, from the mythological spectacles staged in the theater to the executions of criminals in the amphitheater, where such punishments were enacted as mythological episodes.7 From Tertullian (Ad nat. 1.10.47; Apol. 15.4–5), for example, we learn of a criminal burnt alive in the role of Hercules, while Martial (Spect. 21) describes the execution of a man in the guise of Orpheus killed by a bear, contrary to the familiar

 The relationship between wall paintings and theater has been the subject of intense debate among modern scholars. On theatrical influence in various styles of wall paintings, and especially in the development of the scaenae frons (stage building) motif, see, among many, Moormann 1983; Cerutti and Richardson 1989; Beacham 1991; Leach 2004, 93–122; and recently Beacham/Denard 2022 (with bibliography). But cf. Ling 1991, 30–31, 77–78; Hales 2008, 240–241. For a discussion of theatrical scenes with masked actors in costumes found in the Vesuvian cities, see Dunbabin 2016, 60–62 (with bibliography).  Hodske 2007; Esposito 2014. For an overview of the Four Styles: Moormann 2018.  Similarly, the megalographies of exotic animals on domestic garden walls at Pompeii might have referred to the contemporary venationes (animal hunts) staged in the amphitheater rather than being based on the paradeisoi (wild animal parks) of Hellenistic rulers: Andreae 1990; Leach 2004, 130–132.  Coleman 1990.

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myth, in which the legendary poet appears to charm wild beasts with his singing and music. As parodies of moral lessons, their deaths were intended as public deterrents and humiliations of offenders while also amusing the spectators and raising capital punishment to a true art form.8 The capital execution of convicted prisoners could have also been staged in the pyrricha, which also brought mythological themes onto the stage and whose presence at Pompeii is attested by a graffito.9 Other popular entertainments in Campania included mimes and Atellan comedies. Mime, which involved a spoken (and usually maskless) performance, brought comic stories to the stage, including mythological plots. Its popularity began during the late Republic and continued into late antiquity.10 Ancient sources report that Sulla greatly encouraged this genre of theater, being particularly benevolent to mimeactors and even composing some Latin satiric comedies (σατυρικαὶ κωμῳδίαι) himself.11 These comic compositions may have been masked Atellanae rather than mimes.12 The Atellan farces (fabulae Atellanae) were a native Italian comic drama that developed outside of Rome and were named after the Oscan town Atella in Campania. Mythological narratives were also frequently parodied in Atellanae, whose popularity began around the 80s BCE and must have continued at least until the second century CE (Juv. 3.173–175, 6.71).13 Besides these forms of theatrical entertainment, pantomime was a dramatic genre that brought on stage characters mostly from Greek epic and classical tragedy and that, like mime, also came to dominate the Roman stage throughout the imperial period. Imperial pantomime was a silent solo dance in which a masked actor performed each of

 See Clarke (2007, 23–26) for description of the “farcical executions” in the amphitheaters and their comic reversal of the myth.  CIL 4.1203; see Coleman 1990, 56. Suetonius (Ner. 12.2), for example, describes the performance of two pyrrichae danced by imported Greek youths on the themes of Pasiphae and of Icarus during the principate of Nero. In the former performance, a bull mounted, “or at least many spectators believed so,” a Pasiphae concealed inside a fake wooden heifer, while in the latter, an actor playing Icarus fell to his death at the feet of Nero, splattering blood on the emperor. On the pyrricha: Sabbatini Tumolesi 1970; Ceccarelli 1998.  On mime: Beacham 1991, 129–140; Csapo/Slater 1995, 369–389; Wiseman 2002; Cicu 2012; and most recently Dunbabin 2016, 114–137 (with further bibliography).  Ath. 6.261C. On the politics and theatrical interest of Sulla and his support of popular comic entertainments: Garton 1972, 141–167; Beacham 1991, 131–133; Garelli 2007, 135–142.  Garton 1972, 146; Garelli 2007, 137, esp. n. 175 (with primary literary evidence).  Beacham 1991, 128–129. Trimalchio, for instance, prefers the Atellanae to other types of comedies, attesting to the continuous popularity of these Italian farces during the Early Empire (Petr. Sat. 53). Literary evidence for the Atellanae is scanty for later periods, but the last performances occurred possibly in the fourth century CE: Arn. Adv. Nat. 7.33.7; Jer. Ep. 52.2. On the Oscan origins of the Atellanae: Liv. 7.2. For the Atellanae in general and their parody of tragic myths: Frassinetti 1953; Trapido 1966; Manuwald 2011, 29, 169–177. Atellan masks made of plaster, as well as a no longer extant painting possibly representing an Atellan scene, were discovered in both domestic and public buildings at Pompeii: Santucci 2013.

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the (male and female) parts accompanied by an orchestra and a choir, which sang the words of a libretto.14 A genre with Greek origins, pantomime was already familiar to Romans at the end of the Republic.15 However, pantomime only developed its canonical Roman form during the principate of Augustus, when two pantomime dancers of Eastern origin—Pylades from Cilicia and Bathyllus from Alexandria—are credited (according to a later tradition) with having introduced into Italy this new genre of entertainment.16 The former favored themes taken from tragedy, the latter from comedy (Sen. Controv. 3 praef. 10). It was, however, the tragic pantomime that dominated the stage throughout the Empire.17 With two stone theaters, Pompeii was able to offer a wide range of theatrical performances and became a prominent center for pantomime during the early imperial period.18 Several graffiti at Pompeii and Herculaneum attest to the presence of traveling pantomime troupes and their rival fan clubs (the Paridiani and the Anicetiani), informing us of the wild popularity of this theatrical genre in contemporary society.19 Indeed, during the first century CE, the passion for pantomime, which appealed to both the lower and upper strata of society, led to a real “pantomania,”20 apparent from theater riots among fans21 to sharp criticisms from moralizing writers.22 It is worth noting that although in 23 CE the emperor Tiberius exiled pantomime perform-

 For basic works on imperial pantomime: Wüst 1949; Rotolo 1957; Jory 1981; Beacham 1991, 140–153; Csapo/Slater 1995, 369–389; Garelli 2007; Hall and Wyles 2008; Webb 2008; Dunbabin 2016, 85–113; and recently Toepfer 2019, 32–423. On the pantomime libretto: Jory 2008.  While various earlier types of mimetic dance existed in the Greek world, the term pantomimos is first attested in a Greek epigraph at Priene from c. 80 BCE (παντόμιμ[ο]ν) and possibly in another inscription of similar date from Delphi: Jory 1981; Garelli 2007, 118–127; Dunbabin 2016, 87, n. 18.  Several later authors attribute the introduction (or “invention”) of imperial pantomime to the Augustan period, e.g., Lucian Salt. 34; Ath. 1.20d-e; Jer. Chron. 247; Macrob. Sat. 2.7.12–19. For an analysis of the primary literary evidence for imperial pantomime: Jory 1981; Jory 2004; Csapo/Slater 1995, 378–385; Garelli 2007, 147–168. On Augustus’ instrumentalization of pantomime for personal and political interests: Garelli 2007, 168–177; Hunt 2008.  Beacham 1991, 142; Jory 2004, 154.  The Large Theater was built in the second century BCE, while the Small Theater (Theatrum Tectum) was erected after Pompeii became a Roman colony around 75 BCE: Sear 2006, 130–132. On the range of entertainments at Pompeii: Parslow 2007.  Franklin 1987; Starks 2008, 130–137; Cooley and Cooley 2014, 99–101.  I use the term employed by Lada-Richards (2008, 285), who remarks how the passion for pantomime continued until late antiquity. The popularity of pantomime among all social classes, especially during the first and second centuries CE, is attested in ancient literary sources, e.g., Ov. Tr. 2.519; Tac. Ann. 1.54; Sen. Ep. 29.12; Lucian Salt. 83; Macrob. Sat. 2.7.13–19.  Wüst 1949, 864–869; Jory 1984; Slater 1994.  Sen. Qnat. 7.32.2–3; Plin. Ep. 7.24.4–7; Plut. Mor. 748d. With their seductive movements, pantomime performers were accused of debauching women of high rank (Juv. 6.60–66). During the Early Empire, women of imperial families, such as Messalina (Claudius’ wife) and Domitia (Domitian’s wife), were reported to have had affairs with pantomime actors. On Messalina: Tac. Ann. 11.36; Cass. Dio 60.28.3. On Domitia: Suet. Dom. 3.1; Cass. Dio 67.3.1.

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ers either from Italy (histriones: Tac. Ann. 4.14.3) or just from Rome (orchēstai: Cass. Dio 57.21.3), his successor, Caligula, recalled them at the beginning of his Principate in 37 CE (Cass. Dio 59.2.5).23 Caligula, indeed, was reputedly so infatuated with pantomime that he is alleged not only to have had an affair with the dancer Mnester (Suet. Cal. 36) but also to have performed pantomime himself, at least in private if not in public.24 Furthermore, while Claudius put to death Mnester, who was also said to have had an affair with Messalina (Tac. Ann. 11.36; Cass. Dio 60.28.3–5), Nero was not only passionate about theatrical dancing and singing performances but also politically invested in the instrumentalization of pantomime to enhance his popularity.25 Throughout the next two centuries of the Roman Empire, in particular, the popularity of pantomime did not diminish: it continued to attract audiences from all social classes.26 Favoring myths with strong emotional and erotic narratives (e.g., Lucian Salt. 31, 67),27 pantomime contributed to the spread of theatrical imagery and the cultured lifestyle associated with it, playing a seminal role in disseminating myths and educating the masses (Libanius Or. 64.112). Pantomime, indeed, entered the lives of Romans through both public festivals and private entertainments. Pantomime performances were included in the public games honoring the imperial cult, such as the ludi Augustales in Rome and the Sebasta in Naples.28 A funerary inscription at Pompeii also records pantomimes (among whom the star dancer Pylades is mentioned) in the ludi Apollinares spon-

 Pantomime performers are often referred to by the terms histriones (“actors”) or saltatores (“dancers”) by Latin authors, and ὀρχηστάι (orchēstai, “dancers”) in Greek texts: Webb 2008, 59.  Suet. Cal. 54.1; Cass. Dio 59.5.4–5. Even if this was negative invective fabricated by later authors to emphasize Caligula’s degeneracy, it is noteworthy that pantomime was used as a touchstone for imperial morality and proper behavior. It is possible that Philo’s eyewitness description (Leg. 79) of Caligula’s impersonation of various heroes and gods may be contemporary evidence for the emperor’s passion for performing as pantomimus (rather than as an expression of his desire to be considered as a living god): Pollini 2012, 377–379.  On Nero and pantomime: Beacham 1991, 146–149; Garelli 2004; Garelli 2007, 186–190.  Beacham 1991, 140–153; Garelli 2007, 179–208; Lada-Richards 2008.  Our main source for pantomime themes is Lucian’s De Saltatione, written in the second century CE: Lada-Richards 2007. Other textual evidence for pantomime themes can be found in later sources such as Libanius and John Chrysostom, while for the early Imperial period information is scattered in various written sources. For an exhaustive list of Greek and Latin references to mythological narratives staged in pantomime: Garelli 2007, 267–280; Webb 2008 (specifically for late antiquity).  The introduction of pantomime in the ludi Augustales in Rome took place after the death of Augustus in 14 CE (Tac. Ann. 1.54). Due to the lack of solid evidence in textual and epigraphic sources, the date of the pantomime contests at the Sebasta in Naples is debated: for a similarly early date (i.e., 18 CE): Geer 1935, 218–221; Hunt 2008, 181; Zanobi 2014, 4; for a Trajanic date: Leppin 1992, 174; Jory 2001, 19; Garelli 2007, 182; Webb 2011, 226–227; for 160s CE: Slater 1995; Bowersock 2008, 73–75. According to Garelli (2007, 182), while not inserted into the agonistic framework until the Trajanic period, pantomime performances might have appeared even earlier at the Sebasta in Naples.

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sored by the local magistrate Aulus Clodius Flaccus in 20 BCE,29 while Pliny the Elder (HN 7.48.159) describes the inclusion of a pantomime dancer in the ludi Saeculares organized by Augustus in 17 BCE. As for pantomime performances in the private sphere, we know that they were quite common among wealthy people.30 The renowned Pylades, for example, is said to have performed the role of Hercules at a private banquet given by Augustus (Macrob. Sat. 2.7.16–7). Likewise, at Pompeii, the theatrical treatment of the Fourth Style wall decoration, sculptural program, and architectural layout of the peristyle garden of the Casa degli Amorini Dorati (VI 16, 7.38) suggests that contemporary theatrical performances such as pantomimes might have taken place in that area of the house, since most of the decorative program dates to the time of Nero, who greatly encouraged this form of theater.31

Mythological Wall Paintings: The Case of the Tablinum In modern scholarship, the tablinum has usually been described as the formal reception space where the dominus conducted his business and received his clients during the daily salutatio, morning greeting, an interpretation based on a misreading of Vitruvius’ passage (De arch. 6.5.1) and for which there is no evidence.32 The assumption that the tablinum served as the master’s reception room and the emphasis on its “public” nature have not only prevented a full discussion of this space but also conditioned modern scholars’ interpretation of its wall decoration.33 When found in tablina, therefore, images of Mars, Achilles, Hercules, Admetus, Dionysus, and Theseus, as well as their respective female counterparts Venus, Deidamia, Deianira, Alcestis, and Ariadne, have usually been explained as reflections of Roman social values, espe-

 CIL 10.1074d; Franklin 1987, 95; Csapo and Slater 1995, 380–381, no. 28. But cf. Slater (2010, 540–541) on the presence of Pylades at these games.  Jones 1991; Slater 1994. Private pantomime performances are often attested in ancient literary sources. See, e.g., Sen. Ep. 47.17; Sen. Qnat. 7.32.3; Plin. HN 7.184; Petr. Sat. 52.9; Plin. Ep. 7.24; Tac. Ann. 11.4.  See Jashemski 1979, 38–41, 101; Csapo 2010, 154; and Hughes 2014, who remarks on the staging of private pantomime performances in this house. Theatrical entertainments in the domestic sphere were not confined to dining rooms but could have also taken place in gardens and porticoes: Dunbabin 1996, 70–71. For a similar theatrical use of the small platform located on the north side of the peristyle garden (39) in the Casa del Fauno (VI 12, 2) at Pompeii: Csapo 2010, 154; Hughes 2014, 241; Bablitz 2015, 76.  None of the extant textual sources mention the tablinum in connection with the salutatio, a ritual mainly linked to the vestibule and the atrium: Spinelli 2022, esp. 177–178.  Spinelli 2019; Spinelli 2022.

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cially in the contemporary construction of sexuality and normative gender roles.34 The Third Style mythological wall paintings showing the couples Mars and Venus and Dionysus and Ariadne in the tablinum of the Casa di M. Lucretius Fronto at Pompeii (V 4, a), for example, have been associated with marital affection and conjugal relationship and related to the supposed representational and “public” role of this space. Hence, images of these divine couples in a room like a tablinum have been regarded as model husband-and-wife pairs for the family members and visitors admitted to the house because it was here that the dominus supposedly presented himself to his guests and clients (Figs. 1, 2).35 However, these myths were popular not only in tablina but also in other domestic rooms as well as civic and commercial buildings;36 furthermore, these characters and their stories, among many others, were all staged in contemporary entertainments. Propertius (2.3.17–18), for instance, writes about his mistress Cynthia dancing the part of Ariadne,37 while Lucian informs us that during the reign of Nero, a very prominent pantomime (possibly Paris) excelled in performing a solo dance of the tale of Mars and Venus (Salt. 63).38 Similarly, the Fourth Style wall paintings in the tablinum of the Casa dei Dioscuri at Pompeii (VI 9, 6–7) showing the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon (on the north/left wall) and the discovery of Achilles on the Island of Skyros (on the south/ right wall) should not be explained in relation to the patronal and “public” role of this space as a setting for salutationes, for which, as I have pointed out, there is no evidence (Figs. 3, 4).39

 Strocka 1997; Trimble 2002; Romizzi 2006a; Romizzi 2006b; Lorenz 2008. For a list of the mythological wall paintings found in tablina at Pompeii and Herculaneum: Spinelli 2022, 180–181, Table 1.  See further discussion in Spinelli 2022, 183–186. Both paintings are in situ: PPM III:1013–1018; Hodske 145, no. 167, pl. 6,1 (Mars and Venus); Hodske 2007, 164, no. 168, pl. 37,3 (Triumph of Dionysus). For criticism of the use of figural motifs to establish room function, see also Allison 1992; Ling 1995.  For a discussion of these myths and their widespread use in domestic and public buildings at Pompeii: Spinelli 2022, esp. 183–186.  Propertius’ passage more probably referred to a pantomime rather than mime performance: Mckeown 1979, 71. Even now, however, there are limitations in defining the nature of pantomime performances and establishing the difference between mime and pantomime in relation to the extant literary evidence: Webb 2008, 58–61; Wiseman 2008. Whether a pantomime or a mime performance, Cynthia’s dance attests to the presence of and taste for the staging of mythological narratives in contemporary entertainments. Such an interest in mimetic dances on the wedding between Dionysus and Ariadne dates back to at least the fourth century BCE (Xen. Symp. 9.2–7) and is attested in Rome as a pantomime by Lucian (Salt. 10, 39, 49).  On the possible pantomimic performance of Ovid’s version of the Mars-Venus myth as described in his Ars Amatoria: Ingleheart 2008, 206–207.  See Spinelli (2022, 182, figs. 2, 3) with further discussion. Both paintings are in Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale: “Quarrel of the hero and Agamemnon” inv. 9104; “Discovery of the hero at Skyros” inv. 9110.

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Fig. 1: Fresco depicting Mars and Venus. Left/north wall of the tablinum, Casa di M. Lucretius Fronto at Pompeii, V.4.a. In situ. Photo: author. With permission of the Ministero della Cultura—Parco Archeologico di Pompei.

Fig. 2: Fresco depicting Dionysus and Ariadne in a joyous procession. Right/south wall of the tablinum, Casa di M. Lucretius Fronto at Pompeii, V.4.a. In situ. Photo: author. With permission of the Ministero della Cultura—Parco Archeologico di Pompei.

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Fig. 3: Fresco depicting the Wrath of Achilles. Left/ north wall of the tablinum (42), Casa dei Dioscuri at Pompeii, VI 9, 6–7. Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, inv. 9104. Photo: author. With permission of the Ministero della Cultura—Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli.

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Fig. 4: Fresco depicting Achilles discovered on Skyros. Right/south wall of the tablinum (42), Casa dei Dioscuri at Pompeii, VI 9, 6–7. Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, inv. 9110. Photo: author. With permission of the Ministero della Cultura—Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli.

Just as the couple Mars-Venus and many other mythological scenes painted on the walls of tablina, these episodes from the life of Achilles are also found, both paired and singly, in other domestic, civic, commercial, and religious spaces at Pompeii, thus reflecting the popularity of these stories in contemporary tastes and performances.40 Characters from the Trojan War were, indeed, included in the roles played by pantomime dancers. The Augustan pantomime dancers Pylades and Hylas, for example, are both said to have performed the role of Agamemnon on the public stage (Macr. Sat. 2.7.13–14) while the episode of Achilles on Skyros is among the pantomime performances mentioned by Lucian (Salt. 46) in the second century CE.41 Despite the fact that

 Spinelli 2022, esp. 181–183.  The disguise of Achilles on Skyros performed by pantomime dancers is largely attested in later periods: Libanius Or. 64.68; Chorikios Dialexis 21 (=12) 248. See also discussion in Dunbabin 2014; Dunbabin 2018.

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Lucian is a later source, we can nonetheless assume that the same mythological stories were performed during the Early Empire, since pantomime drew from the same epic and tragic repertoire. In discussing the ubiquitous presence and popularity of mythological tableaux across the urban fabric, therefore, we should consider the role and interplay of the written, oral, and visual traditions in making certain narratives —especially those of heroism, passion, and erotic adventures—quickly recognizable and appealing to a large audience. Ovid, indeed, complains that some of his works were performed on the stage (Tr. 2.515–20, 5.7.25–30),42 while we know that notable poets like Statius and Lucan wrote pantomime libretti,43 and that Seneca’s tragedies were most likely influenced by such performances.44 Like the written and oral traditions, theatrical entertainments would have certainly contributed to the popularity and dissemination of these mythological episodes to a broad public (not unlike subjects so familiar to many today through the media of television and cinema). Favoring tales of passion and erotic adventures, pantomime performances may very well have influenced the themes and subjects of mythological paintings, which so frequently depict narratives with strong and emotional components. And this was not a one-way flow, since figurative paintings and pantomimes are likely to have influenced each other. Plutarch, for example, describes the bodily movements and static positions of pantomime dancers like those of figures in a painting (Mor. 747c), and the same can be asserted for the interconnection between stage and statuary.45 Quickly becoming one of the most popular forms of entertainment, especially thanks to its strong emotional charge, pantomime played a seminal role in making these classical mythological subjects universally known, familiar, and appealing in society.46 This genre, indeed, was instrumental in the reception of visual art among Romans of all social levels in the later centuries.47

 Most probably, Ovid refers to pantomime performances of his works: Ingleheart 2008; LadaRichards 2016, 151.  For Statius’ Agave libretto see Juv. 7.82–87. About Lucan’s 14 pantomime libretti (the so-called fabulae salticae), see the Vita of Lucan attributed to Vacca (Suet. Rel. 78.16 Reif.). Virgil’s Aeneid is also said to have inspired pantomime performances during the Early Empire (Suet. Ner. 54); see Panayotakis 2008.  Zanobi 2008; Zimmermann 2008. But cf. Slater 2010, 537. Similarly, contemporary mime influenced various authors and literary genres: McKeown 1979; Wiseman 2002; Fantham 1988; Panayotakis 1995.  On the “close complicity between the plastic and performative arts” in the imperial period and late antiquity: Lada-Richards 2003; Lada-Richards 2004.  Hall 2008; Hall 2013.  In discussing the popularity of private sculptural portraits in the guise of Mars and Venus in the High Empire, Kousser recognizes the significance of this underestimated genre through which “Roman viewers could experience a more powerful connection to the mythological portraits than would have been possible through, for example, literary texts” (Kousser 2007, 688). On the role of pantomime in allowing a large audience to be familiarized with myths: Zanker/Ewald 2012, 32–34.

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By the first century BCE, Romans were deeply invested in—and impacted by—a culture of performances and spectacle. Horace (Epist. 2.1.60–61), for example, points out that “mighty” Rome had both learned and seen in theaters the works of earlier Roman playwrights, while Ovid (Fast. 3.535–36), commenting on the festival of Anna Perenna, remarks that “there, people sing what they have learned at the theaters and move their hands in rhythm to their words” (illic et cantant, quicquid didicere theatris | et iactant faciles ad sua verba manus). The impact that dancing, in particular, had on Roman theater spectators is also remarked upon by Lucretius (4.978–993), who, in the middle-first century BCE, comments that men, not only in their dreams but even when awake, continue to see before their eyes dancers moving their pliant limbs. Both literary and archaeological evidence amply demonstrates that theatrical performances were actively on the minds of ancient people of all social classes. In Petronius’ Satyrica, which is filled with references to various theatrical entertainments, Encolpius compares the feast at Trimalchio’s house to what is seen at a public contemporary spectacle like a pantomime performance (Sat. 31.3–7),48 while Pliny the Younger named his two favorite villas at Lake of Como “Comedy” and “Tragedy” according to their geographical topography (Ep. 9.7.3).49 The villa he called “Comedy” was set at the edge of the Lake, like the flat shoes worn by comic actors. The other was named “Tragedy” because it stood on a high ridge, like the platform heels of tragic actors. The widespread theatrical imagery (such as masks or scenes of actors) found in Roman visual art, ranging from paintings, mosaics, and sculptural reliefs to small portable objects such as lamps or vessels, further attests to the interest in theatrical entertainments. This is especially evident in the Vesuvian towns, where theatrical images have frequently been recorded in both private and public buildings.50 At Pompeii and Herculaneum, for example, theatrical masks decorated not only the walls and floors of domestic and civic buildings but also the counters of retail outlets.51 Paintings and mosaics showing figures dressed in stage  Even though Petronius’ work is clearly a satire, it nonetheless provides a glimpse of ancient daily social life. For a discussion of theatrical entertainments and the blurring of private and public in “dinner theater” and “theater dinner” in Petronius, see Jones 1991. On the influence of contemporary theatrical performances on Petronius’ Satyrica: Panayotakis 1995.  In describing daily life at his other villa in Tuscany, Pliny also speaks of entertaining himself, his wife, and a few friends with comedians after dinner (Ep. 9.36.4). The ancient author even owned a comoedus (Plin. Ep. 5.19.3). On Pliny’s villas: Bergmann 1995.  For Roman theatrical imagery found within and outside the Vesuvian area, see the rich corpus of evidence in Bieber 1961, Webster 1967, and Webster et al. 1995. In general, however, discussions of theatrical imagery in Roman art are addressed in various studies, e.g., Jory 2001; Jory 2002; Huskinson 2002–2003; Newby 2015; Dunbabin 2016.  At Herculaneum a painted frieze with theatrical masks was found in the “Palestra,” while a painting with mask was recorded (and later destroyed) in the so-called “Basilica” or Augusteum: Esposito 2014, 37, 51. On the painted and/or marble relief theater masks embedded in the counters of several bars at Pompeii: Ellis 2018, 58–59. On tragedy masks in Fourth Style wall paintings and their connection to the growing interest in contemporary theater: Allroggen-Bedel 1974, 65–67. Two examples of pantomime masks have also been identified at Herculaneum: Jory 2001, 14, fig. 17. In general, theatri-

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costumes and wearing the open-mouthed masks of tragedy, comedy, and satyr-play are also often attested, indicating the appreciation for the theater in its various forms that existed in Campanian cities.52 Two pantomime masks were also found in wall paintings from the Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum, and their presence in the Vesuvian towns might be more widespread than previously thought.53 The instrumentalization of theatrical buildings fostered by Augustus’ political agenda must have also played a pivotal role in this growing interest during the Early Empire.54 While theaters had existed for centuries in Hellenized areas of southern Italy like Campania, it is especially under Augustus that wealthy individuals promoted their public munificence through this type of building,55 as in the case of the Theater of L. Cornelius Balbus in Rome (Cass. Dio 54.25.2). This was also true outside of Rome. At Pompeii, for example, the local magistrate Marcus Holconius Rufus and his relative Marcus Holconius Celer increased the number of seats of the second-century-BCE Large Theater, allowing for more spectators from various social classes.56 The construction of the theater at Herculaneum, also from the Augustan age, was likewise financed by wealthy and prominent individuals.57

cal masks have been associated with a variety of referents, including theater, education, cultural knowledge, and good fortune: Jory 1996, 6; Leach 2004, 105; Newby 2015, 553.  See, e.g., the mosaic from the tablinum in the Casa del Poeta Tragico with the scene of a Greek satyr play (Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, inv. 9986): PPM IV:546; Bergmann 1994, 235–237 (with bibliography). Frescoes showing masked actors in comedy or tragedy scenes are attested in a number of Pompeian houses, including the Casa dei Quadretti Teatrali (I 6, 11), Casa dei Dioscuri, and Casa del Centenario (IX 8, 3.6). For theatrical scenes with masked actors in costumes found in the Vesuvian cities: Dunbabin 2016, 60–62 (with bibliography).  On the Villa dei Papiri masks: Wojcik 1986, 31–32, pls. xviii, xxi; Jory 2001, 14, fig. 18. Other possible examples of pantomime masks include: two closed mouth masks on the upper frieze of the tablinum “n” and triclinium “p” in the Casa di Trebius Valens at Pompeii (III 2, 1), where they alternate with tragic masks (see PPM III:369, 379, figs. 43, 59); a series of closed mouth masks on the upper frieze of the garden peristyle in the Casa di Giulio Polibio at Pompeii (IX 13, 1–3), together with tragic, comic, and satyric masks (PPM X:207–235). In Rome, a late-first century BCE pictorial frieze of different types of theatrical masks was found in the corridor F-G of the Villa della Farnesina (currently on display at the Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo).  Interestingly, in discussing the instrumentality of theater as part of imperialistic policy, Gros (1998, 291–293) connects the rising number of theaters between the late first c. BCE and the first c. CE, both in Italy and in the Western provinces, to the contemporary popularity of pantomime.  Sear 2006, 13–14.  CIL 10.833–834; Cooley and Cooley 2014, 89, no. D54. On the various building phases of the Large Theater at Pompeii: Sear 2006, 130–132 (with extensive bibliography).  L. Annius Mammianus Rufus, a local magistrate, and Appius Claudius Pulcher, a leading member of the Roman senate, are both associated with the construction of the theater at Herculaneum. According to Pagano (1993, 128, 149–150) and Cooley and Cooley (2014, 93–94, nos. D63–5), the theater was built by the local magistrate L. Annius Mammianus Rufus (CIL 10.1443–1445), while Appius Claudius Pulcher would have financed parts of the building’s structure and/or its decoration (CIL 10.1423–1424). Cf. Sear (2006, 13), who maintains that the original builder was Appius Claudius Pulcher (sometime

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While benefactions were made for a variety of reasons, we know of private individuals who chose theaters as the object of their munificence due to their personal and economic interest in theatrical entertainments, especially pantomime. This is the case, for example, of Ummidia Quadratilla, a Roman matron from a wealthy and distinguished family at Casinum (modern Cassino, Lazio) who was responsible for the restoration of the theater (as well as the construction of an amphitheater) in her hometown during the first century CE. Ummidia Quadratilla was so fond of this theatrical genre that she even owned a personal “troupe” of pantomime dancers and exhibited them both in the theater and at her home (Plin. Ep. 7.24). By leasing her slaves to male upper-class friends, who were traditionally the primary benefactors of public games, she would certainly have maintained a high public profile and social prominence within the local community.58 It is perhaps worth mentioning that among her freed slaves might be C. Ummidius Actius Anicetus, a pantomimist recorded in an inscription from Puteoli (modern Pozzuoli) who may be the same dancer attested in many inscriptions at Pompeii and Herculaneum.59 Moreover, the construction of private theaters in maritime villas along the Bay of Naples during the early Empire further suggests a growing passion for contemporary theatrical spectacles among the local population.60 Even today, the debate as to what extent imperial pantomime influenced mythological images in Roman art remains unresolved. Problems emerge when scholars discuss to what degree these performances and/or individual actors served as models for statuary and painting.61 Pantomime dancers, in particular, wore masks different from those worn in traditional drama, in that they had closed mouths. They also performed wearing a cloak (pallium) over a long robe of silk, a costume that allowed them to move freely and impersonate various characters.62 Although no scenes represented on the walls of Vesuvian buildings show a direct illustration of a pantomime perforafter 32 BCE), while L. Annius Mammianus Rufus either “built or restored the theatre at the time of Augustus.”  During the imperial period, women from Italian and Western provinces were able to play a more prominent role in local municipalities than those in Rome: Hemelrijk 2012. On Ummidia Quadratilla and her personal, social, and business reasons in sponsoring pantomime shows: Sick 1999.  CIL 10.1946, said to have been found in the “villa Ciceronis” at Puteoli. On C. Ummidius Actius Anicetus: Franklin 1987, 97; Cooley and Cooley 2014, 99–100.  The maritime villa of Vedius Pollio at Pausilypum (modern Posillipo), for example, preserves the remains of a private large theater and an odeum built sometime during the Augustan period, while at Bauli (modern Bacoli), the remains of a large odeum, built during the Augustan or Claudian period and later modified into a nymphaeum, also belonged to a large maritime villa: Sear 2006, 47, 129–130 (Pausilypum), 120–121 (Bauli).  Discussed by Lada-Richards 2004; Lada-Richards 2016; Slater 2010. This situation is further complicated by the fact that none of the pantomime libretti has survived. For an overview of pantomime and the evidence for it in the visual arts, see Jory 1996; Jory 2001; Jory 2002; Huskinson 2002–2003; Dunbabin 2016; Rankov 2020 (on pantomime masks in military context).  On the pantomime mask and costume: Dunbabin 2016, 85–86, esp. n. 7 with bibliography.

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mance (e.g., a dancer wearing a closed mouth mask on a stage), in light of the local performative culture the subjects of these paintings likely alluded indirectly to the mythological narratives staged in contemporary performances.63 What is typically seen in these paintings is not an actual pantomime performance as it was presented on the stage, but rather the story or myth itself. Pantomime, therefore, may have influenced the choices of themes.64 Because pantomime was a visual language that appealed to diverse social strata and transcended linguistic barriers, it likely contributed to the “democratization” of mythological narratives. Through hand gestures and body movements, which spoke a communis sermo, the pantomime actor was capable of making a cultural repertory accessible and ubiquitous.65 The passion for pantomime that emerged during the Early Empire in Hellenized cities such as Pompeii and Herculaneum might also have played an important role in influencing the choice of the mythological visual repertory. The preponderance of wall paintings showing Hellenized narratives involving the world of Dionysus, Herakles, and Aphrodite seems to suggest that this was the case.66 The popularity of pantomimic (and mimic) representations of Dionysian and related stories during the Augustan period might likewise have contributed to the great appreciation for these subjects. Dionysian characters, including nymphs, maenads, satyrs, centaurs, Sileni, and Pans, as well as Priapi, were all staged in various contemporary genres of theatrical entertainment including pantomimes, mimes, and satyr-plays.67 The dancer Pylades, indeed, was legendary for dancing the roles of Dionysus and Herakles (Macrob. Sat. 2.7.16–18; Anth. Pal. 9.248), while Bathyllus was particularly appreciated for performing the roles of more salacious Greek characters, including Eros, Pan, and satyrs (Pers. Sat. 5.123; Plut. Mor.

 Only a few Pompeiian wall paintings of theatrical settings have been interpreted as “direct” illustrations of pantomime performances, e.g., the scaenae frons (stage building) decoration in the Casa di Apollo (VI 7, 23, room 25) and the theatrical painting depicting a boy with sleeveless and short tunic in front of pulpitum in Casa dei Quattro Stili (I 8, 17, tablinum 9): Bieber 1961, 232–233, figs. 775–778; Elia 1965. None of these figures, however, wears the mask or long robe and cloak of pantomime dancers. These images, therefore, cannot be taken as actual representations of pantomime performance: see Dunbabin (2016, 99–100) with similar conclusion.  Huskinson (2002–2003, 139) and Dunbabin (2014, 231) arrive at a similar interpretation for some late second and early third century CE Greco-Roman mythological mosaic pavements from Zeugma and Antioch, where the dominant contemporary theatrical genre was pantomime.  Zanker/Ewald 2012, 32; Hall 2013, 456. The power of gestural codification among the ancients is clearly stated by Quintilian, who in discussing rhetorical delivery states that performative gesture was the universal human language (communis sermo; Inst. 11.3.85–87).  As Hodske has rightly noted (2007, 36–37), representations of Roman heroes and myths are exceptional at Pompeii. On the popularity of Dionysus, Herakles, and Aphrodite at Pompeii and Herculaneum in Roman visual art more generally: Zanker 1998, esp. 576–582.  Wiseman 2002. Their popularity on the stage, therefore, further indicates the pivotal role played by the contemporary visual tradition (as distinct from the oral and written traditions) in making certain narratives recognizable and appealing to a large audience.

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7.8.711E-F). The tales of Aphrodite were also among the favorite narratives staged in pantomime from the Early Empire until late antiquity.68 Despite the fact that their profession subjected them to the legal and social limitations of infamia,69 actors were sometimes honored with public commemorations for their benefactions. At Pompeii the actor (a player of second part) Caius Norbanus Sorex was honored with two portrait herms, one in the Temple of Isis, the other in the Building of Eumachia,70 and at Puteoli, the late second-century-CE pantomime dancer Lucius Aurelius Pylades was the subject of an honorific inscription.71 In a region like Campania, which was exposed over the centuries to a wide range of cultural influences (e.g., Etruscan, Greek, Oscan, Roman),72 and in whose cities and towns the theater in its various forms was always a popular form of entertainment,73 we can safely assume that theatrical spectacles played an important part in the creation of an emerging visual canon.

Conclusions The mythological imagery painted on the walls of tablina at Pompeii and Herculaneum does not differ from that found in other domestic, civic, religious, and commercial spaces. Mythological imagery was flexible, adaptable to different settings, and evocative in many different ways—partly shaped by the iconographic surroundings and by other aspects of the immediate context. In this study, however, I asked why such mythological scenes are found in every type of room and building, and what the broader implications of this might be. The myths found in tablina, in particular, do not necessarily relate to social habits and moral ideals but inform us about the type

 See, supra n. 38, as well as the previously-mentioned pantomime dance on the theme of Ares and Aphrodite staged in the time of Nero (Lucian Salt. 63). For pantomime performances of Aphrodite (with or without her lovers) in later periods, see, e.g., Lucian Salt. 10–11, 37, and 73; Apul. Met. 6.24 and 10.30–4; Tert. Apol. 15.2; Libanius Or. 64.68; Cassiod. Var. 4.51. Other primary literary sources can be also found in Garelli 2007, 274–280.  See Edwards 1997, who also points out that actors and actresses were often associated with transgressive sexual behaviors and presumed to provide paid sexual services.  A third herm of C. Norbanus Sorex was found in the Sanctuary of Diana at Nemi (where there was also a theater). The herm from the Temple of Isis was found complete (Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, inv. 4991), while only the inscribed base survives for the herm in the Building of Eumachia: Fejfer 2008, 301; Cooley and Cooley 2014, 100–101, no. D82.  ILS 5186; Csapo/Slater 1995, 382, no. 33A; Fejfer 2008, 40; Webb 2011, 228.  Thiermann 2005; Wallace-Hadrill 2011; Bradley 2013, 11–16.  Ancient literary sources report how Latin drama was influenced by the earlier Fescennine verses (supposedly from the town of Fescennia in Southern Etruria), which were improvised musical and dance performances with an abusive and often obscene component (Hor. Epist. 2.1.139–63). On Etruscan and Oscan theatrical influences in Rome: Manuwald 2011, 22–26, 29; Brockett/Hildy 2014, 43–44.

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of familiar vocabulary that circulated in the urban fabric. While the decoration of Vesuvian tablina reflected the cultural capital of the dominus of the house (i.e., a patron may have chosen certain myths to illustrate his literacy and knowledge of myth), it drew on a shared and recognizable visual and cultural language. Both contemporary spectacles and the social and cultural environment may have played an important if not a dominant role in the promotion of mythological tableaux. In a region like Campania, indeed, the enduring passion for various genres of theatrical entertainments that brought mythological narratives onto the stage contributed to the “democratization” of this repertory in the contemporary urban context. By the first century CE, in particular, pantomime performances, along with mime and other forms of spectacular entertainment, became mass media spectacles capable of drawing broad crowds. Favoring myths with strong emotional and erotic narratives, this form of theater likely contributed to the spread of mythological subjects, making a cultural repertory accessible and ubiquitous. The mythological frescoes found in the Vesuvian towns, together with theatrical and amphitheatrical imagery, as well as theaters, amphitheaters, and inscriptions, provide further evidence for the importance of a Roman “spectacle culture” and the impact that this culture had in people’s everyday lives.74

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Candace Weddle Livingston

The Mistress of the Beasts and Her Humpbacked Bulls: New Considerations About the Breeding of Sacrificial Animals and Roman Trade with India As indicated by its title, this paper will focus on bulls, specifically sacrificial victims that appear on a remarkable but understudied relief from the Greco-Roman theater at Perge in Asia Minor. As a researcher whose primary interest is in sensory aspects of ancient life, allow me first to set the stage with some comments on the general experience of ritual in that ancient city.1

The Case of the Missing Temple Thousands of years ago on the western plains of Asia Minor, in the region the Greeks would call Pamphylia, a powerful deity was worshiped. A goddess of untamed nature, a Mistress of the Beasts, she was tasked with protecting Pergean territory long before the Greeks arrived, and by the fifth century BCE she was honored in Pamphylian Greek inscriptions as Wanassa Preiia, the Mistress of Perge.2 Like the patron deity of Ephesos to the north, Wanassa Preiia was an Anatolian goddess of unknown antiquity who presided over the creatures of the wild and could never be fully tamed by men; during the Hellenization of Asia Minor, both goddesses became syncretized with Artemis.3  As a student of John Pollini, I benefited from his knowledge, curiosity, and willingness to entertain unorthodox research approaches. He was endlessly supportive of my work on the sensory experience of ancient life, which requires marrying a degree of imagination to traditional research approaches in order to explore possibilities that I believe enhance our understanding of ancient life while remaining inherently impossible to prove definitively. John’s open-mindedness helped me to develop my own brand of scholarly curiosity, which has kept me endlessly interested in the study of the ancient world, something I endeavor to pass on to my own students. It seems only fitting that my contribution to this volume be an exploration of a small note from my dissertation that I have continued to mull for years, an idea born from close visual analysis of an ancient artwork that led to a hypothesis that may not be provable but is, nevertheless, suggestive. On this occasion of the publication of a volume in honor of John’s career, I submit it with gratia, admiratio, et affectio.  Kaygusuz 1980, 256.  Numerous indigenous deities of Asia Minor were syncretized with Greek gods and goddesses, including Aphrodite of Aspendos, Artemis of Anemur, and Tarhu(nt), a local storm god(?) in Rough Cilicia about whom little is known, but who was eventually associated with Zeus; see MacKay 1990, 2047. On the various coin types showing Artemis of Perge and what they may suggest about the spread of the cult beyond the city and even beyond Pamphylia: MacKay 1990, esp. 2061–2066. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111182919-012

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Also like her Ephesian counterpart, the Mistress of Perge/Artemis Pergaia was represented in an atypical form in her cult image, the appearance of which is known from two reliefs discovered in the Roman-period theater (one of which will be discussed in detail below; see Fig. 1), from a small sculpture found at Kremna in Pisidia that is presumed to be a copy of the cult image housed in the temple at Perge, and (primarily) from numismatic evidence.4 In all of those examples, she appears only vaguely humanoid, a head perched on a rounded stele, or in some versions on a stepped or sloped base. Regardless of its shape, the base or stele is always decorated with one to three bands of dancing figures holding musical instruments.5 The head, usually shown wearing the cylindrical headdress (polos) that is strongly associated with mother goddess-types in Anatolia—sometimes in Artemis Pergaia’s case adorned with a flowing veil—was possibly a late addition to make the figure more relatable to the Greeks.6 Perhaps the original cult image was a betyl, a sacred rock or meteorite of vaguely human (or not at all human) form.7 Even more mysterious than the appearance of the cult image is the location of the temple that housed it. The great Temple of Artemis of Perge is known only through written sources and numismatic evidence; its footprint or remains have yet to be discovered, despite several attempts by researchers to locate it, beginning in 1946.8

 For photographs of the other relief of the goddess found in the theater, see Bean 1968, pl. 7 and Demirer et al 2005, pl. 122. For a description and image of a third-century ten-assárion coin showing the betyl of Artemis Pergaia within a distyle temple or shrine, see Hill 1923, Pl. IX, no. 5. For a thorough discussion of various representations of the temple and the cult image on coinage, see Pace in the same volume. The “many-breasted” version of the goddess worshiped as Artemis of Ephesos is wellknown. For an overview of interpretations of the “breasts” from late antiquity to 1973, see Fleischer 1973, 74–88. I find appealing Gérard Seiterle’s theory (1979) that the pendants represent bull scrota rather than breasts, and mimic real offerings draped over the cult image in her sanctuary. See also Fleischer (1983) who, though he has some arguments with details of Seiterle’s theory, accepts it as generally correct, saying that Seiterle “. . . solved an old, frequently asked question” (“Seiterle hat eine alte, oft gestellte Frage gelöst . . .”) (82). Contra, see LiDonnici 1992, 393.  MacKay (1990, 2077) suggests that the dancing figures reference “orgiastic processions of the sort that accompanied Cybele.” I am not sure I would go so far, but at least the dancing figures lend more weight to the theory, discussed below, that cult rites included periodic processions through the town and/or countryside.  A post-Trajanic coin shows a version in which the head is tiny in comparison to the stele-type body and an exaggerated polos, but it is unclear whether that version reflects the appearance of the original cult image, a later variation, or was designed by the die-maker without reference to the cult image. See MacKay 1990, 2074.  Whatever the appearance of the cult idol, it was probably badly damaged in the time of Diocletian by the Christians Alexander and Leontius of Pamphylia, who desecrated a temple of Artemis in the area (the identification of the temple is not specified in ancient sources, but most scholars agree it was the famous Perge temple; see Mackay 1990, 2075). Their actions give the dedicant of this volume two more ancient Christians at whom to shake his metaphorical fist.  For details of the excavations and test trenches, see MacKay 1990, 2066–2067. For a discussion of theories that preceded and guided the later excavation work, Pace 1923.

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That the temple has eluded archaeologists is surprising. It was significant enough in antiquity to have been a major tourist destination, as evidenced by its inclusion in the fourth century BCE Geographi Graeci Minores by Psuedo-Scylax, the first surviving mention of the sanctuary.9 Though he was writing from a sailor’s point of view and thus focuses on sites visible to travelers along the coast, the temple is one of two inland sites that the writer deemed notable enough to include, suggesting that he expected sailors to be interested in making a pilgrimage to Perge, 3 miles (15 km) inland; traveling by water, it was 6 miles (60 stades) up the Cestrus river. Polemon of Laodicea, who visited in the second century CE, concurs, writing, “. . . I was in . . . a city called Perge, and there was a temple outside the town called the Temple of Artemis, astonishing in its size, beauty, and structure. People would visit it on pilgrimage from the ends of the land.”10 His contemporary Strabo mentions the temple as well but is vaguer on its location, saying only that it was “on a lofty site . . . near the city.”11 His description, taken in tandem with Polemon’s, suggests that the temple was extramural. The fact that Pseudo-Scylax lists the Katarraktes River before the temple in his description of Perge further supports this theory,12 though it should be noted that the circuit of the city walls was significantly more limited in size when he visited. Most modern researchers agree that the temple must have been located outside the city, on one of two hills to the south of the acropolis and a later southward extension of the city walls undertaken in the Hellenistic period. While the hunt for the famous temple is a compelling archaeological mystery, my primary interest is in a few specific elements of the sensory experience of cult worship at Perge. The fact that the important temple was located outside the city is of significance in this regard because it suggests that, as was the case at Ephesos, processions in honor of Artemis of Perge probably began on the Perge acropolis and wound their way through the streets to the south gate of the city and from there through the suburbs that developed in the Hellenistic and Roman periods and out to the temple.13 Such processions would have introduced a multitude of sensory elements into the

 An inscription mentioning the Mistress of Perge (Μαναψαι Πρειιαι) may pre-date Pseudo-Scylax, but a date for it in the second half of the fifth century BCE is debatable. MacKay 1990, 2049.  Physiognomy, chapter 68, transl. Hoyland (2007, 457) from the surviving medieval Arabic translation. In his description of his experience, Polemon includes the fact that at least one woman who approached the temple was veiled in such a way that only her eyes and the tip of her nose were visible. It is tempting to tie such a description to the veil indicated in many representations of the cult statue from the temple, but there is not enough evidence to do so conclusively.  Geography, 14.4.2. . . . αὶ πλησίον ἐπὶ μετεώρου τόπου τὸ τῆς Περγαίας Ἀρτέμιδος ἱερόν.  MacKay 1990, 2066, following Robert 1948.  Despite the absence of unambiguous proof for such processions at Perge, there is suggestive textual evidence: Hesychius of Alexandria (A 736) says that the priestess in Perge was called “the leader” (ἄγος), which, as MacKay has noted (1990, pg. 2051), might suggest her position at the front of processions. For the archaeological evidence for the dating of various phases of the growth of Perge and construction of its walls, see Grainger 2009.

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urban environment of the city, including the scents of incense and flowers, the sounds of musical instruments and singing, and the visual, olfactory, and other impacts of a large number of people moving through an urban space.14 Whatever the location of the temple that was the endpoint of those processions, and however the goddess appeared in physical form there, Artemis Pergaia was a powerful figure—so powerful that her divine jealousy seems, at least for a time, to have limited the construction of temples to other gods within her city. Almost a century of archaeological research has uncovered few indisputable remains of temples within the city walls or in its immediate environs, an unusual state of affairs for a city with an estimated population of 12,800 by the Roman period.15 This is not to say that no sacrificial rites were conducted in the city other than those to Artemis. Theodora MacKay has rightly pointed out that despite the lack of temple structures, there is archaeological, epigraphic, and numismatic evidence for a number of cults in addition to that of the patron goddess being celebrated in Perge. For example, Jale İnan excavated an altar to Apollo in the baths, and numerous sculptures of Greek deities have been found throughout Perge, as well as appearing on coins minted in the city.16 Therefore, in addition to small sacrifices of incense, flowers, and libations of wine in private homes, some public rites were surely conducted, but on a smaller scale than what would have been performed at a major temple. The temple of Artemis of Perge thus had a twofold and contradictory effect on the population of the city: its extramural location probably extended the sensory experience of civic worship into the main streets of the city, while its status as the sole major temple limited the frequency and size of sacrificial experiences as compared to those celebrated in other Greco-Roman cities of Perge’s size. The fact that the great temple with its sacred precincts, its decoration, and its sacrificial detritus has never been discovered limits our knowledge of the details of the sacrifices made to Artemis of Perge, but suggestive evidence related to the cult has been discovered in another location in the city: the Greco-Roman theater.

 The scholarship on the topic of religious processions in the Greco-Roman world is extensive. See in general Burkert 1985, 99–102; for Ephesos specifically, Rogers 1991, 80–126.  Depending on their interpretation of limited archaeological remains uncovered in excavation and survey work, scholars differ on whether Perge had no other temples, or perhaps a few. MacKay believes that there was “a small Doric Hellenistic temple to the south of the main city gate” (1990, 2078) and suggests, based on comparison with a similar structure in Side, that a round building in the agora was “presumably a temple,” perhaps a Tycheum (2080, after Mansel 1975, 60–83). Abbasoğlu and Martini identified a finely-constructed terrace on the north tip of the acropolis that they speculated may have supported a temple of the classical period—perhaps that of Artemis herself—but cautioned that without more extensive investigation than their survey, the type of building could not be conclusively identified (1997, 98). Nevertheless, given the size and wealth of the city, this is still a much smaller number than expected. On the parameters of the population estimate, see Grainger 2009, 33.  See MacKay 1990, 2080–2081.

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The Sacrificial Frieze from the Theater The theater was located outside the city walls to the south, beside the stadium; both entertainment facilities were constructed in the second century CE as part of the expansion of the city during a period of prosperity enjoyed under the Empire. It was excavated between 1985 and 1993 by a team under the direction of Jale İnan.17 Like many Greco-Roman theaters in Asia Minor, such as those of Hierapolis and Perge’s close neighbor Aspendos, the one at Perge was extensively decorated with both architectural embellishment and free-standing statuary, much of it probably relocated from elsewhere in the city. The most thoroughly published portions of the architectural decoration are the friezes that decorated the three levels of the scaenae frons; they show, from the lowest to the uppermost level, a Dionysian scene, a Gigantomachy, and a Centauromachy.18 Less well-published is an inverted u-shaped frieze that was located above the porta regia (Figs. 1–3).19 Despite being dubbed by İnan “the most interesting find” of the 1986 theater excavations,20 in the most recent catalog of the Antalya Museum, which houses the finds from Perge, the frieze warranted the publication of only the central section, absent the wings on either side, which show what is probably the sacrifice of a bull to Artemis Pergaia in-progress.21 This lack of attention may be due in part to the style of the sculpture as compared to the decoration that has survived from the rest of the scaenae. The proportions of the human figures are inaccurate, with overly large heads and squat bodies, in contrast to the classically proportioned figures of the mythological friezes.22 However, significant attention was given to textural detail of the figures’ clothing and hair, and

 See the yearly reports in Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı, vols. 8–10, 11, and 15, with numerous images.  For their discovery and initial description, see İnan 1986 and 1988.  The three sections of the frieze were discovered in the orchestra. See İnan 1986, 140.  İnan 1986, 140.  Demirer et al 2005. The single image appears on page 141. In Greek and Roman practice, the gender of victims was generally matched to that of the deity to whom a sacrifice was made. Offerings of bulls to female deities was, however, a longstanding local tradition in Asia Minor. Seiterle (1979, 11) notes evidence at Çatalhöyük for the sacrifice of bulls in a cult to a goddess dating back to the sixth millennium BCE.  İnan dated the frieze to the second century, the period of the theater’s original construction. Based on the stylistic elements mentioned above, I am tempted to suggest a later third or early fourth century date. Excavation shows the theater passed through at least two phases of reconstruction and redecoration in the third century and was in use into the seventh century. In addition, Buket AkçayGüven (2018) has argued that reworked portrait sculptures from the first story of the scaenae frons represent two of the tetrarchs, indicating continued alteration of the decoration into that period. However, I am not a connoisseur of Pamphylian-style sculpture, nor was I able to study the relief in person while preparing this article, working instead from photographs and my memory of the object.

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Fig. 1: Detail of a frieze with a scene of sacrifice from the theater at Perge, second century CE. Central section showing Tyche with a cult image of Artemis Pergaia. Antalya Museum, inv. 30.23.93. Photo: Sarah Yeomans.

Fig. 2: Detail of frieze with a scene of sacrifice from the theater at Perge, second century CE. Central section showing worshipers with victims. Antalya Museum, inv. 30.23.93. Photo: Sarah Yeomans.

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Fig. 3: Detail of frieze with a scene of sacrifice from the theater at Perge, second century CE. Left wing showing the sacrifice(?) of a bull. Antalya Museum, inv. 30.23.93. Photo: Sarah Yeomans.

some of the faces in the central section appear individualized, leading İnan to conclude that the frieze depicts a specific historical event rather than a generic procession.23 Perhaps the frieze has also attracted less attention because it appears quite mundane, showing ritual actors leading sacrificial victims in procession, proceeding toward an image of Tyche seated in the center, here made specific to Perge by inclusion of a miniature cult image of Artemis Pergaia in her right hand.24 Such sacrificial processions are common in ancient Mediterranean art ranging from that of Pharaonic Egypt to the Minoans to the classical Greeks and later Romans. By the time of the production of the Perge relief in the second century CE, we might rightly call the theme formulaic.25 My special interest in such scenes is in the evidence they provide for sensory elements of sacrificial processions and their culminating rite. Along with written sour İnan 1986, 140.  The cult figure is of the type described above, in which the goddess appears as a stele form with relief decoration, topped by a small head wearing the polos. A similar image of the goddess was discovered on an architectural pillar block elsewhere in the theater; see note 4, supra.  The sacrificial procession has persisted to the modern period as a symbol of pomp and power. One of Johann Gottfried Schadow’s late-eighteenth century relief panels in one of the north passageways of the Brandenburg Gate shows a classicizing scene of a bull being led to a blazing altar.

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ces, art such as the Perge relief constitutes some of our best evidence for what sacrifices in the Greco-Roman world were like. I have written elsewhere about the known and theorized steps in the process of sacrificing large animals at Greco-Roman sanctuaries.26 When combined with limited information from textual sources and archaeological discoveries at temple sites in the Mediterranean world, artworks like the piece in question give us a strong idea of what went on, though we are constrained by the formulaic nature of many sacrificial representations. The Perge relief, however, has two interesting details that set it apart. The first is found on the left wing of the frieze, near the corner where it meets the central section (see Fig. 3). There, we see demonstrated the use of a metal ring embedded in the ground. Such rings are an uncommon inclusion in Greco-Roman art showing sacrifices, and both their prevalence at actual altar and temple sites and the specifics of their use in sacrificial rites remain unclear. Were they simply tethering points, or did they serve a more active function during sacrifice? Our archaeological evidence for such rings is limited. One has been discovered directly adjacent to a circular altar in the so-called “sanctuary of Theogenes” in the Agora at Thasos (Fig. 4), and a socket assumed to have been for affixing such a ring was excavated at the Sanctuary of Artemis at Magnesia on the Meander.

Fig. 4: Round altar in the so-called “Sanctuary of Theogenes” in the agora at Thasos, with metal ring affixed to base (lower left). Photo: John Pollini.

 Weddle 2013.

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The rings are likewise scarce in sacrificial art. A bull tied to such a ring is shown on the altar of a temple at Ephesos, discovered in situ in 1931 (Fig. 5). That image, which does not include any human actors, seems to indicate the use of the ring simply as a tethering point.27 In contrast, the Perge relief suggests that the rings may have been important tools in the active moments of sacrifice, and thus that their use would have resulted in a visual experience of the act of slaughter somewhat different from that presented in much Greco-Roman art. Only a single ring is shown on the Perge frieze, but its active use is demonstrated. A long rope attached to the halter of a bull is passed through the ring in the ground in front of the animal and someone is pulling up on it, forcing the creature’s head down; this much can be determined from the angle of and tension on the rope. However, the relief has suffered damage that prevents analysis of some elements with certainty. It is especially regrettable that the head of this particular animal is partially broken off, making it difficult to say whether the rope truncates in the left hand of the front figure—which can be seen just above and in front of the bull’s snout—or whether the figure behind him perhaps holds it in his upraised left hand, though the angle of the rope as visible below the neck of the animal would seem to indicate the latter. In addi-

Fig. 5: Detail of one of the short sides of the altar of the so-called “Temple of Domitian” in Ephesos, showing a bull tethered by an altar in preparation for sacrifice, second century CE. Efes Müzesi, inv. 373. Photo: author.

 See also Weddle 2011, 209–212.

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tion, the action being performed by the front figure is unclear. Because he is a victimarius (one responsible for handling and eventually slaughtering and butchering a sacrificial animal), it is tempting to suggest that his right hand is lifted in preparation for either a stunning or a killing blow, but because that detail also is unclear, I am wary of pushing the evidence too far. Nevertheless, the relief demonstrates one use of a ring like that discovered at ancient sacrificial sites such as Thasos. These rings provided another method, in addition to manhandling, of lowering the head of a large sacrificial animal, causing it to present its neck to the popa, the ritual actor whose role was to stun the animal with a sharp blow to the back of the neck.28 Stunning the animal would have dropped it to its knees, a preferable position for slaughter for multiple reasons, not the least of which was the avoidance of a massive deadweight collapsing after the throat was slit.29 A second unusual detail of the relief is even more exciting in terms of what it might suggest about the sensory experience of animal sacrifice in Perge specifically, with implications that might apply to Pamphylia overall, and perhaps to other areas of Asia Minor. Just as the general theme of a sacrificial procession is formulaic in Greco-Roman art, the representation of bulls shows significant standardization. The primary physical feature is that the animals are perfect, a prerequisite for their acceptance by a deity. Thus, the animals on the Perge frieze are, as expected, impressive specimens with wide shoulders and a noble bearing. However, they differ in a significant way from the bulls on every other sacrificial image of which I am aware: they have a pronounced hump on their back, between their shoulder blades.30 The humps are clearly defined and do not seem to be related to the stance of each animal—that is, the bulls standing in full profile (as the one being sacrificed, see Fig. 3), as well as those with their heads turned toward the viewer (see Figs. 1, 2), show the shape.

 For a discussion of the role of the popa in Roman sacrificial ceremonies, see Weddle 2011, 183–184.  An unusual position for ritual slaughter is indicated in two Greek vase paintings that depict (in one example) a crowd of young men holding a bull aloft over their heads while one of their number slits its throat and (in the other example) wrestling with a bull in preparation for hoisting it onto their shoulders. See van Straten 1995, figs. 115, 116. The Greek practice of holding a bull aloft in order to sacrifice it is known from texts such as Euripides’s Elektra (El. 813–814) and Helena (Hel. 1559–1564) and the Characters of Theophrastus (Char. 27), but was long considered merely a literary device, a conclusion bolstered by research carried out in slaughterhouses in the early twentieth century by P. Stengel. As van Straten (1995, 109) noted, “Few scholars in the field of ancient Greek sacrifice have enjoyed such unchallenged authority for such a prolonged period, as the butchers of the Berlin slaughterhouse who laughed at Stengel, when he inquired about the feasibility of lifting up adult live cows onto the shoulders and then kill [sic] them.” However, the subsequent discovery of vases decorated with scenes that illustrate the practice suggest that it is unwise to completely dismiss the possibility without definitive negative proof.  The bull on the relief from Ephesos mentioned above (Fig. 5) also has the suggestion of a hump on its back, but it is quite small in comparison both to the animal itself and to the humps on the Perge bulls. Nevertheless, Seiterle suggests in a passing parenthetical (1979, 12) that it may be a Zebu (on which, see below).

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Given this unusual physical detail, I suggest that the animals on the Perge relief are a different species of bull than those commonly shown in Greek and Roman sacrificial art. The type of bull usually depicted in Greek and Roman art (see, for example, Fig. 6) is the European species Bos taurus; in the case of Roman art, it is probably specifically the breed called Chianina (or Chiana) (Fig. 7).31 I propose that the bulls shown on the Perge relief demonstrate traits specific to Bos indicus, the other of the two domestic bull species. Modern researchers believe that the Bos indicus species (sometimes called Zebu; Fig. 8) originated more than 4000 years ago in what is now India.32 Given the extensive economic and cultural interactions in antiquity between the Greco-Roman world and the Indian subcontinent via the Silk Road, it is not inconceivable that this species of bull could have been procured by a Roman breeder through trade. The species is made up of more than thirty related breeds, including the modern Brahman (or Brahma), a blend of several older breeds of the species. All breeds of Bos indicus have a pronounced hump on the back, an extension of spinal processes covered with muscle and connective tissue.33 In addition to the humps, other physical characteristics of the Perge bulls are consistent with the appearance of Bos indicus cattle.34 The necks of the animals are thick and fleshy at the throatlatch, the juncture of the head and neck. They also sport a large dewlap, an area of excess skin hanging from the neck and front of the chest; it is especially notable on the two animals standing on either side of the altar and the figure of Tyche, due to the angle of their heads gazing out toward the viewer (see Fig. 1). Bos taurus may also have a dewlap, more pronounced in some breeds than others, so that feature alone would not make a convincing argument.35 However, in combination with the typical hump of the Indian breed, it is highly suggestive. Conversely, certain physical elements of the bulls on the relief do not equate with the commonest traits of Bos indicus. Though the horns of every individual on the relief are (regrettably) damaged, they seem to have been short; those of Bos in-

 French 1966, 175.  Texas State Historical Association: https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/brahman-cattle [accessed 17 August 2024].  Briggs/Briggs 1980, 191. For more extensive discussion of the hump and its evolution, see Porter 1991, 189.  In what follows, I am operating under the assumption that the modern individuals of the Bos indicus species share significant physical similarities with their ancient counterparts. Modern individuals of the Chianina breed appear significantly similar to the examples shown in Roman art; it is therefore not illogical to assume that the same holds true for breeds of Bos indicus.  A dewlap is prized in the Chianina breed, for example; the dewlap of the indicine Zebu breed, however, is often described as “voluminous” (see, for example, Porter 1991, 189).

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Fig. 6: Architectural relief with a fragment of a suovetaurilia sacrifice. Head of bull and ram are modern restorations, but area of bull’s shoulders and base of neck is original. Italy, end of first century BCE or beginning of first century CE. Paris, Louvre, inv. MR 863 and Ma 1097. Photo: 2018 Musée du Louvre/ Bertrand Leroy/Anne Chauvet.

Fig. 7: A Chianina bull (a breed of Bos taurus). Photo: © Peter von Wesendonk, released into public domain on Wikimedia Commons.

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Fig. 8: A Brahman bull (a breed of Bos indicus) from a Texas herd. Photo: Cade Mitchell, used with permission.

dicus breeds tend to be long and curve toward the rear.36 Most notably, the Perge animals lack the large, pendulous ears that are characteristic of most, though not all, breeds of the species.37 It is possible that the artist(s) of the relief may have altered that detail because the “floppy” appendages, which can look almost comical on individuals with the largest ears, appeared less perfect than the tidier ears of European species and might have been distracting to viewers. However, the combination of physical characteristics of the bulls on the relief raises another, more likely, possibility: that the Perge bulls represent a hybrid breed, a cross between breeds of Bos indicus and Bos taurus. Animal husbandry, an important aspect of Greco-Roman life, had significant implications for the correct accomplishment of sacrificial rites, and a purpose-bred breed blending indicine and taurine individuals would have yielded distinct advantages directly related to sacrificial use.

 We may safely assume, based on the evidence of ancient Indian art, that this trait has been a feature of indicine bull species for millennia. See, for example, a Bronze Age figurine from Kausambi of a woman riding two bulls, dated to the late Harappan period, 2000–1750 BCE (Metropolitan Museum of Art, Accession Number 2015.505): https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/39126 [accessed 17 August 2024].  The Nellore breed, for example, has smaller ears that stand out to the sides.

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The Benefits of a New Breed Both species of domestic bull—Bos taurus and Bos indicus—possess characteristics that would have made them desirable livestock for sacrificial use. Speaking specifically of the Chianina breed of Bos taurus, the one favored (possibly even developed) by the Romans, it is a visually striking animal with long legs, wide shoulders, and a large muscular frame, meeting the religious requirement of presenting an impressive animal to the gods. The breed has short horns that curve forward, as opposed to the longer, outward-curving horns of some other taurine breeds. Clearly, shorter horns would have been appreciated by the victimarii handling the massive animals during the sacrificial process. In addition, Chianina bulls tend to have docile dispositions. All these traits would have been appealing to the Roman breeders tasked with providing high-quality, tractable animals for sacrifice. However, the breed was originally developed for use as draft animals, and thus Chianina cows are not known for their milk production; in addition, Chianina calves grow rapidly but mature late, meaning that the window of time from birth to sacrificial readiness was extended as compared to that of other breeds. Despite the positive qualities outlined in the previous paragraph, both of those traits would be significant drawbacks to producing sacrifice-ready offspring. No breed is without its problems, though, and for the Romans, the positive traits of Chianine seem to have outweighed the negative. We have every reason to assume that as the Romans expanded to Anatolia they brought specimens of their breeding animals, thus probably introducing their preferred Chianina bull species to the area.38 What I propose, as suggested by the Perge relief, is that in Anatolia the Romans were introduced to breeds of Bos indicus and incorporated that species into their breeding program. The indicine bull species possesses traits that are not only not present in the taurine species but that would have had positive impacts on qualities of the animals specifically related to sacrificial suitability. In what follows, I shall refer to a particular modern breed of Bos indicus, the Brahman, as the benefits of crossbreeding it with Bos taurus have been extensively studied in controlled modern settings.39 Chief among the benefits of all breeds of the Bos indicus species, including the Brahman, is their heat tolerance, developed over millennia of natural selection in the hot, humid environment of the Indian subcontinent. As a result of evolving in their native climate, Brahman bulls have adapted to thrive at high temperatures and humidity. They remain healthy and maintain appetite at temperatures in excess

 The Romans certainly brought their own cattle when they invaded modern England; remains of their larger animals have been found at archaeological sites, in addition to the remains of smaller indigenous breeds. French 1966, 14–15.  I am not aware of any studies in which modern Brahman bulls have been crossbred specifically with Chianina cows and the results documented. Perhaps this presents an opportunity for collaboration between an academic and a bull breeder.

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of 105°F (41°C), unlike breeds of the European species that suffer adverse effects in environments above 75°F (24°C).40 Two of the most important factors contributing to their heat tolerance are their large dewlap and ears, which may provide increased surface area for heat emission, and the fact that some breeds such as the Brahman are able to perspire; most bulls lack that ability, a serious detriment to their health in areas with high atmospheric temperatures.41 The stark contrast between the heat-regulating abilities of indicine vs. taurine bulls has been demonstrated in a classic modern study conducted by A. P. Rhoad of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Rhoad’s testing process is now known as the Iberia Heat Tolerance Test for Cattle and remains standard in the field of animal husbandry; it allows the testing of cattle using low-tech, easily replicable processes that can be successfully conducted outside of a controlled laboratory setting. In his original study, Rhoad found that Brahman cattle were 89% efficient at maintaining a normal body temperature at temperatures above 80°F (27°C). Half-crossbreeds of Brahman and Angus (a breed of Bos taurus) were 84% efficient. As the percentage of Brahman blood fell, so did the efficiency: one-quarter Brahman crossbreeds were only 77% efficient, whereas purebred Angus were only 59% efficient at maintaining a healthy temperature.42 Given these significant differences in hot-weather health, Bos indicus would have been ideally suited to thrive in the subtropical climate of Pamphylia, where summers can be oppressively hot and humid, even near the Mediterranean coast. India, the home of the species, has zones of subtropical and tropical climate; Italy, where the Chianina breed was developed and thrived, lies in a temperate climate zone.43 Though average temperatures have risen worldwide over the last two millennia, the general atmosphere of the sub-tropical and temperate climates remains the same, meaning that imported Roman cattle would have had difficulty regulating their body temperature in southern Anatolia.44 In contrast, the ability of Bos indicus to maintain its body temperature would have had a number of positive outcomes. Chief among them, the heat tolerance of the

 The average temperature in the regions of Italy in which the Chianina breed was developed ranges from 40–75.5°F (4.5–24.2°C).  For a discussion of the debates concerning loose skin as a component of heat emission, see Porter 1991, 189. On the sweating ability of Brahmans, Briggs/Briggs 1980, 199.  Rhoad 1944, 163.  The heat-resistance of Bos indicus accounts for the popularity of the modern Brahman breed in the United States, particularly in the southern coastal areas of Texas, Florida, and Louisiana, which share the subtropical climate of southern Turkey. The breed also carries cultural significance in the area; for example, though the University of South Florida’s sports teams are now known simply as “The Bulls,” until the late 1980s they were the “Golden Brahmans.”  At least one modern study (Ansell 1977) has quantified the difficulties faced by European breeds of cattle introduced to the Near East, but the location—the United Arab Emirates—presented more extreme temperature differences than between Italy and Turkey.

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indicine species allows it to graze in the heat of midday, whereas taurine breeds must seek shade and spend a significant part of the day lying down.45 More grazing by indicine cows leads to greater milk production, which in turn leads to heavy weaning weights. When indicine bulls are crossbred with taurine cows, the cows that result have increased fertility, increased milk production, and produce calves with a higher weaning weight.46 These are all facts that could certainly have been realized by Roman breeders in Anatolia, and the young animals that resulted from such crossbreeding would have been ideal candidates for sacrifice for several reasons. Though they would have been large at the age of weaning, the milder temperament of such a hybrid would have made the sacrificial process easier. Chianina cattle are noted for their docility; Brahmans can be excitable but, raised with proper handling, can become “extremely docile and gentle.”47 I have written elsewhere about the importance of animal handling and animal behavior in the correct completion of Roman sacrifice, in which a stressed or panicked animal could ruin an entire ritual, necessitating that it be started again from the beginning.48 The natural temperament of a bull breed was therefore extremely important to ritual handlers; this concern is perhaps even at the root of the Chianina breed’s docile temperament, as that trait would have been selected for over centuries of Roman breeding. An indicine-taurine crossbreed would also have presented ideal qualities in the post-sacrificial stage, with Bos indicus improving on the traits of Bos taurus. Indicine bulls have a high dressing percentage. That is, they produce high yields of meat after they have been stunned, exsanguinated, eviscerated, and skinned, all steps that were part of the ancient sacrificial process just as they are part of the modern slaughtering process. Furthermore, indicine carcasses have a high cut-out value, meaning their ratio of fat to meat is low.49 Though I am using the modern terms “dressing percentage” and “cut-out value,” whatever terminology the Romans used, they undoubtedly were very aware of these ratios, as the proper ritual breakdown of a sacrificial victim involved draining the body of blood, then separating the meat for human consumption from the hide, viscera, and fat, all of which were set aside for the gods. Those

 In Rhoad’s study and the standard Iberia Heat Tolerance Test developed from it, cattle are corralled in full sun on clear days, and their temperature and respiration tested at 10 am and 3 pm. He noted that cattle from breeds with low heat tolerance experience “great distress” under such conditions and occasionally must be removed before the afternoon testing in order to avoid heat stroke (1944, 163).  Briggs/Briggs 1980, 197–198. Another general benefit of some breeds of the Bos indicus species is their resistance to insects. The Brahman breed has developed a tissue called a panniculus muscular membrane between the fat and the skin that allows the animal to shake its skin to dislodge insects, an ability no other cattle have. It is not clear, though, that this trait would have been shared by its ancient ancestors. See Brahman Cattle, Circular No. 1.  Briggs/Briggs 1980, 200–201.  See Weddle 2013, esp. 149–151.  On the dressing percentage: Briggs/Briggs 1980, 195; on the cut-out value, 200.

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ritual prescriptions gave Roman breeders ample reason to be aware of these traits and to select for the best percentages possible. Introducing indicine blood to their taurine stock would have resulted in more meat for the priests and the public after separating out the gods’ portions.50

Conclusions Since the nineteenth century, when the Bos indicus species was first introduced to the United States through a single sire, breeders have recognized its potential and intentionally crossbred it with Bos taurus to produce hybrids that exhibit the most desirable traits of both. There is no reason to think that Roman breeders would not have done the same. Identifying the bulls on the Perge relief as a hybrid species means more than identifying an artistic curiosity; it indicates recognition by the Romans of traits unique to the Indian domestic bull species that offered important improvements in terms of animal health and husbandry in the environment of southern Anatolia, from breeding field to altar.51 To return in closing to my interest in the sensory experience of sacrifice, if the bulls on the Perge relief are Bos indicus, or, as I suggest, a hybrid of that species and Bos taurus, their presence at a sacrifice would have resulted in a unique sensory element: indicine cattle, in addition to perspiring, secrete a distinctly-scented oil from their skin that may aid in repelling insects. To put it bluntly, they smell more—and different—than European bull breeds. The physical traits of the animals on the Perge relief suggest that the Romans in Pamphylia imported a species of bull from the Indian subcontinent, one that would have been well-suited to life in southern Anatolia and that would have imparted a subtle but noticeable sensory addition to the sacrifices conducted there, as well as contributing positively to the further development of sacrificial stock through animal husbandry. Close study of apparently formulaic religious art such as this relief may continue to enhance our understanding of the sensory experience of ancient sacrifice— and that’s no bull.

 The highly logical division of the victims between what was edible (the human portion) and what was inedible (the gods’ portion, to be consumed in the form of sacrificial smoke) may be traced to the story of Prometheus’s trickery in Hesiod’s Theogony (535–560), in which the hero dressed up a pile of bones with fat in an attempt to trick Zeus into choosing it as his portion.  It is perhaps not a coincidence that the first breeder to import a Bos indicus bull to the United States (in 1894) was Dr. James Bolton Davis of South Carolina “who, it is believed, became acquainted with [the species] while serving as agricultural advisor to the Sultan of Turkey.” Briggs/Briggs 1980, 192, quoting the American Breeders’ Association.

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Bibliography Abbasoğlu, Haluk / Martini, Wolfram (1997). “Perge Acropolisi’nde 1996 Yılında Yapılan Çalısmalar,” Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı 19.2, 93–105. Akçay-Güven, Buket (2018). “A Reworked Group of Emperor Statues from the Theatre of Perge,” in: M. Aurenhammer (ed.), Sculptures in Roman Asia Minor: Proceedings of the International Conference at Selçuk, 1st-3rd October 2013, Österreichisches Archäologisches Institut Sonderschriften Band 56, Vienna, 365–376. Ansell, R. H. (1977). “Maintaining European dairy cattle in the Near East,” in: Animal Breeding: Selected Articles from the World Animal Review, Rome. Bean, George E. (1968). Turkey’s Southern Short: An Archaeological Guide. London. Briggs, Hilton M. / Briggs, Dinus M. (1980). Modern Breeds of Livestock. New York. Burkert, Walter (1985). Greek Religion. Cambridge, MA. Demirer, Ünal Demirer / Çınar, Ünal / Karakaş, Nilüfer S. / Koç, Ali (2005). Antalya Museum. Ankara. Fleischer, Robert (1973). Artemis von Ephesos und Verwandte Kultstatuen aus Anatolien und Syrien. Leiden. Fleischer, Robert (1983). “Neues zu Kleinasiatischen Kultstatuen,” AA 98, 81–93. French, M. H. (1966). European Breeds of Cattle, vol. 2, F.A.O., Rome. Grainger, John D. (2009). The Cities of Pamphylia. Oxford. Hill, George F. (1923). “Some Coins of Southern Asia Minor,” in: W.H. Buckler and W.M. Calder (eds.), Anatolian Studies presented to Sir William Mitchell Ramsay, Manchester, 207–224. Hoyland, Robert (2007). “A New Edition and Translation of the Leiden Polemon,” in: Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul: Polemon’s Physiognomy from Classical Antiquity to Medieval Islam, Oxford, 329–463. İnan, Jale (1986). “Perge Kazısı 1985 Yılı Çalışmaları,” Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı 8.2, 137–176. İnan, Jale (1988). “Perge Kazısı 1985 Yılı Çalışmaları,” Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı 10.2, 197–246. Kaygusuz, İsmail (1980). “A dedication to Artemis of Perge (Wanassa Preiia) from Perge),” Belleten 44.174, 256. LiDonnici, Lynn R. (1992). “The Images of Artemis and Greco-Roman Worship: A Reconsideration,” Harvard Theological Review 85, 389–415. Mansel, Arif M. (1975). “Bericht uber Ausgrabungen und Untersuchungen in Pamphylien in den Jahrem 1957–1972,” AA 90, 60–83. MacKay, Theodora S. (1990). “The Major Sanctuaries of Pamphylia and Cilicia,” ANRW II.18.3, 2045–2129. Pace, B. (1923). “Diana Pergaea” in: W.H. Buckler and W.M. Calder (eds.), Anatolian Studies presented to Sir William Mitchell Ramsay, Manchester, 297–314. Porter, Valerie (1991). Cattle: A Handbook to the Breeds of the World. New York. Rhoad, Albert O. (1944). “The Iberia Heat Tolerance Test for Cattle,” Tropical Agriculture 21.9, 162–164. Robert, Louis (1948). “Deux textes inutilisés sur Pergé et sur Sidé,” Hellenica 5, 64–69. Rogers, Guy Maclean (1991). The Sacred Identity of Ephesos: Foundation Myths of a Roman City. New York. Seiterle, Gérard (1979). “Artemis, die grosse Göttin von Ephesos,” Antike Welt 10, 3–16. Van Straten, Folkert T. (1995). Hierà kalá: Images of Animal Sacrifice in Archaic and Classical Greece. Leiden. Weddle, Candace (2013). “The Sensory Experience of Blood Sacrifice in the Roman Imperial Cult,” in: J. Day (ed.), Making Senses of the Past: Toward a Sensory Archaeology, Carbondale, IL, 137–159. Weddle, Candace (2011). Making Sense of Sacrifice: Sensory Experience in Greco-Roman Cult. Diss. University of Southern California.

Part III: The Rhetoric of Empire

Andrew Stewart†

Roman Power and Greek Sanctuaries: Two Studies For John, φίλος καὶ φιλορωμαιότατος

The Samothracian Sanctuary of the Great Gods after Pydna When discussing politically charged dedications in Greek sanctuaries, scholars sometimes argue that the offering in question cannot have been made at this or that particular time because the sanctuary was allegedly “controlled” by a hostile power.1 (Pausanias’s discussion of the Nike of Paionios comes immediately to mind—but actually proves the opposite.)2 Discussing the Nike of Samothrace (Fig. 1), now often dated to the second quarter of the second century BCE, Johannes Bernhardt and Nathan Badoud have exposed such Macedonian “control” of the Sanctuary of the Great Gods before 168 BCE as a scholarly myth. But what of the Romans after 168?3 Did Roman power ever reach so far down? And on the religious front, did it reach anywhere at all? Since the events of the tumultuous quarter century from the Third Macedonian War (171–168 BCE) through the Fourth (150–148 BCE) are complex and hardly common knowledge, it is best to begin with a timeline, tailored to fit the question at hand and citing the major sources. – 179 Perseus succeeds Philip V as King of Macedon (Polyb. 25.3). – 172 Eumenes II of Pergamon warns the Roman Senate against Perseus; diplomatic intrigues in Rome and Greece push the parties towards war (Polyb. 24.5; Diod.

 I am most grateful to Kevin Clinton, Erich Gruen, Christopher Hallett, Duncan MacRae, Robert Morstein-Marx, Carlos Noreña, Nikolaos Papazarkadas, and Bonna Wescoat for their kind assistance with this paper, though its conclusions are wholly my own.  Palagia 2010, 159; La Rocca 2018, 39; Palagia 2021, 167. Paionios: Paus. 5.26.1.  Bernhardt 2014, 56–59; Badoud 2018, 290–291, correcting (e.g.) Stewart 2016a: 400. On the Nike’s date, see Palagia 2010; Stewart 2016a; LaRocca 2018; Clinton et al. 2020; Palagia 2021. †

To our deep regret, Andy Stewart passed away on January 13, 2023, shortly after sending us the first version of the present chapter. He was therefore unable to update or enhance this short text, which contains an interesting and novel perspective on the subject of this volume. This version includes only minor editorial changes, with which we were assisted by Dr. Kris Seaman, and some notes added by the editors of this volume, with the kind permission of the author’s family.

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Fig. 1: The Nike of Samothrace after conservation and reinstallation in 2014. Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv. Ma 2369. Photo: © Musée du Louvre, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Philippe Fuzeau/Art Resource, New York: ART 488763.

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29.25; Livy 42.2, 5–6, 11–19.1, 25–27, 29; App. Mac. 11.1–9); Rhodes and other states, opposing war, antagonize the Senate (Polyb. 27.7; Livy 42.46; App. Mac. 11.3–4). An attempt to assassinate Eumenes at Delphi, attributed to Perseus, fails (Polyb. 22.18.5; Diod. 29.34.2; Livy 42.15–16; App. Mac. 11.4). 171 The Third Macedonian War begins (Diod. 30.1; Livy 42.30–50; App. Mac. 11.9). 179 Perseus succeeds Philip V as King of Macedon (Polyb. 25.3). 170 The Senate instructs Greek states to ignore financial demands from Roman magistrates unless specifically authorized by senatorial decree (Polyb. 28.3.3–4, 13.11, 16.2; Livy 43.4.11–13, 8.1–10, 17.2–3; Zon. 9.22; Syll3. 646). 170–168 The Rhodians, proclaiming neutrality, try in vain to mediate peace, further annoying the Senate (Polyb. 27.3–4, 7; 28.2, 16–17; 29.10–11, 19; Diod. 30.24; Livy 42.48.8, 56.6; 44.14.5–15.8, 19.8, 29.6, 35.4–6; 45.3.3–8; App. Mac. 17).168/7 Defeated by Aemilius Paullus at Pydna, Perseus seeks asylum in Samothrace (Polyb. 29.8.8; Diod. 29.25; Livy 44.45.11; 45.5–6; Plut. Aem. 23.11, 26.1–6). He is captured

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and sent to Amphipolis, where he formally surrenders to Paullus (Diod. 30.22–23; Livy 45.6–8 Plut. Aem. 26.8–27.6). The Romans threaten reprisals against Rhodes and other states deemed disloyal; the Rhodians desperately seek a formal alliance with Rome (Polyb. 30.4–5, 9, 23; Diod. 31.5; Livy 45.3, 19–20, 22–25.10). 167/6 The Senate dismembers Macedonia into four isolated republics (Diod. 31.8; Livy 45.17–18, 29–30), and declares Abdera, Maroneia, and Ainos to be free cities (civitates liberae) (Polyb. 30.3.7; Diod. 31.8.4, 8; Livy 45.29.5–6); perhaps Samothrace also (Strabo 7 frag. 47 Budé; Plin. HN 4.73). Paullus and all Roman forces leave Macedonia (Polyb. 30.15; Diod. 31.9–10; Livy 45.33.8–34.9). The Senate also frees Rhodes’s mainland territories or peraia (Polyb. 30.5.12–16, 21, 24) and cedes Delos to Athens as a duty-free port, badly damaging the Rhodian economy (Polyb. 30.19.17–20.9, 31.6; Strabo 14.2.3 (652)). 164 The Senate formally accepts Rhodes, now suitably humbled, as a Roman Friend and Ally (amicus et socius) (Polyb. 30.31.19–20: Livy, Per. 46; Zon. 9.24). 161/0 Rhodes and Pergamon reconcile (Polyb. 31.31). 158 Eumenes II dies, is succeeded by Attalos II (Polyb. 32.8). 156 Prousias II of Bithynia declares war on Attalos II, defeats him in battle; the Senate sends legates in a vain attempt to stop the offensive (App. Mith. 3; Polyb. 32.16; 33.1). 155 Prousias invades Mysia by land and sea, fails to take Pergamon, ravages Mysia; his army decimated by dysentery, he returns home, and a storm wrecks his returning fleet in the Propontis (Polyb. 32.15; Diod. 31.35: App. Mith. 3). Yet he continues to rebuff the Roman legates, who join Attalos and muster allies for him in the eastern Aegean (Polyb. 33.7, 12). Cretan pirates goad the Rhodians into war, destroy a Rhodian naval squadron (Polyb. 33.1–4; Diod. 31.37–38, cf. 43–45); Rhodes nevertheless sends five quadriremes to join Attalos (Polyb. 33.13.1). 154 Attalos and his allies, led by Rhodes, mount a naval offensive into the Propontis, ravage Prousias’s territory by land and sea. The Romans finally succeed in stopping the war, impose sanctions and a huge indemnity on Prousias (Polyb. 33.13; App. Mith. 3). 150–148 Fourth Macedonian War: Rome crushes the revolt of Andriskos (Polyb. 36.10.4–5, 17.13–14; Diod. 31.39a-b, 40a; 32.15.5–7; Livy Per. 49–50; Oxyr. Per. 49; Zon. 9.28).

As for Samothrace, although Polybios (29.8.8) calls Perseus the island’s overlord or kyrios, its sanctuary of the Great Gods (Fig. 2), a venue of international importance, remained neutral territory.4

 Perseus and Eumenes clearly regarded the sanctuary as neutral territory during their financial intrigues of 169: Polyb. 29.8.8; App. Mac. 17.1; cf. Badoud 2018, 290–291. They and the Romans also agreed that the entire island was sacred and inviolate: Diod. 3.55.8–9; Livy 45.5.3–4; cf. Wescoat 2013, 49–51.

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Fig. 2: Digital reconstruction of the Nike Monument in the Sanctuary of the Great Gods, Samothrace, as seen looking to the south from the central valley. Photo: © American Excavations, Samothrace.

For the king’s interests were political and military, not religious and cultural, and city and sanctuary were far from identical. But what of his successors, the Romans? Although they clearly regarded Macedonia, Greece, and the Aegean as part of their imperium/archē or “supremacy,” Samothrace included, after launching the four Macedonian republics and mandating their isolation from each other, they simply turned their backs on the area.5 Only the revolt of the “false Philip,” Andriskos, in 150 BCE forced the Romans to return, though their actions thereafter remain frustratingly obscure. Moreover, at Amphipolis in 167 BCE, Paullus even had declared the Thracian coastal towns of Abdera, Maroneia, and Ainos (more or less opposite Samothrace, for-

 Polyb. 1.1.1; 3.1.4–5, 9, 4.2–3; 6.2.3; Livy 45.5.6 (Samothrace), 44.2 (the Senate assigns no magistrate to Macedonia for 166); cf. Gruen 1984, 425–436, aptly remarking that from 167, “for the Romans, ‘leaving [the Macedonians] free’ meant leaving them alone. For the next two decades that is precisely what they did” (429); Kallet-Marx 1995, 19–30, concluding that the Roman “archē from 168/167 consists in one thing above all . . . [the] criterion is not a matter of territorial occupation, legal structures, or fiscal exploitation, but of plain power, specifically the capacity to command obedience” (22).

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merly Macedonian, and geographically part of the new, easternmost Macedonian republic) to be civitates liberae.6 But what of Samothrace? Although the sources fail to mention the island itself in this context, it was certainly an insula libera in the first century CE, and since its Sanctuary of the Great Gods hosted the supposed equivalents of the Roman Penates and Dioscuri, it had already become a mecca for (often high-ranking) Roman pilgrims. So when Paullus “freed” the island’s three mainland neighbors and gave it back its tiny peraia, it is most likely a fortiori that he freed Samothrace at the same time.7 For, like Perseus, the Romans also saw their hegemony as essentially political and military, and its purpose quite simply “to command obedience.”8 Of course, the Senate could—and did—make demands, send legates, threaten, and even issue injunctions to both kings and cities (as it did in 170 BCE, in the cities’ favor; but fruitlessly in 156/5: see further below). Yet there seems to be no instance on record of Rome or its representatives interfering in Greek religious affairs, nor of discouraging or even forbidding a given political or military dedication such as the Nike of Samothrace (Figs. 1, 2) in a particular foreign sanctuary.9 In fact, such matters not only were irrelevant to the Romans’ overriding focus on obedience, discussed above, but actually lay well beyond the scope of Roman religious law and practice. For as Trajan told Pliny the Younger (then governor of Bithynia) two and half centuries later: “the soil of an alien country is not capable of being consecrated according to our laws” (Ep. 10.50: solum peregrinae civitatis capax non fit dedicationis, quae fit nostro iure). As a result: Whereas in Rome dedications would have been regulated, even in inviolate sacred spaces, by the pontifices, Senate, and sometimes the people, Trajan is saying that this law does not apply outside it. This narrow focus is significant, because it suggests that even if a Roman magistrate in the East somewhere had been asked about the dedication of the Nike, he would have said that no applicable rules existed to cover it one way or the other (it would have been different if he had been approached about the Rhodians stealing a statue from the sanctuary).10

In the Nike’s case, however, even this last recourse was foreclosed. For after Paullus and the senatorial commissioners had left for Italy in late 167 BCE, Rome had no representatives whatsoever on the ground in Macedonia or anywhere nearby that could

 Clinton 2003.  Plin. HN 4.73; Strabo 7 frag. 47 Budé (the peraia); on its Roman religious and cultural affiliations, see Dimitrova 2008; Wescoat 2013; La Rocca 2018, 40–57.  Kallet-Marx 1995, 22.  Palagia 2010, 159; La Rocca 2018, 39; Palagia 2021, 167. Might a royal dedication of a building such as the Arsinoeion (for example) have been another matter, though, depending upon the circumstances? Would it have been a gesture of independence too blatantly assertive to be ignored?  Duncan McRae, pers. Comm., March 2022; cf., e.g., Tac. Ann. 3.71; Plin. Ep. 10.68–69.

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have relayed such “requests” to the Senate, still less initiated them.11 So both in this particular case and in general, the onus of finding concrete mid-late Hellenistic examples of such Roman interventions in the religious sphere is firmly on the interventionist camp. What of the Rhodians, now generally accepted as the Nike’s most likely dedicators?12 After spending half a decade in the doghouse for their delusions of independence and ill-considered attempts to meddle in the Macedonian war (infuriating the senatorial hawks), and now thoroughly humiliated and cowed, in 164 BCE they eagerly snapped up the bone that the Senate finally threw them: a formal treaty of alliance and the title Friend and Ally of the Roman People.13 A reconciliation in 161/160 BCE with Eumenes II of Pergamon, the region’s most powerful longtime Roman friend and ally, completed their attempts at a comeback. Accordingly, when Prousias II of Bithynia moved against Eumenes five years later, the Senate sent delegation after delegation to stop him. Repeatedly stonewalled, slighted, and once (if the sources are to be trusted) even ambushed, and with their patience now exhausted, in winter 155/154 BCE the frustrated Roman legates toured the Propontis, Troad, and eastern Aegean to round up allies for Eumenes. Though hard-pressed by the Cretan war (the pirates’ swarming tactics had recently succeeded in annihilating an entire Rhodian naval squadron), the Rhodians obediently signed up, detaching from the Cretan theater five quadriremes (and thus at least 1100 men) that they could ill afford to lose. So, in Spring, 154 BCE: [Eumenes’ younger brother] Athenaios set sail with eighty cataphract ships. Five of these were the quadriremes sent by the Rhodians from those they had mobilized for the Cretan war, 20 from Kyzikos, 27 Attalos’s own, and the other allies contributed the rest. Having sailed up the Hellespont and reached the cities subject to Prousias, he made frequent descents upon the coast, and greatly harassed the country (Polyb. 33.13.1). Hounded by the gods, the elements, the Attalids, their allies, and Rome, Prousias soon capitulated. After imposing confiscations, reparations, and a huge indemnity upon him, and then promptly withdrawing again, the Romans surely would have had no problem with their decade-old official friends and allies, the Rhodians, erecting a splendid monument to their Bithynian exploits (Figs. 1, 2) overlooking the Samothracian sanctuary. That is, if they even knew or cared about it, which to my mind was quite unlikely.

 Beginning in 166, when the Senate assigned no magistrate to Macedonia (Livy 45.44.2: n. 5, above). During the next quarter century, the sources report only one official Roman act there: the reopening of its gold and silver mines in 158, presumably by senatorial decree (Cassiod. Chron. 402–403: M. Aemilius et C. Popillius: His consulibus metalla in Macedonia instituta).  Stewart 2016a, 403–404, with bibliography; Clinton et al. 2020, 551, 556–558, 563–565; contra, Palagia 2010; LaRocca 2018; Palagia 2021, 163, 166–169, advocating a Roman dedication to celebrate Perseus’s capture; contra, in turn, Stewart 2016a, 405, n. 28; Clinton et al. 2020, 565; to which add Wescoat 2013, 75: “Roman victory offerings in Greek sanctuaries generally took the form of spoils, a gold crown or bowl, or a portrait statue,” citing, e.g., I.Délos 1429, A I, 30–34; Plin. HN 34.13.  Gruen 1984, 38–42 (trenchant analysis); Berthold 1984, 179–224 (Rhodes); Errington 2020, 239–248, no. 667 (treaty; I thank Carlos Noreña for this reference).

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The Athenian Cult of Ares/Mars from Augustus to Pausanias Over a century later, under Augustus, the handsome late fifth-century Doric temple of Athena Pallenis at Pallene in central Attica was dismantled and moved to the Athenian Agora, along with the goddess’s marble cult statue by Lokros of Paros, where Pausanias saw them around 170 CE (Fig. 3).14 Athena apparently remained the temple’s titular goddess, at least for the time being, but her theos paredros at Pallene, Apollo, was replaced by Ares, in the form of a statue by the great fifth-century sculptor Alkamenes, pupil of Pheidias. It is preserved almost certainly in the popular Borghese Ares type, named after the only complete Roman-period copy, acquired by the Louvre in 1808 (Fig. 4). Alkamenes’s original came perhaps from the Aglaureion under the eastern crag of the Acropolis, where Ares served as patron of the ephebes and consort of the heroized Athenian princess Aglauros. Two recycled Aphrodites, one of them perhaps repurposed as Aglauros and the other included as Ares’s generally acknowledged Panhellenic consort, flanked this central pair.15 Inter alia, this typically late Hellenistic-Roman cult quartet clearly channeled the Roman Mars and Venus. Mars had given Augustus his great victory at Actium in 31; Venus was the divine ancestor of the Julii Caesares; and both of them together were the patrons of Augustus’s new world order and a Rome reborn after the Civil Wars. A fine fourth-century Pentelic marble altar, perhaps the one at Acharnai named in a fourth-century inscription,16 completed the ensemble, possibly at the suggestion of Augustus himself during his visit to Athens in 19 CE. Finally, the otherwise unknown Koinon of the Acharnians made a thank-offering in the Agora of a statue to Ares and Augustus, possibly in the immediate aftermath of the altar’s transfer.17

 On the temple, which was slightly bigger than the Hephaisteion, see esp. McAllister 1959; Thompson/Wycherley 1972, 162–166, fig. 39, pls. 80–83; Camp 2010, 110–112, figs. 72–73, with Korres 1998 on its original location; on its cult group and architectural sculpture, see Stewart 2016b; Stewart et al. 2019, 2021, and 2022. On the altar, see Thompson and Wycherley 1972, 162, 164–165, fig. 39, pl. 81:d; Camp 2010, 111, fig. 72.  Paus. 1.8.4–5: τῆς δὲ τοῦ Δημοσθένους εἰκόνος πλησίον Ἄρεώς ἐστιν ἱερόν, ἔνθα ἀγάλματα δύο μὲν Ἀφροδίτης κεῖται, τὸ δὲ τοῦ Ἄρεως ἐποίησεν Ἀλκαμένης, τὴν δὲ Ἀθηνᾶν ἀνὴρ Πάριος, ὄνομα δὲ αὐτῷ Λόκρος. ἐνταῦθα καὶ Ἐνυοῦς ἄγαλμά ἐστιν, ἐποίησαν δὲ οἱ παῖδες οἱ Πραξιτέλους. See also also Ath. 6, 234f, 235c on Apollo and Pallene; cf. Paus. 1.3.4 and 8.41.8–9 for a good candidate for the god’s now-lost statue, as yet unidentified. Trajan’s reply to Pliny (Ep. 10.50), quoted earlier, shows that the Romans would have had no problem with any of this: it explicitly affirms that provincials could relocate their temples and cults at will.  Robert 1938, 293–296, pl. 1; SEG 21.519; Stewart et al. 2022, 4, 7, fig. 5 (with recent bibliography).  IG II3.4.242 (ex-IG II2 2953), found on the Areopagos; probably awarded in 19/18 (archonship of Areios) or 18/17 (Demeas) in thanks for a handsome compensatory sum from the princeps. The bibliography on all this has grown exponentially in the last two decades: in addition to those cited in n. 14,

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Fig. 3: Reconstruction of the interior of the Temple of Ares in the Athenian Agora, in the time of Pausanias, c. 180 CE. From left: Aphrodite, Agora Excavations S 1882; Athena Pallenis by Lokros of Paros, Agora Excavations S 654; Ares by Alkamenes (Borghese type); Aphrodite, possibly repurposed as Aglauros, Agora Excavations S 378. Far right: Enyo by Kephisodotos and Timarchos, sons of Praxiteles. Reconstruction by Janet Juarez and Andrew Stewart, 2016.

Soon, in an apparently short-lived burst of enthusiasm for the Roman war god and his denizens, the Athenians honored Gaius, Augustus’s adopted son and heir, and Drusus, Tiberius’s adopted grandson and heir, with portraits, hailing each of them as “the New Ares.”18 One wonders whether the fragmentary unfinished copy of the Borghese Ares type—also found in the Agora (Fig. 5), dated by the pottery recovered from its sealed ar-

above, see most recently Dickenson 2016, 276–282; Vera 2018, 111, 149–161; Rous 2019, 61–78; Stewart et al. 2022, 89–131.  IG II2 3250 (2 BCE), 3257 (20–33 CE); apparently, the Neos Ares gesture was not repeated.

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Fig. 4: The Borghese Ares. Roman copy of a late fifth-century bronze original attributed to Alkamenes. Paris, Musée du Louvre Ma 866. Photo: © Musée du Louvre, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/G. Manusakis/Art Resource, New York: ART 468138.

chaeological context to before 10–20 CE, and somewhat weathered presumably from lying outside and exposed to the elements for a while—might have been an ill-fated first attempt at either Augustus’s or Gaius’s portrait.19 Discarded probably because of unexpected flaws in the marble, and the sole example of its type so far discovered in Greece, it could have easily borne a portrait head like many other copies of the type in the Roman West, and its material—Pentelic marble—had long been used in Athens instead of bronze to honor deified Hellenistic kings. By the early second century CE, however, the cult of Ares in the Agora had evolved somewhat. A decree of 99/100 CE from the Acropolis, honoring a prematurely deceased young athlete from Elis and almost universally overlooked in this context, provides the clue. It describes its proposer, the spectacularly named sacred herald

 Agora S 475a; fragments of its helmet and other body parts survive, all found in the so-called Bouleuterion Screen Wall, dated by its context pottery to ca. 10–20 CE: Stewart 2016b, 581–585, 614–616, figs. 7–10.

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Fig. 5: Unfinished, fragmentary Augustan copy of the Borghese Ares type, Athens Agora S 475. Photo: C. Mauzy, courtesy of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Agora Excavations.

and Roman citizen Titos Koponios Maximos of Hagnon, as also “hoplite general for the second time, gymnasiarch for the second time, and priest of Ares Enyalios, and Enyo, and Zeus Geleon.” A busy man.20 Lokros’s Athena obviously would have had her own priestess, but as both hoplite general and gymnasiarch (trainer to the city’s youth), Koponios Maximos was certainly the right man to tend the cult of Ares. Enyalios and Enyo are unexpected newcomers, however, especially the former in this syncretized role of Ares-Enyalios. Two generations later, Pausanias did see a statue of Enyo in the temple (1.8.4–5), discussed below, but he makes no mention of one of Enyalios there, perhaps confirming the syncretism e silentio.

 IG II2 1072, lines 4–6: ὁ ἐπὶ τὰ ὅπλα στρατηγὸς τὸ δεύτερον καὶ γυμνασίαρχος τὸ δεύτερον καὶ ἱερεὺς Ἄρεως Ἐνυαλίου καὶ Ἐνυοῦς καὶ Διὸς Γελέοντος ἱεροκῆρυξ Τίτος Κωπώνιος Μάξιμος Ἁγνούσιος; for the date, anchored by its citation of his son, T. Koponios Magnos II, as eponymous archon, see Follet 1976, 170–173, 303, 365 (96/7–102/3 CE, perhaps 101/102); Merritt, SEG 29 (1979): 126 (ditto); Byrne 2003, 200–202 (fixing it at 99/100); Gonzales 2004, 226–229 (96/7–102/3). For T. Koponios Maximos’s Roman citizenship, indicated by his tria nomina, see Suet. Claud. 25.3; on his career, which included several other offices, see Geagan 1967, 20, 38, 117, 130, 135, 141; Follet 1976, 171–172; Byrne 2003, 200–202. Despite the overall growth in urban populations under the Empire, such consolidations became normal as civic elites shrank dramatically, got much richer in the process (as today), and garnered more and more state offices, but this case seems quite egregious: see further below. (I thank Duncan MacRae and Nikolaos Papazarkadas for their help with all of this.)

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So when did the merger and Enyo’s installation in the temple occur? Unfortunately, neither Ares Enyalios nor Enyo reappear later in the extant Athenian epigraphical corpus; Attica mercifully experienced no fighting between the time of Augustus and Trajan that might explain matters; and a quixotic attempt to triangulate Ares and the (notoriously problematic) relationship between Mars and Quirinus seems even less likely.21 Although to merge Ares the war-god and Enyalios the god of the war-cry and first onslaught prima facie seems an obvious move, the Athenians had always kept them strictly separate, the aforementioned Acharnian thank-offering of probably 19 or 18 BCE being no exception.22 Probably the merger also postdates the honorary portraits as the “New Ares” (sic) awarded to Gaius and Drusus in 2 BCE and 20–30 CE. Even in the late first or early second centuries CE the tribe of Oineis dedicated a choregic monument on the Acropolis, which inter alia lauds a flute player for “playing the Ar[es?]”— alone.23 Finally, and for what it is worth, outside Athens the (admittedly scanty) record shows that this particular syncretism is an extremely rare second-fourth century phenomenon, documented to date only at Hermione in the Argolid, Orchomenos in Arkadia, and far-off Savatra in Lykaonia.24 The chances are, then, that the merger was relatively recent when Titos Koponios Maximos proposed his motion. Indeed, since he was hyperactive in religious affairs across the board (as sacred herald at Eleusis, and also involved in refurbishing the Asklepieion in his capacity as epimeletes of the polis),25 one wonders whether it was his own doing, especially since as gymnasiarch and hoplite general he would have invoked both gods regularly during military training. Moreover, the Aristotelian Constitution of Athens tells us that among the Athenian archons, the polemarch sacrificed to Enyalios on each anniversary of Marathon (58.1). This practice surely honored the Athenian phalanx’s famously daring charge under a deluge of Persian arrows, led by the polemarch Kallimachos, who then proceeded to lose his life in the ensuing melée. With the consolidation of Athenian state offices noted above, perhaps this task now had fallen to T. Koponios Maximos in his role as hoplite general, all but making the merger a no-brainer.26 As for Enyo/Bellona, Pausanias (1.8.5) attributes her statue in the temple to the sons of Praxiteles, Kephisodotos and Timarchos. A spectral figure in Athens and Attica, Enyo appears elsewhere only in an Acharnian fourth-century BCE copy of the Ephebic  On Enyalios/Quirinus see, e.g., Polyb. 3.25.6; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 2.48.2.  They received separate shrines, festivals, sacrifices, and citations in the Ephebic Oath (SEG 16.140, 37.88, 41.69, lines 16–17; see also, e.g., Ar. Pax 457–459; Arist. Ath. Pol. 58.1; Plut. Solon 9.4; Pollux 8.105– 106); for the details, see Gonzales 2004, 32, 204–221, 226–229.  Gaius and Drusus: supra, n. 18. Oineis: SEG 51.207.  IG IV.717; V.2.343; SEG 6.597; Gonzales 2004, 78–79, 133–134, 149–152, 192–193, 226–229, 419–420.  IG II2 3187, 3571, 3573, 3798, 4481; list, Byrne 2003, 201.  The office of polemarch still existed in the mid-first century CE (IG II2.1735, 1736, 1736a; Geagan 1967, xii, 3), but by the early-3rd its sole remaining requirement was to sacrifice to the Empress Julia Domna as Mother of the Camps (IG II2.1076, lines 21–24; Geagan 1967, 11–12, n. 65).

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Oath.27 No Athenian authors mention her, and she had no known shrine there. So one wonders: given her relative insignificance in Attica; the consequent improbability that anyone in early Hellenistic Athens would have commissioned an expensive full-scale statue of her from these two elite sculptors; and the evidence that her iconography elsewhere was calqued upon Athena’s28—given all this, did T. Koponios Maximos emulate his Augustan predecessors by commandeering a pre-existing Athena statue by the pair,29 in order to complete the roster of Greek war-gods in the temple? Yet by the time that Pausanias visited Athens later in the second century CE, all of these complexities had been forgotten, or at least sidelined by his guides, for he assigns the sanctuary solely to Ares/Mars. Almost two hundred years after the temple’s transfer from Pallene and the altar’s (perhaps) from Acharnai, and apparently without lifting a finger, the Romans had won.

Bibliography Badoud, Nathan (2018). “La Victoire de Samothrace, défaite de Philippe V,” Revue Archéologique 66, 279–306. Bernhardt, Johannes Christian (2014). Das Nikemonument von Samothrake und der Kampf der Bilder. Stuttgart. Berthold, Richard M. (1984). Rhodes in the Hellenistic Age. Ithaca. Byrne, S. G. (2003). Roman Citizens of Athens. Studia Hellenistica 40. Dudley, MA. Camp, John McK. (2010). The Athenian Agora: Site Guide, 5th ed. Princeton. Clinton, Kevin (2003). “Maroneia and Rome: Two Decrees of Maroneia from Samothrace,” Chiron 33, 379–418. Clinton, Kevin / Laugier, Ludovic / Stewart, Andrew / Wescoat, Bonna D. (2020). “The Nike of Samothrace: Setting the Record Straight,” AJA 124, 551–573. Dickenson, Christopher P. (2016). On the Agora. The Evolution of a Public Space in Hellenistic and Roman Greece (c. 323 B.C.—A.D. 267). Mnemosyne Supplement 398. Leiden. Dimitrova, Nora M. (2008). Theoroi and Initiates in Samothrace: The Epigraphical Evidence. Hesperia Supplement 37. Princeton. Errington, R. Malcolm, ed. (2020). Die Staatssverträge des Altertums, Vierter Band: Die Verträge der griechischrömischen Welt von ca. 200 v. Chr. bis zum Beginn der Kaiserzeit. Munich. Follet, Simone (1976). Athènes au IIe et au IIIe siècle: Études chronologiques et prosopographiques. Paris. Geagan, Daniel J. (1967). The Athenian Constitution after Sulla. Hesperia Supplement 12. Princeton. Gonzales, Matthew Paul (2004). Cults and Sanctuaries of Ares and Enyalios: A Survey of the Literary, Epigraphic, and Archaeological Evidence. Diss. University of California at Berkeley. Gruen, Erich S. (1984). The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome. 2 vols. Berkeley.

 SEG 16.140; 37.88; 41.69, line 17.  LIMC 3 (1986), 746–747, pl. 562, s.v. Enyo I (R. M. Gais); for their rapport, see, e.g., Hom. Il. 5.333– 335; Paus. 4.30.5; Quint. Smyrn. 1.363–366.  From some long-neglected rural shrine, and of marble (like all the other divinities attributed to the pair: for a list, see Stewart 1990, 293) or bronze?

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Kallet-Marx, Robert Morstein (1995). Hegemony to Empire. The Development of Roman Imperium in the East from 148 to 62 B.C. Berkeley. Korres, Manolis (1998). “Απó τον Σταυρó στην Αρχαία Αγορά,” Horos 10–12, 83–104. LaRocca, Eugenio (2018). La Nike di Samotracia tra Macedoni e Romani; Un Riesame del Monumento nel Quadro dell’assimilazione dei Penati agli Dei di Samotracia. Annuario della Scuola Archeologica di Atene e delle Missioni Italiane in Oriente Supplemento 1. Athens. McAllister, Marian Holland (1959). “Temple of Ares,” Hesperia 28, 1–64. Palagia, Olga (2010). “The Victory of Samothrace and the Aftermath of the Battle of Pydna,” in: O. Palagia and B. D. Wescoat (eds.), Samothracian Connections: Essays in Honor of James R. McCredie. Oxford, 154–164. Palagia, Olga (2021). “The Nike of Samothrace,” in: M. Lagogianni Georgakarakos (ed.), Known and Unknown Nikai in History, Art, and Life. Athens, 148–169. Robert, Louis (1938). Études épigraphiques et philologiques. Bibliothèque de l’École des hautes études, sciences historiques et philologiques 272. Paris. Rous, Sarah A. (2019). Reset in Stone: Memory and Reuse in Ancient Athens. Madison, WI. Stewart, Andrew (1990). Greek Sculpture: An Exploration. 2 vols. New Haven. Stewart, Andrew (2016a). “The Nike of Samothrace: Another View,” AJA 120, 399–410. Stewart, Andrew (2016b). “The Borghese Ares Revisited. New Evidence from the Agora and a Reconstruction of the Augustan Cult Group in the Temple of Ares,” Hesperia 85, 577–625. Stewart, Andrew / Driscoll, Eric / Estrin, Seth / Gleason, Nathalie / Lawrence, Eric / Levitan, Rebecca / Lloyd-Knauf, Samantha / Turbeville, Kelsey (2019). “Classical Sculpture from the Athenian Agora, Part 2. The Friezes of the Temple of Ares (Temple of Athena Pallenis),” Hesperia 88, 625–705. Stewart, Andrew / Lawrence, Eric / Levitan, Rebecca / Turbeville, Kelsey (2021). “Classical Sculpture from the Athenian Agora, Part 3. The Pediments, Friezes, and Akroteria of the Temple of Ares (Athena Pallenis),” Hesperia 90, 533–604. Stewart, Andrew / Lawrence, Eric / Levitan, Rebecca / Turbeville, Kelsey (2022). “Classical Sculpture from the Athenian Agora, Part 4. Concluding Remarks on the Sculptures of the Temple of Ares (Athena Pallenis),” Hesperia 91, 89–131. Thompson, Homer A. / Wycherley, Richard Ernest (1972). The Agora of Athens: The History, Shape, and Uses of an Ancient City Center. Agora XIV. Princeton. Vera, Joshua R. (2018). How to Move a God: Shifting Religion and Imperial Identities in Athens. Diss. University of Chicago. Wescoat, Bonna D. (2013). “Insula Sacra: Samothrace Between Troy and Rome,” in: M. Galli (ed.), Roman Power and Greek Sanctuaries. Forms of Interaction and Communication. Athens, 45–81.

Peter J. Holliday

The Mausoleum of Augustus and Etruscan Precedents for Roman Renewal Elements of John Pollini’s reconstruction of the Mausoleum of Augustus have generated debate, but that is not my focus here.1 Rather, this paper considers how the monument’s initial form was conceived and its later program devised to reassure the Roman populace, especially a cohort of the princeps’s supporters of Etruscan lineage, by acknowledging concepts of temporality going back to the city’s foundation.2 Etruscan sages divided time into cyclical eras of varying length, the duration of which was determined according to a system based on the dates of birth and death of the most long-lived members of a community.3 Each city, including Rome, had its own framework, by which the first saeculum ended with the death of the last person born on the day of the city’s foundation, at which point a new saeculum began that would end in the same fashion, leading to the beginning of the next. Prodigies heralded the beginning of a new age to forewarn what was occurring, and it is for this reason that the matter became part of the Etruscan disciplina and a concern of the Etruscan haruspices active in Rome.4 Censorinus (DN 17.6) states that Varro’s sources predicted that the series of saecula was supposed to end with the tenth age.5 Etruria’s ninth saeculum, or age, began in 88 BCE (Plut. Sull. 7.7) during the Mithridatic crisis, and the tenth and final in 44 BCE (Servius Ecl. 9.46), “when the Republic was on the brink of collapse and Octavian was about to start his formidable rise.”6 According to Appian (BC 4.4), the reconciliation between Octavian and Antony in 43 BCE was accompanied by numerous alarming prodigies, from dogs howling like wolves in the Roman forum to statues dripping blood or sweat. Etruscan seers were consulted. The senior haruspex claimed that the saeculum was ending and that the monarchy was about to be restored, enslaving everybody except for himself. After making this pronouncement, he held his breath until he choked and died.  See, for example, Pollini 2012, 248–256, where Nicholas Cipolla’s computer generated models make the arguments particularly convincing.  I presented a version of this paper at “Etruscan Art to Roman Art? A Reappraisal,” a workshop at the University of Oxford’s Classical Art Research Centre in 2014, which encouraged speculation and benefited from the generous comments of the organizers, Charlotte Potts and Peter Stewart, the other participants, and subsequently from additional colleagues.  Cens. DN 17.5.  Cens. DN 17.6; V. Max. 1.1; Cicero also refers to a disciplina in his writings on the subject. The problem of the Etruscan ages is complex, and its implications for late republic and early imperial politics remain contentious; see Santangelo 2013, 115–127, for an accessible account.  According to Cens. DN 17.6, Varro had access to Etruscan sources that provided details about the varying lengths of the first seven saecula.  Santangelo 2013, 115; see also Sordi 1972 and Rawson 1978, 146–147. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111182919-014

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Plutarch (Caes. 69.3) mentions the appearance of a comet in 44 BCE during funeral games Octavian held in honor of Caesar from July 20 to 30.7 According to Servius (Ecl. 9.46–47): The haruspex Vulcatius said in a public meeting that it was a comet, signifying the end of the ninth age and the beginning of the tenth, but that, since he was revealing the secret against the will of the gods, he would immediately die; and he fell dead in that public meeting, without having finished his speech. Augustus included this too in the second book of the memoirs of his life.

Some scholars believe that this account was devised as an alternate version of the episode related by Appian, purposely rendered in a manner supportive of Augustan ideology.8 Since comets were regarded as inauspicious portents (Cic. ND 2.14; Plin. HN 2.89, 92), Octavian and his supporters were quick to interpret the phenomenon as a star, the sidus Iulium, associated with the apotheosis of Caesar.9 In his later Commentarii de vita sua (published in the late 20s BCE), he reported: The crowd believed that this constellation signified that the soul of Caesar had been received among the numina of the immortal gods. On this account this emblem was added to the likeness of his head which I presently consecrated in the forum.10

According to Suetonius (Aug. 95.2), Octavian attempted to further offset the disturbing impact of this phenomenon with the augural ritual he performed after his election to his first consulship on 19 August 43 BCE, when twelve vultures appeared in the sky.11 Ennius (Ann. frags. 96–100) recorded that the same number of vultures had appeared to Romulus, and Vettius, an expert on augural matters consulted by Varro, regarded the prodigy as a sign that Rome had twelve saecula, not ten.12 Thus, it would be through the young Octavian that catastrophe would be deferred, and Rome would be renewed. The chronology of the Roman upheaval thus coincided with a main tenet of Etruscan lore: the coming Civil War, which some feared would lead to a return to an undesirable past, also indicated the finis nominis Etrusci, the last age of the Etruscan people. The significance of that revelation was undoubtedly clear even to those who were unaware of the preceding disorder of 88 BCE and of the rules that governed the Etruscan system of periodization.

 Ramsey and Licht 1997.  Hahn 1983, 62; Gurval 1997, Santangelo 2013, 116. Contra, however, see Weinstock 1971, 194–195.  According to Cass. Dio 45.7.1, while some called the portent a comet, most followed Octavian’s lead; see Hall 1986, 2576. Hall’s critical study corrects the tendency to interpret the Secular Games of 17 BCE as a Hellenized ceremony.  Quoted in Plin. HN 2.93. In his account, Suet. Jul. 88 also states that the belief that it was the soul of Julius Caesar taken into heaven was the reason for the addition of a star to the head of a portrait of Caesar. On the representation of the Divus Iulius, see Pollini 2012, 145–154.  See also Livy 1.6; Plut. Quaest. Rom. 10; App. BC 3.9.4.  Sidon. Apoll. Carm. 7.55; Cens. DN 17.15; see Hall 1986, 2568.

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It was against this background of the saecula raised in the turmoil following Caesar’s death, prodigies unparalleled in Roman history, and the foretelling of the disappearance of the Etruscans just when he was attempting to gather the consensus of tota Italia, that Octavian began building his great tomb.13 In examining the matter here, I not only review the well-known evidence for the predominantly Italic derivation of the Mausoleum’s form and how both its subsequent ornamentation and Augustus’s later building projects in its vicinity expanded its original meaning, but will also show how, just as Octavian had deftly interpreted the initial appearance of the sidus Iulium to benefit his political agenda and then enlarged upon it decades later, so too his Mausoleum, initially undertaken to make one particular political statement, was incorporated into a larger program that nevertheless remained expressive of Etruscan concepts of time and eternity. Augustus would subsume the last age of the Etruscans into the renewal of Rome.

The Mausoleum’s Location and Form The relatively undeveloped northern Campus Martius was far removed from the competitive displays crowding the Circus Flaminius and from their encroachment into the southern Campus by monuments erected by Pompey and Caesar. Because it lay outside the pomerium, by the laws of the Twelve Tables some burials were permitted there. During the later Republic, public burial at state expense (funus publicum) was awarded posthumously by decree of the Senate to a few individuals.14 In 78 BCE, the ceremonies for Sulla’s funeral there evoked Hellenistic royalty and Roman triumph.15 Other notables were subsequently given the right to be buried in the Campus, including Julia, the daughter of Caesar and wife of Pompey,16 and public monuments were provided for Hirtius and Pansa, the two consuls who died in the siege at Mutina (Modena) against Antony in 43 BCE.17 The overwrought mob precluded Julius Caesar’s planned cremation in the Campus by cremating him in the Forum instead, but his remains were then probably buried in the tomb of his daughter Julia.18 Unlike those sites, the massive form of Augustus’s Mausoleum never vanished. In the Middle Ages it served the Colonna family as a fortress. In the sixteenth century the Soderini family laid out an ornate sculpture garden within the upper part of the ruins, followed in the eighteenth century by the Teatro Correa for bullfights, and in the early

     

See Chillet 2016, 206–233. Plut. CG 3.1 and Pomp. 40.5, 44.3; Plin. Pan. 63.7; Cic. Leg. 2.23.58. Livy Epit. 90; App. BC 1.106; Plut. Sull. 38.4. Suet. Jul. 84.1. Livy Epit. 119; Vell. 2.62.4. Suet. Jul. 84.3–4; App. BC 2.148.615–616; Cass. Dio 44.50.2.

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part of the last century by a theater called, appropriately enough, the Augusteo, until the 1920s and 1930s, when Mussolini ordered centuries of accretions removed in his quest to recapture the ancient glory of Rome.19 The Mausoleum is classified as a tumulus, that is, possessing a circular retaining wall and a mound of earth (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1: Section and plan of the Mausoleum of Augustus. After Yegül and Favro 2019, fig. 4.25.

Its form is achieved through the construction of five concentric circular walls with intervening spaces surrounding a central travertine-faced concrete pillar some nine meters in diameter. The outer wall was just over 89 meters, or 300 Roman feet in di-

 Kostoff 1978; Riccomini 1995; von Hase Salto 1997.

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ameter. Inside, the five concentric walls are tied to each other by a series of radial walls to form semicircular chambers between walls 5 and 4 and connectors linking walls 4 and 3, forming twelve rectangular chambers. Tons of earth filled the enclosed spaces, leaving the visitor with limited interior space. The southern entrance accesses a vaulted vestibule piercing the three outer walls and leads to an annular corridor between walls 3 and 2; two short passages from this corridor lead to a second annular corridor between walls 2 and 1 that encircle the tomb’s center. From this inner corridor one entered the burial chamber proper (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2: Mausoleum of Augustus, interior. Photo: © Hugo DK for Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0.

Rectangular wall niches that opened into the outer wall accommodated urns and statues of members of the imperial family. Inside the travertine pillar in the center was a smaller chamber, presumably for Octavian’s cinerary urn. Significantly, none of these corridors was necessary for structural purposes.20

 Davies 2000, 124.

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The exterior, now partially obscured by the raised ground level surrounding it and by the cypress trees planted on its first tier,21 can be partially reconstructed on the basis of limited literary and archaeological evidence. Strabo (5.3.8) provides an early, if brief, description: Most worth seeing is the so-called Mausoleum, a great mound set upon a lofty foundation of white marble near the river, thickly planted with evergreen trees to the very summit. Above stands a bronze image of Augustus Caesar. Within the mound are the tombs intended for him, his relatives, and his intimates. Behind there is a large grove with splendid walks; nearby is an elevated place, where Augustus’s corpse was burned.

The outermost wall is presently about nine meters high. Contra Strabo, it was neatly surfaced in creamy white travertine except for the surface around the doorway, which was completed in marble from Luna (modern Carrara). A Doric frieze and projecting cornice topped the lower, outer wall for a total height of about twelve meters.22 The varying heights of the surviving interior walls impede determining the building’s original exterior appearance, and above the outer wall reconstruction becomes nearly impossible. One school of thought reconstructs the structure with an enormous mound rising from the cornice of the outer wall topped with trees and a statue.23 Most scholars, however, believe that the lower, outer portions of the building were covered with earth and planted with trees, interpreting the surviving concrete remains and stone architectural fragments to indicate that the fourth ring wall was considerably taller than those around it, rising above the mound of earth that Strabo describes heaped up inside and against it (as indicated in the reconstruction here).24 The marble moldings emphasizing the door may have been decorated with pilasters and a cornice, which was topped by a second mound planted with trees before culminating in the statue. The present state of the structure and Strabo’s scant description make either reconstruction plausible.

Sources and Precedents Whatever its exact form, the monument was impressive, its diameter ensuring it remains the largest Roman tomb ever built. There is a great variety in Roman funerary architecture, but Octavian chose the simple tumulus type. Because of the vegetation, Strabo connected the Mausoleum with the type of grave mound that his contemporaries would probably associate with ancient graves of heroes, such as were still visible

 Pollini 2012, 251–252 argues that the cypress trees planted during the fascist period are incorrect, and that laurel trees probably decorated the upper levels of the middle ring of the Mausoleum, with oak trees in large semicircular planters in the outer ring.  Hesberg/Panciera 1994, 180.  Giglioli 1930; Richardson 1992, 248.  Hesberg/Panciera 1994.

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in Etruria.25 An even earlier native tradition of tumulus burial existed in the peninsula during the Proto-Villanovan phase, but in the late seventh century BCE large versions of the type appeared throughout Etruria, with regional variations, and remained in use well into the period of Roman domination.26 Since the Mausoleum overlooked the Via Flaminia leading north from Rome to Etruria, and because of Augustus’s recognized antiquarian interests, the idea of inspiration from Etruscan tumuli has long been acknowledged. The Banditaccia necropolis at Cerveteri (ancient Caere) features tumulus tombs of varying sizes, dates, and interior arrangements; each served for the burials of a single family for several generations. Most have a cylindrical wall or podium carved out of a tufa ridge in imitation of built architecture that supports a tumulus above, making them clearly visible from the town (undoubtedly a concern of their owners). Corridors cut into the mounds provide access to the burial chambers, located toward the center or sometimes the periphery of the tomb. Several seventh-century BCE tombs at Populonia (Livorno), however, are constructed rather than carved buildings. The so-called Tomba “dei Carri” (Tomb of the Chariots) has a cylindrical retaining wall built of irregular stone masonry covered with an earthen mound (Fig. 3).27

Fig. 3: Tomba “dei Carri” (Tomb of the Chariots), Populonia (Livorno). Photo: author.

A narrow entry corridor leads to a rectilinear burial chamber. Although the similarities between such Etruscan tombs and Roman tumuli are both striking and significant, the differences are also important, especially in the nature of the burial chambers: Etruscan tumuli sometimes include multiple chambers, with none of them

 Zanker 1988, 1975.  Prayon 1986, 176.  Cecconi/Melani 1981, 79–80; Johnson 1996, 227.

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necessarily placed at the center of the structure. The design of these chambers probably imitates the interior of Etruscan houses since, following local religious practices, the builders sought to create a suitable habitation for the dead.28 Some Etruscan tombs, however, do have interiors that augur the Mausoleum’s arrangement. Among these may be cited the tholos tomb at Casale Marittimo and another tomb, “La Montagnola,” at Quinto di Sesto Fiorentino, which both date to around 600 BCE (Fig. 4).29

Fig. 4: Squared pillar and corbelled masonry inside “La Montagnola” Tomb, Quinto di Sesto Fiorentino. Photo: author.

Their chambers are constructed of corbelled masonry with a square pillar at the center of each. These pillars may have helped support the masonry ceiling, but technically they were not necessary. The central pillar within a circular room may have conveyed instead some symbolic meaning, though that meaning, if it existed, is now lost to us. Although the architect of the Mausoleum may never have seen these particular tombs so as to be influenced by them, they nevertheless demonstrate that Etruscan precedents exist for the arrangement of the Mausoleum’s pier and annular burial chamber, albeit on a larger scale. Another potential Italic source is at Lavinium, according to legend founded by Aeneas. Following his disappearance after a battle near the Numicus River, Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Ant. Rom. 1.64.5) records that “the Latins built a hero-shrine to him . . .

 Prayon 1986, 182. Site to site the practice follows different trajectories; e.g., at Cerveteri tombs no longer imitated real house forms after the late-sixth century.  Johnson 1996, 229.

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It is a small mound, around which have been set out in regular rows of trees that are well worth seeing.” Excavations uncovered a complex known as the Sanctuary of the XIII Altars,30 and nearby, the remains of a tumulus sixty feet in diameter consisting of a circle of stones, which served as its foundation, and a mound dating to the seventh century BCE. Usually identified as the heroön described by Dionysius,31 even if the tumulus did not contain the burial of Aeneas it marked the site of his disappearance and was the site of his cultic worship. Significantly, Cassius Dio (56.33.1) calls the Mausoleum a heroön, and whether or not Octavian initially anticipated his tomb becoming a heroön, the tumulus form would allow him to link his monument with that of his ancestor Aeneas.32 Octavian and his architects may also have looked at earlier tombs constructed in the city’s suburbs. One of the small mid-sixth-century tumulus tombs near the fifth milestone on the Via Appia, conventionally known as the Tomb of the Horatii, is typical of those lining the roads outside the city.33 It is a small, simple monument with a low retaining wall topped by an earthen mound. The absence of a funeral chamber indicates that the burial was done beneath the ground marked by the tumulus. To the north, a tomb dated securely to 80–40 BCE has the beginnings of internal buttressing comparable to the Mausoleum.Several republican tombs possess an internal corridor and a burial chamber like Octavian’s; a few even have a similar central pier that, like that in Augustus’s tomb, helped support a statue above the tomb. The interior of the fourth-century (or earlier) tomb attributed to the Curiatii on the Via Appia, with a present tumulus height of about three meters, has a central pier to carry a statue. This arrangement of the Mausoleum’s pier in the center of an annular burial chamber appears in other tombs, notably in a large tumulus in the Vigna Pepoli.34 Its outer retaining wall is now five and a half meters high, though its original tumulus would have reached a greater height. A corridor leads to the burial chamber located at the center of the structure. The fact that the interior features opus reticulatum, a technique first found in Rome in a datable building in 55 BCE, suggests that it may have preceded the Mausoleum. These tombs all exhibit great variety in the height of the drum, from one or two meters up to almost ten. The so-called Casal Rotondo on the Via Appia, convincingly dated to the decade of 40 to 30 BCE, has a diameter of over 29

 Galinsky 1974. Recently another altar of volcanic tufa was unearthed. The altars may represent each of the important Latin cities of that era.  Giuliani 1981; Turcan 1983; Johnson 1996, 231–233.  Cf. Ver. A. 2.849; Hor. Carm. 3.29.1. Holloway 1966 argues that the emulation of overall form and particular details were enough to evoke the intended parallel, and later Romans also constructed tumulus tombs, such as that of Caecilia Metella (ca. 30–10 BCE), to suggest earlier monuments.  Eisner 1986, 56–59; Johnson 1996, 222.  Eisner 1986, 25–27; Johnson 1996, 225.

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meters and a retaining wall that preserves some of its exterior travertine facing to a height of just under 9 meters.35 The Mausoleum’s distinctive annular corridor encircling the burial chamber can be seen in the much smaller tomb known as that of the Servilii on the Via Appia of the same period.36 Such passageways appear in a relatively small number of Roman tombs, and their purpose may have been to provide a path for the ritual circumambulation of the burial chamber. The act of circumscribing an object or person held magical properties for Romans.37 According to Varro (L. 5.143, 7.7), the boundary established through circular motion both defined the area it enclosed and protected it, effectively purifying the area thus inscribed, as demonstrated when sacrificial victims were forced to circumambulate the altar before their slaughter. Circumambulation was essential in Roman funerary rituals. At a funeral, participants would circumambulate the pyre.38 Plutarch (Quaest. Rom. 14) recounts Varro’s claim that when the living visited ancestral tombs they would “turn around” the graves, as they did the shrines of the gods. Suetonius (Cl. 1) records that after the sudden death of Drusus in 9 BCE, the army erected a commemorative monument to him in Mogontiacum (Mainz); in subsequent years soldiers made an annual ceremonial run around the monument, perpetually reenacting the funerary rite of the decursio. Cassius Dio (56.42) recounts Augustus’s funeral: When the bier had been placed on the pyre in the Campus Martius, all the priests marched around it first, then came the knights, not only those who were to be senators but the others as well, and then the infantry of the Praetorian Guard circled it at a run and threw onto it all the triumphal decorations which any of them had ever received from the emperor for an act of valor.

It is in rituals of circumambulation like these that Penelope Davies, following Windfeld-Hansen, convincingly finds an explanation for the annular corridors in imperial tombs, which accommodated encirclement of the central burial chamber by visitors before and after entry.39 Roman design thus manipulated visitors to perform certain magical and honorific rituals. Circumambulation inside the Mausoleum was both a ritualistic precaution and a perpetually repeated sign of piety and honor, like the rite Suetonius describes enacted at Drusus’s funerary monument. When visitors circumambulated a monument, their choreographed movement through space perpetuated memory through a ritualistic engagement with the deceased. Following his thorough overview of these and other monuments, Mark F. Johnson determined that the principal elements of the Mausoleum’s structure can all be found

    

Eisner 1986, 61–63; Johnson 1996, 224. Eisner 1986, 33–36; Johnson 1996, 227. Having no beginning or end, the circle also takes on associations with eternity. See, e.g., Stat. Theb. 6.213–216 and V. Fl. 3.347–350. Davies 2000, 124–127; Windfeld-Hansen 1962, 58.

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in other Etruscan and Italic funerary monuments, including its tumulus, circular plan, retaining wall, corridor leading into an interior space, annular corridor, annular burial chamber, and central pier within that chamber.40 Although some have sought sources for its construction techniques elsewhere, these also have Italic precedents.41 As Paul Rehak observed, “the late Republic is precisely the period when Roman architects and engineers were experimenting with colossal concrete structures at villas along the Italian coast.”42 The buttressing of the Mausoleum might therefore be understood as stemming from Italic innovations seen in the substructure of complexes like the Temple of Jupiter Anxur at Terracina and the Temple of Fortuna at Praeneste. Given its affinities with the tombs just reviewed, Octavian had no need to look to Greece, Asia Minor, or the capital of Ptolemaic Egypt for inspiration for the tomb’s form.43 Octavian chose a tumulus design largely because it was a conservative and even aristocratic tomb type clearly within Etruscan and Roman funerary traditions. It is generally agreed that the basic forms of early Roman temples derive from Etruscan architecture, and it seems sensible to assume that there would also be similar influences manifested in other building types, including tombs. Some scholars, including Michael Eisner and Jane Reeder, call attention to the fact that with few intermediaries between Etruscan tombs and the Mausoleum, tracing a direct line of evolution is difficult; however, given the fact that the necropoleis of Etruscan tombs were visible and visited at the beginning of the imperial period, this does not seem to be overly problematic.44 It was precisely by harking back to earlier Italic models that Octavian implied that his legitimacy as ruler was preordained, comparable to his choice in 36 BCE to build his house near the tugurium Romuli (hut of Romulus) on the Palatine.

Dating: Initiation vs. Completion Octavian’s development of the northern Campus Martius reveals the evolution of a personal architectural plan that, like the Principate itself, changed over the course of several decades. The development falls into two distinctive stages. The first is the precocious erection of his Mausoleum and the Ustrinum, the location of cremations. Although Octavian had some health issues,45 they were minor, and it seems likely that he initiated these structures so early in his life in order to ensure that his funeral

 Johnson 1996.  For example, Davies 2000, 56–58 compared the construction of the Mausoleum to Egyptian monuments like Sneferu’s Fourth-Dynasty pyramid at Meidum.  Rehak 2006, 38–39. Reeder 1992, 226, suggests the influence of Roman military architecture.  Scholars have particularly sought a connection with Alexander’s tomb: Bernhard 1956; Kienast 1969; Castagnoli 1984; Coarelli/Thébert 1988; Davies 2000, 51–60.  Eisner 1979; Reeder 1992.  Suet. Aug. 81.1, see Kraft 1967, 189–190.

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would not be disrupted by the kind of riots that accompanied the funerals of Clodius, Caesar, and others.46 They exemplify the “Romulean” phase of Octavian’s career, when he promoted a well-documented parallel to Rome’s founder. Vincent Jolivet locates his Ustrinum near those of later emperors on the low hill of Monte Citorio, a site that also links it with Romulus’s apotheosis.47 A second, “Augustan” phase of development in the Campus Martius directly followed the celebration of the Secular Games of 17 BCE and his extended absence from Rome from 16 to 13 BCE. Scholars since Edmund Buchner have shown how during this phase the Mausoleum became one component of an honorific complex consisting also of the Ara Pacis and Horologium Augusti,48 the first element in a process that Diane Favro describes as Augustus’s orchestration of both the district and greater city.49 The interlude of some eighteen years between these two stages of development suggests that Octavian did not originally envision the unified complex we now know; nevertheless, he again drew on elements of Etruscan belief for that later program. Although scholars agree that the Mausoleum was among the princeps’s earliest architectural projects, the precise date of its construction remains problematic. Konrad Kraft interprets the use of the pluperfect exstruxerat in Suetonius’s statement (Aug. 100.4) that the gardens around the tomb were opened to the public during Octavian’s sixth consulship in 28 BCE to mean that the tomb structure itself was also finished then, although he concedes that its ornamentation may not have been.50 Certainly Octavian’s restoration of the Via Flaminia, completed in 27 BCE, would have made it easy for Romans to visit the tomb and gardens.51 For our purposes, however, the date of the tomb’s completion is not really as important as when it was first planned and announced. The scale of the monument suggests that it took some time to build and was most likely begun several years earlier. In the period leading up to Actium (31 BCE), both Octavian and Antony staked their claims to the present legitimacy and future success of the triumvirate, Antony on the basis of earned laus and gloria, to which Octavian had little claim. In 32 BCE, after Antony aligned himself with Cleopatra by making the so-called Donations of Alexandria in favor of his own children by her, along with Caesar’s son, Kaisarion, Octavian illegally published Antony’s will to the Senate, including the damning statement that Antony wished to be buried with the Egyptian queen in Alexandria.52  Rehak 2006, 32–33.  Jolivet 1988; see Pollini 2012, 248–258.  Buchner 1982; Favro 1996, 260–267; Heslin 2007; Haselberger/Auber 2014, esp. 15–38.  Favro 1996, 192–214.  Kraft 1967, 191. Similarly, Kraft notes that Cass. Dio’s (53.30.5) use of the imperfect when discussing Marcellus’s burial in 23 BCE may indicate that it was still not complete then. Verg. A. 6.874 describes it as tumulus recens.  Rehak 2006, 36.  Cass. Dio 50.4.2; Suet. Aug. 17.1; Plut. Ant. 58.3–8; Zanker 1988, 72; Eder 1990, 95, 99–104; Davies 2000, 50–51; Rehak 2006, 37.

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If, therefore, Octavian undertook construction before Actium, the tomb would have played an important role in the propaganda war with Antony and served as a symbol of his commitment to be buried in Rome as a Roman citizen. Choosing to construct his tomb in the Campus Martius permitted Octavian to secure his place among the burials of other illustrious Romans; deploying a form clearly embracing local funerary traditions underscored that identity. The Mausoleum, however, would become more than just an expression of Octavian’s loyalty to Rome and Italy. A surviving fragment of the projecting marble cornice preserves on the underside Egyptian corona atef patterns between two coffers, while one of the coffers carries in relief a type of lotus flower.53 Standing some 22 meters from either side of the entrance was a pair of small, uninscribed granite obelisks.54 Adding such Egyptian elements commemorated Octavian’s success at Actium, giving the Mausoleum the impression of a triumphal monument, subtly increasing its meaning to include victory in war in addition to triumph over death. In this context its form presages that of later tropeia, such as the commemorative monument he erected outside La Turbie, France.55 The later triumphal imagery has tended to overshadow the significance of the tomb’s early form in modern scholarship. Suetonius’s statement about the Mausoleum’s completion may suggest that the spoils from Egypt simply allowed Octavian to finish construction quickly. The exterior of the Mausoleum continued to be ornamented over the years with additional references to Octavian’s accomplishments. Fragments of marble blocks carved in relief with laurel branches and leaves suggest that the walls flanking the doorway were sculpted to recall a pair of laurel trees that Octavian planted on either side of the door of his Palatine residence early in 27 BCE, when he adopted the title of Augustus.56 In the same year the Senate awarded the princeps an inscribed gold shield recording his virtues, the clipeus virtutis, which was exhibited in the Curia Julia; a marble fragment found at the Mausoleum copies this honorific.57 Suetonius (Aug. 101.2) tells us that after his death a pair of pillars on which was an inscribed copy of the record of Augustus’s achievements (Res Gestae) flanked either side of the entrance to the Mausoleum, as specified in his will.58 The eclecticism of its exterior elevation and the combination of architectural ornaments from a variety of sources suggests that the architects of the Mausoleum were

 Reeder 1992, 274; Rehak 2006, 39.  Zanker 1988, 76.  Formigé 1949; Zanker 1988, 76; more recently see Davies 2000, 64–66.  Cass. Dio 53.16.4; Hesberg/Panciera 1994, 14.  Hesberg/Panciera 1994, 14–15 place the shield over the entrance; see also Welch 2019, 287–296.  Favro 1996, 311 n.155, observes that, except for being written by the subject himself, its form and content paralleled those of funerary elogia.

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searching for a vocabulary adequate for the varied messages they wished to convey.59 The deployment of motifs drawn from diverse artistic traditions in the search for a comprehensible message is a hallmark of Roman practice. Numerous partisans of Octavian commissioned artistic programs that wove together the threads of distinct early legends into one unified Roman tapestry. Thus, paintings like those discovered in a tomb on the Esquiline, probably built for the freedmen of Statilius Taurus, or the sculpted friezes dating to the reconstruction of the Basilica Aemilia, illustrate the union of Trojan, Latin, Sabine, and Etruscan peoples to form Rome.60 A miscellany of different significances was not uncommon in republican tombs. The form of the tomb of the Scipios (early-third century to early-first century BCE) imitated Etruscan rockcut tombs, featuring naturalistic portrait statues gracing its fashionable Hellenistic façade, a podium carrying traditional historical painting, and inscriptions on the sarcophagi inside combining contemporary calligraphy with archaic language forms.61 The accretion of small-scale ornament, however, is not sufficient to articulate the Mausoleum’s enormous mass effectively and fails to produce a unified appearance. (The few large forms of the Mausoleum of Hadrian, by contrast, yield a bolder architectural image.) The gleaming white rings formed a monumental base for the statue of Octavian, whose monumental proportions matched those of the Mausoleum.62 Nevertheless, the tomb dominated the landscape of the Campus in the Hellenistic manner and eclipsed other structures in Rome, justifying Strabo’s calling it a “mausoleum,” a term embodying a sense of marvel at its size by referencing one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

Etrusca Disciplina and Roman Renewal Etruscan municipal aristocrats figured largely among Octavian’s inner circle. The wealthy equestrian Maecenas, who prided himself on his ancient Etruscan lineage, first appears in 40 BCE, when Octavian employed him to arrange his marriage with Scribonia and afterwards to help negotiate the Treaty of Brundisium and the reconciliation with Marc Antony.63 Maecenas recognized the genius of contemporary poets, not only as the truest ornament of the court, but as a power for reconciling Romans to the new order of things: he was behind the shift in solemnity of purpose between

 Zanker 1988, 76–77; Rehak 2006, 40. Such additions transformed the Mausoleum from a mere tomb into a larger commemoration of the man and his accomplishments.  Holliday 2005.  Holliday 2002, 33–36, 124–125.  Zanker 1988, 76. Pollini has long argued that that colossal statue of Augustus was quadrigati rather than pedestris: Pollini 1993, and more recently Pollini 2012, 252–254.  Chillet 2016, 21–93. See Hall 1982 on the question of Vergil’s own Etruscan lineage and associations.

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the Eclogues and the Georgics of Vergil, and a similar progression from the earlier odes of Horace to the great national themes of the third book.64 Maecenas’s brother-in-law Caius Proculeius was also a close associate. Moreover, Octavian’s half-sister, Octavia Maior, was the daughter of the Etruscan Ancharia, and wife of Sextus Appuleius, an Etruscan from Luna, site of the new marble quarries. John Hall notes that the burgeoning party of Octavian also included his enigmatic agent, Aulus Caecina of Volaterra; C. Carrinas, a former Caesarian general and praetorian senator whom Octavian nominated in 43 BCE to take his own place as consul; and C. Vibius Pansa, another Caesarian general and ordinary consul of the same year. Not least, M. Vipsanius Agrippa was among their ranks. Octavian’s choice to build his tomb in a recognizably local, largely Etruscan form undoubtedly spoke to these powerful supporters whose backing would remain crucial in later Augustan councils of state.65 The Etruscan presence profoundly affected the Roman habitus well beyond the workings of the court. Although today we conceive of time as a unilinear progression from beginning to end, some ancient cultures conceived of eternity as the ceaseless repetition of time already experienced, cosmological in nature, assuring continuity by the constant return of circular movement. In his discussion mentioned above, Censorinus reveals that the problem of the saecula was acutely felt beyond an exclusively Etruscan constituency. Since at least the calamitous decade of the 40s BCE, the cycle of ages and their renewal had become a matter of broader public interest, certainly in response to the political upheavals of the period, but also due to the advancing of the sun from the constellation Aries into Pisces with the precession of the equinoxes; this heightened the anticipation of change, as was witnessed in our own time by the next precession, from Pisces into Aquarius. Romans traditionally marked the beginning of a new era with the celebration of ludi saeculares (Secular Games). Censorinus (DN 17.6) records the existence of differing beliefs concerning the ludi and the dates when they were performed.66 Although sources offer highly imaginative accounts of their origin, some proposing that the ludi went all the way back to the expulsion of the kings, all agree that the last observance before those led by Augustus had been in 146 BCE. Etruscan supporters of Augustus belonging to the Quindecemviri sacris faciundis, fifteen men charged with keeping the Sibylline books and overseeing the Games, included Agrippa, C. Licinius Stolo, C. Norbanus Flaccus, and Q. Aelius Tubero.67 Augustus’s resident religious advisor, C. Ateius Capito, derived from an Etruscan family and experienced in the Etruscan haruspical arts, under-

 Chillet 2016, 459–469; Le Doze 2019.  Hall 1986, 2578–2580 registers even more Etruscan supporters of Octavian; see also Chillet 2016, 417–436.  Since, as noted above, the saecula had varying durations, the ludi were celebrated at irregular intervals to mark those cycles.  Hall 1986, 2588.

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took the massive task of formulating the ceremony and procedure by reconstructing earlier ritual either forgotten since the celebration of 146 BCE or muddled through a proliferation of specious texts.68 The ceremony Capito devised not only preserved many archaic Latin characteristics, it also retained ample Etruscan elements to conjure the Etruscan source of the observances.69 These include the employment of the atalla, and the choruses of twenty-seven youths and maidens who sang Horace’s Carmen Saeculare.70 The prescribed warning of the lictores curiatii, which demanded that the Games had not been witnessed by any living man, clearly points to the original Etruscan concept of the saeculum.71 The prominence of haruspices is understandable, especially if Augustus rather than Claudius had formally organized their order at Rome.72 They performed sacrifices, examined entrails, and immolated sacrificial animals expressly in accordance with Etruscan ritual. Certain ceremonial aspects of the Games also reflect religious practice long in use at Rome, but which may, in fact, have ultimately derived from Etruria, such as the use of fars (spelt) in sacrifices, according to Pliny (HN 18.97) the employment of the spica and fistula (lead tube) as sacred utensils, and the toga praetexta (white toga with purple borders) and the tunica fimbriata (fringed tunic) worn by the priests.73 Equally significant, however, was the new material Capito incorporated into the observances. The inclusion into the rites of Augustus’s patron god Apollo, with Diana, displaced Sol and Luna from their traditional Secular roles, underscoring the close link between Apollo and Augustan ideology.74 (The new Temple of Apollo Palatinus had recently been consecrated.)75 The Games marked a significant and deliberate redirection of the Principate; whereas earlier occasions for the Games had emphasized the propitiation of chthonic deities and repeating cycles of years, the new performance focused on Rome’s renewal as it entered a new, Golden Age. The purpose of the Secular Games presented by Augustus differs from those of the early Republic: the recitation of the same ancient prayers beseeches divine favor to assure the continuation of Roman imperium, but under the Principate the imperium no longer centered on the populus Romanus, but rested effectively in the hands of Augustus and his party. Horace reveals this

 Zos. 2.4.2; Taylor 1934, 105; Hall 1986, 2566, 2586; Scheid 2000, 646–651; Schnegg-Köhler 2002, 201–220.  Hall 1986, 2587.  See Galinksy 1967; Putnam 2000.  Diehl 1934, 262; Hall 1986, 2587.  Rawson 1978, 147 and n. 150. That they were very much a part of the Severan ceremonies, unquestionably based closely on the model of the Augustan Games, is apparent in the acta of those observances: see Hall 1986, 2566.  Hall 1986, 2587.  Taylor 1934, 106; Hall 1986, 2589. On the propaganda effect of Capito’s innovations, see Palmer 1974, 27.  Vell. 2.81.3; Suet. Aug. 29.1. Partially enclosed by parts of the princeps’s house, the temple brought Octavian into direct association with Apollo: Zanker 1988, 51.

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new reality in the last stanzas of his Carmen Saeculare, where Apollo is entreated as the divinity that will prolong the Roman empire.76 For the Games of 17 BCE, the concepts of the saeculum of the sidus Iulium and the saeculum aureum foretold by Augustus’s image-makers are fused into the saeculum Augustum. As Rehak observed, “Augustus revived and reshaped them . . . to promote his plans for the moral and political renewal of the Roman people and state.”77 Among his interventions in the Circus Flaminius, Octavian oversaw the renovation of the newly named Porticus Octaviae and the construction of the Theater of Marcellus, and seized the opportunity to alter the Temple of Apollo Sosianus, thereby establishing a gens-centric narrative of Julian supremacy. The Campus Martius, where important elements of the Secular Games were staged, provided a tabula rasa for the monumental new forms of the second, “Augustan” phase of development that visibly united their topographical proximity to one another, underscored by their isolation from other buildings. The incorporation of the Horologium (ded. 10 BCE) into Augustus’s funerary complex underscored his association with the sun-god Apollo, controller of daily time. The shadow cast by the obelisk (formerly associated with the Egyptian sun-god Ra) employed as the sundial’s gnomon across the immense gilded bronze network of lines laid into the pavement served to measure the passing of time and also reassuringly confirmed time’s eternity as reflected in the ordered movements of the cosmos.78 The Horologium Augusti literally demonstrated the eternal, circular passage of time revolving around and governed by the sun, a message reinforced by the smaller obelisks added outside the Mausoleum.79 The lavish sculptural program of the Ara Pacis, celebrating Augustus’s safe return from Spain and Gaul, delivers complementary messages. Motifs of bucrania, sacrifice, and the ominous snake in the acanthus frieze suggest death, but they are offset by the fertility and regeneration suggested by the personification of Tellus Italia. As I discussed previously, eternity is the context for the sacrificial procession frieze that winds around the altar table, and on the inside of the enclosure walls, garlands fashioned out of plants from all seasons conjure the fullness of time.80 The cyclical, repetitive nature of time denoted by the Horologium corresponds to the recurring annual sacrifices at the Ara Pacis and the ritualistic circumambulation enacted by visitors to  Hall 1986, 2589 notes that the lyric poem takes the form of a prayer to Apollo and Diana; see Galinksy 1967; Putnam 2000.  Rehak 2006, 10–11.  Davies 2000, 93. This was the underlying message regardless of the sundial’s accuracy through the years; cf. Plin. Nat. 36.71–73; Rehak 2006, 90–93; Yegül and Favro 2019, 210–211; or indeed, if it served as a simple meridian line, as proposed by Schütz 1990; Heslin 2007.  Rehak 2006, 39. The Horologium reset the Julian calendar, upset by the omission of leap years during the Civil Wars, thus making Augustus the controller and restorer of time, a role affirmed when he was made Pontifex Maximus in 13/12 BCE.  Holliday 1990, revisited in 2009.

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the Mausoleum. Thus, the eternity assured by the Augustan monuments of the Campus Martius will not die with the princeps but will be regenerated through the gens Julia. Recent discussion of the urban metamorphosis of Rome that occurred under Augustus has tended to find its impetus in the changing social and political values of the period. Today we recognize that the genius of the Augustan program lay in its masking of those changes by adapting the established vocabularies of artistic and architectural rhetoric to convey new messages. The Mausoleum, joined by his later, post-Actium interventions in the northern Campus Martius, demonstrates how Augustus purposefully and tendentiously deployed identifiably Etruscan elements to serve specifically Roman ideological objectives. In addition to Etruscan precedents for the Mausoleum’s form, Etruscan beliefs also provided concepts of cyclical time that joined with pervasive trust in astrology and catasterism to help shape the temporal metaphors central to Augustan ideology, including the idea of an Augustan renewal itself.81

Bibliography Barton, Tamsyn (1994). Ancient Astrology. London. Barton, Tamsyn (1995). “Augustus and Capricorn: ‘Astrological Polyvalency and Imperial Rhetoric,’” JRS 85, 33–51. Bernhard, Marie-Louise (1956). “Topographie d’Aléxandrie: Le tombeau d’Aléxandre et le mausoleum d’Auguste,” RA 47, 129–156. Buchner, Edmund (1982). Die Sonnenuhr des Augustus. Mainz. Castagnoli, Ferdinando (1984). “Influence alessandrine nell’urbanistica della Roma augustea,” in: Alessandria e il mondo ellenistico-romano. Studi in onore di A. Adriani 3, Rome, 520–526. Cecconi, Valeriano / Melani, Vasco (1981). Profilo di una città etrusca: Populonia. Pistoia. Clément, Chillet (2016). De l’Etrurie à Rome: Mécène et la Fondation de l’Empire. Rome. Coarelli, Filippo / Thébert, Yvon (1988). “Réflexions sur l’hellénisme numide,” MEFRA 100, 761–818. Davies, Penelope J. E. (2000). Death and the Emperor: Roman Imperial Funerary Monuments from Augustus to Marcus Aurelius. Cambridge. Diehl, Ernst (1934). “Das Saeculum, seine Riten und Gebete,” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 83, 255–272, 348–372. Eder, Walter (1990). “Augustus and the Power of Tradition: The Augustan Principate as Binding Link between Republic and Empire,” in: K.A. Raaflaub and M. Toher (eds.), Between Republic and Empire. Interpretations of Augustus and His Principate, Berkeley, 71–122. Eisner, Michael (1979). “Zur Typologie der Mausoleen des Augustus und des Hadrian,” RM 86, 319–324. Eisner, Michael (1986). Typologie der Graubbauten in Suburbium Roms. RM Ergänzungsheft 26. Mainz. Favro, Diane (1996). The Urban Image of Augustan Rome. Cambridge. Formigé, Jules (1949). Le trophée des Alpes (La Turbie). Paris. Galinksy, G. Karl (1967). “Sol and the Carmen Saeculare,” Latomus 26, 619–633. Galinsky, G. Karl (1974). “The Tomb of Aeneas at Lavinium,” Vergilius 20, 2–11.

 On astrology: Barton 1994 and 1995; on catasterism (the belief that deserving souls will be united with the heavens in the form of constellations): Ramsey and Licht 1997.

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Giglioli, Giulio Quirino (1930). “Il sepolcreto imperiale,” Capitolium 6, 532–567. Giuliani, Cairoli Fulvio (1981). “Santuario delle tredici are, Heroon de Enea,” in: Enea nel Lazio, 169–186. Gurval, Robert A. (1997). “Caesar’s Comet: The Politics and Poetics of an Augustan Myth,” MAAR 42, 39–71. Hall, John F. (1982). “Vergilius Maro: Vates Etruscus,” Vergilius 28, 44–50. Hall, John F. (1986). “The Saeculum Novum of Augustus and Its Etruscan Antecedents,” ANRW II.16.3, 2564–2589. von Hase Salto, Maria Aurora (1997). “L’Augusteo: Das Augustusmausoleum im Wandel der Geschichte,” Antike Welt 28, 297–308. Haselberger, Lothar / Auber, Paolo Albèri (2014). The Horologium of Augustus: Debate and Context. Portsmouth, RI. Hesberg, Henner von / Panciera, Silvio (1994). Das Mausoleum des Augustus: der Bau und seine Inschriften. Munich. Heslin, Peter (2007). “Augustus, Domitian and the So-called Horologium Augusti,” JRS 97, 1–20. Holliday, Peter J. (1990). “Time, History, and Ritual on the Ara Pacis Augustae,” Art Bulletin 72, 542–557. Holliday, Peter J. (2002). The Origins of Roman Historical Commemoration in the Visual Arts. Cambridge. Holliday, Peter J. (2005). “The Rhetoric of Romanitas: The ‘Tomb of the Statilii’ Frescoes Reconsidered,” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 50, 89–130. Holliday, Peter J. (2009). “Temporality in Roman Representations of Sacrifice,” in: M. Praloran and S. Romano (eds.), Figura e racconto: Narrazione letteraria e narrazione figurativa in Italia dall’antichità al primo rinascimento, Atti del Convegno di studi Losanna, 25–26 novembre 2005, Florence, 3–23. Holloway, R. Ross (1966). “The Tomb of Augustus and the Princes of Troy,” AJA 70, 171–173. Johnson, Mark J. (1996). “The Mausoleum of Augustus: Etruscan and Other Influences on Its Design,” in: J.H. Hall (ed.), Etruscan Italy: Etruscan Influences on the Civilization of Italy from Antiquity to the Modern Era, Provo, UT, 217–239. Jolivet, Vincent (1988). “Les cendres d’Auguste. Note sur la topographie monumentale du Champ de Mars septentrionale,” Archeologia Laziale 9, 90–96. Kienast, Dietmar (1969). “Augustus und Alexander,” Gymnasium, 430–456. Kostoff, Spiro (1978). “The Emperor and the Duce: The Planning of the Piazzale Augusto Imperatore in Rome,” in: H.A. Millon and L. Nochlin (eds.), Art and Architecture in the Service of Politics, Cambridge, 270–325. Kraft, Konrad (1967). “Der Sinn des Mausoleums des Augustus,” Historia 16, 189–206. Le Doze, Philippe (2019). “Maecenas and the Augustan Poets. The Background of a Cultural Ambition,” in: K. Morrell, J. Osgood, and K. Welch (eds.), The Alternative Augustus Age, Oxford, 231–246. Palmer, Robert E. A. (1974). Roman Religion and the Roman Empire. Philadelphia. Pollini, John (1993). “The Gemma Augustea: Ideology, Rhetorical Imagery, and the Creation of a Dynastic Narrative,” in: P.J. Holliday (ed.), Narrative and Event in Ancient Art, Cambridge, 258–298. Pollini, John (2012). From Republic to Empire. Rhetoric, Religion and Power in the Visual Culture of Ancient Rome. Norman, OK. Prayon, Friedhelm (1986). “Architecture,” in: Larissa Bonfante (ed.), Etruscan Life and Afterlife, Detroit, 174–201. Putnam, Michael C. J. (2000). Horace’s “Carmen Saeculare”: Ritual Magic and the Poet’s Art. New Haven. Ramsey, John T. / Licht, A. Lewis (1997). The Comet of 44 B.C. and Caesar’s Funeral Games. Atlanta. Rawson Elizabeth (1978). “Caesar, Etruria and the Disciplina Etrusca,” JRS 68, 132–152. Reeder, Jane Clark (1992). “Typology and Ideology in the Mausoleum of Augustus,” ClAnt 11, 265–304. Rehak, Paul (2006). Imperium and Cosmos. Augustus and the Northern Campus Martius. Madison, WI. Riccomini, Anna Maria (1995). “A Garden of Statues and Marbles: The Soderini Collection in the Mausoleum of Augustus,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 58, 265–284. Richardson, Lawrence, Jr. (1992). A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome. Baltimore. Santangelo, Federico (2013). Divination, Prediction and the End of the Roman Republic. Cambridge.

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Scheid, John (2000). “Dell’importanza di scegliere bene le fonti. L’esempio dei ludi secolari,” Scienze dell’Antichità 10, 647–657. Schnegg-Köhler. Bärbel (2002), Die augusteische Säkularspiele. ARG 4. Munich. Schütz, Michael (1990). “Zur Sonnenuhr des Augustus auf dem Marsfeld,” Gymnasium 97, 432–457. Scott, Kenneth (1941). “The Sidus Iulium and the Apotheosis of Caesar,” Classical Philology 36, 257–272. Sordi, Marta (1972). “L’idea di crisi e di rinnovamento nella concezione romano-etrusca della storia,” ANRW 1.2, 781–793. Taylor, Lily Ross (1934). “New Light on the History of the Secular Games,” American Journal of Philology 55, 101–120. Turcan, Robert (1983). “Enée, Lavinium et les treize autels,” Revue de l’histoire des religions 200, 41–66. Welch, Kathryn (2019). “Shields of Virtue(s),” in: K. Morrell, J. Osgood, and K. Welch (eds.), The Alternative Augustus Age, Oxford, 282–304. Windfeld-Hansen, H. (1962). “Les couloirs annulaires dans l’architecture funéraire antique,” in: Acta Instituti Romani Norvegiae 2, 35–63. Yegül, Fikret / Favro, Diane (2019). Roman Architecture and Urbanism, from the Origins to Late Antiquity. Cambridge. Zanker, Paul (1988). The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus. Ann Arbor.

Bernard Frischer

The Phasing and Design of the Calendrical Device (“Horologium”) of Augustus Pliny (HN 36.72) tells us that Augustus erected a calendrical device in the Campus Martius. Variously called in modern times the “Horologium Augusti” or “Solarium Augusti,”1 I refer to the monument here as the calendrical device. Its gnomon was a sphere carried atop the Montecitorio Obelisk, which Augustus brought to Rome from Egypt and dedicated to the sun god.2 To German historian Edmund Buchner (1923–2011) goes the credit for finding a section of the pavement of the calendrical device by excavating from 1979 to 1981 below the cellar of an apartment building located at Via di Campo Marzio 48 (Fig. 1).3 Buchner excavated a section of pavement c. 6.8 meters long at 10.80 meters above sea level (m.a.s.l.). He found bronze attachments on the pavement, including a strip with cross hatches running due north-south. Since on a horizontal sundial the meridian line will run due north-south, what Buchner found proved that the Horologium was, at a minimum, a meridian. Contrary to his expectations that there would be additional lines indicating other hours of the day,4 Buchner found no evidence that the pavement continued farther east or west than the section he exposed. Also, contrary to Buchner’s expectations, the pavement he found was situated at the quota level of 10.80 m.a.s.l, whereas he had expected that level to be ca. 1.60 meters lower (see below); this led him to postulate that he had found evidence of a later (post-Augustan) phase, when the structure had been repaired. At first, Buchner dated this second phase to the period of Domitian.5 As he did not excavate under the pavement, Buchner was unable to search for dating material or anything else preserved beneath the pavers. Since Buchner’s discovery, scholars have, not surprisingly, debated whether the device had one or two phases and whether it was a meridian (i.e., limited to the noon hour) or a horizontal sundial telling other hours of the day. If it was a meridian, we would not be surprised to find the width of the pavement to have been more or less what Buchner discovered at Via di Campo Marzio 48, i.e., ca. 5.4 meters; in contrast, if it were a horizontal sundial, the pavement would have had to be quite broad. Indeed, in his earliest publication, Buchner thought that it was a sundial with the second through tenth hours of the day and predicted a width of ca. 160 meters at  The ancient name of the monument is not preserved; as noted, modern scholars refer to it with the Latin terms Horologium Augusti and Solarium Augusti. It is also characterized as the “gnomonical instrument,” the “gnomonical device,” or (as here) the “calendrical device.”  Plin. HN 36.72; for the dedication of the obelisk, see CIL 6.702 = ILS 91.  Buchner 1980, Buchner 1982. For a critique of Buchner: Frischer 2016–2017.  Buchner 1976, 350–351.  Buchner 1980, 372. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111182919-015

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Fig. 1: Section of the Meridian of Augustus found at Via di Campo Marzio 48. The white arrow points to the damaged part of the surface where Stefano Floris was permitted to drill a coring at the request of the author. The inset in the upper right is a close-up shot of the damaged area prior to the coring. Photo: author.

its greatest extent.6 The purpose of this article is to shed new light on both whether there were two phases and whether it was a meridian or a sundial.

One Phase or Two? Pliny, our sole ancient source for the calendrical device, mentioned only an Augustan phase of the monument and noted that in his lifetime the device was no longer keeping accurate time. On the basis of Pliny’s remark on the condition of the calendrical device, Buchner posited a second, Flavian phase during which the Horologium was supposedly repaired to tell time correctly. It was to this proposed phase that Buchner  Buchner 1976, 358.

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dated the pavement that he had discovered. In an earlier article, I critiqued in detail Buchner’s reasons for positing the two-phase theory.7 To review the matter briefly, in his earliest publications on the calendrical device, Buchner posited a Domitianic date for the second phase.8 Later, he changed his mind and suggested that the hypothesized renovation of the monument should be dated to the reign of Vespasian.9 Although Buchner produced no archaeological evidence in favor of this interpretation, several other scholars adopted this theory of a second phase datable to the Flavian period.10 Then, in 2014, Albèri Auber suggested that the monument had only a single, Augustan phase, a theory that Haselberger found “attractive.”11 In an article published several years ago,12 I presented archaeological evidence that there was only one phase of the monument. This evidence derived from my collaboration with the geologist Stefano Floris to drill a coring through a damaged section of the pavement (see the white arrow and the inset in Fig. 1). If there had really been two phases, one would expect to find, at a minimum, the bedding of an earlier pavement at a lower quota level and perhaps even a paver and dating material. As Floris’ report indicates (for an English translation, see Appendix I; see also Fig. 2), below the bedding and substrata of the pavement found by Buchner there is only alluvial material. Hence, our results confirmed Albèri Auber’s one-phase theory. On the basis of these results, we expected that the debate over a single Augustan phase versus two phases had been settled in favor of the single-phase interpretation. However, in 2019 Peter Heslin revived the two-phase theory relying on the very coring made by Floris.13 Heslin’s article followed earlier work in support of the two-phase

 Frischer 2016–2017, passim.  Buchner 1980, 362.  Buchner 1996, 36; Buchner 1999, 162.  See Frischer 2017, 31 n. 78 and now add Heslin 2019, 72.  Albèri Auber 2014, 65–68; Haselberger 2014, 194.  Frischer 2016–2017.  Heslin 2019. I would like to put on record my dismay that Heslin may have misled some readers into thinking that I question the professional integrity of Buchner and Rakob. I in no way “doubt the reliability of Rakob,” as Heslin (2019, 73) wrote. Heslin also erroneously claimed that I believe that Buchner had “fabricated” a Flavian date for his findings “in order to preserve the viability of his hypothesized Augustan original” and that I find Buchner’s interpretations of his evidence “grotesquely tendentious . . . never to be trusted . . .” (Heslin 2019, 72–73); far from it, I praised both Buchner and his contributions to the debate: “At this point, given the critical thrust of what follows, we think it incumbent upon ourselves to acknowledge the fundamental contributions made by the late Edmund Buchner to understanding this part of the Campus Martius. Before him, the close relationship of the Ara Pacis and the Horologium Augusti was not fully appreciated by archaeologists; in undertaking fieldwork and revealing a section of the meridian line of the Horologium, he performed a signal service to the field of Roman Topography; and in ensuring before he died that his documents and finds could be consulted by scholars, he kept alive the research program that he himself initiated with his

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theory that he had published in 2007.14 The 2007 article concluded: “the Flavian building programme thus communicated a sophisticated message: that the institutions founded by Augustus were praiseworthy in principle but imperfect in execution and that they had been re-founded [scil., by Domitian] on a more secure basis.”15 Although Buchner himself eventually came to believe that the second phase should be dated to the reign of Vespasian rather than Domitian,16 Heslin has consistently maintained that the second phase must have occurred during the reign of Domitian. Hence, in 2019 he wrote: “so Domitian, it seems, decided to repair the instrument, for the pavement discovered by Buchner sits below the modern street level at an elevation of 10.8 meters above sea level.”17 Heslin agrees with Buchner’s hypothesis that the Augustan monument is below the pavement and its bedding and substrata found by Buchner. Before asking at what quota level Heslin imagines the Augustan level to have been, and before critiquing his answer, let us review what Buchner and his collaborator Friedrich Rakob thought about the matter. Buchner’s expectation of the quota level of his “Augustan” phase was based on the quota level of the west side of the Ara Pacis, which Giuseppe Lugli reported as 9.52 m.a.s.l.18 Indeed, several decades before Buchner, Giuseppe Moretti, the author of a monograph on the Ara Pacis, had guessed the same thing as Buchner: “certo è che quando fu fatto da Augusto il Solarium, il livello di questo non poteva non essere quello stesso dell’Ara Pacis, la quale fu costruita contemporaneamente . . . .”19 In his writings, Buchner avoided putting a precise quota level on his expected Augustan level, but his thoughts can be inferred: “tolto questo pavimento, abbiamo trovato grosse lastre di travertino, il cui spigolo superiore era circa ad 1,60 m sopra il livello augusteo.”20 Since the travertine pavers to which Buchner refers stand at 10.80 m.a.s. l., Buchner implies that he expected the Augustan level to be at 9.20 m.a.s.l. Friedrich Rakob, Buchner’s distinguished archaeological collaborator, more loosely defined the expected level as falling in the range between 9.48 to 9.25 m.a.s.l., citing previous studies.21 In what follows, Rakob’s range of 9.48/9.25 m.a.s.l. is denoted as “the Rakobian range.” I use that range, rather than Buchner’s implied level of 9.20 m.a.s.l., as reflective of what Buchner and his team had in mind as the level of their hypothetical Augustan

groundbreaking article. Even if we are, perforce, critical of Edmund Buchner, we do so in a spirit of constructive criticism and with the aid of resources that he was mainly responsible for amassing” (Frischer 2016–2017, 10).  Heslin 2007.  Heslin 2007, 20.  Buchner 1999.  Heslin 2019, 72.  Lugli 1961, 21.  Moretti 1948, 116 (not cited by Buchner).  Buchner 1980, 372; Buchner 1981–1982, 337.  Rakob 1987, 693.

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pavement. I hasten to add that nothing in my argument would be affected if, instead of the Rakobian range, I used Buchner’s more specific level of 9.20 m.a.s.l. Floris found anthropogenic material in the first 0.88 m below the travertine paver (i.e., down to 9.58 m.a.s.l.). We interpreted this as the bedding and substrata of the pavement. Although Floris’ coring continued to quota level 8.66 m.a.s.l., no additional anthropogenic material was found (see Fig. 2). Instead, from 9.58 m.a.s.l. to 8.66 m.a.s.l. Floris reported only alluvial material (see Appendix I). In short, to confirm Buchner’s two-phase theory, Floris would have had to find a second level of anthropogenic material at the hypothesized “Augustan” level; however, Floris found only natural alluvial deposits left by floods of the Tiber from before the calendrical device was constructed. As can be seen on Fig. 2, wherever in the Rakobian range we place the top of the hypothetical Augustan paver, Floris’ coring proves that there was no anthropogenic material (indicated in blue) to be found at the levels required to confirm the two-phase theory. Floris found only natural deposits of alluvium (indicated in yellow).

Fig. 2: Quota levels at Via di Campo Marzio 48, showing the ground floor of the building (17.55 m.a.s.l.), the travertine pavement found by Buchner (10.80 m.a.s.l.); Floris’s coring (beginning below the travertine pavers, including the mortar bedding he found). A and B shows the relationship of Floris’ coring with respect to the pavements Buchner and Rakob hypothesized as lying at either 9.48 m.a.s.l. or .25 m.a.s.l. Image: author.

So, the status quaestionis in 2017 was that Buchner’s two-phase theory had been refuted by new empirical evidence. In his 2019 defense of Buchner’s interpretation, Heslin acknowledges that we were right to expect to find Augustan pavers or “a thin bed

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of mortar,”22 but, cognizant of the fact that no such evidence was found in or beneath the Rakobian range, Heslin tried another approach: dividing the 0.88 m thick anthropogenic layer found by Floris into two parts, one upper, Flavian layer and another lower, Augustan layer. Heslin raised two points relative to this division: first, he thought that a bedding of 0.88 m would be unusually thick and that the tuff layer Floris found 0.77 m below the level of the paver would represent “a remnant of the Augustan level.”23 Everything above the tuff layer, Heslin designated “postAugustan fill.”24 Accordingly, I divide my response into two parts: first, I consider whether the 0.88 m layer (including the 0.10 m thick bedding of the travertine paver) could be properly identified as the unitary substrata for the bedding and paver, or whether they are more properly characterized, as Heslin puts it, as “absolutely enormous” (i.e., too thick to belong to a unitary preparation).25 Then I show why pottery invoked by Heslin has no relevance for the two-phase theory for the simple reason that the ceramic fragments were found in an area that was not part of the calendrical device.

Thickness of the Travertine Pavers and their Preparatory Layers (substrata) The 0.88 m layer discussed by Heslin includes a 0.10 m bedding for the travertine pavers; beneath that bedding is 0.78 m of anthropogenic material, which Heslin described as too “enormous” to constitute the preparatory layers for the travertine paver and their bedding. I begin with some general considerations. We know about how the Romans constructed pavements from many archaeological sites where pavements have been found and described. In general, there is the surface pavement, below which is the bedding, and below that several layers collectively known as the “substrata” or “preparatory layers.” Alluding to Vitruvius’ description of how pavements for mosaics were prepared, experts call the lowest of these layers the statumen, which usually consists of stones. Above that is the rudus, a level consisting of a mortar of sand and gravel. Atop the rudus is the nucleus, a ceramic mortar that sits just

 Heslin 2019, 74.  Heslin 2019, 74–75. Heslin calculates that the Augustan level would have stood at “approximately 9.58 m above sea level, which is a bit higher than expected, but not implausibly so.” Below, we will point out an error that Heslin made in his calculation, which, when corrected, puts his Augustan level at 9.66 m.a.s.l.  Heslin 2019, 74.  Heslin 2019, 74.

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below the bedding.26 While Vitruvius is discussing the strata underlying mosaics, archaeological evidence shows the same system was used for other constructions.27 My interpretation of the strata found by Floris is that the 0.10 m stratum just below the 34 cm thick travertine paver is the bedding beneath the paver. Next, Floris found a stratum “initially similar to the preceding” that was 0.38 m thick (0.10–0.48 m of the coring). This layer can be interpreted as a continuation of the bedding, at least in the upper part; the lower part corresponds to the nucleus. Next were four strata of clayey or muddy sands used as fill (0.48–0.58 m; 0.58–0.67 m; 0.67–0.72 m; 0.72–0.77 m). We interpret this as the rudus. Below this, as one would expect, is the rocky statumen, the two layers of tuff and fragmentary brick (0.77–0.80 m and 0.80–0.88 m) in Floris’ coring. Heslin’s interpretation of what we are calling the nucleus and rudus as “post-Augustan” is unlikely for two reasons: first, it is an odd coincidence that this “fill” corresponds so nicely in sequence and materials to the bedding and substrata usually found beneath a Roman pavement. Secondly, we have an excellent example of “post-Augustan” fill from Buchner’s excavation of the area he called G III: pottery fragments dated to the Flavian period.28 No such fragments were found in Floris’ coring. Why did those responsible for the hypothetical Flavian phase of the calendrical device use ceramic fill in G III but sand and tuff beneath the pavement of G IV and G V? The total thickness of the anthropogenic layers below the travertine paver is 0.88 m, of which at least the top 0.10 m is bedding and the rest is preparatory. Nothing thus far is inconsistent with what we would expect to find beneath a Roman pavement. In the preparatory layers below the bedding there is no evidence of a second bedding that could belong to the proposed Augustan pavement, nor was there any trace of a travertine paver of such an Augustan pavement. Below the 0.88 m layer Floris found nothing but alluvial strata. Heslin interprets the tuff strata from 0.80–0.88 m below the paver as “the remnant of the Augustan level.”29 Here we may note that he mistakenly situates the tuff at 0.88 m, making his hypothetical Augustan pavement sit at 9.58 m.a.s.l., “which,” he writes, “is a bit higher than expected, but not implausibly so.” Once we correct the error, Heslin’s Augustan pavement sits at 9.66 m.a.s.l., 18 cm above the upper limit of the Rakobian range.

 See, for example, Caldeira et al. 2019, 4; Giuliani 2006, 182–83. For Vitruvius’ description of the pavements of mosaics, see Vitr. 7.1.1–3. That Vitruvius’ recommendations correspond broadly to archaeological results from 1,000 randomly selected sites is shown by Moore 1964, 89 (who added a thin layer, 1 cm or less, above the nucleus to the Vitruvian system of statumen, rudus, nucleus then pavement).  For example, the pavement of the basilica of Cosa (Brown et al. 1993, 213, 219), the cella of a firstcentury CE Gallo-Roman sanctuary (Mermet 1993, 102), and roads (Pigeon 1890, 168; Chevallier 1972, 46; Giordani 2002, 315; Arizza/Di Mento 2017, 373).  La Torre 1980.  Heslin 2019, 74–75.

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Heslin’s proposal raises two questions: if Floris’ two tuff strata are not the remains of the statumen of the pavement found by Buchner at 10.80 m.a.s.l, where is that statumen to be found in Floris’ coring? Secondly, if the “tufa layer is a remnant of the Augustan level,” as Heslin suggests, then where did it fit into the normal Roman sequence of paver, bedding, nucleus, rudus, and statumen? It could not have been the paver, since there are contemporaneous travertine pavers in the area of the Ara Pacis30 and, as I show below, other travertine pavers were found on the calendrical device itself in the area of the apartment building at Piazza del Parlamento 3. Now, let us turn to the question of whether a substratum 0.78 m thick can properly be characterized as “enormous” (i.e., too thick to come from a unitary preparation). To answer this question, it should be noted that in Fulvio Cairoli Giuliani’s characterization of a typical pavement, the bedding and the substratum supporting a mosaic pavement 3 cm thick is 0.445 m.31 In contrast, the travertine paver of the calendrical device is 0.34 m thick, i.e., at least ten times the weight of the mosaic used in Giuliani’s example.32 So, finding bedding and substrata thicker than 0.44 to 0.45 m would not be surprising. However, there is no need to rely on such generalities and extrapolations from mosaics, as there is another piece of evidence from the very monumental complex we are studying. The German Archaeological Institute in Rome preserves four of the seven corings that Buchner commissioned in 1991 (the whereabouts of the other three remain unknown; for a report on all seven corings found in the Buchner Archive, see Appendix III). All the corings were drilled in the courtyard of the apartment building at Piazza del Parlamento 3, where the southern end of the calendrical device was located. This area included the start of the meridian line and, farther to the south, the Montecitorio Obelisk topped by the gnomon. In the Buchner Archive we find the precise locations of these corings on a plan (see Fig. 5). We know from the report that all the corings I, II, IV, V, and VII revealed a travertine pavement at roughly the same quota level as the pavement found at Via di Campo Marzio 48, that is at 10.80 to 11.00 m.a.s.l. Of the surviving four corings, the only one to preserve the preparatory layers beneath the travertine block is coring I. As can be seen in Appendix II, the travertine paver found in it is 0.35 m thick and its bedding and preparation are 1.10 m thick (for a photograph of the preparation, see Fig. 6). This coring provides a relevant comparandum from the same calendrical device that casts doubt on Heslin’s description as “enormous” of the 0.78 m thick bed-

 See the report by the geological firm Geosonda for corings 8 and 9 made near the Ara Pacis in Frischer 2016–2017, 21.  Giuliani 2006, 182.  The density of marble used in a mosaic floor is 2570 kg/m3 according to http://www.comfsm.fm/~ dleeling/physci/text/006sample-lab.xhtml [accessed 15 July 2024]. The density of travertine from Tivoli is rated at 2473 kg/m3 according to https://www.rlautier.com/products/light-travertine [accessed 15 July 2024].

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ding and preparatory layers under the pavement found by Buchner at Via di Campo Marzio 48.

The Design of the Calendrical Device Even though Floris found no dating material in his coring, Heslin thought that the Flavian pottery found by Buchner in the area to the east of the pavement of the calendrical device offers “circumstantial support” for the two-phase theory.33 Buchner called the area G III (see Fig. 3). This area lies 5 m to the east of G IV and G V (where remains of the calendrical device were found). Buchner’s trench supervisor, Günther Leonhardt, recorded potsherds used as fill in G III according to an excavation note dated December 13, 1979. The fill went as far as 8.40 m below the modern level (8.97 m.a.s.l.).34 Buchner’s ceramicist, Magda La Torre, studied the pottery and, in an unpublished report in the Buchner Archive, dated it to the Flavian period.35 In this section I show that the pottery has no bearing on the validity of the two-phase theory of the device. Nevertheless, the pottery is interesting for another reason: it helps us determine the much-debated design of the calendrical device. For the pottery to be considered relevant evidence for the two-phase theory, G III, its findspot, must be shown to be part of the calendrical device. G III, however, lies 5 meters east of the nearest securely identified section of the device; therefore, the pottery cannot (as Heslin suggested) without further consideration offer “circumstantial support” for the two-phase theory.36 Buchner and his team excavated G III in November 1979, after working just to the west in the area called G II (see Fig. 3). On November 28, 1979 the team reached the quota level of 10.80 m.a.s.l. at G II and found a Roman-era brick wall on the western side of their trench. On the other side of the wall, in the area called G IV, they found the pavement of the calendrical device.37 Just east of the wall, in G II, they found no travertine pavement and nothing but a fill of small fragments of “ceramics, marble, travertine” in a stratum from 11.74 to 10.81 m.a.s.l. (Fig. 4).38 The excavators did not go deeper in G II but instead, on November 29, 1979, opened G III. There is, in other words, no evidence that G II was part of the calendrical device. It is therefore not surprising that Buchner’s team found no travertine pavement at 10.80 m.a.s.l. in G III, the area immediately to the east of G II, which lies even farther from the calendrical device found in G IV. Instead, in G III the team found a rubble fill consisting primarily of potsherds from  Heslin 2019, 74.  Leonhardt’s excavation notes in the Buchner Archive (formerly housed in the Kommission für Alte Geschichte und Epigraphik in Munich and now at the German Archaeological Institute in Rome).  See Frischer 2016–2017, 28.  Heslin 2019, 74.  For a photograph, see Buchner 1980, tab. 132.1.  So Leonhardt, find notes (“Fundzettel”) for G II, no. 6, dated November 28, 1979.

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Fig. 3: Plan found in the Buchner Archive showing the trenches (“G”) dug at Via di Campo Marzio 48 during Buchner’s fieldwork from November 1979 through May 1981, with overlay (added by B. Frischer) of the segment of the calendrical device of Augustus uncovered in these excavations.

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Fig. 4: Photograph from the Buchner Archive showing the lowest level reached in G II. A marks the foundation of the Roman brick wall on the west side of the trench. B points toward the small fragments of ceramics, marble, and travertine reported by Leonhardt in the stratum running from 11.74 to 10.80 m.a.s.l.

11.04 m.a.s.l. to 8.97 m.a.s.l. So far removed from the calendrical device at G IV, these potsherds do not help date the device and appear instead to relate to a later structure erected ca. five meters to the east of it. We do not, however, have to rely on our sense of how plausible the scenario sketched by Heslin would be to decide whether the area uncovered in G III belonged to the calendrical device. As mentioned, Buchner commissioned the firm M.T.S. to make seven corings on the nearby property at Piazza del Parlamento 3 at the southern end of the calendrical device (see Fig. 5, where they have been indicated on the site plan). As the red box on Fig. 5 indicates, corings I, II, IV, V, and VII fall within the projected extension of the Meridian from Via di Campo Marzio 48 to Piazza di Parlamento 3.39 In these corings, travertine pavers were found at the expected level.40 Coring III, taken 1.5 meters to the east of the area where the calendrical device is attested,

 For details, see Appendix III for the report on M.T.S.’s corings in the Buchner Archive.  Note that the upper quota level of the travertine pavers in the report is always 11.00 m.a.s.l., a slight discrepancy from the 10.80 m.a.s.l. measurement taken at Via di Campo Marzio 48. This could be explained by the fact that the report on the corings relies on an estimate of the modern quota level of the courtyard below which the corings were made (see the last line of Appendix III, “Niveau Hof (noch nicht gemessen) ca. 17.90 m.”

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Fig. 5: Plan of the area explored by Buchner’s team through corings at Piazza del Parlamento 3 (Roman numerals I through VII) and excavations at Via di Campo Marzio 48 (G II through G VI). The added red box shows the extension southward (to Piazza del Parlamento 3) of the securely attested travertine pavement of the calendrical device found at Via di Campo Marzio 48.

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is outside the red box and contains no evidence of a travertine paver. Finally, coring VI was taken ca. 2 meters east of the area of the calendrical device. Although coring VI does not survive, M.T.S.’s report on it states that the modern surface level is approximately 17.90 m.a.s.l., and the coring descended 10 m. According to the report, M.T.S. found “at -7 m (=10.90 m.a.s.l.) sandy earth and brick fragments, down to 10.00 m loamy, muddy earth, no layers” (my translation); no travertine or preparatory layers were found at the site of coring III. In other words, all the corings inside the red box produced evidence of a travertine pavement at the appropriate quota level; all the corings and excavations we have discussed (i.e., G II and G III) outside the red box produced no such evidence. Any pottery found in G III, then, can shed no light on the interpretation of Floris’ coring, since there is no reason to believe that the area of G III was part of the calendrical device. In sum, Heslin’s argument in favor of Buchner’s two-phase theory is inconsistent with the empirical evidence produced both by M.T.S.’s corings at Piazza del Parlamento 3 and by Floris’ coring at Via di Campo Marzio 48. Furthermore, the anthropogenic material Floris found cannot fairly be characterized as too “enormous” to have been the unitary substratum of the pavement which Buchner found at 10.80 m.a.s.l. This takes us back to what, prior to Buchner, was assumed to be the case by all scholars of the problem since the Renaissance: the calendrical device had a single, Augustan phase as attested by Pliny, the only surviving ancient source that mentions the monument. We conclude on a positive note: the excavations of G II, G III, G IV, and G V, taken together with Floris’ coring and the earlier corings made at Piazza del Parlamento 3, give us the contour of the calendrical device (see the red box in Fig. 5). From the contour we can infer the much-debated design of the monument. The evidence presented here suggests that the device was a meridian, not a sundial. ✶✶✶ I end with a happy, personal memory dating to June 28, 2014. On that date, I had the pleasure of taking our honoree, John Pollini, to visit the section of the calendrical device revealed by Edmund Buchner. Luckily, I documented the occasion by snapping a picture of him descending the wobbly ladder from the level of the modern basement to the ancient pavement below (Fig. 6). As can be seen, the pavement was covered with about 0.30 m or so of water—a normal occurrence, since the water table in this part of Rome is now higher than 10.80 m.a.s.l. The presence of water did not deter John for a moment, and I only wish I had taken another photograph of him exploring the pavement, its bronze lines, and its inscriptions, rapidly snapping pictures all the while. He was oblivious to the water getting into his shoes and soaking his pants as he joyfully romped around while carefully examining all the features of this very special monument of the period that he has spent his life elucidating—the Age of Augustus.

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Fig. 6: John Pollini, camera in hand, visits the Meridian of Augustus at Via di Campo Marzio 48 on June 28, 2014. Photo: author.

Appendix I Translation by author of Stefano Floris’ report on the coring at Via di Campo Marzio 48 published in Frischer 2016–2017, 85–86. 0.0–0.10 m: Bedding consisting of mortar and brick fragments, compact, of good mechanical resistance. 0.10–0.48 m: Material initially similar to the preceding with numerous inclusions consisting of fragments of mortar and bricks. A small sandy component is present. As the depth increased, the material became more pliable with the diminution of the sandy element and the increase in the clayey. Little resistance to drilling.

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0.48–0.58 m: Fine material consisting mainly of sandy-muddy clays (probably fill material). Weakly cohesive. 0.58–0.67 m: Fine material similar to a clayey sand (probably fill material), mainly loose, of moderate consistency. 0.67–0.72 m: Fine material characterized as muddy sand (fill soil), of moderate consistency. 0.72–0.77 m: Fine material consisting of a clay somewhat sandy (fill soil), cohesive and not particularly hard. 0.77–0.80 m: Sandy material with inclusions of tuff and brick fragments (fill soil). Very hard, compact. 0.80–0.88 m: Very hard layer, compact and consisting of tuff material (fragment of masonry?). 0.88–1.00 m: Fine material, muddy-clayey and brown in color. Alluvium from the Tiber River of low consistency. 1.00–1.50 m: Very fine material, identified as muddy-clayey. Alluvium of the Tiber River of low consistency. 1.50–1.80 m: Very fine material characterized as muddy-clayey. Alluvium of the Tiber River of low consistency.

Appendix II M.T.S. report on Coring I made in 1991 under the courtyard of the building at Piazza del Parlamento 3. Coring #

Top quota level

Quota of top of travertine paver

Quota of bottom of travertine paver

Thickness of substrata

M.T.S. Report

I

. m a.s.l.

–. m (. m.a. s.l.)

–. m

 cm

Erreichte Tiefe: . m Marmorplatte (Pflaster ?) OK . m— UK . m Travertinplatte mit Mörtelbettung OK . m—UK . m Spuren roter Tuff, Bettung. Darunter keine Schichten

Comment by author based on autopsy of the coring: The evidence of travertine pavement is consistent with via di Campo Marzio 48 (thickness of 35 cm; quota level 11.093 m.a.s.l.). Resting on top of the travertine pavement was a marble block, 35 cm thick. Below the pavement were the mortar bedding and the substrata of the pavement, some of which is preserved in the box. The strata consist of a fill made of sand, brick fragments and tuff. Also relevant is what is written on

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Fig. 7: Detail of fill of sand, gravel, brick fragments, and tuff in Coring I under the travertine paver and its mortar bedding. Note that this part of the coring has slipped to the right in the storage box; it should end where “-8.30” is written on the edge of the box.

the box itself, namely that this material, not organized into detectable layers (“keine Schichten,” as the report puts it), continued to -8.30 m, giving it a total thickness of 110 cm. For a photograph, see Fig. 7.

Appendix III Document found in the Buchner Archive reporting on M.T.S.’ corings under the building at Piazza del Parlamento 3. Horologium Augusti Bohrkern-Untersuchungen im Hof des Palazzo Piazza del Parlamento 3 17.–18. April 1991. (Ausführende Firma M.T.S.—Perugia) Bohrung I: erreichte Tiefe: 8.30 m Marmorplatte (Pflaster?) OK 6.05 m—UK 6.40 m Travertinplatte mit Mörtelbettung OK 6.85 m—UK 7.20 m Spuren roter Tuff, Bettung Darunter keine Schichten Bohrung II: erreichte Tiefe: 6.90 m Travertinplatte (Pflaster?) OK 6.30 m—UK 6.90 m Bohrung III: erreichte Tiefe: 9.70 m Mörtel- Travertin-, Ziegelfragt. Keine Schichten, sandige-lehmige Füllungen (Raubgrube Obelisk) Bohrung IV: erreichte Tiefe: 7.30 m Travertinblock(?) bei 5.70—6.00 m. Travertinpflaster ab 6.90 m bis 7.30 m Bohrung V: erreichte Tiefe: 10.00 m Tuff- und Tuffmörtel von 4.00 m—6.20 m Marmorplatte(?) von 6.25 m—6.40 m

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Travertinpflaster von 6.90 m—7.50 m (einschl. Untermörtel) darunter keine Schichten, nur lehmige Erde Bohrung VI: bei 4.00 m Tuffmörtel Bei 7.00 sandige Erde, Ziegelfragmente Bis 10.00 m lehmige, schlammige Erde, keine Schichten Raubgrube erreichte Tiefe: 10.00 m Bohrung VII: bis 4.70 m Tuff- Travertinfragmente Bei 4.80 m schlammige Erde, Ziegelfragmente bei 5.10 m Tuffbrocken, Travertinbrocken, Erde Kein eindeutiges Marmorpflaster, aber zwei Marmorfragmente Ab 6.90 m Travertinplatte bis ca. 7.70 m Befund wie in V. Mörtel Uber und unter Travertinplatte erreichte Tiefe: 7.70 m Niveaumarke vor Eingang Piazza del Parlamento 3 (wahrscheinlich auf Strasse) Niveau Hoff (noch nicht gemessen) ca. 17.90 m Acknowledgements: I wish to thank Architect Francesco Prosperetti, Superintendent of the Soprintendenza Speciale per il Colosseo, il MNR e l’Area Archeologica di Roma, for permission to take geological cores and pursue campaigns of ground penetrating radar in the area of the Campus Martius where the calendrical device is suspected to have extended. I am also grateful to Dott.ssa Marta Baumgartner, the Superintendency’s official responsible for the area in question, for her support and cooperation. I am indebted to the members of his Scientific Committee, Dott.ssa Marina Sapelli Ragni and Dott.ssa Anna Maria Reggiani. I also wish to acknowledge the following individuals for the indispensable help in conducting the research reported in this contribution: Paolo Albèri Auber, Heinz Beste, Jane Crawford, Stefano Floris, Guido Giordano, Fulvio Cairoli Giuliani, Maurizio Lanzini, Paolo Liverani, Carlo Rosa, and Valerio Baiocchi. I state my deep appreciation to Sig. Giuseppe Brunelli for permission to visit, survey, and take a core through the section of the meridian located in the basement of the building he owns at Via di Campo Marzio 48, Rome. I am also grateful to Sig. Brunelli’s staff, especially Carla Coglitore and Giuseppe Cantiello, for their help and cooperation in arranging many visits to the site. I thank Prof. Christof Schuler, Director of the Kommission für Alte Geschichte und Epigraphik of the German Archaeological Institute, Munich, for permission to consult the Edmund Buchner Archive and to publish the archival materials used in this article when the Archive was housed in his institute; and Prof. Ortwin Daly, Director of the German Archaeological Institute, Rome for permission to consult Edmund Buchner’s geological cores as well as documents in the Friedrich Rakob Archive. Finally, I express my gratitude to Peter Schertz and his editorial team for this Festschrift for the helpful suggestions they made about the style and content of this contribution. I am pleased to acknowledge that some of the research reported here was supported by the National Science Foundation (grant # IIS-1014956) and the Loeb Classical Library Fund.

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Bibliography Albèri Auber, Paolo (2011–2012). “L’obelisco di Augusto in Campo Marzio e la sua Linea Meridiana. Aggiornamenti e proposte,” Rendiconti della Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia 84, 447–580. Albèri Auber, Paolo (2014). “Reconstructing the Montecitorio Obelisk of Augustus: A Gnomonist’s Point of View,” in: L. Haselberger (ed.), The Horologium of Augustus: Debate and Context, JRA Suppl. 99, Portsmouth, RI, 62–76. Arizza, Marco / Di Mento, Marzia (2017). “La scelta di un monumento funerario come memoria di appartenenza sociale: le pseudo cupae da una necropolis suburbana sulla Via Triumphalis,” Studi Classici e Orientali 63, 373–388. Baiocchi, Valerio (2017). “Augustus’s Sundial: Image-based Modeling for Reverse Engineering Purposes,” The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences XLII2/W3, 63–69. Brown, Frank Edward / Richardson, Emeline Hill / Richardson, L., Jr. (1993). Cosa III. The Buildings of the Forum. University Park, PA. Buchner, Edmund (1976). “Solarium Augusti und Ara Pacis,” RM 83, 319–365. Buchner, Edmund (1980). “Horologium Solarium Augusti. Bericht über die Ausgrabungen 1979/80,” RM 87, 355–373. Buchner, Edmund (1980–81, 1981–82), “L’orologio solare di Augusto,” Rendiconti della Pontificia Accademia Romana d’Archeologia 53–54, 331–345. Buchner, Edmund (1982). Die Sonnenuhr des Augustus. Mainz. Buchner, Edmund (1983). “Horologium Augusti. Neue Ausgrabungen in Rom,” Gymnasium 90, 494–508. Buchner, Edmund (1996). “Horologium Augusti,” in: E.M. Steinby (ed.), Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae, vol. 3, Rome, 35–37. Buchner, Edmund (1999). “Horologium Augusti,” in: C. D’Onofrio (ed.), Via del Corso: Una strada lunga 2000 anni, exhibition catalogue, Rome, 159–163. Caldeira, Bento / Oliveira, Rui Jorge et al. (2019). “Studying the Construction of Floor Mosaics in the Roman Villa of Pisoes (Portugal) Using Noninvasive Methods: High-Resolution 3D GPT and Photogrammetry,” Remote Sensing 11, 1882. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11161882. Chevallier, Raymond (1972). “Die Römerstrassen,” Antike Welt 3, 43–52. Frischer, Bernard, with technical appendices by Paolo Albèri Alber, David Dearborn, and John Fillwalk (2016–2017). “Edmund Buchner’s Solarium Augusti: New Observations and Simpirical Studies,” Rendiconti della Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia, 3–90. Frischer, Bernard / Pollini, John / Capriotti, Giuseppina / et al. (2017). “New Light on the Horologium Augusti, the Montecitorio Obelisk, and the Ara Pacis,” Studies in Digital Heritage 1, 18–119. https://doi. org/10.14434/sdh.v1i1.23331. Giordani, Rita Santolini (2002). “Via Trionfale,” Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma 103, 312–320. Giuliani, Cairoli Fulvio (2006). L’edilizia nell’antichità. Rome. Haselberger, Lothar (2014). “The ‘Horologium’: Where Do We Stand, and Where Should We Go?” in: L. Haselberger (ed.), The Horologium of Augustus: Debate and Context, JRA Supplement 99, Portsmouth, RI, 167–201. Heslin, Peter J. (2007). “Augustus, Domitian and the So-called Horologium Augusti,” JRS 97, 1–20. Heslin, Peter J. (2019). “The Julian Calendar and the Solar Meridian of Augustus. Making Rome Run on Time,” in: M.P. Loar, S.C. Murray, and S. Rebeggiani (eds.), The Cultural History of Augustan Rome, Cambridge, 45–79.

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La Torre, Magda (1980). [No title]. Report on the Pottery Found in Excavations in the Basement of the Building at Via di Campo Marzio 48, Rome, (Rome), 56 pp. Unpublished document in the Edmund Buchner Archive, Munich. Leonhardt, Günther (no date). “Fundzettel,” covering the period November 23, 1979 to December 20, 1979 for G II and G III (unpublished; in Buchner Archive). Lugli, Giuseppe (1961). Via del Corso. Rome. Mermet, Christian (1993). “La sanctuaire gallo-roman de Châteauneuf (Savoie),” Gallia 50, 95–138. Moretti, Giuseppe (1948). Ara Pacis Augustae, 2 vols. Rome. Pigeon, E.-A. (1890). “Voie romaine dans les départements de la Manche et de l’Ille-et-Vilaine,” Revue Archéologique 16, 158–171. Rakob, Friedrich (1987). “Die Urbanisierung des nördlichen Marsfeldes. Neue Forschungen im Areal des Horologium Augusti,” in: L’Urbs. Espace urbain et son histoire, Rome, 687–712.

Trinidad Nogales-Basarrate

Aeneas and Romulus in the Forum of Augusta Emerita (Hispania) Roman Colony ex novo in the Image of Rome Augusta Emerita is a direct result of Augustus’ imperial policy in Hispania.1 The conquest and pacification of the Iberian Peninsula prompted the reorganization of its territory. Augustus founded this new colony ex novo around 25–23 BCE,2 and this was soon followed by the creation of a new Spanish province, Lusitania, when Hispania Ulterior was divided into the new provinces of Baetica and Lusitania.3 Augusta Emerita would become, just a few years after its foundation, the provincial capital of a vast territory. The province of Lusitania faced towards the Atlantic, ignotus oceanus, a new route in Roman geopolitics. Thus, soon after the foundation of Augusta Emerita, Hispania was organized into three provinces: Tarraconensis, Baetica and Lusitania. Augusta Emerita became the political and administrative center of western Hispania, and in the fourth century CE, after the administrative reforms of Diocletian, it became the capital of the dioecesis Hispaniarum.4 The new colony was located in a privileged and rich geographical zone. It lay at the center of a communications network and was protected by two rivers, the Ana and the Barraeca, today the Guadiana and Albarregas. Its first settlers were Italic veterans from the Fifth and Tenth legions of the Roman army.5 The colony’s patron may have been Augustus’ son-in-law, M. Vipsanius Agrippa. He had commanded the legions in the campaigns in the north of the peninsula and was very popular among the veterans.6 Several monumental inscriptions dedicated to Agrippa, dating to 16–15 BCE, are preserved in Emerita’s first large theater, which were set up shortly before his death in 12 BCE.7

 Iglesias 2014; Álvarez/Nogales-Basarrate 2015. For an overview of the history of the Roman colony of Augusta Emerita: Nogales-Basarrate 2021; Álvarez/Nogales-Basarrate in press. Translation revised by Jonathan Edmondson. Project “Augusta Emerita: modelo urbano, arquitectónico y decorativo en Lusitania-I” (PID2020-114954GB-I00). Programa Estatal de Generación del Conocimiento y Fortalecimiento Científico y Tecnológico del Sistema de I+D+i y de I+D+i Orientada a los Retos de la Sociedad. Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación.  Stylow/Ventura, 2009, 467; Nogales-Basarrate 2021, 35–36.  Álvarez/Carvalho/Fabião 2015.  Arce 2002.  Le Roux 1982; Saquete 1997; Edmondson 2018.  Roddaz 1995; Nogales-Basarrate/Álvarez 2018, 36.  Nogales-Basarrate 2007a, 106; Stylow/Ventura 2018, 157–160. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111182919-016

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Fig. 1: 3D reconstruction of the colony Augusta Emerita. Photo: Josep Casals 2020, based on Golvin/ Álvarez/Nogales 1995.

From the start, the urban models of the new provincial capital were closely linked to the city of Rome.8 The first construction systems of granite and local stones covered with stucco may be classified in the Italic tradition of the so-called military architecture, which specialized in public and utilitarian works.9 It is an architecture with little knowledge of the use of marble, a material that was already widespread in Rome in the great monumentalization projects of the princeps, such as the Forum Augustum.10 In this new provincial administration a very powerful political class emerged, with characters closely linked to the emperor such as L. Cornelius Bocchus,11 L. Fulcinius Trio12 or M. Salvius Otho, the future emperor.13 This close political contact with Rome from the moment of the colony’s foundation could be the basis for Augusta Emerita’s evident relationship with metropolitan models, which arrived in Lusitania

 Nogales-Basarrate/Álvarez 2006.  Nogales-Basarrate/Álvarez 2018, passim.  Ungaro 2007; La Rocca 2011; Ungaro 2021.  Saquete 2011; Almagro 2011; Fishwick 2011; González Herrero 2013; Álvarez/Nogales-Basarrate in press.  Saquete 2005.  Fernández Uriel 2001.

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thanks to the important officinae charged with working on large projects such as the theater, amphitheater or the two fora (colonial and provincial) (Fig. 1).14

Forum coloniae: A Monumental Public Space and the Start of Imperial Cult In the early years of the colony, in its topographic center at the intersection of the decumanus and the cardo, a great square with a temple was erected, the forum coloniae (Figs. 2A–C). Since the seventeenth century it has been called the “Temple of Diana” in the humanist tradition. This imposing religious building was related to the start of the imperial cult under Augustus (Fig. 2C); it was possibly dedicated to Rome and Augustus, as with other provincial examples. The temple was integrated as a celeberrimus locus within the large square of the colonial forum.15

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

Fig. 2: (A) Plan with locations of both fora. After Alvarez/Nogales-Basarrate 2003. (B) 3D reconstruction of the fora at Emerita. Drawing by Josep Casals 2020. (C) and (D) “Temple of Diana”—Imperial Cult Temple. Photo: MNAR archive, C. López.

 Nogales-Basarrate 2009.  Álvarez/Nogales-Basarrate 2003: passim.

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As usual with Roman fora, the initial monumental space was enlarged and transformed over several centuries (Figs. 2A–B). This process evolved throughout the entire Julio-Claudian period and continued in the second and third centuries CE. Excavations, with sculptural, architectural and epigraphic material discovered in the area, allow us to document this evolution.16 The area has been known since the first documentary sources of the Renaissance because, over time, the remains of the Roman temple were reused and integrated into the so-called Palace of the Conde de los Corbos, which remained in use until the twentieth century. In the nineteenth century the first discoveries were made in the area near the socalled Temple of Diana. The important sculptural pieces found were taken to the museum, created in 1838. The architectural remains were not recovered and were hardly documented by the researchers of that period. In the twentieth century, the serious project of excavation and recovery of the forums of Augusta Emerita began. Under the direction of the MNAR, Dr. Alvarez Martinez identified the two urban complexes, which he called forum coloniae and forum provinciae (Fig. 2A).17 The denomination was questioned at first,18 since there is no epigraphic evidence, but today this nomenclature is fully accepted. First, the Temple of Diana (imperial cult temple) was excavated. The archaeological work allowed the recovery of its important dynastic statuary programs linked to the imperial cult.19 It was also possible to free the temple, in part, from the remains of the palace and modern constructions. The forum coloniae complex had a second space adjacent to the temple, known from nineteenth century finds. The first large square surrounding the temple was joined by a second square, which was successively labeled the “portico of the forum,” the “marble forum,” the “forum adiectum” and the “Augusteum.” These designations referred to its monumental porticoed architectural structure, annexed laterally to the temple square, and to the important decorative marble programs recovered from there, which could be the key to the interpretation of this new space.20 In the middle of this second square a monumental altar may have been located,21 but other authors think that this was a temple.22

      

Ayerbe, Barrientos/Palma 2009. Álvarez 1982. Trillmich 1993. Álvarez/Nogales-Basarrate 2003; Nogales-Basarrate 2007b, 479–490. Nogales-Basarrate 2007b, 490–497; Nogales-Basarrate 2021, 45–47. Nogales-Basarrate 1998, 2000a, 2000b. Ayerbe, Barrientos/Palma 2009, 763–766.

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The Decorative Program of the Colonial Forum: Imitatio Romae The discoveries of the nineteenth century were followed by further finds in the twentieth century. In the years prior to the Spanish Civil War, numerous fragments of sculptural pieces that had been decontextualized and reused were recovered on the outskirts of the city; some of the most significant were clipei and caryatids, which were related to the decoration of the forum Augustum in Rome.23 These provided the first evidence that the model of the Urbs Romae was used for designing this provincial capital of Hispania. In the excavations of the colonial forum during the 1980s, new fragments of clipei (with heads of Jupiter Ammon and Medusa) and caryatids appeared, as well as new togate statues in their original context.24 All these sculptures together allowed for a reconstruction of the colonial forum: an exterior decoration of the building with clipei and caryatids, completed with the sculptural cycles of togati displayed inside the porticoes. The nature and quantity of these togate statues recovered in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, unfortunately lacking any epigraphic documentation to identify them, made it obvious that the forum coloniae at Emerita followed quite faithfully the model of the forum Augustum in Rome (Fig. 3A).25 All this material allowed us to propose an initial reconstruction of the enclosure, which we called the “Forum Portico” (Fig. 3B). This large monumental portico incorporated semi-colossal togate statues of illustrious individuals (summi viri) signed by the metropolitan workshop of Caius Aulus.26 The images were arranged along a back wall with niches, a solution very similar to that found in the Augustan forum. The clipei and caryatids belonged to the architectural decoration of the attic of the portico27 (Fig. 3D), following the emblematic scheme of the forum Augustum.28 The model seems to have gained popularity in the western provinces and was repeated in numerous buildings,29 especially in Hispania.30 The different versions of the iconographic model of the forum Augustum found in the provinces give an idea of its popularity and its durability.

       

Floriani 1976; Floriani 1982. Álvarez 1982. Álvarez/Nogales-Basarrate 1990; Trillmich 1996; Trillmich 1997. Trillmich 1994; Trillmich 1995. De la Barrera 2000. Zanker 1968; Ungaro 2021. Spannagel 1999; Valeri 2010; La Rocca 2011; Goldbeck 2015. Peña 2007; León in press.

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(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

Fig. 3: (A) Decorative Programme of the Forum Augustum (according to Ungaro 2021). (B) Drawing reconstructing the Forum of Augusta Emerita. Image from Mesa and Martínez after Álvarez/NogalesBasarrate 1990. (C) Hypothetical reconstruction of the decorative programme of the Augusta Emerita forum (according to Nogales-Basarrate). (D) Portico of the forum. Current situation. Photo: J. Edmondson.

Group of Aeneas: Metropolitan Models Among the pieces located in the area of the colonial forum in the nineteenth century was a medium-sized statue known as the “Monsalud Diana,” since it was initially identified iconographically as the goddess Diana and then owned by the Marquis of Mon-

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salud.31 The piece was acquired by the National Archaeological Museum of Madrid in the 1950s and became part of this museum’s sculpture collection. After the excavations of the 1980s, which revealed new findings from Emerita, Trillmich proposed a new identification of the Monsalud Diana as a statue of Ascanius-Iulus.32 The presence of Ascanius, son of Aeneas, suggested the existence of an Aeneas statue group, possibly following in a provincial context the pattern of the existing statue group from the Forum of Augustus. The materials recovered in our excavations of the forum included several epigraphic fragments belonging to the elogium of Aeneas, the short text outlining the main details of his life which was originally placed with the Aeneas statue group in the Forum of Augustus in Rome.33 These fragments allowed us to hypothesize about its location and confirmed the existence of the statue group. The document, which has interesting novelties, continues to be analyzed for its epigraphic interest.34 The discoveries of our excavations at the end of the 1980s revealed numerous new sculptural fragments of the group, which we gradually analyzed and integrated into an improved reconstruction (Fig. 4A).35 As a result, a good part of Anchises’s right arm and shoulder, as well as the toe-end of his footwear, could be incorporated into original fragments. As for the statue of Ascanius, we were able to identify a small fold that belonged to the lower end of his tunic, which confirmed the provenance of the statue found in the nineteenth century as being from the same area excavated in the 1980s.

(a)

(b)

(c)

Fig. 4: (A) Original fragments of the Aeneas group in the National Museum of Art of Romania (MNAR). Photo: MNAR archive. (B) Fragment of the head of Aeneas. Photo: MNAR archive. B. Grunewald-DAI. (C) 3D reconstruction of the Aeneas group by Merchán et al. Reconstruction made by Nogales-Basarrate.

    

About the discovery of, and research on, the Aeneas group, see Nogales-Basarrate/Álvarez 2021. Trillmich 1992. De la Barrera/Trillmich 1996. Edmondson in press. Nogales-Basarrate 2020.

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Among further fragments we were able to identify a part of the head of Aeneas, corresponding to the left area of his cheek, mustache, and beard (Fig. 4B). The face corresponds to other known iconographic patterns associated with the image of the Trojan hero.36 The most obvious parallels for this historical portrait are: the relief of the Ara Pacis where Aeneas makes a sacrifice to the Penates;37 a relief from the south side of the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias, where three panels with the Trojan cycle were reproduced, one of them being the escape of Aeneas,38 and a head from Rome that forms part of the collection of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen.39 The face of Aeneas in all three of these examples—the Ara Pacis, the Sebasteion and the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek—shows many similarities with the fragment from Mérida. This suggests that they all come from a similar iconographic pattern, although their chronology ranges from the Augustan period (Ara Pacis) to the Neronian era (Sebasteion in Aphrodisias) to a later high-imperial period (Glyptotek portrait head); the latter must belong to another sculptural group in the round like the one from Emerita. All these images provide further evidence of the survival of the Aeneas group for several decades, and the similarities among them suggest that the original pattern was the one followed in the officinae of Rome and the provinces. The fragment from Emerita that we attribute to the head of Aeneas is the one with the greatest movement of the hair, which is organized in thick curls of abundant locks (Fig. 4B). The style of its execution, which hardly shows any drill marks, suggests a date in the late Julio-Claudian period, when elements of the baroque style that was to predominate in the second century CE began to appear in Roman art. In the excavations we also recovered various fragments of Aeneas’ extremities: both of his arms, a hand, and a knee. All of the fragments are colossal and of the same scale as the largest fragment preserved with the cuirass, corresponding to the lower part of the trunk, from the waist to the start of the legs, of the prototypical image of Aeneas. All these elements were analyzed in detail to begin the process of recreating the group, which we will discuss below. The group from Emerita is the first group of Aeneas in large sculptural format preserved almost in its entirety, since no fragments of the one that must have existed in the Forum of Augustus are preserved. If the head of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek is an Aeneas and was integrated into a group sculpture, it could be another metropolitan model, since it comes from Rome. We know the physiognomy of the group from examples preserved in other media: paintings, reliefs, gems and carvings, ceramic representations.40 The pattern is very similar in all the iconography. Aeneas, as a mythical character, is an adult male

    

Nogales-Basarrate 2020. Bianchi Bandinelli 1970, 188–189, fig. 202–203; Riis 1976, fig. 41 d; Rossini 2006. Smith 2013, 204–206, fig. 164, pl. 194–205. Riis 1976. Spannagel 1999, 90–132, 365–396.

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who dresses in Roman military style with armor and has a powerful anatomy and abundant hair and beard. Anchises, his father, is a bearded old man, with a lighter and more fragile body, who wears a toga that covers his head and is carried on the shoulders of Aeneas as a symbol of pietas; in size, he is usually smaller than Aeneas. Ascanius-Iulus is shown as a boy wearing a light tunic and a cloak or chlamys flying out behind, symbolizing the fact that he is running and fleeing; he also wears a Phrygian cap, alluding to his origins in the East. These various iconographic models repeat the same patterns when showing Aeneas in his flight from Troy, and it is these models that we have used to reconstruct the group from Emerita. It has always been assumed that models in the minor arts follow the original more closely because they repeat in small scale the most recognizable elements of the latter; in the large format versions the artists could introduce some personal variations to the original scheme.

Reconstruction of the Aeneas Group A challenge for us was to restore the Aeneas group in such a way as to display it in the room dedicated to the colonial forum in the National Museum of Roman Art (MNAR). The fragmentary situation of the pieces of the group made the physical toscale reconstruction very complicated, as it was impossible to fill the gaps between the parts using traditional methods. Given their experience with high quality 3D models for sculpture,41 we developed a strong collaboration with the Department of Electronic Engineering of the University of Extremadura, to whose team we proposed the idea of conducting 3D-scanning of all the fragments that made up the group. A digitization project began between the MNAR and this university team of engineers, which culminated in 2011 with the creation of the 3D model of the group (Fig. 4C).42 The result of this laborious work was the creation of a total 3D model in which the different fragments were integrated into the areas where they most likely would have been in the original group. To produce this model of the group, we used the various known iconographic parallels of the group,43 trying to make the image as close as possible to its original form based on the most commonly found composition, possibly the one most similar to the original model from the Forum Augustum at Rome. The project on the iconographic programs of the colonial forum of Augusta Emerita, in addition to its scientific value, has a real-world application. Its development has allowed us to offer viewers in the MNAR a new reading of the Aeneas group, inte-

 Merchán et al. 2014; Frischer 2015.  Merchán et al. 2011; Merchán et al. 2020.  Spannagel 1999, 365–396.

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grated into its original space and context: the colonial forum of Augusta Emerita. Since it was impossible to set up the restored statue group in its original context, in 2018 we incorporated it into the permanent exhibition of the MNAR thanks to a collaboration with the institution’s staff. Today, in room VIII on the first floor of the MNAR, the Aeneas statue group is presented together with the computer graphics resulting from the work undertaken by the aforementioned professional teams.44 In this way, without altering any of the fragments, which would prevent them from being studied in the future, viewers can understand the magnitude of the Aeneas group from Augusta Emerita.

Romulus as Pendant of Aeneas A fragment of a high-quality statue has formed part of the long-standing collections of the MNAR since 1926/1927. The piece corresponds to part of the upper right side of a decorated breastplate of an over life-size figure. It had been classified in the early collections of the MNAR as an example of the Panzerstatue type45 in the series of imperial statuary from Hispania.46 Our own study of the piece has led us to suggest that it could be from a statue of Romulus that would have formed a pendant to the Aeneas statue in the forum at Emerita.47 Many aspects of this fragment support its identification as Romulus: the place of its discovery, on the eastern edge of the colonial forum; its size, which is much larger than natural, almost colossal and of the same scale as Aeneas; and the similar quality of this and the Aeneas statue, as well as its iconographic type. The sculptural work is carefully decorated, with a rampant winged griffin standing on the remains of a scroll: i.e., part of three stems that form vegetal and floral circles. At the left edge of the fragment, two folds are preserved of the fabric of a paludamentum, which falls transversally from the figure’s right shoulder. On the basis of this small element, it is possible to restore a good part of the statue, following the form of the usual type of Romulus tropaiophoros.48 If we compare the stylistic and technical details of the vegetal elements of the scrolls on the breastplates of Aeneas and Romulus in terms of style and manufacture, we find that they are absolutely similar. This supports the idea that a single workshop created both works according to patterns deriving from the city of Rome.49

     

Nogales-Basarrate/Álvarez 2021, fig. 5. Acuña 1975, 89, n. XIX; Stemmer 1978, 99–100. Garriguet 2001, 10–12, V 2–4. Nogales-Basarrate 2008. Nogales-Basarrate 2008, 306–309, fig. 6 a. Nogales-Basarrate 2008, 306–308, figs. 5–7.

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The direction in which the two statues move, Aeneas striding to his left and Romulus to his right, would correspond to their placements in the two corner niches of the forum at Emerita (Fig. 3C). This compositional scheme is the one observed in the so-called tensa relief in the Museum of Budapest, where the two groups of Aeneas and Romulus are observed as having similar compositional characteristics to those found in Augusta Emerita.50 Thus, it seems that Aeneas and Romulus were present in the colonial forum of Emerita; they formed part of two sculptural groups in the round, of semi-colossal scale, which were located in each of the corners of the forum precinct, judging by the places where the remains of both groups were found (Fig. 3C). It is logical to suppose that if the Aeneas statue group had its elogium fixed on the base of the monument, the same probably applied to the Romulus group, but we have no evidence for this. Undoubtedly the closest parallel in the Iberian Peninsula to the Romulus statue from Emerita is the colossal statue from the forum at Corduba, identified by some as Romulus and by others as Aeneas51 and known as “Cuirass statue from the Tienda collection,” today in the Museum of Córdoba. The fragment from Emerita and the colossal statue from Corduba show a very similar typology: the treatment of the decoration of the cuirass is similar in its overall layout, although the scale of the Emerita example is smaller than the one from Corduba (Fig. 5A–B). Another statue of Romulus has been documented at Italica,52 where clipei and caryatids have also been found, associated with a monumental building that imitated the model of Rome. With the identification of this fragment as belonging to a statue of Romulus, a further step has been taken in the configuration of the decorative program of the colonial forum of Augusta Emerita, in particular in the forum adiectum, which displayed such a remarkable array of works in the image and likeness of Rome.

The Two Founding Myths in a Provincial Political Discourse The sculptural groups of Aeneas and Romulus in the colonial forum of Emerita, erected some years later than those set up in Rome in the Forum of Augustus, had a clear political message in this provincial capital in Hispania.

 Nogales-Basarrate 2008, 311–312, fig. 10.  Trillmich 1996, 175–195; Nogales-Basarrate 2008, 309–310, fig. 8.  Peña 2007.

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(a)

(b)

Fig. 5: (A) Statuary fragment of the possible Romulus from the colonial forum of Augusta Emerita. Photo: MNAR, archive / C. López. (B) Statue of Romulus from Corduba. Photo: MNAR-DAI, archive.

Aeneas and Romulus refer to the origins of Rome, a frequent theme throughout the first century CE.53 The founding myths were associated with the origins of the new colony. As we have analyzed extensively in other studies, the program of the Emeritan forum was not a ‘faithful’ copy of the Forum of Augustus; it was an adaptation of the model of Rome with a clear political message for the new Spanish colony and the provincial capital of Lusitania.54 The large togate statues of the forum of Augusta Emerita signed by the workshop of Caius Aulus would correspond to the series of protagonists of the genealogy of Rome.55 Persons who were emblematic of the local history of Emerita had to be brought together with the founding mythological figures of Aeneas and Romulus and illustrious individuals from Roman history. Perhaps the legacy of the provincial governor P. Carisius and his successors in the political-administrative development of the new colony were present.

 Dardenay 2007.  Nogales-Basarrate 2007, 496–497.  Trillmich 1994; Trillmich 1995.

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This genealogical and historical significance would explain Agrippa’s presence in the narrative relief, possibly from an altar located in the center of the square,56 in which a sacrifice scene has M. Vipsanius Agrippa playing a central role.57 Surely this is a patronus coloniae, as can be deduced from the presence of Augustus’ son-in-law in the monumental epigraphy of the emblematic theater.58 The Agrippa scene makes reference to the foundation of the colony, which has a marked significance in local historical narratives. In our judgment, the altar would have been located in the center of this porticoed space, which we would define as an Augusteum, forming part of an imperial cult complex. The narrative discourse of the altar was fully integrated into the general iconography of the monument: Starting from the Aeneas and Romulus groups and passing through the illustrious Roman heroes, one reached the center of the square, the sacred place. The external narrative reliefs of this cult enclosure recalled the foundation of the colony and, undoubtedly, would exalt the reigning dynasty during Nero’s period in power, highlighting the gens Iulia with its ancestors portrayed there, who recalled the fact that Augustus himself was the initiator of this powerful dynasty (Fig. 3C).59

Local Materials for a Metropolitan Workshop The sculptures of the colonial forum of Augusta Emerita in this singular space of the Augusteum testify to a large-scale public monumentalization project, closely linked to imperial power and its representatives in the provinces. Let us not forget that M. Salvius Otho60 was governor of the province of Lusitania at the very time when, in our opinion, the decision was made to carry out this significant urban transformation, with the aim of creating a new space for dynastic exaltation. The nature of the programs, the quality of the works, and the important political message of the new project in the forum of the colony of Augusta Emerita imply a political commitment at the highest level. For this endeavor, workshops of recognized prestige, possibly knowledgeable and trained in the models of Rome, must have participated. The type of marble used in these programs was of local origin, from the quarries of the pagus marmorarius Emeritensis, in the area of the Estremoz anticline (Portugal). The exclusive use of these materials implies that the Emerita workshops were

    

Nogales-Basarrate 2007, 495–497, fig. 12. Trillmich 1986. Stylow/Ventura 2018, 157–163. Nogales-Basarrt/Álvarez 2006, 432–435; Álvarez/Nogales-Basarrate, in press. Fernández Uriel 2001.

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familiar with this type of marble, which was of great quality and widespread across the Iberian Peninsula.61 In our judgment, it was the same workshops that worked on the monumentalization of the colony in its most significant public spaces: both forums and the theater. There are innumerable stylistic details that demonstrate the connection between the sculptural pieces of both spaces.62

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 Nogales-Basarrate et al. 2008.  Nogales-Basarrate 2009.

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Fishwick, Duncan (2011). “L. Cornelius L.f. Bocchus and the Office of [curator templi Divi] Augusti,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 178, 252–254. Floriani Squarciapino, Maria (1982). “Cultura artistica di Mérida romana,” Homenaje a Sáenz de Buruaga. Madrid, 33–52. Frischer, Bernard (2015). “Three-Dimensional Scanning and Modeling,” in: E.A. Friedland, M.G. Sobocinski, and E.K. Gazda (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Roman Sculpture, Oxford, 74–89. Garriguet, José Antonio (2001). La imagen del poder imperial en Hispania: Tipos estatuarios. España. CSIR II, 1. Murcia. Goldbeck, Vibecke (2015). Fora augusta: das Augustusforum und seine Rezeption im Westen des Imperium Romanum. Regensburg. González Herrero, Marta (2013). “L. Cornelius L. F. Gal. Bocchus y L. Fulcinus Trio: nuevas reflexiones,” Revue des Études Anciennes 115.2, 403–415. Iglesias, José Manuel (2014). “La presencia de Augusto en Hispania. Las Guerras cántabras y sus consecuencias,” in: J.M. Álvarez Martínez (ed.), Augusto y Emerita: Catálogo de la exposición, Museo Nacional de Arte Romano. Merida, 33–43. La Rocca, Eugenio (2011). “I foro di Augusto e le province dell’Impero,” in: T. Nogales-Basarrate and I. Rodà (eds.), Roma y las provincias: modelo y difusión (Actas del XI Coloquio Internacional de Arte Romano Provincial, Mérida, mayo 2009), vol. 2, Hispania Antigua. Serie Arqueológica 3. Merida, 991–1010. León, Pilar (in press). “Riproduzioni ispaniche dei gruppi mitologici del Foro di Augusto,” in: C. Capaldi (ed.), Augusto e la Campania. Da Ottaviano a Augusto. Rome. Le Roux, Patrick (1982). L´armée romaine et l´organisation des provinces ibériques. Paris. Martínez-Pinna Nieto, Jorge (2010). Las leyendas de fundación de Roma: de Eneas a Rómulo. Instrumenta 39. Barcelona. Merchán, Pilar / Salamanca, Santiago / Adán, Antonio / Nogales, Trinidad (2011). “3D digitalization of large sculptural pieces. Restitution of Aeneas Group,” in: T. Nogales-Basarrate and I. Rodà (eds.), Roma y las provincias: modelo y difusión (Actas del XI Coloquio Internacional de Arte Romano Provincial, Mérida, mayo 2009), vol. 2, Hispania Antigua: Serie Arqueológica 3. Merida, 1061–1066. Merchán, María José / Nogales-Basarrate, Trinidad / Merchán, Pilar / Pérez, Eduardo (2020). “La digitalización tridimensional y su aplicación en el estudio de la escultura romana,” in: J.M. Noguera and L. Ruiz (eds.), Escultura romana en Hispania IX, Yakka: Revista de Estudios yeclanos XXVII. Murcia, 425–437. Nogales-Basarrate, Trinidad (1998). “Relieves del Ara Providentiae,” in: J.M. Álvarez and M. Almagro (eds.), Hispania, el legado de Roma. Madrid, 532. Nogales-Basarrate, Trinidad (2000a). “Un altar en el foro de Augusta Emerita,” in: P. León and T. NogalesBasarrate (eds.), Actas de la III Reunión sobre escultura romana en Hispania (Córdoba 1997). Madrid, 25–46. Nogales-Basarrate, Trinidad (2000b). “El relieve histórico de M. Agrippa, los relieves de Pan Caliente y el altar del foro emeritense,” Espacio, Tiempo y Forma serie II, U.N.E.D. Madrid, 391–423. Nogales-Basarrate, Trinidad (2007). “Culto imperial en Augusta Emerita: imágenes y programas urbanos,” in: T. Nogales-Basarrate and J. González (eds.), Culto Imperial: política y poder. Merida, 447–540. Nogales-Basarrate, Trinidad (2007a). “Teatro romano de Augusta Emerita. Evolución y programas decorativos,” Mainaké 29, 103–138. Nogales-Basarrate, Trinidad (2008). “Rómulo en el Augusteum del foro colonial emeritense,” in: E. La Rocca, P. León, and C. Parisi Presicce (eds.), Le due patrie acquisite: Studi di Archeologia dedicati a Walter Trillmich, Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma Suppl. 18. Rome, 301–312. Nogales-Basarrate, Trinidad (2009). “Talleres de escultura de Augusta Emerita y su papel en Lusitania romana,” in: V. Gaggadis-Robin, A. Hermary, M. Reddé and C. Sintes (eds.), Les ateliers de sculpture

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régionaux: techniques, styles et iconographie, Actes du Xe Colloque International sur l’art provincial romain (Arles et Aix-en-Provence 2007). Arles, 467–483. Nogales-Basarrate, Trinidad (2013). “Augusta Emerita. Centro de interacción de los modelos metropolitanos en las esferas públicas y privadas de Lusitania,” in: A. Dardenay and E. Rosso (eds.), Dialogues entre sphère publique et sphère privée dans l’espace de la cité romaine. Vecteurs, acteurs, significations (Ausonius Scripta Antiqua 56). Bordeaux, 185–206. Nogales-Basarrate, Trinidad (2020). “El rostro de Eneas en Augusta Emerita,” in: J.M. Noguera, I. López, and L. Baena (eds.), Satyrica signa: Estudios de Arqueología clásica en Homenaje al profesor Pedro Rodríguez Oliva. Granada, 285–300. Nogales-Basarrate, Trinidad (2021). “Colonia Augusta Emerita,” in: T. Nogales-Basarrate (ed.), Ciudades Romanas de Hispania/Cities of Roman Hispania, Hispania Antigua: Serie Arqueológica 13. Rome, 33–61. Nogales-Basarrate, Trinidad / Álvarez, José María (2006). “Fora Augustae Emeritae. La interpretatio provincial de los patrones metropolitanos,” in: D. Vaquerizo and J. Francisco Murillo (eds.), El concepto de lo provincial en el mundo antiguo. Homenaje a la Profesora Pilar León Alonso. Cordoba, 419–450. Nogales-Basarrate, Trinidad / Álvarez, José María (2010). “Foros de Augusta Emerita. Modelos en Lusitania,” in: T. Nogales-Basarrate (ed.), Ciudad y foro en Lusitania romana/Cidade e foro na Lusitânia romana. Studia Lusitana 4. Merida, 231–260. Nogales-Basarrate, Trinidad / Álvarez, José María (2018). “Urbanismo de Augusta Emerita en su fundación y origen,” in: T. Nogales and N. Barrero (eds.), La fundación de Augusta Emerita y los orígenes de Lusitania, Monografías emeritenses 11. Merida, 13–51. Nogales-Basarrate, Trinidad / Álvarez, José María (2021). “El grupo de Eneas del foro colonial de Augusta Emerita: iconografía y origen,” in: Abantos. Homenaje a Paloma Cabrera Bonet. Madrid, 415–426. Nogales-Basarrate, Trinidad / Gonçalves, Luis Jorge (2004). “Imagines Lusitaniae: la plástica oficial de Augusta Emerita y su reflejo en algunas ciudades lusitanas,” in: T. Nogales-Basarrate (ed.), Augusta Emerita: Territorios, Espacios Imágenes y Gentes en Lusitania Romana, Monografías Emeritenses 8. Merida, 285–337. Nogales-Basarrate, Trinidad / Gonçalves, Luis Jorge (2008). “Programas decorativos públicos de Lusitania: Augusta Emerita como paradigma en algunos ejemplos provinciales”, in: J.M. Noguera and E. Conde (eds.), Escultura romana en Hispania V (Murcia 2005). Madrid, 279–310. Nogales-Basarrate, Trinidad / Gonçalves, Luis Jorge / Lapuente, Pilar (2008). “Materiales lapídeos, mármoles y talleres en Lusitania,” in: T. Nogales and J. Beltrán (eds.), Marmora Hispana: explotación y uso de los materiales pétreos en la Hispania Romana, Hispania Antigua, Serie Arqueológica. Merida, 407–466. Peña, Antonio (2007). “Reflejos del Forum Augustum en Itálica,” in: T. Nogales-Basarrate and J. González (eds.), Culto Imperial: política y poder, Merida, 323–345. Riis, P. J. (1976). “An Aeneas in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek?,” in: L. Bonfante and H. Von Heintze (eds.), Essays in archaeology and the humanities: In memoriam Otto J. Brendel, Mainz, 165–171. Roddaz, Jean Michel (1995). “Agrippa y la Península Ibérica,” ANAS 6 1993, 111–126. Rossini, Orietta (2006). Ara Pacis. Rome. Saquete, José Carlos (1997). Las élites sociales de Augusta Emerita. Cuadernos emeritenses 13. Merida. Saquete, José Carlos (2005). “L. Fulcinius Trio, Tiberio y el gran templo de culto imperial de Augusta Emerita,” Epigraphica 67, 279–308. Saquete, José Carlos (2011). “L. Fvlcinivs Trio, L. Cornelivs Bocchvs y el templo del Divus Augustus en Mérida,” Habis 42, 163–172. Spannagel, Martin (1999). Exemplaria principis. Untersuchungen zu Entstellung und Ausstattung des Augustusforum. Archäologie und Geschichte 9. Heidelberg. Stemmer, Klaus (1978). Untersuchungen zur Typologie, Chronologie und Ikonographie der Panzerstatuen. Berlin.

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Stylow, Armin / Ventura, Ángel (2009). “Los hallazgos epigráficos,” in: R. Ayerbe, T. Barrientos, and F. Palma (eds.), El Foro de Augusta Emerita: Génesis y evolución de sus recintos monumentales, Anejos de AEspA, LIII. Madrid, 453–523. Stylow, Armin / Ventura, Ángel (2018). “Inscripciones asociadas a la Scaena del Teatro,” in: P. Mateos (ed.), La scaenae frons del Teatro romano de Mérida, Anejos de AEspA. Merida, 155–192. Trillmich, Walter (1986). “Ein historisches Relief in Mérida mit Darstellung des M. Agrippa beim Opfer,” MM 27, 279–304. Trillmich, Walter (1990). “Colonia Augusta Emerita: Die Haupstadt von Lusitanien,” in: W. Trillmich and P. Zanker (eds.), Stadtbild und Ideologie. Die Monumentalisierung hispanischer Städte zwischen Republik und Kaiserzeit, Munich, 299–318. (Updated English version in J. Edmondson, ed., Augustus. Edinburgh, 2009, 427–467). Trillmich, Walter (1992). “El niño Ascanio (Diana calzadora) de Mérida en el Museo Arqueológico Nacional,” Boletín del Museo Arqueológico Nacional 10, 25–38. Trillmich, Walter (1993). “ und in den Hauptstädten der drei hispanischen Provinzen: eine Fiktion,” in: J. Arce and P. Le Roux (eds.), Ciudad y comunidad cívica en Hispania en los siglos II-III d.C. (Casa de Velázquez, 1990). Madrid, 117–127. Trillmich, Walter (1994). “Aspekte der ‘Augustus-Nachfolge’ des Kaisers Claudius,” in: V. Strocka (ed.), Die Regierungszeit des Kaisers Claudius (41–54 n. Chr.): Umbruch oder Episode?. Mainz, 69–89. Trillmich, Walter (1995). “Gestalt und Ausstattung des „Marmorforums“ in Mérida. Kenntnisstand und Perspektiven,” MM 36, 269–291. Trillmich, Walter (1996). “Reflejos del programa estatuario del Forum Augustum en Mérida,” II Reunió sobre escultura romana a Hispània / II Reunión sobre escultura romana en Hispania. Tarragona, 95–108. Trillmich, Walter (1997). “El modelo de la metrópoli,” in: J. Arce, S. Ensoli, and E. La Rocca (eds.), Hispania romana: desde tierra de conquista a provincia del imperio. Madrid, 131–141. Trillmich, Walter (2007). “Espacios públicos de culto imperial en Augusta Emerita: entre hipótesis y dudas,” in: T. Nogales-Basarrate and J. González (eds.), Culto Imperial: política y poder. Merida, 415–445. Ungaro, Lucrezia (2007). “Il Foro di Augusto,” in: L. Ungaro (ed.), Il Museo dei Fori Imperiali nei Mercati di Traiano. Milan, 118–169. Ungaro, Lucrezia (2021). “Roma e Augusta Emerita: la presenza dello Stato romano nei complessi forensic,” in: T. Nogales-Basarrate (ed.), Ciudades Romanas de Hispania/Cities of Roman Hispania, Hispania Antigua, Serie Arqueológica 13. Rome, 17–30. Valeri, Claudia (2010). “Il 'Rione Terra' di Pozzuoli: cicli e programmi decorativi,” in: Escultura Romana en Hispania VI: Homenaje a Eva Koppel. Murcia, 419–442. Zanker, Paul (1968). Forum Augustum: Das Bildprogramm. Monumenta Artis Antiquae 2. Tübingen.

Peter Justin Moon Schertz

New Evidence for the Forum Marsyas Statue Type It is with great pleasure that I write this paper on a previously unrecognized depiction of the Forum Marsyas in a book dedicated to my dissertation advisor, mentor and friend, John Pollini.1 The Forum Marsyas refers to a lost statue that stood in the Forum Romanum and was the primary subject of my unpublished dissertation on the figure of Marsyas (including images of the Hanging Marsyas and Dejected Marsyas) in late Republican and Augustan Rome.2 The Forum Marsyas stood in the Forum Romanum, probably from around 300 BCE (although there is only circumstantial evidence for any date). The original statue is lost, but fragmentary versions of it exist from other sites in Roman Italy and there are a number of extant depictions (primarily but not exclusively on coins) that have been identified with the statue type; there are also literary references from the first century BCE through the fourth century CE. Although lost, the Forum Marsyas has been the subject of intense scholarly scrutiny, much of it focused on interpreting its ancient significance and whether and in what ways it is associated with Roman conceptions of libertas and whose libertas it concerned.3 These debates are based on ancient literary sources, interpretations of Roman history, and the work of scholars trying to reconcile the form of this statue with these sources and modern understandings of Roman history and culture. The purpose of this article is to explore this new image of the Forum Marsyas and how it contributes to our understanding of the statue type and its spread and use in the Roman empire. The depiction occurs on a terracotta lamp in the Metropolitan Museum of Art currently on view in their study gallery for ancient art (Fig. 1). Included in two publications of the Cesnola collection, the most recent catalogue entry reads in part: “a naked Silenus standing in profile to left, head tilted slightly back, right arm raised above his head, and holding a wine skin over his left shoulder.”4 In all its details, this depiction of a naked Silenus conforms to the iconography of the Forum Marsyas. To confirm

 New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cesnola Collection, Purchased by subscription, 1874–76, inv. 74.51.2115. My thanks to the Department of Greek and Roman Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for taking this lamp off-view and allowing me to examine it in person. My thanks also to Profs. Elise Friedland and Steven Fine for their comments on early drafts of this paper; Dr. Nathan Elkins for pointing me toward additional resources; Prof. Erika Darmer of the University of Richmond for helping me with inscriptions and Robyn Le Blanc for her thoughtful comments and generosity in sharing her maps and own work on the topic of the Forum Marsyas and on this lamp.  Schertz 2005.  Recently see Arena 2021, Santangelo 2016, Miano 2011, and Basso/Buonopane 2008 with earlier literature.  Lightfoot 2020, 288, no. 376; Myers 1914, no. 2655. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111182919-017

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Fig. 1: Terracotta Oil Lamp with Depiction of the Forum Marsyas. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cesnola Collection, Purchased by Subscription, 1874–76, inv. 74.51.2115. Photo: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

the identity of the Silenus on the lamp, though, it is necessary to examine other images that have been identified as showing the Forum Marsyas on the basis of these literary sources. The earliest and perhaps best-known depiction of the Forum Marsyas appears on the coinage of Gaius Marcius Censorinus, dated by Crawford to 82 BCE, where the statue stands beside a column (Fig. 2).5 Torelli and Coarelli read the column on the coin as the Columna Maenia and believe it is surmounted by a statue of Minerva;6 other scholars believe it is a generic column surmounted by Victory.7 The prominence of the column on the coin seems specific to the context in which the coin was minted as the column is absent, for instance, from the depiction of Marsyas on the Anaglypha Traiani. An engraved onyx in the British Museum is so similar to the Censorinus depiction (including a column surmounted by what Walters described as the Palladion) that it must be related, and the gem should probably be dated to the first century BCE.8 A second gem, in the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, seems to be of a significantly later date.9 This gem shows a stooped figure carrying a wineskin over his left shoulder and with his right arm raised; the figure stands on a column and is accompanied by an eagle and various other symbols, which Bonner interpreted as a medicinal amulet and derived

 Crawford RRC, no. 363.1b.  Coarelli 1992, 107; Torelli 102.  Crawford RRC, no. 363.1a; Small 1982, 88.  Walters 1926, no. 1566, pl. 21.  Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, object number 0000.02.6138; see Le Blanc 2020, 163 and pl. 31.9; Bonner 1950, 65–66, referring also to a similar amulet in Copenhagen; I have not examined either amulet.

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Fig. 2: Reverse of the Denarius of Lucius Marcius Censorinus, 82 BCE (RRC no. 363.1b), American Numismatic Society, Bequest of E.T. Newell, 1944.100.1026.

from coin designs produced in Neapolis from the reigns of Philip I through Volusianus (244–253 CE).10 The Forum Marsyas is also known through damaged depictions on both panels of the so-called Anaglypha Traiani (see Fig. 4), most likely dating to the early second century CE;11 a bronze statue discovered in the Forum of the Latin colony of Paestum (c. 273 BCE; see Fig. 3);12 bronze fragments found in the Latin colony of Alba Fucens that have now been identified as coming from a copy of the Forum Marsyas;13 and depictions on a number of provincial coins minted in the eastern Roman empire.14 Julia Habetzeder has argued that a group of statues of satyrs she identifies as the Palazzo Massimo Type share the iconography of the Forum Marsyas.15 The statues Habetzeder discusses, though, are fragmentary and often heavily restored; they may well be depictions of more generic silenoi bearing wineskins, a well-established motif in Greek and Roman art. Putting aside Habetzeder’s Palazzo Massimo type, the depictions of the Forum Marsyas are damaged (e.g., the Anaglypha), fragmentary (the Paestan statue lacks both arms while the Alba Fucens version survives only as the left arm and a finger), or small in scale (the numismatic evidence and gem). Patrizio Basso and Alfredo Buonopane have compiled an updated list of the nine known inscriptions mentioning statues of Marsyas in the Roman world as well as a list of imperial cities that issued coins with depictions of this statue.16 While most of the statue bases have been found in North Africa, the coins are from the Roman east. The absence of known images of the Forum Marsyas from areas outside Italy in the Roman west remains puzzling.

      

For these coins see Palistrant Shaik 2021, 190–192; Le Blanc, forthcoming. Torelli 1982, 89–118; Brown 2020, with recent bibliography. Denti 1991 remains the most detailed study. Liberatore 1995. See such recent studies with earlier bibliography as Le Blanc 2010; Palistrant Shaik 2021. Habetzeder 2010. Basso/Buonopane 2008.

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The depiction on the Cesnola lamp, showing Marsyas facing left, is both complete and larger than the images on the coins. Lightfoot has identified the lamp as a Loeschke Type 4, mold-made and with an inscribed base and slightly concave base ring, dating it to c. 40–100 CE. As part of the Cesnola Collection, its presumed findspot was Cyprus. A wealth of additional details can now be added to our imaginings of what the lost statue may have looked like (always allowing for uncertainty concerning the relation of the statue that stood in Rome to the copies and depictions of the statue type in later art in various media). On the lamp, the figure is inside a discus containing a fill-hole and delimited by three grooves of varied width. The right arm of the figure is raised and the hand is turned palm outward with all four fingers visible and the open thumb pointing to the right, though the fingers are cut off by the circular grooves around the discus; the designer seems to have attempted to suggest tendons or musculature on the forearm. The left hand holds a wineskin with what appears to be a stoppered mouth and all five digits of the left hand, shown from the back, are visible. The wineskin hangs over the shoulder, and there is a gap between the wineskin and the figure’s arched back. Marsyas’ body is upright, and he has a long equine, rather than caprine, tail emerging from his lower back with hair indicated by a series of pronounced lines; he is nude with an indication of a penis. There is a slight bend of the knees and, though shown in profile, the position of the feet seems similar to that of the Paestan statue; that is, the feet spread slightly apart and with the right foot slightly drawn back from the left. Unlike the fingers, the toes are not articulated, which suggests that the feet are shod (as on the Censorinus coin, the Paestan statue and the Anaglypha) and, importantly in light of some of the literary sources on this statue, there is no indication of shackles around his ankles. The feet rest on what appears to be a base, as on the Anaglypha, indicating that this is a depiction of a statue and not a figure, either real or mythical. There is also an indication of a curved enclosure, whose exterior is indicated by a reticulate pattern while the interior side is smooth. Though the statue is depicted as outside of the enclosure, this was presumably an artistic choice made in order to show both the enclosure and the statue; the fact that the enclosure is depicted on the lamp suggests that, wherever the model for this depiction of the Forum Marsyas once stood, it stood inside an enclosure and that the designer of this lamp considered the inclusion of the enclosure important. The presence of this lamp on Cyprus is part of the broader dissemination of this statue type, so closely associated with the city of Rome, throughout Roman-controlled territories beginning in the third century BCE. Daniela Liberatore recognized fragments of a left arm clutching the mouth of a wineskin and fragmentary fingers as coming from a bronze version of the Forum Marsyas at Alba Fucens;17 a statue missing its arms and tail found in Paestum in 1931 had previously been recognized as a version of the same statue (Fig. 3).

 Liberatore 1995.

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Fig. 3: The bronze statue, the Paestum Marsyas, was found in the western portion of the forum. Paestum, Museo Archeologico Nazionale. Photo: © Francesco Valletta and Giovanni Grippo. With permission of the Ministero della Cultura—Parco Archeologico di Paestum e Velia.

The original location of the statue in Alba Fucens is unknown, as the fragments were found together with other material waiting to be melted down. The Paestum version was found cut into five sections in the western part of the forum.18 The discovery of the Paestum statue in the comitium—and sources that place the version in Rome near the comitium in the Forum Romanum—suggest that, outside of Rome, the statue of Marsyas was at a minimum an indicium romanitatis. The date of both these statues is uncertain. Several scholars have posited that the statue in Paestum pre-dates the statue that stood in Rome, although there is little evidence to support the hypothesis and even less evidence on the date of the Alba Fucens version.19 Although the findspot at Paestum, at the junction of the cardo and decumanum, was probably not the original site of the statue, the Marsyas likely once stood in the forum of Paestum.20 Denti dates the statue to the fourth century BCE on stylistic grounds and characterizes it as a work from Magna Graecia; the statue more likely post-dates the establishment of Paestum as a Latin colony in 273 BCE and is modeled on the version in Rome (gener-

 Denti 1991, 135–136.  Denti 1991, 158–163.  Coarelli 1985, 96; Denti 1991, 136.

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ally dated to the late fourth-early third centuries BCE). The date of the Paestum version suggests that the version at Alba Fucens also was dedicated in the early years of the colony (which was founded in 303 BCE) and that both statues, in addition to marking the cities as “Roman,” had a symbolic importance derived from the statue in Rome. An interesting aspect of the statues from Paestum and Alba Fucens is the difference in scale; the statue from Paestum is about a meter tall, yet the fragments from Alba Longa suggest a nearly life-size statue (the arm is 38.4 cm long and 13.4 cm in diameter).21 Prior to the discovery of this larger version at Alba Longa, the size of the Paestan statue seemed to lend credence to Pliny’s report (HN 34.24) that the early statues erected in the Forum were three feet in height. The difference in scale also means that, rather than making copies of the Marsyas in Rome, the cities of Italy—and presumably throughout the empire—were creating versions; the notion of versions raises questions about how close a version needed to be to the original in order to be either recognizable or to convey meaning and whether the meaning of the versions was the same as what the original conveyed in its original setting. Considering the chronological range and geographical extent of both the statue type and the sources available to modern scholars for understanding it, the difference between copies and versions has profound implications for our understanding of both the individual statues and of the type more generally. These two versions of the Forum Marsyas type fall neatly into neither the categories of copies of the original nor (given their scale) of small-scale adaptations of originals.22 A statue base found in Bovino (Italy), ancient Vibinum, bears the inscription: P(ublius), L(ucius) Postumii L(uci) f(ili[i]) Gal(eria) / Albinus et Niger / Marsuam d(e) s(ua) p(ecunia) f(ecerunt) (“Publius Postumius Albinus and Publius Postumius Niger, sons of Lucius Postumius, of the Galerian tribe made this statue of Marsyas from their own resources/money”). The inscription has been dated to the last decade of the Republic or the very first years of the Augustan principate.23 As Vibinum was either a Sullan or Triumviral colony, the dedication of this Marsyas can be assigned without hesitation to the early period of the colony, providing some support for the thesis that the statues at Paestum and Alba Fucens were also dedicated early in the history of those colonies. There is, however, no reason to assume that a statue dedicated in the mid-first century BCE had the same symbolism as those dedicated in the third century BCE; nonetheless, the dedication of the Vibinum statue indicates that the Forum Marsyas type served as a marker of the colony’s romanitas and that dedicating the statue was both a deliberate choice and a source of pride.

 Liberatore 1995, 249.  Mattusch 2014 (on workshop practices, including copying); Stähli 2014.  Basso/Buonopane 2008, 152–153, no. 1, citing earlier literature.

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Fig. 4: Anaglypha Traiani, detail of the Destruction of the Tax Records relief. Photo: © John Pollini.

From the imperial period, there are five non-numismatic depictions of the statue: the two on the Anaglypha, dating to the early second century CE (Fig. 4); the Cesnola lamp at the Met, dating to the second half of the first century; the hematite amulet, currently dated only generally to the imperial period; and a fragmentary marble statuette (perhaps of earlier date) whose current whereabouts are unknown but which was described and illustrated by Jordan in 1883 as originating in Rome and being in the collection of G. Löschke of Dorpat (Tartu, Estonia).24 There are also depictions of

 Jordan 1883, 8–9, pl. C.

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the Forum Marsyas on coins from 22 different cities, ranging in date from the reign of Hadrian to that of Aurelian (from the first to the third century CE)25 and eight inscriptions from outside Italy dating from the beginning of the second century to the third century CE (Fig. 5).26

Fig. 5: Map of the Imperial Cities with numismatic depictions of the Forum Marsyas (red dots) and inscriptions referring to a statue of Marsyas (green dots). Photo: © Robyn Le Blanc, drawing upon the mapping tool of Oxford University’s Roman Provincial Coinage resource.

In his discussion of the inscriptions, Buonopane notes that the epigraphic evidence confirms Paul Veyne’s doubts about the connection between the presence of the statue and the status of cities as coloniae or as holding the ius italicum (a suggestion made by Jules Paoli and earlier scholars).27 Buonopane makes the observation that the dedication of the statues seems to correspond to significant events in the city, such as their establishment as coloniae or municipii or the granting of other privileges; numismatists have also recognized a similar correspondence between the depiction of Marsyas on coins and changes in a city’s status.28 When inscriptions specify the placement of the statue or when archaeological evidence (the findspot) exists for the placement, that place is the forum.29 This location is in keeping with the known locations of the earlier versions in Italy, including Rome, suggesting that in the imperial period, as in the Republican, the Marsyas was displayed to visually reinforce a provincial city’s identification with the caput mundi. The connection between Marsyas

    

Basso/Buonpane 2008 (updating the list found in Small 1982, 132–139). Passo/Buonopane 2008, 155–156. Veyne 1961; Paoli 1938; for a more recent discussion, LeBlanc 2020, 171–175. Le Blanc forthcoming. Passo/Buonopane 2008, 157.

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and a forum is borne out by third century CE coins issued under Elagabalus in Berytus, where Marsyas appears in an elaborate architectural setting identified as the monumental gate to the city’s forum (the architectural settings appearing on other coins are not explicitly associated with fora).30 The deeper significance of the iconography and cultural-historical importance of this statue type has been much debated and can be further explored through the depiction on the Cesnola lamp. There are four features that distinguish the Forum Marsyas from generic images of silens and whose combination makes the type unique: the raised right arm; the wineskin carried on his left shoulder; the headgear; and the bands visible around the ankles in some depictions of the statue. The upraised arm was first mentioned by pseudo-Akron in his commentary on Horace Satires 1.6.119– 121. The date of this comment is unknown, as the comment only appears with Akron in the fifteenth century, but the reference to the statue’s iconography indicates an early origin, perhaps the second century CE.31 In this passage, the poet’s persona declares that he can sleep untroubled even though the next day he must pass the Marsyas, qui se/voltum ferre negat Noviorum posse minoris (“Marsyas who says he cannot stand the face of Novius Junior,” transl. Fairclough). Pseudo-Akron glosses this passage as Horace declaring, “I think that Marsyas has his hand raised because he cannot endure the shamelessness of the money-lenders; from this, the giving of bail bond was established at the statue of Marsyas” (puto Marsyam erectam nam manum habere, quod illorum feneratorum impudentiam non potest sustinere; deinde quod ad statuam Marsae vadimonium statuebatur). The pseudo-Akron comment is the earliest surviving effort to read the iconography of the statue and it has allowed us to relate various depictions of a silenus with upraised arm to the Marsyas statue in the Forum. Aside from describing the arm as raised, the commentary does not describe how high the arm was raised, its position (for example, straight or bent), or how the hand or fingers were positioned. A second series of ancient references to the raised arm can be found in Servius’s and Servius Danielus’s commentaries on Virgil’s Aeneid 3.20 and 4.58, so fascinatingly discussed by Valentina Arena.32 The glosses on both lines are similar, with that on Aeneid 4:58 the fuller: To Father Lyaeus, who as we said above is appropriately the god of freedom for cities, whence Marsyas too, his servant, is placed in the forum in cities as a symbol of freedom [in foro positus libertatis indicium], with his hand raised to show the city lacks nothing. (trans. Wiseman)

 Palistrant Shaik 2021, 183–185, pls. 14–16.  Taraskin 2013.  Arena 2021.

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Again, there are no details given on the nature of the gesture beyond that Marsyas’s arm is raised, but here the raised arm is interpreted as indicating that the city lacks for nothing. In the various depictions, it is always the right hand that is raised, but the degree and angle of elevation as well as the way the hand is held differs (none of the sculptural versions have intact right arms, including the relief-carved Anaglypha). Thus, on the Cesnola lamp, the arm is raised upright above the head with the wrist bent backwards and fingers spread. The position of this arm resembles that on some dies for the Censorinus denarius and perhaps has greater weight because it is on a larger object than a denarius; however, it should be noted that there are variations in the position of the arm (and all other details) among the 228 reverse dies that Crawford identified for the Censorinus issue, and that some show both the hand and arm in quite different positions. On the provincial coins, the position of the arm (and Marsyas’ posture) varies, often rendered as if he is making the adlocutio gesture so familiar from imperial iconography. The variations may be due to the scale and form of the depictions (the scale of the imperial coins is quite small) or to differences between the statues in different cities. It is also quite possible that when the first version of the type was dedicated in Rome, the position of the arm and hand held a narrow significance for that time and place, one that was lost or misunderstood over the centuries; later versions and depictions of the statue had only to show a raised arm in order to conform with the Forum Marsyas type. The second characteristic feature of the Forum Marsyas is the wineskin he bears on his left shoulder. This attribute reinforces the connection between Marsyas and Dionysos. As a silen, Marsyas is by nature in the circle of Dionysos, and several sources describe him as a teacher of viticulture to the peoples of Italy. In commentaries on the Aeneid, Marsyas is explicitly described as an attendant of Liber Pater (eius [Liberi] minister, Serv. ad Aen. 4.58), the god most closely associated with Dionysos, or under Liber’s protection (qui in tutela Liberi patris est, Serv. ad Aen. 320). The wineskin is, however, a common burden born by satyrs and silens in ancient art, beginning with the François Vase, where one of three labeled silenoi following Hephaestus bends beneath the weight of a wineskin.33 Although there seems to be no surviving indication of a wineskin associated with the armless Paestum Marsyas, which was discovered in a dismantled state, in all other certain depictions of this statue type (including the fragmentary version from Alba Fucens) the wineskin is present and seems to be an essential feature of the type, notwithstanding the possible (but unlikely) versions discussed by Habetzeder.34 The third feature—and this is more a case of scholarly uncertainty than a feature —of the Forum Marsyas concerns the headgear evident on some versions of the statue type. On the lamp, Marsyas appears to be a typical older silen with a bald pate, a

 Florence, National Archaeology Museum, 4209; for the detail, see LIMC, s.v. Silenoi 22 (Simon).  Habetzeder 2010.

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fringe of hair, and downturned ears pointing to the front of his face. The smaller depictions on the Censorinus coins offer only ambiguous evidence for what, if any, headgear Marsyas wears, but it has been variously described as a pileus (perhaps under the influence of literary sources describing the statue as an indicium Libertatis), a diadem, or absent, meaning that the coins show a bald-headed Marsyas, similar to the depiction on the Cesnola lamp.35 The Paestum statue is the best evidence for the headgear and it shows an unadorned diadem, which may be a reference to Marsyas as a king, a tradition known to the first-century BCE annalist Gnaeus Gellius and preserved in Solinus (1.7).36 In recounting the legend of Cacus, Gellius says that he and a companion, the Phrygian Megales, were sent by King Marsyas (missu Marsyae regis) to Tarchon the Tyrrhenian. A reference to Marsyas as a leader of Lydia (Marsya duce), also attributed to Gellius, is preserved in Pliny (HN 3.108 = Gell. Fr. 8).37 Thus, if the headgear of the Forum Marsyas is a diadem, it may be associated with this tradition, found first in Gellius, of a King Marsyas from Phrygia or Lydia (a tradition which Coarelli believes originated with the family traditions of the gens Marcia).38 With regard to the question of the headgear of the Forum Marsyas, it is worth remembering the scandal of Augustus’s daughter Julia. According to Pliny (HN 21.9), Augustus recorded in a letter how Julia placed a chaplet of flowers on the Marsyas during her “night frolics;” this passage immediately follows the story of how P. Munatius removed a crown of flowers from Marsyas (Plin. HN 21.8). While not mentioning chaplets, Seneca (de Ben. 6.32.1) also associates Julia with the statue of the Marsyas, listing as one of the causes for Augustus’s rage “that there had been daily gatherings by the statue of Marsyas, when she turned from adultery to prostitution and claimed the right to every kind of license with any unknown adulterer.” Aside from associating Marsyas with Julia and a gathering place for prostitution, these passages raise the possibility that the unadorned diadem incorporated into the Paestum statue may have been elaborated with temporary adornments of flowers. The fourth distinctive feature of the statue is the footwear, both how the Forum Marsyas is shod and the possibility that he wore fetters. In those depictions of the Forum Marsyas where feet can be distinguished, they seem regularly to be shod rather than having the exposed toes one expects with shackles. The type of shoe varies, however, from the rounded toes of the statue from Paestum and the Anaglypha (see Figs. 3, 4) to the pointed toes on many of the Censorinus denarii (see Fig. 2). In the Paestum statue, the top of the footwear is divided by vertical lines into five flat surfaces.39 This feature, seemingly shared by the damaged boots depicted on the Anaglypha, may be an eccentric way of rendering turned down boot-tops, although it is

    

Tibiletti 1962, 353 (pileus); Crawford, no 363n1 (bald-headed); Coarelli 1985, 100 (diadem). Gnaeus Gellius, fr. 7; see Penny 1982, 5 (transl. and text); Coarelli 1992, 113–114. Small 1982, 76 and n. 28. Coarelli 1992, 115. Denti 1991, 138; Guzzo 2015, 117.

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hard to imagine how turning down boot-tops would produce flat surfaces and straight vertical lines.40 On some of the Censorinus coins, the shoes seem to be high boots, unlike those of the Paestum statue and Anaglypha. Guzzo has argued that Marsyas is wearing ἐμβάδες, like those found on other depictions of satyrs,41 but again, the turned down tops of Marsyas’ shoes differ quite noticeably from the shoes worn by other satyrs. Santangelo and Guzzo are only the most recent scholars who have pointed out that neither the Paestum Marsyas nor the Marsyas depicted on the Anaglypha (nor that on the Cesnola lamp) seems to have shackles.42 Depictions of other bound captives are not helpful in determining whether the facets above the Paestan statue’s boots are intended as shackles. One can look at other enchained figures in ancient myth and art. Andromeda was chained to a rock (or, in the visual record, posts, trees, or a cave) and the means of restraint, when visible, are evident only on her wrists (never on her ankles or legs) and take the form of straps affixed over her wrists to a solid surface.43 Prometheus was also bound to a rock, but images of this figure are no more helpful than those of Andromeda: inasmuch as the means of restraint can be determined, Prometheus, like Andromeda, is also bound with curved straps at his wrists and occasionally ankles. The most telling evidence of an artistic representation of shackles, though, is the statue of Eros Bound at the Villa Borghèse. Like the Paestum Marsyas, Eros is shown in the round, but he is barefoot, with a strap loosely tied around his waist, from which chain links extend down his left leg to a band around his ankle; the band is round and may, like the strap around his waist, depict leather or textile rather than metal.44 There is something unusual about Marsyas’ footwear, however, not just as it is rendered on the Paestum statue but also on whatever versions were visible to Charax of Pergamon in the mid-second century CE. In a fragment preserved in the Etymologicum Magnum explaining the etymology of the word koloneia, Charax mentions that following his war against the Tyrrhenians, Dionysos left both the older and younger silenoi in his army in Italy, where they became farmers specializing in viticulture: “They [silenoi] took care of honouring the towns where the Italoi lived. They used to erect the statue of a supernatural being, a kind of old man similar to a Silenos, so that common sacred rites could create a further bond between them. The fetters around the statue symbolized their condition as subjects. The towns possessing those statues

 Guzzo 2015, 117; the details of the shoes on one of the Anaglypha reliefs can be discerned on a photograph in the DAI’s photo archive, negative 63.107, https://arachne.dainst.org/entity/642911 [accessed 1 August 2024].  Guzzo 2015, 117.  Guzzo 2015; Santangelo 2016, 66.  LIMC, vol. 1, s.v. “Andromeda I” (Schauenburg).  Villa Borghèse, 689, Covina et al., cat. no. 63 (Irena Petrucci).

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are closely associated.”45 This passage formed the basis of Coarelli’s interpretation of the Forum Marsyas as referring to the abolition of debt-bondage (nexum) and his argument of how the statue type was associated with plebeian liberty.46 In order to reconcile Charax’s use of the word ὑπήκοον (subjection) with libertas, Coarelli posits that the shackles were broken; however, just as there are no signs of cuffs, there are no signs of broken shackles on any version or depiction of the Forum Marsyas. While it is possible that Charax encountered statues in provincial cities that did include shackles, on the evidence from Italy (including the second-century Anaglypha, which Charax might have seen), this would be a provincial misreading of the earlier footwear. In that case, like the position of the raised right arm, the earlier significance and details of the footwear may have been lost or altered over time. A unique feature of the lamp is the enclosure, which is different but perhaps conceptually related to the architectural settings associated with other depictions of the Forum Marsyas. On third century coins from several imperial cities (Sidon, Tyre, Berytus and Caesarea ad Libanum), the statue is shown within a gateway or in—or beside—a temple.47 An elaborate example of Marsyas in an architectural setting occurs on a coin from Berytus dating to the reign of Elagabulus (Fig. 6)48; the setting is not identified but Palistrant Shaik’s suggestion of a monumental gate is quite plausible.

Fig. 6: Coin of Berytus with Forum Marsyas inside Monumental Gate. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, inv. 63.1410. Photo: © Boston, Museum of Fine Arts.

 For the full Greek text and translation (by G. Squillage), Santangelo 2018, 67 and n. 77.  Coarelli 1992, 106.  For a discussion of these coins and the cities that produced them, see Palistrant Shaik 2021, 179–187.  Coin of Berytus with bust of Elagabalus, Roman Provincial, Imperial Period, A.D. 218–222, Mint: Syria, Berytus, Bronze, Diameter: 31 mm, weight 21.34 gm, die axis 11. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius C. Vermeule III, 63.1410 (reverse).

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Sometimes the statue is unaccompanied, sometimes it is a companion figure to a deity, typically Tyche-Astarte, who is usually visually larger than Marsyas. On a coin from Neapolis, Marsyas stands beside an eagle supporting Mt. Gerezim, the sacred mountain of the Samaritans outside of modern Nablus in the Palestinian Authority. These architectural settings evoke the Anaglypha, where Marsyas is depicted amongst the buildings of the Forum Romanum. In light of the references in literary sources, however late, to Marsyas as minister Liberi patris, the association of the Forum Marsyas with local civic deities and religious structures is suggestive of one of the ways provincial cities incorporated a distinctly Roman image into their cityscapes. All of these architectural depictions are far more elaborate than the enclosure shown on the lamp. The enclosure does, however, recall a passage by the first century CE grammarian Conon (Nar. 48) referring to bronze fencing (κιγκλίσι καλκαῖς) surrounding the ficus ruminalis, the fig tree where the lupa suckled Romulus and Remus. Mario Torelli used the passage to support his argument that the Anaglypha was created to replace this fencing, which, he posited, enclosed both the tree and the Forum Marsyas.49 Torelli’s explanation remains problematic, as not only do two long, straight reliefs not an enclosure make, but there is no indication of other sides for an enclosure, and the extant fragment by Conon mentions only fencing around the tree with no mention of Marsyas or any other statue. Nonetheless, the image on the lamp, which has been dated to the first century, indicates that the Marsyas statue on Cyprus, and perhaps that at Rome, was indeed surrounded by an enclosure. That brings us to the last aspect of this lamp, which is both intriguing and inconclusive: the presence of this lamp in the Cesnola Collection. While the Cesnola Collection is generally known as a collection of works from Cyprus, not all works in it were necessarily produced in Cyprus. This caution is especially warranted for the terracotta lamps found on the island. Indeed, in a recent study of more than seven hundred Hellenistic and Roman lamps excavated from the agora of Nea Paphos, the capital of Roman Cyprus, many of the lamps were found to have been produced elsewhere.50 The Cesnola lamp appears to belong to Kajzer et al.’s Production Group 13, “Mouldmade closed discus lamps.” This was the largest group of lamps found at Nea Paphos, with lamps ranging in date from the early first century CE until at least the late second century CE.51 Kajzer et al. identified two sub-groups, one with a slip (like the Cesnola lamp) and one without; the slip-covered lamps are earlier, consistent with Lightfoot’s dating of this lamp to the mid- to late first century CE. From this study, it appears that the geographical distribution of Production Group 13 is concentrated on Cyprus, although specimens have been found at Baalbek and Tubas.52 Indeed, Kajzer

   

Torelli 1982, 108; see also, Santangelo 2016, 64. Kajzer et al. 2021, 233–234. Kajzer et al. 2021, 325–327. Kajzer et al. 2021, Table 10.

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et al. classify Production Group 13 as “likely [produced in] Cyprus.”53 Without a specific findspot for the Cesnola lamp, however, it is difficult to determine where and how it fits into the recently reinvigorated study of Roman Cyprus.54

Conclusions While the Cesnola lamp can shed little direct light on the presumed original of the Forum Marsyas that stood in Rome, it is another data point in the study of the versions of the type erected in the imperial period throughout much of the Roman empire. The larger size of the lamp in comparison to the numismatic evidence and its excellent state of preservation compared to other large versions or depictions of the Forum Marsyas have allowed a reexamination of the many issues that this statue raises. Among other things, the above discussion highlights the apparent flexibility artisans exhibited in creating depictions or versions of the Forum Marsyas while highlighting the difficulties of reading or understanding a monument, certainly an ancient monument, either by the mere act of looking or by looking alongside ancient texts. The discussion also points out some of the mechanisms of interpreting visual art both in antiquity and today, and the tendency to derive unitary meanings from works of art that may exist in multiple versions created over long periods of time and encountered in a variety of contexts. While an image may be able to speak to a viewer, the most interesting images are usually too sophisticated to convey a single, universal and timeless meaning. Nonetheless, the encounter with a work of art, especially one that is a deliberate intervention in a cityscape, challenges viewers to seek to understand why that work is where it is and why it looks the way it looks. This need to explain may be particularly true for the statue of Marsyas; he is neither a historic figure like an emperor or civic benefactor nor a major deity. As a mythological creature, Marsyas is simply a mixed race (human and animal) follower of Dionysos/Liber. Marsyas is best known—in antiquity and today—from the literary and artistic traditions of his tragic encounters with Athena/Minerva, who invented and discarded the flute (auloi) that Marsyas mastered, and Apollo, who mastered Marsyas in a musical contest. A number of scholars have sought to reconcile the forum statue with this cycle of myths, including traditions attested in the Flavian period in which Marsyas escaped Apollo and fled to Italy (this version also associated Marsyas with the Marsi, an Italic people who had a long and complicated history with Republican

 Kajzer et al. 2021, Table 12.  Hussein 2020.

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Rome).55 The iconography of the statue, however, does not fit the narrative of Marsyas’ punishment or escape from punishment; nor does this statue type lend itself to moral lessons about the dangers of hubris and of challenging existing social hierarchies. A quite different interpretation of the statue arises from ancient sources such as Servius; these interpretations associate the Forum Marsyas with the idea of libertas in Rome. This association has been much questioned; indeed, Valentina Arena considers it a modern “scholarly myth” derived from ancient commentators trying to make sense of a mention of the god Liber in Virgil by discussing Marsyas as a follower of Liber familiar to the authors from statues in their own cities.56 We are left, though, with the knowledge that the Forum Marsyas was important enough in the Roman world that cities from Italy to North Africa to Bostra in Arabia Petraea—and, as this lamp appears to attest, some place on the island of Cyprus—not only raised up versions of the statue but even came to employ these local versions on their coinage and decorative art. The call to understand this statue and its ancient significance may never yield a conclusive answer, but to engage with it is to engage with the world and culture that produced and reproduced the Forum Marsyas and to struggle to understand that world. This drive to understand objects in the specificity of the cultures that produce them is but one of the treasures that John has passed on to his students.

Bibliography Arena, Valentina (2021). “The Statue of Marsyas, Liber, and Servius: an Instance of an Ancient Semantic Battle?,” in: M. Nebelin and C. Tiersch (eds.) Semantische Kämpfe zwischen Republik und Prinzipat? Kontinuität und Transformation der politischen Sprache in Rom, Göttingen, 427–456. Basso, Patrizia / Buonopane, Alfredo (2008). “Marsia nella città del mondo romano,” Mediterraneo Antico: enconomie, società, culture 9.1–2, 139–159. Bonner, Campbell (1950). Studies in Magical Amulets. Chiefly Graeco-Egyptian. Ann Arbor. Brown, Nicole B. (2020). “The Living and the Monumental on the Anaglypha Traiani,” AJA 124, 607–630. Coarelli, Filippo (1992). Il Foro romano: Periodo Repubblicano e Augusteo, 2nd ed. Rome. Coliva, Anna et.al. (2011). I Borghese e l’Antico. Milan. Denti, Mario (1991). “Il Marsia di Paestum,” Annali dell’Instituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli; Sezione Archeologia e Storia Antica 13, 133–188. Guzzo, Pier Giovanni (2015). “Marsia le compedes e Charax di Pergamo,” RM 121, 115–124. Habetzeder, Julia (2010). “Marsyas in the Garden? Small Scale Sculptures Referring to Marsyas in the Forum,” Opuscula 3, 163–178. Hussein, Ersin (2020). Revaluing Roman Cyprus: Local Identity on an Island in Antiquity. Oxford. Jordan, Henri (1883). Marsyas auf Forum. Berlin. Kajzer, Małgorzata et al. (2021). “Production and Supply of Ceramic Oil Lamps in Hellenistic and Early Roman Nea Paphos, Cyprus: Integrated Typological, Chronological and Provenance Studies,” Annual

 E.g., Wiseman 2008, 99–103; Maiano 2011, 126–132; Silius Italicus 8.502–504 and Plin. HN 3.108.  Arena 2021, 447 and generally; see also Guzzo 2015, 115; Santangelo 2018, 68.

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of the British School at Athens 116, 291–357. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068245421000071 [accessed 2 August 2024]. Kearns, Catherine (2018). “Cyprus in the Surging Sea: Spatial Imaginations of the Eastern Mediterranean,” TAPA 148.1, 45–74. LeBlanc, Robyn (2020). “The Marsyas of the Forum Motif on Coins from Roman Mesopotamia and Osrhoene,” NMC 180, 157–179. LeBlanc, Robyn (Forthcoming). “The Forum Marsyas as a Colonial Type at Tyre, Mallus, Bostra, and Neapolis,” in: S. Kerschbaum and H. Vidin (eds.), Tracing the Locals, Pessac. Liberatore, Daniela (1995). “Un Marsia nel Foro di Alba Fucens? Un proposta di identificazione,” Ostraka 4, 149–255. Lightfoot, Christopher S. (2020). The Cesnola Collection of Cypriot Art: Terracotta Oil Lamps. New York. Mattusch, Carol (2014). “Artists and Workshops: The Craft and the Product,” in: L.M. Anderson, S. Ebbinghaus, and D. Mitten (eds.), Ancient Bronzes through a Modern Lens: Introductory Essays on the Study of Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Bronzes, Cambridge, MA, 113–131. https://doi.org/10. 37862/aaeportal.00015 [accessed 2 August 2024]. Miano, Daniele (2011). Monimenta. Aspetti storico-culturali della memoria nella Roma medio-repubblicana. Rome. Myres, John L. (1914). Handbook of the Cesnola Collection of Antiquities from Cyprus. New York. Palistrant Shaik, Ronit (2021). “The ‘Marsyas of the Forum’ Image on Roman City Coins of the Southern Levant,” Scripta Classica Israelica 40, 169–202. Paoli, Jules (1938). “Marsyas et le ius italicum,” MéFR 55, 90–130. Santangelo, Frederico (2016). “The Statue of Marsyas,” in: M. García Morcillo, J.H. Richardson, and F. Santangelo, Ruin or Renewal? Places and the Transformation of Memory in the City of Rome, Rome, 50–71. Schauenburg, Conrad (1981). “Andromed I,” LIMC 1.1, 774–790; LIMC 1.2, 622–642. Schertz, Peter (2005). Seer or Victim? The Figure of Marsyas in Roman Art, Religion, and Politics. Diss. University of Southern California. Small, Jocylen Penny (1982). Cacus and Marsyas in Etrusco-Roman Legend. Princeton. Stähli, Adrian (2014). “Roman Bronze Statuettes: Copies of Greek Sculpture?,” in: S. Ebbinghaus (ed.), Ancient Bronzes through a Modern Lens: Introductory Essays on the Study of Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Bronzes, Cambridge, MA, 133–135. Taraskin, Paulina (2013). “Horace Scholiasts Porphyrio and ‘Acro’ in Early Modern Printed Editions (1474– 1838),” Studia Aurea 7, https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/studiaaurea.71 [accessed 2 August 2024]. Tibiletti, Gianfranco (1962). “Marsyas, die Sklaven und die Marser,” in Studi in onore di Emilio Betti, IV. Milan. Torelli, Mario (1982). Typology & Structure of Roman Historical Reliefs. Anne Arbor. Veyne, Paul (1961). “Le Marsys colonial et l’indépendence des cites,” RPh 25.1, 87–98. Walters, Henry Beauchamp (1926). Catalogue of the Engraved Gems and Cameos: Greek, Etruscan and Roman in the British Museum. London. Wiseman, T. P. (2008). Unwritten Rome. Exeter.

Susan Wood

Fantastic Beasts and How to Use Them: Griffins and the Phoenix in Visual Panegyric Imaginary beasts have always fulfilled a need in the human psyche for belief in creatures with supernatural strength, magical powers, or extreme longevity. Humans can represent them either as deadly predators or as benign protectors. In the latter role, they safeguard the health and safety of individuals, families, and cities. In some contexts they can also embody rebirth and renewal. Two such creatures of Greek and Roman mythology, the griffin and the phoenix, eventually made their way onto monuments that praised and expressed allegiance to the Roman emperor. The early years of Hadrian’s principate offer a case study of this phenomenon. Griffins and the phoenix supposedly lived in distant, eastern lands: Philostratus placed both of them in India, as does the Great Hunt Mosaic of the Villa Casale.1 As inhabitants of the “eschata,” where heaven and earth meet, they were associated with sunrise, sunset, and the seasons.2 Griffins could be the chariot animals of the sun, while the phoenix was said to escort the solar chariot.3 The griffin entered Greek art at least as early as the seventh century BCE, but the phoenix existed only as a literary (rather than visual) conceit until the Hellenistic era. The mythical bird made its first appearance in official Roman imagery in 117 CE.4 In both cases, the “grass roots” imagery of these mythical beings provided patrons at a dangerous time of political transition with the visual language to assert both their love of the late emperor and their loyalty to his successor.5

 Philostr. V A 3.48–49. The Great Hunt Mosaic of Piazza Armerina depicts increasingly exotic lands from the center outward. Near the southern end, a griffin appears, while in the southern apse the Phoenix accompanies the personification of an eastern land. On the various identifications of the personification: Wilson 2004, who identifies her as Aethiopia, and Pensabene and Gallochio, 2011, 31, who accept the identification as India.  Franks 2009, 458–459, 467–472.  Griffins drawing the chariot of the sun appear on an altar to Sol Sanctissimus/Malakbel, Rome, Musei Capitolini inv. NCE2412. Simon 1962, 765; Delplace 1980, 302, 391–392, fig. 287; Houston 1990. On the solar associations of the phoenix: van den Broek 1972, 233–304, Lecocq 2016, 451–452, 454, 459–460.  BMCRE 3, 245, nos. 48–49, pl. 47.8–9; van den Broek 1972, 427–428, pl. 6, 1–2; LIMC 8, 987, C.5, s.v. “Phoinix III;” Abdy 2019, 237, nos. 2453–2455, pl. 44, nos. 2453–2455.  See Hellström/Russell, 2020, 17–18. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111182919-018

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Griffins, Fertility Gods, and Civic Authority: The Archon’s Throne in Athens and Its Roman Replicas Griffins in Greco-Roman iconography could represent righteous military power, justice or fate.6 Under the control of a “master of the beasts,” they could embody strength in the service of divine power. Such compositions originated in the near east, made their way into Greek art at least by the seventh century BCE, and enjoyed renewed popularity from the later fourth century BCE onward. In these later works, lionheaded griffins accompanied Dionysus Sabazios, who is recognizable by his sleeved Persian robe, long beard and androgynous figure.7 Sabazios was a Phrygian god whom Greeks of the late Classical and Hellenistic periods identified with their own god of vegetation and renewal. At least one surviving work of funerary art, the finial of a grave stele, depicts the syncretic deity with a pair of lion griffins (Fig. 1).8 That Hellenistic motif soon also appeared as well on architectural terracottas of the late Republic and early empire.9 Notably, the group of Sabazios flanked by lionheaded griffins appeared on an Athenian monument that received an enthusiastic reception in the Latin-speaking west. This is a carved marble throne that came to light in 1836 on the Acropolis, amid the ruins of the Parthenon (Figs. 2–5). The elegantly archaizing relief appears on the back and armrests of the chair.10 The upper border of the chair back originally bore a fragmentary inscription that appeared to include a proper name ending in “. . . rato” and the word “archontos.”11 This, then, was probably the official seat “of the Archon _____ratos,” later appropriated as a bishop’s throne when the Parthenon became a cathedral. Its original setting is unknown, but this could have been the official seat of the Archon during religious festivals in the sanctuary.12 The nearby Theater of Dionysus yielded an inscribed statue base that identifies Hadrian as the eponymous archon of Athens in the year

 On the aggressive imagery of the griffin as the familiar or alter-ego of Nemesis, Simon 1962, 770–780, pl. 47.4; Delplace 1980, 303–305; Wood 2016, 232–236.  Jucker 1961, 173; Ustinova 2005, 76–78, fig. 6.5.1–5; Kaltsas 2002, 266, no. 557, Athens, National Archaeological Museum, inv. 1487.  Marble acroterion in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. Jucker 1961, 173, sketch 23; Ustinova 2005, 76–77, fig. 6.5.4.  E.g. Rome, Museo Nazionale Romano, inv. 121494. Jucker 1961, 173–174, fig. 61; Simon 1962, 767–768, pl. 46, fig. 2; Delplace 1980, 263.  Athens, Acropolis Museum, inv. 1366, Pentelic marble throne, h. 0.75 m, w. 0.65 m, excavated in 1836 between the peristyle and the pronaos of the Parthenon. Casson 1921, 278–280, no. 1366; Richter 1954, 271–276, pl. 47.1–4, 48.7–8; Jucker 1961, 173; Vermeule et al. 1977, 54; Pedrocchi 1993, 19; Ustinova 2005, 76–78, fig. 6.5.3. (Drawing shows restoration of missing parts, based on other replicas).  Richter 1954, 272, pl. 48.7–8.  Casson 1921, 279; Hdt. 5.72.3.

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Fig. 1: Marble acroterion, probably from a funerary stele, ca. third century BCE, provenance unknown. Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. Photo: Alamy Stock Photo.

112–113 CE.13 He would surely have seen this throne, and possibly sat on it, or on an earlier prototype that it replicates.14 At least three Roman period replicas of the work survive, in Berlin, Rome, and Boston, respectively, leading Richter to suggest that the city of Athens gifted the original throne to Hadrian after his term as archon.15 According to her stylistic analysis, the Acrop-

 IG II2 3286/CIL 3.550.  Richter 1954, 275.  Replicas: Berlin, Antikensammlung, cat. 1051, h. 0.75 m, w. 0.63 m. Conze 1891, 418–419, no. 1051; Richter 1954 271, 275–276, pl. 48.5–6; Jucker 1961, 173; Rohde 1968, 115; Rome, San Gregorio Magno, Richter 1954, 271, 275–276. pl. 49, 9–12; Jucker 1961, 173; Pedrocchi 1993, 19–20, figs. 4, 6–7; Boston, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, inv. S5c4, h. 0.64, w. 0.665, d.0.65, acquired in Telesina, Italy, inscribed LICINIAE✶L✶F✶POST[V]MI. Richter 1954, 271, 275–276, pl. 50, 13–17; Jucker 1961, 173; Vermeule et al. 1977, 53–54, no. 78; Goldfarb 1995, 45.

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Fig. 2: Marble throne of an archon, Athens, rear view. Akropolis Museum, inv. 1366. Pentelic marble throne, h. 0.75 m, w. 0.65 m. Photo: Akropolis Museum, by permission.

Fig. 3: Left profile of Fig. 2. Photo: Akropolis Museum, by permission.

olis throne would be a work of the second century CE, made to replace the original. It is also conceivable that Hadrian commissioned a copy or cast of the throne to take to Rome. The throne in Hadrian’s possession could have provided the prototype for the other three. This essay will not attempt to address the date of the Athenian throne, but will focus on its Roman reception. The prototype of the Acropolis throne, if not the extant object itself, probably belonged to the second or first century BCE, when its archaizing style enjoyed popularity in Athens.16 The other three replicas all appear to have been found in or near Rome. One, according to tradition, was the throne from which Saint Gregory the Great delivered his homilies in the church of the monastery that he founded on the Caelian hill in 575 CE. The throne still stands in that church.17 Isabella Stewart Gardner acquired another replica in Italy that bears an inscription in Latin: LICINIAE✶L✶F✶POST(V)MI.18 The Berlin replica was purchased in Rome in 1878 and probably found in the Sabine region.19

 E.g. Athens, Agora Museum S 370. Harrison 1965, 59, 66–67, no. 8, 70, 79–81, no. 128, pl. 30; https:// agora.ascsa.net. Digital library S 370, Tripod Base.  Pedrocchi 1993, 19–21, fig. 4.  Richter 1954, 276, pl. 50.17.  Conze 1891, 418.

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Fig. 4: Right profile of Fig. 2. Photo: Acropolis Museum, by permission.

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Fig. 5: Front of Fig. 2. Photo: Acropolis Museum, by permission.

The replicas in Rome and Berlin are somewhat better preserved than the Athenian marble and assist with the reconstruction of its imagery. On the back of the chair, a winged figure rises from an acanthus vine that forms the figure’s legs (Fig. 2). The Acropolis throne has suffered some damage since the time of its discovery. An early cast, however, now also in Berlin, appears to show that the figure’s face had already suffered iconoclasm, probably by the Christians who appropriated it.20 The damage extends well down onto the figure’s chest, suggesting the presence of a long beard, which the Berlin and Roman replicas confirm, but all replicas also depict breasts. This androgynous deity must be Dionysus Sabazios.21 These copies also demonstrate that the figure wears a tall polos. Still visible on the Athens throne are the sleeved tunic that covers the torso and the shorter sleeveless chiton worn over the sleeved garment. The chiton swings outward on each side in archaizing “swallowtail folds.” The longer folds of the tunic merge into the fanciful vines that echo the outward flare of the chiton. These vines—part acanthus, part palm frond—twine upward on each side of the figure, who grasps a tendril in each hand. The lion-griffin protomes on each side emerge from separate acanthus plants (Figs. 3, 4). Their leonine heads and goat-like horns with rosette finials form the throne’s arm rests. The Berlin and Rome replicas demonstrate that the crea-

 Richter 1954, 271–272, pl. 48.7–8.  On the iconography of Sabazios: Jucker 1961, 173; Ustinova 2005, 76–78.

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tures’ wings curled gracefully above their heads. Although the griffins flank Sabazios, the god does not grip the creatures or place his hands over their heads in the “master of the beasts” formula (Fig. 1).22 It was the archon, sitting in the throne, who would have placed his hands on the armrests. He, then, became the “master of the beasts” (Fig. 5). We do not know the original locations of any of these thrones. The Throne of St. Gregory the Great probably stands today closest to its original location, since Gregory established his monastery on the site of his ancestral home. If its traditional association with Gregory himself is accurate, the second-century throne might have been a treasured possession of his aristocratic family. In any case, one of the wealthy homes on the Caelian hill is its likeliest place of discovery.23 The marble throne was well known and associated with the saint long before the existing church was built.24 We may reasonably infer that Licinia’s throne had a religious but not a civic function, since a woman could have been a priestess but not a political official. In the other two cases, we have no way of knowing whether the possessors were priests, public officials, or both. In any case, Roman owners of these monuments apparently remembered the original civic as well as religious significance of the archon’s chair. Two of the monuments were appropriated in Christian times, despite their pagan imagery, to assert the hierarchical authority of a bishop and of an abbot. The Italian replicas show no connection with the imperial cult, but perhaps indicate admiration of Hadrian’s philhellenism and of his special relationship to Athens. We shall meet the griffins and their divine master again, however, on statues of emperors in the Greek-speaking east.

The Phoenix on Healing Talismans The phoenix, unlike the griffin, existed largely as a literary rather than a visual conceit until the Hellenistic period. Authors described its appearance, emphasizing its radiant beauty and magnificent colors, but the descriptions vary too much to reflect existing iconography. Two representations of the creature survive at Pompeii, but despite being close in place and date, they visualize the bird in different ways. A caupona sign depicts a large, dove-like bird with golden feathers, a crest and a beard, identified by the inscription phoenix felix et tu (“The phoenix is fortunate, and so may you be”). A fresco from the temple of Isis depicts the phoenix as an eagle that has alit on the tomb of Osiris.25 This

 E.g., a marble relief in Athens depicts Sabazios standing between two lion-griffins and extending his hands above their heads. Athens National Museum, inv. 1487, h. 0.95 m, w. 0.635 m, found in Athens, Jucker 1961, fig. 62, Kaltsas 2002, 266, no. 557; Ustinova 2005, 76–78, fig. 6.5.2. For the gesture of gripping the horns see supra n. 8.  Pedrocchi 1993, 5, 13–14, 16–20.  Pedrocchi 1993, 19–21, figs. 4, 6–7; Fehl 1973, on a representation of the throne in Raphael’s Disputa.  Phoenix as a dove: shop sign of Euxinos, Lecocq 2016, 459; as eagle: van den Broek 1972, 427, pls. 4–5; Lecocq 2009 a, 79–80; Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, inv. 8570, fresco painting from Pom-

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painter ingeniously represented the bird as a backlit silhouette, leaving the magnificence of his colors to the viewer’s imagination. In Hellenistic Egypt, however, the phoenix eventually found a standard visual form through assimilation with the Egyptian god Bennu. This solar deity took the form of a Eurasian Gray Heron (Ardea cinerea), wearing on his head either the crown of Osiris or the sun disk. Bennu was associated with cycles of day and night and could appear as a psychopomp, escorting the deceased through the river of the underworld.26 Talismans that attest the iconography of the Bennu-phoenix are probably of Alexandrian or Syrian origin, although their provenances are unfortunately not recorded. At least twenty-three surviving talismans depict the Bennu-phoenix amid traditional Egyptian symbols, with inscriptions in Greek.27 The imagery of the phoenix, then, seems to find its earliest and most popular use on privately owned objects that protected one’s health. Several, for example, are inscribed πέπτε, “digest” (Fig. 6).28

(a)

(b)

Fig. 6a–b: Talisman with image of the Bennu-Phoenix, University of Michigan Library Special Collections SCL-Bonner 29. Photo: © University of Michigan Library.

The phoenix on these talismans departs from Bennu’s iconography in that, rather than the solar disk, he wears the seven-rayed aureole of Helios. In one of these amulets, the creature perches on a palm tree (φοῖνιξ), a Greek-language pun on the word “phoenix,”

peii, Temple of Isis, see https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pompeii_-_Temple_of_Isis_4_-_MAN. jpg [accessed 18 August 2024].  Van den Broek 1972, 425–426, pls. 1.1–2; Lecocq 2016, 449, 451–452; Scalf 2012, 34–35, tab. 2, figs. 2.2, 2.3.  Bonner 1950, 60–61, 270, nos. 103–106, 286, no. 195, pl. 5.103–106, pl. 9.195; Bélyácz et al. 2014, nos. CBd-2, 127, 198, 497, 502, 724, 772–775, 1046, 1237, 1239–1241, 1244, 1247, 1250, 1251, 1390, 2788, 3315.  Bonner 1950, 61, 214, 270, no. 103; Bélyácz et al. 2014, CBd-1046.

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while Harpokrates kneels nearby on a lotus blossom, gesturing toward the bird.29 The miraculous birth of the Horus child and the association of the flowering lotus blossom with the rising sun complement the meanings of the self-regenerating creature.30 All versions of the Phoenix legend agree that the bird arises from the remains of its predecessor, but differ on how. In the version recorded by Ovid, the bird dies in its nest and the new phoenix arises from the remains of its parent.31 Pliny the Elder elaborates that a worm emerges from the carcass, then transforms into a bird that becomes the new phoenix.32 Ovid and Pliny both recount that the regenerated phoenix takes the remains of its predecessor to a temple of the sun and places them on the altar. Herodotus, writing in the fifth century BCE, identified Heliopolis in the Nile Delta as the destination of the creature’s journey.33 The other version, better known to us today, is that the phoenix burns itself in its nest of aromatic herbs, and the new bird arises from the ashes. When the image appeared on Roman coins that honored the deified Trajan, knowledgeable viewers might have recognized a parallel of the latter myth with their own rituals of cremation and deification.34

Trajan’s Deification, Hadrian’s Accession, and Responses in the Visual Arts Trajan died at Selinus in Cilicia while returning to Rome after his ultimately unsuccessful Parthian campaign. The death of an emperor so far from the capital city posed an unprecedented dilemma. Trajan had no sons, biological or adopted. Trajan’s will named Hadrian as his heir, but the document did not become public until several days after Trajan had died.35 Hadrian was governor of Syria, and his physical proximity to Trajan’s army allowed him to assume command. The troops willingly acclaimed him. This move, however, offended the Roman Senate, which normally ratified a succession. Hadrian attempted to mend relations with the Senate by sending them a letter that requested divine honors for Trajan and explained the pressing need for some-

 Paris, Cabinet des Médailles, inv. AA.Seyrig.36; Bonner 1950, 286, no. 195, pl. 9.195; LIMC 8, 988, no. 16 (s.v. Phoenix III), Bélyácz et al. 2014, CBd-1390. On meanings of the word phoenix, see van den Broek 1972, 51–57; for punning allusions to the phoenix through mention of a palm tree, Broek 1972, 142; Lecocq 2009a, 85.  On the blue lotus as a symbol of the rising sun, see Harer 1985, 52.  Ov. Met. 15.391–407.  Plin. HN 10.4; Lecocq 2009b, 108–111.  Hdt. 2.73.1. For further discussion of the various sacred cities identified as the burial place of the phoenix, van den Broek 1972, 186–198; Lecocq 2016, 451; Nigg 2016, xvii-xix, 3–4, 7, 16, 38–43.  Statius Silv. 2.4.34–37; Lecocq 2016, 460–461, 464.  On Trajan’s death and the posthumous adoption of Hadrian in his will: SHA Hadr. 4.6–7; D.C.68.33.1–3; 69.1–2; Birley 1997, 74–77; Everitt 2009, 163–167.

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one to take control of the army.36 Hadrian also oversaw the return of Trajan’s ashes to Rome and their deposition in the base of Trajan’s column.37 He declined to celebrate a triumph for the Parthian “victories,” insisting that the triumph belonged to his predecessor. The Senate then authorized a bizarre celebration, in which the triumphal chariot carried the effigy of the dead imperator.38 The controversies over Hadrian’s succession, however, were far from over. Inevitably, rumors circulated that Trajan’s will was fraudulent and that Hadrian had seized power illegally.39 Four men of consular rank with close ties to Trajan had been considered potential heirs. These men were accused of plotting a coup, tried in absentia and summarily assassinated.40 Hadrian, who had not yet returned to Rome, could claim plausible deniability in the affair. Nonetheless, the ruthlessness of his loyalists must have frightened public officials and lent urgency to their acclamation of the new princeps. In an autocratic system of government, open protest against the person who holds power is not an option, and demonstrations of loyalty to him are often a matter of self-preservation.

Local Statuary Dedications at Perge and Side The Athenian throne, as noted, expressed the power of a local official, but Sabazios also appears as “master of the beasts” in monuments that express broader authority. Two fragmentary torsos of cuirassed statues, in Athens and Epidauros, bear the breastplate device of Sabazios emerging from an acanthus and flanked by two winged lion-griffins.41 A variant on the formula decorated a cuirassed statue of the deified Trajan, perhaps one of the earliest to be made. A statue from Perge (Fig. 7) and a fragmentary torso from Side depict on the cuirass a pair of lion-griffins flanking the young Hercules.42 The head of the Perge statue belongs to the body and recognizably portrays Trajan, despite a half-hearted later recutting. The Side fragment has lost its portrait head, but probably also represented Divus Traianus. The rivalry of these two wealthy cities

 SHA Hadr. 6.1–3.  D.C., 69.2.3.  SHA Hadr. 6.3–4.  On the controversy over Trajan’s will: SHA Hadr. 4.10; D.C. 69.1–2; Everitt 2009, 166–167.  SHA Hadr. 7.1–4; D.C. 69.2.5; Everitt 2009, 178–183.  Athens fragment: Athens, Acropolis Museum. Vermeule 1959, 56, no. 195, pl. 17.48, Cadario 2004, 373–374, pl. 48.2–5. Epidauros fragment: Archaeological Museum of Epidauros, inv. 15. Vermeule 1959, 56–57, no. 196; Cadario 2004, 373–374, pl. 48.6.  Perge statue of Trajan: Antalya Museum, inv. 11.23.93, h. 2.30 m. Özgür 2009, 48–49, no. 15, and 2011, 88–91; Wood 2016, 223–229, figs. 2, 3; 230–231. Side torso: Inan 1975, 166–168, no. 93, pl. 78.1. Although the latter fragment has lost its extremities, the pose, like the breastplate device, is recognizably the same as the better-preserved statue from Perge.

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Fig. 7: Statue of the Deified Trajan, from Perge, Antalya Museum, inv. 11.23.93, h. 2.30 m. Photo: © Carole Raddato, Creative Commons BY-SA 2.0.

virtually guaranteed that if one of them displayed a politically significant statue, the other would soon also have a replica of the work.43 Pamphylia bordered on Cilicia, where Trajan died and where his will was published. The elite citizens of Perge and Side would have received that news early, and with it an opportunity to honor both the new Divus and his living successor. Another statue from the Perge theater, unfortunately headless but of similar dimensions, identical pose and very similar workmanship to that of Trajan’s statue, probably represented Hadrian and formed a pendant to Trajan’s.44 Prior to his death, Trajan had no heir or partner who could have appeared with him as an equal. The breastplate of the headless statue also displayed heraldic griffins, although of the eagle type and without a central human figure. The

 Heinzelmann 2003.  Antalya Museum, inv. 13.23.93, marble statue h. 2.40 m. Özgür 2011, 92–93; Wood 2016, 231.

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image of Hercules as “master of the beasts” was for the dead and deified man, not his living heir. The more warlike eagle griffins would have embodied Hadrian’s newly acquired power as commander of the armed forces. In 117, Hadrian was probably far too preoccupied with vital military operations to concern himself with honorific sculpture. The primary audiences for these dedications were the people of Perge, Side, and any other cities in the region that may have displayed statues of the same type.45 These dedications demonstrated to the people of those cities the new loyalties of the wealthy elite and their affirmation of Hadrian’s legitimacy. The choice of the strapping young Hercules rather than the aging and androgynous Sabazios introduced a traditionally Greco-Roman hero into the “master of the animals” formula and alluded to apotheosis of a mortal. Hercules appears to grow out of the acanthus calyx below him. A figure emerging from a growing plant indicates renewed life, while griffins can figure in funerary art as guardians and psychopomps.46 Here, as Hercules demonstrates his mastery over the creatures, they raise their wings as though to bear him heavenward. Eventually, patrons and artists of the Latin west also adopted this imagery. A portrait of the Deified Hadrian from the Antonine-era theater at Sessa Aurunca wears an identical breastplate.47 Hercules had a long history in Roman rhetoric as an exemplar of the virtuous mortal who earned immortality. Cicero used Hercules as a metaphor for enduring fame rather than for literal rebirth, but drew a parallel between Roman funeral customs of cremation with the hero’s self-immolation on a pyre.48 Actual deification of mortals soon became accepted, beginning with the spontaneous worship of Julius Caesar that the Senate later ratified.49 Ovid describes Hercules’ death and apotheosis in terms that recall Roman funerary rituals, as did Cicero. Ovid later echoes the language of his own earlier passage when describing the apotheosis of Julius Caesar.50 The youth and beauty of the figure on the cuirass might also indicate that, as Ovid describes the transformation, the hero’s immortal essence has emerged from the fire purified, as a snake sheds his skin.51 Hercules continued for centuries to play a special role in imperial Roman

 Hellström and Russell 2020, 18–19.  I am most indebted to Professor Susann Lusnia for this observation. On griffins as tomb guardians, Delplace 1980, 414–426. A fine example of the griffin as psychopomp appears in the Tomb of the Servilii (sometimes erroneously called the tomb of the Valerii). Delplace 1980, 348–349, 359, 417–426; Borg 2019, 12–13, 59, 60, figs. 1.6, 1.7.  Cuirassed statue, marble h. 2.50 m, Sessa Aurunca, Sala Archeologica del Castello Ducale, inv. 297047. Cascella 2002, 67, no. 2, 69–70, figs. 31–32; Cadario 2004, 371, 377, pl. 54.2; Cascella 2012, 74; Wood 2016, 223, 225–230, fig. 1.  Cic. Sest. 143. Cited by Borg 2019, 67 n. 245.  Burges 2020, 111–112.  Ov. Met. 9.229–272 and 15.745–842.  Ov. Met. 9.266–270: Utque novus serpens posita cum pelle senecta/luxuriare solet, squamaque nitere recenti, sic ubi mortale Tirynthius exuit artus, parte sui meliore viget, maiorque videri / coepit et augusta fieri gravitate verendus.

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rhetoric and art as a prototype for a good emperor whose deeds earned deification. Poets and orators of Trajan’s Principate in particular invoked the hero in their praise of the emperor. Coin designers made the same allusions on Trajanic coinage.52

The Mint of Rome and the Coins of Divus Traianus Three issues in honor of Trajan’s consecration bear obverses of Trajan, laureate the inscription “DIVO TRAIANO PARTH AUG PATRI.” (“To the Divine Trajan, Conqueror of Parthia, father of the Augustus”). The use of the dative emphasizes that these coins acclaim the late emperor’s achievements.53 Two of the reverses had abundant precedents. One represents Trajan in his triumphal chariot, conventional imagery for an event that in this case was far from conventional.54 Another issue devoted the reverse to Trajan’s widow Plotina, who would now assume the customary role as priestess of his cult.55 The third, however, departed from convention (Fig. 8).

Fig. 8: Aureus of the Deified Trajan with reverse of phoenix. London, British Museum, 1846,0910.148. Photo: © Trustees of the British Museum.

These reverses depict the phoenix as the gray heron, standing either on the ground or on a laurel branch and wearing the radiate nimbus of the sun.56 The golden flan of the coin solved the problem of representing the creature’s brilliant plumage. No earlier extant work from Italy represents the creature in this manner. Not all Latin-speaking people of the western empire, therefore, would have recognized the Bennu-phoenix. The single most important audience for these coins, however, was the

    

Hekster 2005, fig. 1, 209–210; Borg 2019, 66–67. Elkins 2018–2019, 175. BMCRE 3 p. 244, 47, pl. 47.7; Abdy 2019, 237, nos. 2451–2452, pl. 44, 2451–2452. BMCRE 3 p. 245, 50–51, pl. 47, 10–11; Abdy 2019, 237, nos. 2447–2450, pl. 44, 2447–2450. Supra n. 4. On iconography, see Castritius 1964; Lecocq 2009a, 84–85; Lecocq 2016, 452.

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cosmopolitan and philhellenic Hadrian.57 The wealthy elite might also have been familiar with the Greco-Egyptian deity. In any case, the novelty of the type could have attracted the attention of any viewers who were lucky enough to see and handle an aureus. Anyone could grasp the meaning of the bird’s radiate crown and could recognize the majestic gray heron, a familiar sight in the wetlands of western Europe, as an appropriate choice to represent the “king of birds.” The prima facie meaning of the image would have been Trajan’s ascent to divinity. More subtly, the phoenix could suggest the renewal of Trajan’s power in the person of his successor. Hadrian, like the pious phoenix, had arranged to bring his adoptive father’s ashes to their final resting place.58 The journey of the young phoenix to pay funeral honors to its predecessor carried a powerful significance for Romans and was well known before Hadrian’s time. As noted above, a fresco from the temple of Isis at Pompeii depicts the sacred bird’s arrival at Heliopolis, where it alights on the tomb of Osiris as a priest witnesses the epiphany.59 Trajan’s column supported a gilded statue of the emperor that would have been visible from a distance, gleaming in the sunlight and appearing to float above the surrounding buildings. After the base of the column became Trajan’s tomb, the statue could have suggested a vision of the deified emperor soaring skyward. Indeed, some viewers of that column during the early years of Hadrian’s Principate might have witnessed a dramatization of that very event. Even though Trajan had been cremated at Selinus soon after his death, Hadrian could still have given him a state funeral in Rome with rites of consecration. Herodian gives a detailed description of a later deification, that of Septimius Severus. The deceased emperor received a lavish funeral, and his actual body was then buried. Then, a wax effigy of the emperor lay in the imperial palace for seven days.60 The Senate and elite women observed a vigil by the bedside, while doctors examined the statue and reported periodically on the “patient’s” health. When they finally announced the emperor’s death, the consecration took place. This odd ritual probably bought the time necessary to construct the huge, multi-tiered and richly decorated pyre in the Campus Martius. Antonine coins confirm Herodian’s description that these pyres were stepped, pyramidal structures resembling the Pharos lighthouse.61 These coins also indicate that a statue of the emperor in a triumphal chariot crowned the uppermost level of the pyre. The wax effigy would be placed on the second tier, the cavalry would perform the decursio, riding counterclockwise around the pyre, and then the mourners would light the wooden structure with their torches. The pyre, filled with tinder and dried aromatic herbs, would quickly go up in flames. As it caught alight, Herodian states that an eagle would be

 SHA Hadr. 1.4–5; D.C. 69.3.1–2. On the emperor as audience for coin types, see Levick 1982, 108, 116.  D.C. 69.1.3.  Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, inv. 8570, see supra n. 25.  Hdn. 4.2.  Burges 2018, fig. 1, ANS 1966.62.10; Burges 2020, 113–116, figs. 2 and 5. E.g., sestertius of the deified Antoninus Pius, British Museum R.14270, RIC 3, p. 315, no. 1266; BMCRE 4, 525, no. 872.

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released from a cage at the summit of the pyre. Burges is not alone in speculating on the terrible fate of the eagle and the disastrously bad omen its death would have created if the latch mechanism had ever failed to open the cage in time.62 We may therefore speculate that an attendant opened the cage, providing the eagle with a route of escape, before mourners applied their torches to the pyre. Then the eagle, borne aloft by a combination of thermal updrafts and sheer terror, would fly directly upward, supposedly carrying the emperor’s soul to the heavens, while burning herbs filled the air with perfumed smoke. The living bird would undoubtedly have reminded viewers of the mythological creature that also rose from an aromatic pyre.63 From the time of Antoninus Pius onward, both the funeral pyre and the eagle appear on coins of consecrated imperial figures.64 Some of Faustina I’s consecration coins bear a reverse of Aeternitas, either standing or seated, holding the phoenix in her outstretched hand.65 One might suspect that the ceremony of cremation and consecration caused the “fire version” of the phoenix myth to gain in popularity over the “worm version.” The phoenix reverse of Trajan’s posthumous coins evidently met with the approval of its primary intended audience, since coin designers employed it again on aurei of Hadrian. This issue makes the connection of the creature with the living emperor even more explicit: on these reverses, Aion steps through the circle of the zodiac, holding the phoenix. The inscription below reads “Golden age,” “SAEC AUR.” (Fig. 9).66

Fig. 9: Aureus of Hadrian with reverse of Aion holding the phoenix. London, British Museum, R.8145. Photo: © Trustees of the British Museum.

 Burges 2020, 116.  Lecocq 2016, 464.  Denarii of Divus Antoninus with reverse of eagle, reverse legend CONSECRATIO, RIC 3, 1930, 247, nos. 429–434; BMCRE 4, 392–393, 41–54; pl. 54.9–11.  Sestertii of Faustina I with reverses of Aeternitas holding the phoenix, BMCRE 4, 228, no. 1415, pl. 34.6; 238–240, nos. 1482–1494, pl. 35.10, 13; LIMC 8, 988, 18, s.v. “Phoenix.”  BMCRE 3, 278, no. 312, pl. 52.10; Abdy 2019, 97, nos. 296–297, pl. 7.

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Hadrian, the image implies, had been predestined by the stars to arise as Trajan’s successor. The appearance of the phoenix marks a foreordained beginning of a new temporal era.

Conclusions Hadrian did not learn of his adoption as successor until after Trajan had died and his will had been published, just as the young phoenix arises somewhere in the distant eastern lands after its parent dies. Hadrian was acclaimed emperor in Syria—dare we say that he rose in the east? Hadrian sent the ashes of Trajan back to Rome, just as the young phoenix brings the remains of its parent to Heliopolis, and instructed the Senate to vote divine honors to him. If Trajan received the type of state funeral that Herodian describes, the ritual would have dramatized in visual form his ascent to the heavens. Statues of the new Divus in Asia Minor, meanwhile, celebrated his consecration with another image of rebirth and renewal, the apotheosis of Hercules as “master of the beasts” between a pair of griffins. The imagery of both griffins and the phoenix had precedents in the Greek-speaking world, specifically in Athens and in Alexandria respectively, often in works of art for private patrons with deeply personal meanings such as honoring the dead or protecting the health of the living. Both also lent themselves to the more public imagery of rightful succession. The cosmopolitan and philhellenic new emperor might well have found these allusions pleasing, but none of these associations were too esoteric for most viewers in 118 CE to understand. These coins and sculptures constitute an effort by patrons both in the city and in the provinces to affirm their devotion to the new emperor and their support of his legitimacy.

Bibliography Abdy, Richard (2019). The Roman Imperial Coinage, 2nd ed. London. Bélyácz, K. / Endreffy, Kata / Nagy, A. M., eds. (2014). Campbell-Bonner Magical Gems Database. http://classics.mfab.hu/talismans/visitatori_salutem [accessed 15 July 2024]. Birley, Anthony (1997). Hadrian, the Restless Emperor. London. Bonner, Campbell (1950). Studies in Magical Amulets, Chiefly Graeco-Egyptian. Ann Arbor. Borg, Barbara (2019). “In Search of Deceased Senators,” in: Roman Tombs and the Art of Commemoration: Contextual Approaches to Funerary Customs in the Second Century C.E. 1–76. Cambridge. Broek, Roel Van den (1972). The Myth of the Phoenix According to Classical and Early Christian Traditions. EPRO 24, trans. by I. Seeger. Leiden. Burges, Steven (2018). “Antonine Pyres and Consecratio Coins,” American Numismatic Society Blog. http://numismatics.org/pocketchange/burges [accessed 15 July 2024]. Burges, Steven (2020). “The Archaeology of Apotheosis: Roman Coinage, Funerary Pyres, and Imperial Cult Sites,” in: F. de Angelis (ed.), Emperors in Images, Architecture and Ritual, Augustus to Fausta, Selected Papers on Ancient Art and Architecture 5, Boston, 111–125.

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Cadario, Matteo (2004). La corazza di Alessandro: loricati di tipo ellenistico dal IV secolo a.C. al II d.C. Milan. Cascella, Sergio (2002). Il teatro romano di Suessa Aurunca. Marina di Minturno. Cascella, Sergio (2012). “Uso e riuso dell’antico a Suessa Aurunca (DE): il caso dei marmi del teatro romano,” in: L. Campanella and C. Piccioli (eds.), Diagnosis for the Conservation and Valorization of Cultural Heritage: Atti del Terzo Convegno Internazionale, Naples, 62–84. Casson, Stanley (1921). Catalogue of the Acropolis Museum II: Sculpture and Architectural Fragments. Cambridge. Castritius, Helmut (1964). “Der Phoenix auf den Aurei Hadrians und Tacitus’ Annalen VI, 28,” JNG 14, 89–96. Conze, Alexander (1891). Beschreibung der antiken Skulpturen in Berlin. Berlin. Delplace, Christiane (1980). Le Griffon de l’archaïsme à l’époque impériale: etude iconographique et essai d’interpretation symbolique. Etudes de philologie, d’archéologie, et d’histoire anciennes 20. Brussels. Elkins, Nathan (2018–2019). “Coinage Programs and Panegyric in the Reign of Trajan: Imagery, Audience, and Agency,” MAAR 63–64, 169–201. Everitt, Anthony (2009). Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome. New York. Fehl, Philipp (1973). “Raphael’s Reconstruction of the Throne of St. Gregory the Great,” The Art Bulletin 55.3, 373–379. Franks, Hallie Malcolm (2009). “Hunting the Eschata: An Imagined Persian Empire on the Lekythos of Xenophantos,” Hesperia 78.4, 455–480. Goldfarb, Hilliard (1995), The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum: A Companion Guide and History. New Haven. Harer, W. Benson (1985). “Pharmacological and Biological Properties of the Egyptian Lotus,” JARCE 22, 49–54. Harrison, Evelyn (1965). Archaic and Archaistic Sculpture. The Athenian Agora 11. Princeton. Heinzelmann, Michael (2003). “Städtekonkurrenz und kommunaler Bürgersinn: Die Säulenstrasse von Perge als Beispiel monumentaler Stadtgestaltung durch kollektiven Euergetismus,” AA 1, 197–220. Hekster, Olivier (2005). “Propagating Power: Hercules as an Example for Second-Century Emperors,” in: L. Rawlings and H. Bowden (eds.), Herakles and Hercules: Exploring a Graeco-Roman Divinity, Swansea, 205–221. Hellström, Monica / Russell, Amy (2020). “Introduction” in: A. Russell and M. Hellström (eds.), Social Dynamics of Imperial Imagery, Cambridge, 1–24. Houston, George W. (1990). “The Altar from Rome with Inscriptions to Sol and Malakbel.” Syria. Archéologie, Art et Histoire, 189–193. Inan, Jale (1975). Roman Sculpture in Side. Researches in the Region of Antalya 8. Ankara. Jucker, Hans (1961). Das Bildnis im Blätterkelch: Geschichte und Bedeutung einer römischen Porträtform. Lausanne. Kaltsas, Nikolaos (2002). Sculpture in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, trans. by D. Hardy. Los Angeles. Lecocq, Françoise (2009a). “L’Iconographie du phénix à Rome,” Schedae 6.1, 73–106. Lecocq, Françoise (2009b). “L’Oeuf du phénix. Myrrhe, encens et cannelle dans le myth du phénix,” Schedae 17.2, 107–130. Lecocq, Françoise (2016). “Inventing the Phoenix: A Myth in the Making through Words and Images,” in: P.A. Johnston, A. Mastrocinque, and S. Papaioannou (eds.), Animals in Greek and Roman Religion and Myth, Proceedings of the Symposium Grumentinum Grumento Nova (Potenza) 5–7 June 2013, Cambridge, 449–477. Levick, Barbara (1982). “Propaganda and the Imperial Coinage,” Antichthon 16, 104–116. Nigg, Joseph (2016). The Phoenix: An Unnatural Biography of a Mythical Beast. Chicago. Özgür, M. Edip (2009). Marble Reflections: Antalya Museum Selection, trans. by D. Lucas. Antalya. Özgür, M. Edip (2011). Antalya Museum Sculptures of the Perge Theater Gallery: A Journey into Mythology and History, trans. by M.K. Döku-Ezgi Taşpek. Ankara.

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Pedrocchi, Anna M. (1993). San Gregorio al Celio: Storia di una abbazia. Rome. Pensabene, Patrizio / Gallocchio, Enrico (2011). “The Villa del Casale of Piazza Armerina,” Expedition 53.2, 29–37. Richter, Gisela M. A. (1954). “The marble Throne on the Akropolis and its Replicas,” AJA 58.4, 271–276. Rohde, Elisabeth (1968). Griechische und römische Kunst in den staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Staatlich Museen zu Berlin Antiken-Sammlung. Berlin. Scalf, Foy (2012). “The Role of Birds Within the Religious Landscape of Ancient Egypt,” in: R. Bailleul-LeSuer (ed.), Between Heaven and Earth: Birds in Ancient Egypt, Chicago, 33–40, 177, 192–193, no. 29; 201–202, no. 34. Simon, Erika (1962). “Zur Bedeutung des Greifen in der Kunst der Kaiserzeit,” Latomus 21.4, 749–780. Ustinova, Yulia (2005). “Snake-limbed and Tendril-Limbed Goddesses in the Art and Mythology of the Mediterranean and Black Sea,” in: D. Braund (ed.), Scythians and Greeks, Exeter, 64–79, 194–200. Vermeule, Cornelius C. / Cahn, Walter / Van N. Hedley, Rollin (1977). Sculpture in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Boston. Vermeule, Cornelius (1959). Hellenistic and Roman Cuirassed Statues: The Evidence of Paintings and Reliefs in the Chronological Development of Cuirass Types. Berytus 13. Copenhagen. Wilson, Roger (2004). “On the Identification of the Figure in the South Apse of the Great Hunt Corridor at Piazza Armerina,” Sicilia Antiqua 1, 153–170. Wood, Susan (2016). “Hadrian, Hercules and Griffins: A Group of Cuirassed Statues from Latium and Pamphylia,” JRA 29, 223–238. No author. “Agora Object S 370: Tripod Base with Figures in Relief.” Digital Collections. https://agora.ascsa. net/id/agora/object/s%20370 [accessed 15 July 2024].

Part IV: Craft, Practice, and Production

Owen Doonan

Death and the Maiden: Meditations on a Kylix by the Brygos Painter Introduction A festschrift is a celebratory setting in which to experiment with the intersection of the honoree’s legacy and the ideas and approaches of the participants. John Pollini’s career has celebrated the centrality of works of art in narrating antiquity, a happy outcome of his early work at the J. Paul Getty Museum. Our symposiarch has selected the theme “Why objects matter.” As as a field archaeologist, I find that objects in context lie close to the heart of the archaeological enterprise. So it is with pleasure that I take up a cup by the Brygos Painter to plumb the artist’s polyvalent messages for recipient(s) far from Athens.1 The Brygos Painter was a prolific and influential Attic Red Figure producer in the first quarter of the fifth century BCE, yet his background and motives as an artist are obscure.2 Cambitoglou has suggested, based on the orthographic analysis of the inscriptions on his pots, that he was a non-Greek immigrant to Athens.3 The Getty collections offer numerous examples of his work: a scan of the catalogue yields 132 hits, including many fragmentary works and half a dozen substantially intact works, for the most part acquired from the collection of Walter and Mary Bareiss. Like many museum-quality Attic Black-Figure and Red-Figure works, there is essentially no definite archaeological context for most of these. This missing context greatly hampers our understanding of what meanings a given artist or a given work conveyed to recipients—a serious challenge if one accepts Ernst Gombrich’s principle that art is communication.4

 I would like to thank my students in the Getty Consortium Seminar “Colonialism and the Constitution of Artistic Communities” (Winter 2023) for providing the stimulating environment in which these ideas were first tried out. I would also like to thank my Getty colleagues Claire Lyons and David Saunders for numerous helpful suggestions and invaluable cautions fundamental to the development of the paper. They saved me from numerous misunderstandings and over-simplifications—those that remain are my own.  For discussion of the Brygos painter and his origins see Cambitoglu 1968; Wegner 1973.  Cambitoglu 1968, 11.  Gombrich 1972. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111182919-019

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Fig. 1: Kylix attributed to the Brygos Painter. Interior, Tekmessa covers the body of Ajax following his suicide. Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum, inv. 86.AE.286. Photo: © The J. Paul Getty Museum.

A Story for the Colonial and Para-Colonial Mediterranean My interest in Getty inventory number 86.AE.286 (Fig. 1) arose in the context of a seminar I was leading as the 2022–23 Getty Consortium Scholar examining culture formation in colonial communities. Ideologies related to gender are one of the most persistent lines of cultural disjunction and definition in colonial situations across the world.5 Intrigued by the dynamic of gender within the contrasting settings of the Athenian symposium and the Etruscan banquet, I found that this remarkable cup resonated with the many ancient legends celebrating strong women characters in colonial and paracolonial settings. Beautiful enchantresses like Circe and Medea loved and greatly aided Odysseus and Jason on their quests; the Segobrigian princess Gyptis’s decision to wed Protis led to the foundation of Massilia (Just. Epit. 43.3).6 The unforgettable social ambitions of Etruscan Tanaquil (Livy 1.34) and Tullia (Livy 1.46–47), or the moral contrast

 See, for example, Mills 2013.  Dietler 2010, chapter 1. Dietler was citing from Gn. Pomp. Trogus, Phillipic History XLIII.3.

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between the virtuous Roman Lucretia and the banquet-loving Etruscan wives (Livy 1.57) paint an image of Etruscan women who were very comfortable in public life, including banquets. Could it be that ceramics featuring female protagonists fit in with the gender roles more typical of Etruscan and western colonial culture than that of Athenian society? In the tondo of the Getty kylix, Tekmessa, the Phrygian princess who became the slave-consort of Ajax, takes swift action to spare the hero’s body from the ridicule and scorn of the Greeks. Scratched onto its base is a short Etruscan inscription (“ZIL”) that appears to be an abbreviated form of the word for magistrate,7 suggesting the piece’s use and deposition in an Etruscan context (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2: Etruscan inscription “ZIL” on the underside of the Getty cup (86.AE.286). After Moore 1998, 34, fig. A.

Images emphasizing certain female protagonists appear to have been far more popular in Italy than in Greece. For example, a search of the Beazley Archive Pottery Database

 Moore 1998, 34 and fig. a; for detailed analysis see Wallace/Saunders forthcoming. For the meaning of ZIL see Bonfante/Bonfante 1983, 143.

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(BAPD)8 shows that 27/ 29 (93%) of the works featuring Medea and 26/29 (90%) of the works depicting Circe hail from Italian proveniences. Of these, the majority come from Etruscan cities, especially Vulci. Queries of the Beazley Archives’ holdings can be misleading because of the skewed nature of the sample, complexities and uncertainties about attributions, uneven provenience data and so on, but they offer some crude insight into broad trends in Attic vase production and consumption.9 The high proportion of vessels from Italy featuring active female protagonists may be linked, at least as a working hypothesis, with customers who were interested in these kinds of stories. It is not unreasonable to imagine that women could have formed an active customer base for Attic ceramics, as well as for locally produced bronze mirrors and cistae.10 Cups (especially kylikes, as opposed to other drinking vessels like skyphoi, kantharoi, rhyta, and so on) are particularly interesting as objects employed in an intimate personal space, not unlike the physical context of a hand mirror. When drinking from a kylix, a user presents one face looking outward towards others, another looking inwards for private contemplation and the tondo image within the cup, which directly confronts the drinker. The tondo image faces the drinker in much the same way that a bronze hand mirror might on the reverse side. In Italy mirrors were, for the most part, produced to appeal to women owners who used them in daily life and were subsequently buried with them.11 Few tomb assemblages have been well-documented, although in isolated cases even brief notices provide valuable clues. Tomb 1 in the “la Peschiera” cemetery yielded a rich assemblage together with a female skeleton, including gold jewelry, a splendid bronze mirror depicting the Judgment of Paris (Villa Giulia Mus. no. 2745), and a mixed drinking assemblage including a rhyton, skyphos and two oinochai.12 This example shows that a woman’s burial assemblage could include not only the stereotypical feminine adornments but also her drinking set. Van der Meer has identified numerous kinds of images that were particularly popular on Etruscan bronze hand mirrors: deities associated with love and family, romantic couples,13 love-wrestling/abduction,14 suicide, and so on.15 It stands to reason that personal drinking cups belonging to women may share decorative motifs in common with women’s mirrors. BAPD searches for “cup/cup fragment” and a range of topics related to those popular on Etruscan mirrors yield a strong preponderance of proveniences in Italy and western colonial sites (Tab. 1).

 See https://www.carc.ox.ac.uk/XDB/ASP/searchOpen.asp [accessed 15 July 2024].  For a discussion of the perils and potentials of the BAPD, see Lewis 2012; Saunders 2017; Bennett 2019.  Bundrick 2019; De Grummond 1982, 166–168; van der Meer 1995.  De Grummond 1982, 172–179.  Bernabei 1886.  Van der Meer 1995, chapter 18.  Van der Meer 1995, chapter 5.  Van der Meer 1995, chapter 21.

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Tab. 1: Proportions of popular Etruscan Bronze mirror motifs in Attic cups, sixth to fourth centuries BCE. The “Contexts” column indicates the presence of a motif in different types of Etruscan contexts (Sanctuary, Domestic, Tomb).

Aphrodite Eros Hera Helen Briseis Judgment of Paris Peleus and Thetis Ajax

Italian

Contexts (from Western Greece Ruesser ) colonial (mainland)

/ / / / / / / / / (%)

S T T, S T, S T, S, D T T, S

 / /   / 

/ / / /  / / / / (%)

As mentioned above, raw statistical analyses based on the Beazley Archives are problematic, especially because of the great preponderance of looted examples from Vulci and other Etruscan sites. In this case, the over-representation of Etruscan proveniences for Attic ceramics can be put into perspective by exploring relationships between specific forms, motives and find spots. Note that when “cup/cup fragment” and more broadly popular subjects (symposium, athlete(s), satyr(s) and so on) are searched together, a much broader range of proveniences including many examples from Greek mainland sites are found. Likewise, when a popular “feminine” topic in Italy (Aphrodite, for example) is searched across all shape categories (i.e. ritual, storage and service vessels), the apparent predominance of Italian proveniences disappears. So there does appear to be discernible patterning in the distribution of cups representing these kinds of myths. Bennett has recently argued for the emergence of a market (late fifth century) for Athenian ceramics with images of women that were promoted specifically for women’s use. Her results focus on forms and motives that contrast with the picture that emerges from early fifth century BCE Italy, including the oeuvre of the Brygos Painter. She breaks down proportions of pots from Greek contexts by form and chronology using the BAPD data set. Ceramics depicting women make up a low proportion (ca. 10%) of works in the sixth century BCE, slightly more (ca. 15%) in the first quarter of the fifth century, followed by a dramatic increase (up to ca. 33%) in the last quarter of the fifth century.17 The loutrophoros, pixis and lebes gamikos dominate the assemblages depicting women in Greece, all forms of which directly associated with marriage.18 In contrast, lekythoi depicting women, mainly associated with funerary and

 Find locations for particular deities and themes identified in Ruesser 2002 Concordance (Namen, Sachen), vol. II., 238–245, with contexts determined based on individual site entries.  Bennett 2019, 10–12.  Bennett 2019, fig. 7.

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sanctuary assemblages, were produced in great quantities throughout the fifth century. Bennett’s study highlights the popularity of ceramics depicting weddings, food preparation, wool working and child care among the images depicting women. In images from the early fifth century, erotic and nude images of women are common, although Bennett’s analysis focuses more on types that she interprets as targeting female viewers.19 All in all, it appears that different kinds of ceramics featuring women’s images are typical in Greece and in Italy, and ceramics with relatively active and affirmative images of women and female characters may have become popular in Italy before they did in Greece. Recent studies have made a concerted effort to organize evidence for imported Athenian ceramics from documented excavations.20 There are still too few rich data sets to develop robust models for trade, artistic interpretation and deposition, but Ruesser’s systematic survey of Etruscan settlement, sanctuary and cemetery contexts makes it clear that Attic ceramics should be seen as components within complex material assemblages that included imported and local ceramics, luxury materials and architectural space. Attic ceramics appear to have been imported primarily as relatively ordinary service wares that made their way through banqueting practices in domestic, sanctuary and funerary spaces. The exquisite connoisseurship that dominates the subfield of Attic fine wares does not appear to have been typical of ancient assessments of value and significance. On the other hand, Italo-Etruscan consumers do appear to have had a sense of the philosophical and social implications of narrative imagery.21 Attic Black- and RedFigure wares are extensively documented in mixed assemblages that include local wares in settlements in Bologna, Marzabotto and Rome. The fine ware assemblages of coastal sanctuaries like Pyrgi and Gravisca contain an astonishing breadth of ceramics and luxury materials from all over the greater Mediterranean world. Our understanding of the tombs such as those in Vulci, which yielded the rich 18th–19th century troves of Black- and Red-Figure treasures, can be refined by examples like the Tomba dei Vasi Attici.22 This tomb yielded nearly 100 Athenian vases together with an equal proportion of local ceramics, bronze, gold and faience. The tomb was situated within one of the larger multi-burial tumuli and consisted of a dromos, a main room and five small chambers housing 14 burial klinai. More than 60 drinking vessels, including Black- and RedFigure ware, Bucchero and other local wares, were recorded together with more than a dozen storage vessels and a similar number of serving vessels.23

 Bennett 2019, 10–18.  Notable examples include Bundrick 2019; Ruesser 2002; and case studies presented in Bentz and Ruesser 2004.  Ruesser 2002, vol. II., 269–270.  Cerveteri, Banditaccia no. 9.  Ruesser 2002, vol. I, 62–69; Ruesser 2002, vol. II, tab. 6; Ricci 1954.

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It may be noted that few Attic ceramics were of what modern scholars might consider high quality, despite the evident high social standing of this family. This is not typical of the tomb assemblages in Ruesser’s data set, most of which have one or two storage/serving vessels and a handful of cups. Banditaccia Tomb 9 provides some sense of the large and sumptuous banquet assemblages that were excavated in other cemeteries with minimal recorded information. Works more specifically by the Brygos Painter and members of his close circle are documented in domestic, sanctuary and funerary contexts, including wealthy coastal sanctuaries (Gravisca), large and small domestic settings (Adria, Saturnia), and the well-known but poorly documented funerary assemblages in Vulci and other cities.24

The Getty Brygos Cup No, he is not to be looked at! I will cover him over entirely with this enfolding shroud, since no one—no one, that is, who loves him—could bear to see him spurt the darkened gore of his selfinflicted slaughter up his nostrils and out of the bloody gash. Ah, what shall I do? What loved one is there to lift you in his arms? Where is Teucer? How timely would be his arrival, if he would but come to compose the corpse of his brother here! Ah, unlucky Ajax, from so great a height you are fallen so low! Even among your enemies you are worthy of mourning! Soph. Ajax 915–925 (trans. Jebb 1893)

The Getty cup depicts three scenes that center around a myth popular in early Italy: the suicide of Ajax.25 The Getty Brygos cup highlights a rarely depicted moment in the story when Tekmessa covers the body to prevent defilement and ridicule (see passage from Sophocles Ajax above). The princess swoops into the scene, swift movement throwing hair and drapery behind. She throws a cover over the pathetic body of the great hero, so massive that even in death his feet extend beyond the border of the scene. His body arches uncomfortably on the pivot of his sword, still embedded in the rocky beach. Head and neck thrown back, his hair streams down limply while his beard bristles in indignation, even in death. She holds the shroud tenderly and her face is a mask of quiet determination. Ajax’s death is an injustice, and the brave Tekmessa, no wailing and mourning maiden but a self-possessed heroine, is right to take quick and decisive action (see Fig. 1 above). The exterior of the cup details the story that leads up to Ajax’s suicide (Fig. 3). The integrated interior/exterior narrative is characteristic of many cups by the Brygos Painter. Side A (Fig. 3 top), which would face toward the drinker who was holding the cup to [her?] face, shows the dispute between Ajax and Odysseus, mediated by Agamemnon.

 Ruesser 2002; Huber 1999; Backe-Forsberg 2009.  Williams 1980.

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Fig. 3: Kylix attributed to the Brygos Painter. Exterior, Side A (top) Struggle for the arms of Achilles. Side B (bottom), Greeks vote on the arms of Achilles. Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum, inv. 86.AE.286. Photo: © The J. Paul Getty Museum.

Swords have been drawn and the king has little power to restrain the Greek heroes from fratricidal violence. The struggle and voting for the arms of Achilles is a subject that appears on a number of drinking cups dated to the first quarter of the fifth century BCE.26 Side B (Fig. 3 bottom) illustrates the process of voting for the hero who will win Achilles’s armor and the honor that it signifies. Athena, marked by her aegis, stands by Odysseus, who wins the vote. Ajax, unsupported by the gods, despondently cradles his head in hand as he realizes his defeat and dishonor. Although we might expect to see cups featuring voting scenes as celebrating the new democratic ideology in Athens, it is interesting that the large majority (9/10) of the works listed in Williams’ catalogue have known or likely find contexts in Italy. The one example from Greece (a cup by Makron)27 was found on the Athenian Acropolis. A drinker holding the cup in its proper orientation (i.e. looking directly at the tragic scene in the tondo) would have looked onto this scene. What injustice can arise from the crude practice of democracy! This would not seem to be a message for a ‘true believer’ in the exciting new system of government, and might even offer a whiff of skepticism not unwelcome in the hands of an Etruscan aristocrat.

 Williams 1980.  Athens, Acropolis Museum, inv. 2.315.

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Fig. 4: Kylix attributed to the Brygos painter. Exterior, Side B Athena proclaims Odysseus the winner of the vote for the arms of Achilles. London, British Museum, Catalogue of Vases, E 69. Photo: © Trustees of the British Museum.

Another fine cup by the Brygos Painter features a nearly identical exterior composition recounting the same contest (Fig. 4).28 Side A features a vigorous battle for the armor of Achilles, with three heroes on either side of Agamemnon, who gestures wildly in a futile attempt to restrain the great heroes. Ajax and Odysseus have drawn swords, while the helm and greaves of Achilles are tucked beneath the handles. On Side B, Athena proclaims Odysseus the winner of the vote for the armor as Ajax cradles his head in precisely the same gesture as on the Getty cup. The interior tondo image (Fig. 5) depicts a bearded man grasping the hand of a young maiden as they rush along. The man, clad in himation and petasos, looks back at the woman; their mouths are both open as they converse in an intimate space. The widely cited interpretation of this scene associates Odysseus with the male figure on the basis of his petasos.29 At first glance, this association makes some iconographical sense; Odysseus is frequently portrayed as a traveler. However, given the context of the story on the exterior, an alternative identity of the male figure might be suggested, namely Ajax. Robertson tentatively suggested this possibility based on the similarities of the exterior to the Getty cup.30 The woman would clearly be Tekmessa in this case, and the occasion would be Ajax taking possession of his princess bride after killing her father. The interior scene would thus represent a happy moment when the devoted couple come together, while the exterior forebodes a grim fate. The British Museum cup and

 London, British Museum E69 (from Vulci); Williams 1980; 1993, 56–58.  See Williams 1993, 56–58 and pl. 60–61, fig. 11 (with bibliography).  Robertson 1975, 232.

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the Getty cup bracket the defining moment in Ajax’s life (disgrace and suicide) and may well have been produced as a complementary pair.

Fig. 5: Kylix attributed to the Brygos painter. Interior, proposed reinterpretation: Ajax and Tekmessa engage in intimate conversation. London, British Museum, Catalogue of Vases, E 69. Photo: © Trustees of the British Museum.

The tondo image of Tekmessa is extremely rare, but the quarrel between Ajax and Odysseus for the armor of Achilles is somewhat more common (more than 30 examples can be found on the Beazley Archive). Tekmessa’s story is far more common in Italian contexts than in Greek,31 and is most often portrayed on lekythoi. The association of this story with lekythoi suggests a particular suitability for funerary contexts, which may stem in part from the connection between judgment in Ajax’s story and the judgment faced after death.32 The suicide of Ajax was also a popular myth in other media.33 The motif is well known from architectural sculpture (e.g. Foce del Sele), gems, and coins as well as ceramics.34 Sympathy for the Trojans and for victims of Greek aggression is a common theme for Black-Figure and Red-Figure imports to Italy. A quick search of the Beazley Archive for “Astyanax” (the most pathetic victim of brutal Greek aggression of the Trojan war) yields 30 examples, 21 with known pro   

Ca. 90% of the examples on the BAPD. Cerchiai 2008. Catoni 2015. For examples, Touchefeu 1981, nos. 107–134.

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veniences, of which 20 (95%) are from Italy. A slightly lesser proportion of vessels featuring “Ilioupersis” hail from Italian proveniences (52/69, or 75%). The vast majority of these come from the Etruscan heartland. Generations of Classics professors (myself included) have enthusiastically drawn parallels between the great fifth-century Athenian dramas and remarkable ceramics from approximately the same era. Given the proportions cited above, we may need to rethink the context for the reception and perhaps even the production of such images in terms of Italian dramaturgical interests. Bundrick problematizes the reception of Athenian ceramics in Italy in much greater depth and detail than is possible here.35

Considering the Kylix At what point in the Athenian ceramic industry did a pot start to be seen as a potential export? The process by which a soggy lump of clay became an export item and eventually a museum piece was more complex than it may seem at first glance. Bundrick adapts Kopytoff’s methodology for following an object through the stages of its life.36 There are many stages in the production, marketing, use and repurposing of any particular Attic ceramic, during which the communication inherent to the nature of visual art might be shifted and re-contextualized: – Mining/processing/sorting clays – Fashioning the pot – Choosing the decorative program – Designing and painting the decoration – Inscription – Firing and finishing – Marketing/selecting and shipping – Delivering the pot – Marketing/selling – Purchasing the pot – Use and deposition The chaîne opératoire by which a cup like 86.AE.286 went from levigated clays to being placed into an Etruscan tomb or tossed in a well in Piraeus was fairly complex, and there were many junctures at which decisions might be made about how a particular pot might suit one or another kind of client. Furthermore, the reading(s) of any particular vessel depended largely on who was looking and in what context. The agency of numerous actors was decisive in determining the fate of the object, but it is

 Bundrick 2019, chapter 3.  Bundrick 2019, 10; Kopytoff 1986.

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clear that certain producers sent much or most of their works to overseas buyers. It is inconceivable that Athenian potters/painters created works with no sense of which themes and motives were popular with which groups of customers and geographies. There do appear to have been patterns in the relationship between ceramic forms and markets,37 and the Brygos Painter is particularly known for his cups. Cups, especially kylikes, were bound for a narrow range of destinies; they could be used in symposia or banquets, or deposited in sanctuaries or in funerary assemblages. At a symposium or banquet a particular cup might be given by a symposiarch to a guest. The act of distributing cups could be highly charged; one imagines a host making a flirtatious or teasing gesture to a guest by presenting a cup with an erotic tondo painting that would be revealed as the symposiast drank, or a bawdy exterior design that might make the point more blatantly. Such a cup might become a kind of mask for the bearer as they drank the night away, as is most obvious on the famous “eye cups.”38 The basic function of a cup in the context of an Etruscan funerary banquet was of course similar, if we take the evidence of the painted tombs at face value (e.g. Tomba dei Leopardi or Tomba dei Vasi Dipinti, Tarquinia). The burial assemblage from the Tomba dei Leopardi appears to confirm that an actual banquet may have been held in the context of the most famous image we have of Etruscan funerary banquets.39 On the other hand, the relationship of the decoration to the solemnity of the occasion may have demanded a more thoughtful approach. One might prefer to toast the dead with a vessel imbued with more heroic or admirable designs, although it is also true that bawdy imagery is known from these contexts. In all cases the relationship between a kylix and a drinker is intimate; the expressive power of the imagery derives from this intimacy. A well-chosen image conveyed subtle messages. A cup conveyed potentially divergent messages in an Athenian or Greek colonial symposium as compared to an Etruscan banquet. The implications of overt sexual imagery could be especially divergent. In this case a cup intended for export overseas would likely bear imagery that might be seen as appropriate and expressive in a variety of different settings.

The Brygos Painter’s Market The Brygos Painter’s primary market appears to have been Italy, and particularly the Etruscan heartland (Tab. 2). A raw search of the Beazley archive yields Adria, Athens and Vulci as far and away the predominant find contexts for his works, with most other examples coming from Etruscan communities (Fig. 6). Beyond Athens, the only

 Saunders 2017.  A fine example is on display at the J. Paul Getty Villa, Malibu, inv. 86.AE.169; https://www.getty. edu/art/collection/object/103W3C [accessed 2 August 2024].  Blanck 1988.

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Tab. 2: BAPD search for proveniences of (known) works by the Brygos Painter.

Etruscan Greece (mainland) Greek (colonial)

Brygos ptr

Brygos ptr + wom✶n + cup✶

 (%)  (%)  (%) 

 (%)   

Fig. 6: Main known proveniences of works by the Brygos Painter (after BAPD).

Greek settlement with a substantial number of finds seems to be Gela, where a group of lekythoi has been found. All compiled, the BAPD lists about 200 vessels with known provenience, of which 57% were found in Etruscan settlements and cemeteries, while 23% were sourced from Greece and 20% derived from Greek colonial sites. When the search is narrowed to focus on the subject of mortal women on cups, out of 32 examples, half come from Vulci (ten) and Adria (six). No such examples come from Greece, and the extant examples from Italy tend to feature women as assertive protagonists in mythical and mundane contexts rather than as hetairai/entertainers at symposia. Given Greek and Roman proclamations of scandalous public-forward behavior exhib-

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ited by Etruscan women, this would not seem terribly surprising.40 Bonfante cites a well-known passage in Athenaeus’s Deipnosophistae, quoting Theopompus, a fourthcentury BCE Greek historian: Theopompos, in the forty-third book of his Histories, also says that it is normal for the Etruscans to share their women in common. These women take great care of their bodies and exercise bare, exposing their bodies even before men and among themselves: for it is not shameful for them to appear almost naked. He also says they dine not with their husbands, but with any man who happens to be present; and they toast anyone they want to. (Ath. 12.14, trans. Gulick 1927)41

The active participation of women in feasting and drinking was one of the most remarkable aspects of women’s public life among the Etruscans. Imagery of women participating in Etruscan feasts can be traced to the early-/mid-sixth century. Notable examples include revetment plaques showing a banqueting scene from the upper building at Poggio Civitate, on which one reclining woman drinks from a deep bowl while a second, on an adjacent kline, plays the cithara.42 A similar plaque from Velletri shows a reclining woman drinking from a kylix.43 The above-mentioned Tarquinian tomb painting and numerous others show that comfortable mixing between women and men of apparently equal status continued into the fifth century. In accepting the likelihood of female participation in Etruscan feasting and drinking, we might presume a need for drinking cups suited to the tastes of Etruscan women of high status. This is very different from the context of women drinking in Athens, who were primarily hetairai. Not all Attic painters would have catered to such clientele, but it appears that the Brygos Painter, quite possibly himself of non-Greek origin, may have found a niche in this market. A sampling of cups from Vulci and other sites serves to illustrate how women protagonists are portrayed by the Brygos Painter: some feature women at or approaching altars, playing music44 or approaching altars.45 Another shows a finely dressed woman sensitively tending to a vomiting youth.46 A domestic scene on a cup from Adria depicts a woman with a mirror.47 These are all images that would have likely appealed to women drinkers, as discussed above. The question remains whether the Getty cup and its siblings might have graced the hands of women at some elegant dinner party or funerary banquet. Although the vast majority of fine Athenian ceramics in Italy have been found in tombs, recent excavations at San Giovenale establish that

       

For a discussion of the public social habits of Etruscan women, see Bonfante 1995. Cited from Bonfante 1995, 249. Winter 20091, 84–87 (ca. 580–575 BCE). Winter 2009, 365–366 (ca. 530 BCE). Paris, Cabinet des Medailles, 581. Munich, Antikensammlungen, J271. Würzburg, Universität, L479. Adria, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, inv. 7747.

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the Brygos Painter’s works were, at least sometimes, used in habitation contexts.48 The two functions are not mutually exclusive, but the question is somewhat complicated by the relative paucity of examples that have been excavated with significant archaeological context. The assemblage of the Capuan tomb, dubbed the “Brygos Tomb” by John Beazley, may provide some clues to this question.49 Some ingenious sleuthing by Dyfri Williams followed up on Beazley’s short piece and traced a tomb robbing caper worthy of a Hollywood script; the gentleman farmer/tombarolo Simmaco Doria plundered rich tombs on his property to sell to collectors and museums, aided and abetted by Prof. Wolfgang Helbig and mediated by slippery dealer Fortunato Castellani. The loot from several tombs ended up scattered across Europe, but the majority of the Athenian pots from the “Brygos Tomb” were bought by the British museum.50 Thanks to informal notes and recollections by Doria, which were cursorily published by Helbig, Beazley and Williams were able to reconstruct a group of fine vessels from the tomb.51 Though there is no real archaeological documentation and no information about non-valuable things and non-Greek ceramics found in the tomb, this remains one of the better-documented tombs from the time when the majority of Archaic and Classical Athenian ceramics were acquired. Of the four rich tombs in this group looted by Doria, no cups were reported for Tombs I, III and IV. Tomb II, the “Brygos Tomb,” was the only one in which cups were listed (Williams 1992). The Brygos kylix (British Museum: E65) is signed on the base and features two connected scenes on the exterior. On Side A, satyrs approach Hera threateningly, while the Queen of Heaven is defended by Hermes and Herakles, who carries a Scythian bow and quiver and wears leggings. On Side B, two satyrs have captured Iris while Dionysus approaches. Iris has been sent to stop a sacrifice to Dionysus, and the entire ensemble has been interpreted as representing a contemporary satyr play.52 The interior tondo image features a woman (Zeuxo) ladling wine into a seated warrior’s (Chrisippus) phiale. Zeuxo, like many of the Brygos Painter’s women figures, is an active agent, while the exterior of the cup features female protagonists Hera and Iris. It is not difficult to imagine a cup like this appealing to a female client.53 The other vessels in the Brygos tomb assemblage include a skyphos featuring Eleusinian myths by Hieron,54 two molded rhyta55 and a pair of stamnoi by the Deep-

       

Backe-Forsberg 2009. Beazley 1945. Williams 1992. Helbig 1865; Beazley 1945; Williams 1992. Simon 1982; Williams 1992. See Bundrick 2019, 81–90. London, British Museum, E140. London, British Museum, E788 and E800.

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dene Painter, which ended up dispersed between New York56 and Karlsruhe.57 Williams observes that the stamnoi, which both feature Eos in pursuit of Kephalos on one side, should be seen to make up a pair.58 If so, these may well have been purchased for use specifically in a tomb. Williams argues that this assemblage contains so many references to Athenian culture that the Brygos Tomb most likely held an Athenian male burial. Bundrick’s sensitive reconsideration of the iconography of this assemblage notes that the gender themes tilt more towards the feminine than the masculine, but wisely hesitates to commit to the idea of a female burial.59

Concluding Thoughts Several broad themes are raised by reconfiguring the analysis of Attic fine wares to foreground usage and depositional context as a way of framing iconological and narrative considerations. Even in the case of works stripped of specific provenience information, patient analysis of broader patterns can bolster our understanding of how a particular example fits into larger geographical, chronological and cultural trends. Returning to the Getty cup, it is indeed intriguing to imagine it as having been made as part of a pair by the Brygos Painter with its mate in the British Museum. On the latter, Tekmessa, the beautiful young bride, rushes along with her new husband as they whisper intimate thoughts. On the former example, Tekmessa the doughty widow protects the corpse of her wronged husband from undeserved scorn. Unfortunately, we do not have sufficient evidence to demonstrate that they were deposited together in Vulci. Furthermore, given the circuitous path followed by Attic vases en route to their deposition, there are many reasons to imagine how such a pair might not have ended up together. Nevertheless, we may speculate on artistic intention within the workshop so as to see this as a cup made to appeal to the lucrative market for cups in Italy. It appears likely that there were classes of imagery similar to those common on Etruscan mirrors that were far more common in Italy than in mainland Greece. It also appears that breaking down iconographical patterns based on specific forms and the embodied context of use may point to methodologies that can disentangle interpretations of Attic ceramics as material culture. If indeed the Getty cup was eventually deposited in a Vulcian tomb, would the choice of myth better suit a man mourning his well-deserving wife or a woman mourning her heroic husband? Would a cup with such resonant meanings in the context of a lifelong relationship have served for the banquet table as well as the funerary feast? Owing to the

   

New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 18.74.1. Karlsruhe, Bädisches Landesmuseum, inv. 211. Williams 1992, 629. Bundrick 2019, 90.

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abysmal provenience data we have for finds from 18th and 19th-century excavations in central Italy, we still lack the theoretical apparatus to distinguish between feminine agency in the context of funerary banquets (their roles as hosts, guests, etc.) and feminine identity of the deceased. Ruesser and Bundrick provide a way forward, emphasizing more well-documented excavations, which permit the development of hypotheses that we hope may become testable someday.60 At the risk of over-simplification, the early fifth-century market in Italy for active, even heroic, female imagery may have set the stage for the more affirmative feminine imagery found on ceramics common in Greece a generation later. The community of artists in the Kerameikos appears to have been multicultural, and the ebb and flow of ideas and practices likely reflected this cultural complexity. In this case we would do well to conceive of the directionality of cultural influence in the context of the Greek colonial world and beyond as far more complex than the “Hellenization” model traditionally taken for granted by students of classical Greece. Getty 86.AE.286, like all works of art, was a vehicle for communication between the artist and diverse potential viewers. The kylix, thanks to the embodied context of its use, creates an intimate private interior—public exterior space for the user. The kylix can serve as a vehicle of messages from host to guest, or as an expression of sympathy and love from a mourning spouse. The Maiden: “Oh! leave me! Prithee, leave me! thou grisly man of bone! For life is sweet, is pleasant. Go! leave me now alone! Go! leave me now alone” Death: “Give me thy hand, oh! maiden fair to see, For I’m a friend, hath ne’er distress’d thee. Take courage now, and very soon Within mine arms shalt softly rest thee!” (trans. Jurgenson, 1920)

Matthias Claudius’ bleak poem inspired Franz Schubert to compose his powerful meditation on human resistance and eventual submission to Death. Death, in the end, is a comfort to the maiden, much as it offered comfort to the tortured soul of Ajax. The Getty cup, like uncountable others, most likely held a last toast offered by a bereaved survivor to a lost loved one. We cannot say for sure that the painter working far from his own homeland sought to console a distant stranger through this poignant image. But this cup was no mere trifle to amuse a literate Athenian symposiast, it embodies the dynamic aesthetics of the multicultural, multi-directional networks of the Mediterranean colonial world.

 Ruesser 2002; Bundrick 2019.

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Bibliography Backe-Forsberg, Yvone (2009). “The Brygos Painter at San Giovenale,” Opuscula 2, 193–203. Beazley, John (1945). “The Brygos Tomb at Capua,” AJA 49, 153–158. Bennett, Danielle (2019). “Targeted Advertising for Women in Athenian Vase-Painting of the Fifth Century BCE,” Arts 8.2, 52. Bentz, Martin / Reusser, Christophe (2004). Attische Vasen in etruskischem Kontext: Funde aus Häusern und Heiligtümern. Beihefte Zum Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum Bd. 2. Munich. Bernabei, F. (1886). Di una ricca tomba della necropolis tuderte, scoperta nel predio “la Peschiera,’” Notizie degli Scavi ser. 4, 358–361. Blanck, Horst (1988). “Funde aus der Tomba dei Leopardi. (Tarquinia),” JDI 103, 201–216. Bonfante, Giuliano / Bonfante, Larissa (1983). The Etruscan Language: An Introduction. New York. Bonfante, Larissa (1995). “Excursus: Etruscan Women,” in: E. Fantham (ed.), Women in the Classical World: Image and Text, New York, 243–259. Bundrick, Sheramy (2015). “Athenian Eye Cups in Context,” AJA 119.3, 295–341. Bundrick, Sheramy (2019). Athens. Etruria, and the Many Lives of Greek Figured Pottery, Madison. WI. Cambitoglou, Alexander (1968). The Brygos Painter. Sydney. Catoni, Maria (2015). “The Iconographic Tradition of the Suicide of Ajax: Some Questions,” in: G. Most and L. Ozbek (eds.), Staging Ajax’s Suicide, Pisa, 15–30. Cerchiai, Luca (2008). Gli Etruschi e I pessoi,” in: B. D’Agostino (ed.), Alba della città, alba delle immagini, Athens, 91–109. De Grummond, Nancy (1982). A Guide to Etruscan Mirrors. Tallahassee, FL. Dietler, Michael (2010). Archaeologies of Colonialism: Consumption, Entanglement, and Violence in Ancient Mediterranean France. Berkeley. Gombrich, E. H. (1972). The Story of Art. 12th ed. New York. Hannestad, Lise (1988). “Athenian pottery in Etruria c. 550–470 B.C.,” ActaArch 59, 113–130. Helbig, Wolfgang (1865). “Scavi di Capua,” BdI, 161–167. Huber, Kalinka (1999). La Ceramiche Attiche a Figure Rosse. Bari. Kopytoff, Igor (1986). “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process,” in: A. Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things, Cambridge, 64–91. Lewis, Sian (2013). The Athenian Woman: An Iconographic Handbook. London. Lynch, Kathleen (2011). The Symposium in Context, Pottery from a Late Archaic House near the Athenian Agora. Hesperia Suppl. 46. Princeton. Mills, Sara (2013). Gender and Colonial Space. Manchester. Moore, Mary (1998). Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum: United States 33, Getty Villa 8. Malibu. Reusser, Christophe (2002). Vasen für Etrurien: Verbreitung und Funktionen Attischer Keramik im Etrurien des 6. und 5. Jahrhunderts vor Christus. Zurich. Ricci, Goffredo (1954). “Caere. Scavi di R. Mengarelli, necropoli della Banditaccia Zona A ‘Del Recinto,’” MonAnt 42, 203–1047. Robertson, Martin (1975). A History of Greek Art. London. Saunders, David (2017). “The Distribution of the Berlin Painter’s Vases,” in: J.M.Padgett (ed.) The Berlin Painter and His World: Athenian Vase-Painting in the Early Fifth Century B.C., New Haven, 107–131. Simon, Erika (1982). “Satyr-plays on Vases in the Time of Aeschylus,” in: D. Kurtz and B. Sparkes (eds.), The Eye of Greece, Cambridge, 125–129. Spivey, Nigel (1994). “Psephological Heroes,” in: R. Osborne and S. Hornblower (eds.), Ritual, Finance, Politics: Athenian Democratic Accounts Presented to David Lewis, Oxford, 39–51. Touchefeu, Odette (1981). “Aias I,” Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, Zurich, 312–336.

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Van Der Meer, Lammert Bouke (1995). Interpretatio Etrusca: Greek Myths on Etruscan Mirrors. Amsterdam. Wallace, Rex / Saunders, David (forthcoming). “Catalogue entry for 86.AE.286” in: C.L. Lyons (ed.), Etruscan and Italic Art in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Wegner, Max (1973). Brygosmaler. Berlin. Williams, Dyfri (1980). “Ajax, Odysseus and the Arms of Achilles,” AntK 23.2, 137–145. Williams, Dyfri (1992). “The Brygos Tomb Reassembled and 19th-Century Commerce in Capuan Antiquities,” AJA 96.4, 617–636. Williams, Dyfri (1993). Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum: Great Britain 17, British Museum 9. London. Winter, Nancy A. (2009). Symbols of Wealth and Power: Architectural Terracotta Decoration in Etruria and Central Italy, 640–510 B.C. MAAR suppl. 9. Ann Arbor, MI.

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Hellenistic Gold and Silver Luxury Tableware as a Legacy of Roman Spoils of War While the broader subject of the allocation of Roman loot, both private and public, continues to be discussed by modern scholars,1 Polybius specifically indicates that valuable tableware looted from houses in Greek Sicily and southern Italy was made available to Roman citizens. In his discussion of the plunder from the sack of Syracuse in 211 BCE by Marcus Claudius Marcellus, Polybius approves of the confiscation of the city’s gold and silver but decries the stripping of its civic adornments. Significantly, Polybius adds that spoils taken from Sicilian domestic contexts were subsequently used for the embellishment of the private homes of Romans, while those that were state property were placed in Roman public buildings (Polyb. 9.10.11–13).2 Appropriations from the defeated city on view in Marcellus’s subsequent procession in Rome included silver and bronze wares, lavish furnishings and costly fabrics, as well as statues and paintings that had decorated Syracuse’s institutions and sanctuaries (Livy 26.21.6–10). Livy believed it was this public display in the late third century BCE that marked the beginning of the Romans’ enthusiasm for Greek luxuries and works of art (Livy 25.40.1–3). This paper explores the influence of plundered Greek tableware on Roman households and visual culture in the ensuing centuries. Given the notorious reputation of the Greeks of Sicily for luxury, particularly the Syracusans according to Athenaeus (12.527c), the household items that Polybius refers to almost surely included tableware of silver and bronze and possibly of gold. Surviving this turbulent period of history to bear witness to the high level of Hellenistic metalworking in Sicily is a group of silver symposium vessels in the Museo Regionale in Aidone discovered in the 19th century, many elaborately decorated with added motifs, repoussé, and partial gilding. They are dated to the third-century BCE and were almost surely part of a private household in the nearby ancient city of Morgantina (Fig. 1).3 More Greek treasures were confiscated as booty with Q. Fabius Maximus’ recapture of Tarentum (a Roman protectorate since 272 BCE) in 209 BCE after its collabora-

 For a very useful discussion of art as Roman plunder, with references to its distribution, see Miles 2008, 53–54 with related notes.  For a critical discussion of the moral stance assumed by later historians regarding the looting of Greek cities during Rome’s wars, see Gruen 1992, 84–130 (beginning with Marcellus’s sack of Syracuse) and 52–83 (for a measured analysis of M. Porcius Cato’s harsh criticism of Greek culture).  Purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in 1981–1982 and now repatriated. For measurements and detailed photographs, see von Bothmer 1984, 54–60, nos. 92–106, with front and back covers. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111182919-020

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Fig. 1: Items from the silver treasure from Aidone, third century BCE, Museo Archeologico di Aidone, Sicily. Photo: © Museo Archeologico di Aidone.

tion with Hannibal.4 According to Livy (27.16.7–8), Fabius’ brought back to Rome a quantity of silver—in the form of vessels as well as well as coin—three thousand and eighty pounds of gold, probably in bullion or coin, as well as statues and paintings that Livy says nearly rivaled in quantity and quality those taken from Syracuse two years earlier. Some indication of the high artistic quality of the silver vessels appropriated by Fabius Maximus is afforded by the Hellenistic silver treasure buried in antiquity for safekeeping and found in 1896 during the construction of a street in the modern city of Taranto and published in 1930 by Pierre Wuilleumier.5 Once in Paris as an acquisition of the family of Baron Edmond de Rothschild, the treasure’s present location is unknown. Together with a unique blue glass bowl, the treasure included a number of elaborate silver vessels. The date of a silver tripod pyxis with sphinx-shaped feet and an embossed relief medallion of a seated Zeus between upright figures of Apollo and Artemis on the lid, with a complex decorative relief of leaves and flowers on its underside (a gem marking the center), may be as early as the early third century BCE. An elegant high stemmed krateriskos with both figural and vegetal surface ornamentation, 33 cm high, should be dated no later than the middle of the second century BCE (Fig. 2).  Tarentine objects of luxury and value were also carried in the triumph of M. Curius Dentatus for the defeat of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, at Malventum (later Beneventum) in 275 BCE (Gruen 1992, 89; Florus 1.13.25–27).  Wuilleumier 1930.

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Fig. 2: The silver krateriskos from Tarentum, midsecond century BCE. Formerly de Rothschild Collection, Paris. Present location unknown. H 33 cm. After P. Wuilleumier, 1930. Le trésor de Tarente. Paris.

The other silver objects are of differing dates from the late-third to the middle of the second century BCE.6 Uniquely, the pyxis is signed by its silversmith, whose name was Nikon. Not surprisingly, given the extensive reputation of conspicuous consumption in Philip V’s kingdom of Macedon, silver vessels of all shapes, most of them embossed and many of high workmanship, are specifically mentioned in Livy’s account of the second day of the 3–day triumph in 194 BCE celebrating Titus Quinctius Flamininus, victor of the Second Macedonian War (Livy 34.52.4–6). The timing was propitious for such luxurious material to be absorbed into private Roman ownership, as the Oppian sumptuary law of 215 BCE, which among other restrictions limited the amount of gold or silver plate that could legally be held by Roman households, had been repealed only the year before, in 195 BCE (Livy 34.8.3). Also brought to Rome by Flamininus were ten silver Macedonian shields and, notably, one of gold. There were also 43,270 pounds of unworked silver (presumably in bullion), 84,000 Athenian tetra For other proposed dates of the krateriskos, ranging from the last quarter of the third to the middle of the second century BCE, see Barr-Sharrar 1982, 136, n. 18. For good photographs of the silver objects, Pfromer 1987, pl. 31–35, who dated all the silver objects to the second quarter or middle of the third century BCE.

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drachms, 3,714 pounds of gold, and 14,514 gold coins stamped with the image of Philip V. Just where such precise bullion weights and numbers of coins were obtained is unclear; such numerical details sometimes vary among ancient literary descriptions and are no doubt frequently exaggerated for effect. A large number of bronze vessels were also in the procession. Livy’s description of the victory parade for M. Acilius Glabrio in 190 BCE after his triumph at Thermopylae over Antiochus III and the Aetolians also notes large numbers of embossed silver vessels of great weight (vasa argentea caelata multa magnique ponderis, Livy 37.46.3–4) and a set of silver furniture from the camp of the king, who had been driven out of Greece. These silver treasures no doubt belonged to the royal household and were very likely of Seleucid workmanship. Like other Hellenistic royal courts, that of the Seleucids was well known for its lavish banquets demonstrating the wealth of the king to a large assembly of guests. At the end of the festivities, cups of precious metal and other items of valuable tableware were distributed to the guests as gifts, perhaps a continuation of the banqueting and distribution of tableware practiced at the Persian court.7 Smaller banquets were held by the king on the field of battle for his courtiers and military officers, a circumstance that very likely explains the silver vessels and furniture said to have been taken from Antiochus’s camp. The highly significant triumph the following year, 189 BCE, of Lucius Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus, brother of Africanus, celebrated the conquest of Greek Asia at Magnesia. In 188 BCE the Treaty of Apamea established definitive peace with Antiochus III, who was allowed to maintain his throne but with a considerably reduced kingdom and his loyalty to Rome assured. In Scipio Asiaticus’s spectacular triumphal parade in Rome there were 1,423 pounds of silver vessels—all of which were embossed, according to Livy—and, mentioned in great number for the first time, 1,023 pounds of vessels made of gold (Livy 37.59.4–5). Of considerable importance is Livy’s comment, on the authority of Valerius Antias, that Asiaticus gathered together artists (or artisans) in Asia and brought them back to Rome (Livy 39.22.10: congregatosque per Asiam artifices).8 In the eyes of the Romans, Asia represented the very quintessence of luxury. Pliny asserts that it was the conquest of Asia Minor and Syria and the subsequent display of these appropriated articles of precious metal that initiated the Romans’ admiration and coveting of foreign opulence (Plin. HN 33.53.148–149). The Romans had witnessed triumphal parades of luxurious Greek commodities decades earlier, but Pliny was clearly impressed with the items from Asia. The amount of worked gold may have seemed to him of unusual extravagance. Roman power was now established across the Aegean and throughout much of Asia Minor. In 187 BCE Marcus Fulvius

 For the Persian court practice, see Strootman 2014, 188–191. While we must be aware of possible hyperbole with Livy’s weights and numbers, that does not affect his descriptions of the vessels and furniture.  See Gruen 1992, 106 for an interpretation of the word artifices as artists rather than dramatic actors.

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Nobilior conquered Ambracia and imposed a peace settlement on the Aeolians, thus ending the war in Greece. Like Scipio Asiaticus, he brought back to Rome a number of Greek artists (artifices ex Graecia: Livy 39.22.2). According to both Livy (39.6.7) and Pliny (HN 34.14), bronze couches (triclinia aerata) were first introduced into Rome among the spoils seized and paraded in triumph later in the year 187 BCE by Scipio’s successor in Asia, Gnaeus Manlius Vulso, who defeated the Galatians in Anatolia. Hellenistic bronze klinai, with a design developed from fifth-century Athenian wooden prototypes, directly influenced the production of Roman dining couches well into the first century CE.9 The center of the production of bronze klinai in the second-century BCE has been placed in the Eastern Mediterranean10 and was notably associated by Pliny with Delos.11 The one hundred couches of “gold” (or perhaps gilded silver) with feet shaped like sphinxes described in the elaborate pavilion before the narrative of the festival of Ptolemy II Philadelphos in Alexandria in the early second century BCE were almost surely of this Greek design (Ath. 5.197a–b). After his decisive victory in 167 BCE near Pydna in Pieria, Lucius Aemilius Paullus appropriated from the rich kingdom of Macedon an extensive array of costly vessels as well as valuable statues, paintings, and rare textiles (Livy 45.33.5–7). Aemilius Paullus’s great victory ended the Third Macedonian War and the centuries-long Macedonian monarchy. Seized as booty, Livy says, were vessels made of gold, silver, bronze, and ivory that had been manufactured in the royal palace in Pella with great care (factorum ingenti cura) for continuous use by the household of King Perseus. (In contrast, Livy notes, the precious vessels stored in the palace at Alexandria were there only for display). Among the seized Macedonian vessels, some were almost surely Hellenistic shapes familiar to us today. By the time Perseus inherited the kingdom of Macedon in 179 BCE, his father Philip V (222–179 BCE) had greatly strengthened the kingdom. Philip had increased revenues by intensive cultivation of the countryside as well as by expanded trade, which yielded greater harbor dues. He had also reopened long disused mines and opened new ones in many places (Livy 39.24.2). While Philip’s predecessor, Demetrios II (239– 229 BCE), had coined only in bronze, and Antigonus Doson (229–222 BCE) probably not at all, Perseus coined in gold, silver, and bronze.12 While some of the vessels seized by Aemilius Paullus may have been heirlooms—produced during the reigns of earlier monarchs—an extensive production of metalwork in Macedonia throughout the late third and first half of the second centuries BCE seems very likely.

 Dunbabin 2003, 38–40 and 42, fig. 20.  Faust 1989, 42, with Kartes 1 and 2. Faust (1989, 41–47, with Beilage, no. 9–16) dates her fulcrum form II to throughout the second century BCE.  Plin. HN 34.9. For kline manufacture on Delos see Faust 1989, 26–27, with earlier literature, n. 94; Barr-Sharrar 1998.  Hammond 1989, 362.

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Before proceeding to Rome, the victorious Paullus held an elaborate festival at Amphipolis with sumptuous banquets for official representatives from Greek cities. With the exception of the captured Macedonian bronze shields, which were loaded onto Paullus’s ships, the arms of the defeated forces were burned in a great fire in dedication to Mars, Minerva and other appropriate gods. The rest of the collected Macedonian booty was exhibited to all assembled before being loaded onto the Roman ships (Livy 45.32.8–33.7). The precious vessels were displayed along with the statues, paintings, and rare textiles, of which some items, perhaps most, may well also have been taken from the royal palace. Somewhat later, Paulus’s troops were given permission to plunder those cities of Epirus that had allied with Perseus. After the booty from Epirus had been sold—including gold and silver collected from houses and temples and taken to the civic center by the people themselves—distributions of money were paid to the soldiers. Despite the soldiers’ dissatisfaction with how little money they were awarded given the value of the goods they had plundered, and the debate this provoked in the Senate (Livy 45.35.5– 39.20; Plut. Vit. Aem. 29.4–31.10), Paulus was awarded a triumph in November of 167 BCE that lasted three days (Plut. Vit. Aem. 32–34). Plutarch recounts the paraded treasures. On the first day, there were 250 chariots carrying statues, paintings, and colossal figures. On the second day, the captured Macedonian arms, artfully arranged in piles, rattled as the wagons passed. Among these were freshly polished Macedonian bronze shields, helmets, breast plates and greaves, plus Thracian quivers and wicker shields, as well as horse bridles, swords and long Macedonian spears (sarissai). Three thousand men followed bearing coined silver in 750 vessels. Other men carried silver kraters, rhyta, and bowls, as well as phialai and kylikes, all outstanding in size and in the depth of the relief of their tooled ornamentation. On the third day, Plutarch continues, trumpeters opened the procession in the morning with the Roman battle cry. Sacrificial oxen with gilded horns followed, 120 in number, led by young men, while boys attending them carried gold and silver cups for pouring libations. Then came porters of 77 vessels, each of which held three talents of coined gold, and, notably, a phiale commissioned by Aemilius Paullus himself, in his own honor, for the occasion. Made of ten talents of gold and decorated with precious stones, the phiale was presumably the work of a Macedonian craftsman, the addition of precious stones suggesting eastern influence. This was followed by bearers of bowls called Antigonids and Seleucids, as well as other bowls referred to as Theracleian. Only the Theracleian bowls are familiar from other ancient sources. They were said to be a type of kylix named after the Corinthian silversmith who invented the shape and appear to have been made of various materials (Ath. 11.470e-f). Antigonids and Seleucids may have been distinctive shapes of drinking vessels invented for use

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by the royal members of those monarchies.13 Notably included in the parade of vessels was all the gold tableware that had been used by King Perseus in his royal palace at Pella. Livy (45.50.1–3) says the total of all the gold and silver carried in Aemilius’s triumphal procession was one hundred and twenty million sesterces, adding that this huge sum of money had been accumulated from the output of Perseus’s mines and other revenues within the thirty years since Macedonian king Philip V’s war with the Romans (194 BC). To the gold and silver from Perseus’s palace in Pella listed in Plutarch’s account Polybius adds the palatial furniture and more than 6,000 talents of gold and silver from the treasury (Polyb. 18.35.4–5). Further, Polybius tells us that Aemilius Paullus did not covet any of the king’s treasure, but gave it all to others (18.35.4–5). Perhaps these gifts were to individual families for private use. Livy tells us that Perseus and his son Alexander were taken to Alba Fucens in custody together with Bithys, son of Cotys, king of Thrace, who shortly thereafter ransomed the two royal sons (Livy 45.42.4). Perseus remained a prisoner and later starved himself to death. Alexander survived in Rome to distinguish himself there with his mastery of embossing and the execution of fine metal work. He also learned to speak and write Latin and became secretary to Roman magistrates (Plut. Vit. Aem. 37). The specific mention of the young Macedonian prince’s own mastery of embossing techniques, together with the earlier commissioning of a gold phiale encrusted with gems by Aemilius for the consecration of his victory, suggest both developed skills in the craft in Macedonia as well as changing tastes, reinforcing the view that high-level metalworking had continued in that region. This historical information is important, as the actual survival of silver and bronze vessels dated to the later third and second centuries BCE from ancient Macedonia is so far surprisingly minimal compared to the great amount of metalwork discovered from the two previous centuries. Excavations dated to the fourth century BCE have yielded 60% of the metal vessels discovered in Macedonia, those of the fifth century BCE 11%, and of the sixth century 25%; of that total, 73% of are made of bronze, 19% of silver, and a slim 0.3% of gold.14 In contrast, only 3% of all metal vases found in ancient Macedonia can be dated to the third century BCE, and only 1% to the second century BCE.15 This circumstance must be related to significant changes in burial practices, perhaps somehow the result of the intervention of Roman power. While a substantial migration of Macedonian craftsmen to Alexandria and Athens, as well as other centers of power following the death of Alexander the Great in 331 BCE, undoubtedly reduced their numbers in the north, the continuing wealth of the kingdom and its royal household had been entirely sufficient to continue an al The Seleucid bowls discovered in Cività Castellana now in Naples may be pertinent; see note 18 below.  Sideris 2016, 492, fig. 2.  Sideris 2016, 492–494 with fig. 1. See also Zimi 2011, Appendix II: Table of Chronologies, 134–136.

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ready established demand. The metalware discovered in the fourth- and early thirdcentury Macedonian tombs was not produced for burial, but for use. The fact that Perseus’ royal tableware was made of gold is significant. With the notable exception of the heavy gold larnakes in the tomb in Aigai of Philip II (336 BCE), who coined in gold,16 the gold items found in fourth- and early third-century graves in Macedonia are wreaths and jewelry, the finds of which have been extensive. Plutarch’s explicit mention of Alexander’s embossing skills suggests the historian’s recognition of the significance of this specialized aspect of toreutic art. Many silver vessels were described as embossed by Livy in his account of the second of three days of triumph decades earlier celebrating Titus Quinctius Flaminius, victor of the Second Macedonian War in 194 BCE (Livy 34.52.4–6; Plut. Vit. Flam. 14).17 Embossed silver vessels from Greek Asia are conspicuously present among the purloined treasures in the triumphs of M. Acilius Glabrio in 190 BCE after his victory at Thermopylae over Antiochus III and the Aetolians, and the triumph of Scipio Asiaticus the following year after the final defeat of Antiochus III, at whose court many of them may have been produced (Livy 37.59.4–5). Three second-century BCE, partially gilded double-layered silver cups with elaborately embossed and engraved outer elements of decorative leaves and tendrils with settings for gemstones—discovered in a tomb in the ancient city of Falerii Novi (close to Civita Castellana in southern Italy)—have been recognized as Seleucid in workshop origin (one, Fig. 3).18 They could well have entered Italy by means of one of these Roman triumphs. It is highly likely that Macedonian craftsmen migrated to Rome and other areas with an assured demand for luxury goods, following those already settled in Alexandria or other Hellenistic capitals as early as the end of the fourth century. Pliny tells us that the Macedonian painter Heraclides went to Rome after the defeat of Perseus in 167 BCE (Plin. HN 35.40.135), and there were no doubt others well aware of their opportunities in a city with wealthy patrons and an increasing interest in Greek luxury tableware, sculpture, and painting. Aside from the division of the kingdom of Macedonia into four sections, the Roman laws enacted after the victory of Aemilius Paullus ordained that all members of the Macedonian elite be removed to Italy under penalty of death. This group, numbering in the tens of thousands, included all military leaders, all those who had held office under the king or were connected to the royal

 Le Rider 1977; Arnold-Biucchi 2006, 48.  The First Macedonian War had been concluded in 205 BCE, won by Rome mostly by proxy thanks to the cooperation of Greek allies. These allies importantly included the Aetolian League and, to some extent, Attalus I of Pergamon. Gruen 1990, 27, 29–30.  Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, inv. 25284, 25285 (both diam. 18.3 cm), and 25488 (diam. 13.4 cm). Most recently, Picón and Hemingway 2016, 244–245, cat. no. 182a-c. (Text, Fiorenza Grasso). Pfrommer (1987, 115–116, pl. 56–57) may have been the first to assign them to a Seleucid workshop as Pergamene, not Tarentine, as originally believed.

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Fig. 3: One of three gilded silver Seleucid cups found in Falerii Novi (Cività Castellana), second century BCE. Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, inv. 25284. Diam. 18. 3 cm. With permission of the Ministero della Cultura—Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli.

court, and all sons of these men who were over 15 years old (Livy 45.32.3–6).19 Livy says that some of these individuals were exceedingly rich. Such an influx of wealthy Macedonians to Italy could well have increased the market for luxury products. The relocation to Rome of the Athenian painter/philosopher Metrodorus was at the invitation of Aemilius Paullus, who requested an artist to both embellish his processional triumph and educate his children (Plin. HN 35.40.135). By the second half of the second century BCE, Macedonia had been annexed as a province and, after defying Rome, the Achaean League had also been defeated. Thanks to tributes and indemnities from conquered areas, principally from Carthage, Macedonia and Syria, the financial resources of the Roman state were now formidable. In 146 BCE, Mummius defeated Corinth, and in 133 BCE Attalus III died, having bequeathed the kingdom of Pergamon to Rome. With the Pergamon bequest, citizens could buy luxury products of King Attalus’s personal effects at auctions in Rome (Plin. HN 33.52.149–150). Impressive triumphs in the first century BCE followed the victories of Pompey the Great in North Africa in 81 or 80 and Spain in 71. His third triumph, in 61 BCE, celebrating the definitive victory over Mithridates VI Eupater, ruler of the kingdom of Pontus in Asia, especially enhanced Pompey’s fame and was notable for its display of  Daubner 1950, 142.

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extravagant booty, including vessels of gold and silver, paraded over a period of two days (Plut. Pomp. 45.1–4). Mary Beard has suggested that a well-known bronze dinos with a Greek inscription around the neck identifying it as a gift to a group of his subjects from Mithridates VI Eupator (reigned 120–63 BCE) may have survived from Pompey’s third triumphal procession. The dinos was found in Anzio in the eighteenth century and is now in the Capitoline Museum in Rome.20 While the Oppian sumptuary law of 215 BCE, which (among other restrictions) limited the amount of gold or silver plate that could be legally held by Roman households, had been repealed in 195 BC (Livy 34.8.3), a number of sumptuary laws and degrees in 181 BCE and over the next 40 years again sought to limit conspicuous private consumption, luxurious entertainment, and even dress. These laws limited triumphs to those who held the consulship but could not have prevented the distribution of foreign booty from what Crawford calls “an unprecedented flood” of victories of men who held only the praetorship.21 The laws themselves are a telling indication of the scale of private household wealth during this period, an unknown but significant amount of which no doubt originated as booty from successful wars. While specifics regarding shapes of vessels are few, and there is almost certainly hyperbole regarding numbers, there is no reason to doubt that this appropriated material included the luxurious and costly gold and silver Greek tableware described by the ancient historians. The lavish lifestyle of the wealthiest Roman Republican families who built villas along the shores of the Bay of Naples in the first century BCE following Pompey’s expulsion of the pirates can be ascertained to a meaningful extent by what survived after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE. Some sculpture survives, in both marble and bronze, as does a certain amount of valuable silverware, notably the famous hoard from the Villa of Publius Fannius Synistor at Boscoreale now in the Musée du Louvre and dated to the end of the Republican period.22 Perhaps the most telling proof of the idealized life of otium, or cultivated leisure, established by these elites before the Augustan period is the villa architecture itself. With colonnaded courtyards, porticoed walkways, gardens, and elaborately painted interiors, these establishments were designed to suggest the extravagance and grandeur of the royal building complexes and palaces of the Hellenistic kingdoms conquered by Rome.23 Within the elegant schemes of the most complex of our modern categories of ancient Roman mural painting, the illusionistic Second Style, painted between 80 and 20

 Beard 2007, 10–11, with fig. 2. Rome, Musei Capitolini, inv. MC 1068. Dated there to the latesecond/early-first century BCE. It was restored with modern handles and a foot, which distorts its original profile.  Crawford 1978, 46, 76; Crawford (1978, 75–76) places the sumptuary laws in the context of the second-century aristocracy’s need “to preserve the cohesion of the group.”  Baratte 1986.  The most obviously analogous feature is the colonnaded peristyle courtyard (Zarmakoupi 2014, 19, with reference to Aigai and extensive related bibliography, and passim).

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BCE, with its simulated columns of colored marble and its stucco reliefs, are carefully painted trompe l’oeil images of silver and bronze vessels, as well as some, notably, that appear to be gold. Many of the shapes are highly suggestive of, if not actual testimonies to, both the artists’ and the patrons’ familiarity with the booty seized during the Roman military victories of the previous centuries. Two well-studied Republican villas that brilliantly illustrate the integration of motifs of precious vessels within the schemes of their painted walls are Villa A at Oplontis in Torre Annunziata and the Villa of Publius Fannius Synistor in Boscoreale. The Second Style walls of both villas are believed to have been painted by the same group of painters, named in modern scholarship the “Boscoreale Workshop.”24 While Villa A at Oplontis has walls in the Third and Fourth Style as well, seven rooms retain their Second Style frescoes, dated to 50 BCE.25 Within the complicated Second Style schemes of Villa A at Oplontis, multiple images signify Roman victories. On the west wall of Triclinium 14 (Fig. 4), the panels on the bases of the gilded or gold tripod candelabras—tall incense burners—are decorated with slender personified Nikai.

Fig. 4: The west wall of Triclinium 14 in Villa A at Oplontis, 50 BCE. Photo: courtesy of The Oplontis Project, the University of Texas at Austin.

 Gazda 2016, 39; Gee 2016, 88–89, with n. 11; and Gazda/Clarke 2016, passim.  Gee 2019, 271.

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The candelabras stand between painted marble columns alternating between those imitating variegated giallo-antico and others suggesting plain yellow marble, all lavishly ornamented with gem-studded gold vines. Elsewhere in Villa A, on the west wall of Atrium 5, personified gold Nikai grace the upper panels of simulated doors. On the same wall in Atrium 5, excavators identified miniature trophy monuments in the shape of silver cistae decorated with gold and gem-studded wreaths.26 Silver imagines clipeatae hang above the cistae. An embroidered purple and gold fillet is draped on an altar. Silver imagines clipeatae can also be found on the west wall of Triclinium 14 (Fig. 4). Hanging deep within alcoves on either side of the three central panels, they are framed by groups of elaborate columns and arched spandrels. Such allusions to Roman military victories are not unique to the walls of Villa A at Oplontis. In a lower level of the Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum, explicit references to Roman military victories can be found in stucco reliefs depicting piles of arms.27 Specific to one of the defeated Hellenistic kingdoms, highly polished bronze or gold shields emblazoned with the distinctive starburst of Macedonia hang conspicuously over gates to fictive sanctuaries. A Macedonian shield can be seen above the entrance to an open colonnaded space with an elaborate central tholos in the central panel on the west wall of Triclinium 14 of Villa A at Oplontis. (Fig. 4) Garlands hang symmetrically from the shield to meet the outer edges of the doors to the sanctuary.28 Macedonian shields appear with equal prominence on both the east and west walls of Cubiculum M of the Villa of Publius Fannius Synistor at Boscoreale (now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), again suspended over painted gates leading to fictive sanctuaries with tholoi housing statues (west wall, Fig. 5). In Oecus 15 of Villa A at Oplontis, the trompe l’oeil depiction of six highly polished bronze shields without identifying emblems, placed in a row, side-by-side on an elaborately molded shelf supported by consoles, has been restored from painted fragments.29 Coincident to these evocations of Roman military conquests, trompe l’oeil Greek gold, silver and bronze vessels placed within the designs of the Second Style rooms in Villa A at Oplontis and the Villa of Publius Fannius Synistor at Boscoreale convincingly imply Hellenistic models. Subtle differences from extant examples of these vessels can be reasonably explained by the paucity of material surviving from the latethird and second centuries BCE and, to some extent, by the relative freedom of the recording painters to elaborate artistic details or misunderstand decorative concepts. It is not a stretch of the imagination to suppose that these painted images reference

 Gee 2019, 356, note 3, who adds a reference to a frieze of arms that once decorated the uppermost zone in Triclinium 14.  McAlpine 2016, 40; Ehrhardt 2012, 258, fig. 53.  Gee 2019, 274, fig. 1.9; Gazda and Clark 2016, 35, fig. 2.9. Others can be found in atrium 5.  Gazda 2016, 40. Gazda and Clarke 2016, “catalogue of architectural components,” no. 45–73, 200–202; reconstruction, 201.

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Fig. 5: The west wall of cubiculum M in the Villa of Publius Fannius Synistor, Boscoreale, 50 BCE. New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund 1903, inv. 03.14.13a–g. Photo: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

booty acquired directly or indirectly from the Roman conquests of the preceding few centuries, given that these very events seem to be celebrated elsewhere on the same walls. Although not specifically described in any of the accounts of paraded Roman booty, the tripod candelabras with their relief Nikai in Triclinium 14 in Villa A at Oplontis, previously discussed and painted to appear gold or gilded, are clearly references to Greek metal versions that inspired the many neo-Attic marble copies dated as early as the late-second century BCE; among the earliest are the five marble candelabras from the Mahdia shipwreck, believed to have been made for the Roman market in Athens.30 Besides the gold tripod candelabras, also noteworthy on the west wall of Triclinium 14 in Villa A at Oplontis are two large silver kantharoi with high, gracefully arching handles. The kantharoi are depicted symmetrically on elevated shelves deep within narrow alcoves that immediately flank the entrance to the open colonnaded space containing a tholos (Fig. 4).31 Their contexts make it clear that these vessels are much larger in scale than the kantharoi used for drinking, a shape invented in Athens at least as early as the first decades of the fifth century BCE that continued to be produced in related forms throughout the Hellenistic period. We know from a 42 cm high silver vessel of associated shape surviving in the famous Hildesheim hoard that the kantharos was considerably enlarged in format at some point, possibly as early as the mid- to late-third century BCE (Fig. 6).

 Cain and Dräger 1994.  Details in Gazda 2016, 35, fig.2.9; McAlpine 2016, 112, fig. 10.2.

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Fig. 6: Silver kantharos/krater from the Hildesheim hoard. Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Antikensammlung. HI 63, Inv. Nr. Misc. 3779, 63. Diam. 34.7 cm. H (from its base, with the reconstructed stem and foot, to the lip) 42–42.4 cm. H with high swung handles, 52 cm. Photo: Johannes Laurentius.

Since the well-known Greek fifth- and early fourth-century volute and calyx krater shapes had disappeared in both metal and pottery by that time,32 the amplification of the kantharos shape almost certainly served as a container from which wine was distributed at banquets and drinking parties. While the stems of the two painted Oplontis Villa A kantharoi are higher and fluted, their bowls fuller, higher, and more elaborately ribbed than those of the Hildesheim kantharos, both in perceived size and in general aspect—a lower rounded bowl, high walls with a wide mouth, and, notably, two gracefully rising handles forming spirals as they meet the lip—they may be appropriately compared to the large silver kantharos from Hildesheim. The Hildesheim vessel, however, with its simplified profile is considerably later in date than the probable mid-second century BCE prototypical inspiration for the Oplontis painted kantharoi.33 On both the east and west walls of Cubiculum M from the Villa of Publius Fannius Synistor are pairs of large hydriai (Fig. 5). These vessels are presented not as isolated items of luxury like the silver kantharoi and other vessels painted on walls in both this Villa and Villa A at Oplontis, but rather are integral parts of the colorful and complex fictive architectural setting of the bedroom. At the level of the dado on each of these two opposite walls, these hydriai are intended to be understood as gilded silver or, most likely, gold. Each is placed in the center of a marble table turned toward the

 The character of the Greek symposium, an activity in which both Classical vessels had been central, changed profoundly over that century, no doubt precipitating the end of the traditional production of both shapes (see Rotroff 1996).  Dates for the individual silver vessels from the Hildesheim treasure (now in the Antikensammlung, Berlin) have been widely debated. Earlier published dates for the kantharos vary from late Hellenistic to Claudian: Niemeyer 2007. For the treasure, most recently Niemeyer and Schwarzmaier 2021, 97–145, no. 34; for the kantharos/krater, Misc. 3779, 63, see 115 and 141–142, dated to the Augustan period.

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gated entrance to an elaborate fictive sanctuary, the central scene of the two analogous panels. On the closest visual plane, hanging from the high horizontal beam between two red columns with elaborate Corinthian capitals and shafts encircled with delicate gold wire ornamented with gems, is a polished Macedonian shield with its unmistakable starburst emblem. Visible above and beyond the painted bronze sanctuary doors on the west wall, illustrated here (west wall, Fig. 5) and framed by two pillars supporting an entablature, is an archaistic marble statue of the goddess Hecate holding a burning torch in each raised hand in perfect symmetry; the statue of the goddess on the east wall is different in both style and posture.34 Focusing on this panel on the west wall, illustrated here (west wall, Fig. 5), it is clear that the hydriai are depicted from the back, each with its single high vertical handle toward the viewer, and that the handles are joined to each vessel within the mouth rather than to the neck or lip. The bodies of the hydriai are oval in shape, with rounded shoulders and vertical ribbing in high relief covering their lower walls. Replacing the canonical pair of small horizontal handles on this vessel shape are two short upright handles ending in volutes that are attached to decorative bands that encircle each hydria’s body just above the ribbing. Most elaborate and unusual, and further distinguishing the two vessels as pure gold, are large calyxes of gold acanthus leaves that cradle the base of each hydria’s bowl where it meets the top of a shortstemmed foot. The extravagantly rich appearance of the two hydriai suggests a revered, perhaps venerated, aspect in keeping with their placement at the entrance of a sanctuary. Gold calyxes of similar leaves can also be found at the base of each of the red Corinthian columns that flank this scene on both east and west walls. High above the gold hydriai and on top of the elaborate architectural structure that frames the goddess in the fictive space beyond the immediate ambiance are two silver hydriai, one at each end of a low rectangular base rendered as red marble. The tops are cut off by the horizontal frame that demarcates the nearer area, but, like their gold counterparts, the lower areas of their oval bodies are ribbed below an ornamented encircling zone. Unlike the gold hydriai, however, on the shoulder of each silver one are the canonical horizontal handles. A filet is tied on each handle, the lengths blowing outward in an ethereal breeze.35 As was true of most metal vessels, over time hydriai were produced with more elongated proportions, becoming more slender. A Hellenistic bronze hydria with a distinctive conical lid in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York has been dated broadly to the third century BCE.36 While the greatest number of surviving hydriai are examples in bronze dating from the sixth through the fourth centuries BCE, the shape continued to be produced in bronze throughout the Hellenistic period.  See Bergmann et al. 2010, 31, fig. 50. The masks hanging from the entablature differ, as do some other minor details in this area.  See Meyer 2010, 38, fig. 76.  New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 66.11.12a, b; Picon/Hemingway 2016, 160, no. 68.

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Besides their practical use as containers for water and their significance in religious and ceremonial ritual, hydriai were used as burial urns. One of the earliest surviving examples of this phenomenon is the silver hydria used for the burial of ashes from the well-known “Prince’s Tomb” in ancient Aigai, its walls uniquely cut below the shoulder and hinged for access to the interior. The Aigai Tomb is almost surely that of Alexander IV of Macedonia, who was about 13 at the time of his death in 310 BCE. When this silver hydria was discovered in 1977 in its marble sarcophagus within the tomb chamber, the wreath of gold oak leaves and acorns on its shoulder connoted the royalty of its occupant.37 The use of a hydria of precious metal for burials was not a novelty either at that time or later. According to Plutarch, the ashes of Eumenes, who served in the court of Philip II and died in 316/315 BCE (Plut. Vit. Eum. 18.19), those of Demetrios Poliorcetes, a successor of Alexander the Great who died in c. 282 BCE (Plut. Vit. Dem. 53), as well as those of the Roman general Marcus Claudius Marcellus, who died in battle with Hannibal (Plut. Vit. Marc. 30)38 were all buried in hydriai. All vessels were of silver except for the hydria of Demetrius, which was made of gold. When Ptolemy Philopater died at the end of the third century BCE, the silver hydria (kalpis) that held his ashes was placed in the Alexandrian royal treasury (Polyb. 15.25.6–11). Traditionally suggestive of consecration, the pairs of gold and silver hydriai on the Second Style west and east walls of Cubiculum M in the Villa of P. Fannius Sinistor at Boscoreale were an appropriate choice in the environment of fictive temples.39 While it is conceivable that the two uncanonical rising vertical handles on the gold hydriai were inventions of the artist, they may reflect actual formal developments in the hydria during the late-third and second century BCE. While the handles of the third-century bronze hydria in the Metropolitan Museum of Art previously mentioned are horizontal, they curve upward noticeably and may be suggestive of such a tendency. Entirely plausible technically, though exaggerated artistically, are the calyxes of gold acanthus leaves painted with apparent flourish at the join of the body of each gold hydria to the top of the short stem of its foot. Cradling the rounded bottoms of the bowls of these calyxes these features appear delicate, even fragile in their resemblance to jewelry. Before dismissing these as fanciful, we must look closely at the late Hellenistic silver krateriskos from the famous Treasure of Taranto (Fig. 2), where an

 Andronikos 1984, 212, figs. 203, 214.  Plutarch says that Marcellus was buried in a kalpis, but in ancient literature the terms hydria and kalpis seem to have been used indiscriminately. Accounts of Marcellus’s burial vary; Livy reports he was buried on the battlefield where he died (Livy 27.28.) In modern scholarship, a kalpis is a hydria of distinctive shape and single ornamental motif developed in the first half of the fifth century BCE. In bronze kalpides, the single motif is a siren attachment under the handle (Sowder-Koch 2009, 170–194).  See the hydria in the fourth-century Greek painting of Orestes and Pylades in the sanctuary of Artemis in Taurus on a Fourth Style wall in the Casa del Citarista in Pompeii.

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identical artistic concept can be found in relief. There, caressing the tapering bottom of the bowl of the tall, slender silver vessel of the mid-second century BCE as it joins its tall stem, is a calyx of acanthus leaves. When the Second Style decoration of the walls of Villa A at Oplontis was painted, as well as that of the Villa of Publius Fannius Synistor at Boscoreale, between 50 and 30 BCE, a century had passed since the battle of Pydna in 146 BCE and the destruction of the palace at Pella. These events were accompanied by the deportation of tens of thousands of elite Macedonians connected to the court, as well as the likely relocation of many more Macedonian families to Italy. Given the tantalizing references to the royal Hellenistic kingdom of Macedon, with multiple images of the famous shield with its distinctive starburst, reinforced by the decades of contemporary scholarly discourse concerning the possible Macedonian origin of the Second Style painting, it is tempting to suggest that the artists identified in modern scholarship as the Boscoreale Workshop were of Macedonian heritage. If so, by this time they had no doubt been sufficiently assimilated to retain interest, even pride, in their heritage without resentment of the loss of their former kingdom to Rome. What Plutarch describes as an eager embracing of opportunities in Rome on the part of Alexander, the son of the defeated Macedonian king Perseus, suggests a realistic accommodation to a new Italian life. The artists of these walls would represent the third generation of Macedonian repatriation.

Bibliography Andronikos, Manolis (1984). Vergina: The Royal Tombs and the Ancient City. Athens. Arnold-Biucchi, Carmen (2006). Alexander’s Coins and Alexander’s Image. Cambridge, MA. Baratte, François (1986). Le Trésor d’Orfèvrerie Romaine de Boscoreale. Paris. Barr-Sharrar, Beryl (1982). “Macedonian Metal Vases in Perspective: Some Observations on Context and Tradition,” in: B. Barr-Sharrar and E.N. Borza (eds.), Macedonia and Greece in the Fourth Century, Studies in the History of Art 10. Washington, D.C., 124–140. Barr-Sharrar, Beryl (1998). “Some Observations Concerning Late Hellenistic Bronze Production on Delos,” in: O. Palagia and W. Coulsen (eds.), Regional Schools in Hellenistic Sculpture. (Proceedings of an International Conference held at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, March 15–17, 1996. Oxford, 185–198. Beard, Mary (2007). The Roman Triumph. Cambridge, MA. Bergmann, Bettina / De Caro, Stefano / Mertens, Joan / Meyer, Rudolf (2010). Roman Frescoes from Boscoreale: The Villa of Publius Fannius Synistor in Reality and Virtual Reality. New York. Bergmann, Bettina (2016). “The Gardens and Garden Paintings at Villa A,” in: E.K. Gazda and J. Clarke (eds.), Leisure and Luxury in the Age of Nero: The Villas of Oplontis Near Pompeii. Ann Arbor, 96–110. Cain, H.-U. / Dräger, O. (1994). “Die Marmorkandelaber,” in: G. Hellenkemper-Salies, H-H. von Prittwitz und Gaffron and G. Bauchhenss (eds.), Das Wrack: Die antike Schiffsfund von Mahdia, vol. 1. Cologne, 239–257. Clarke, John / Muntasser, Nayla, eds. (2019). Oplontis: Villa A (“of Poppaea”) at Torre Annunziata, Italy, vol. 2: The Decorations: Painting, Stucco, Pavements, Sculptures. Humanities E-book, ACLS (Oplontis: Villa A [“of

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Poppaea”] at Torre Annunziata, Italy. vol. 1. The Ancient Setting and Modern Rediscovery [fulcrum. org]. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb90048.0001.001 [accessed 10 December 2023]). Crawford, Michael (1978). The Roman Republic. Cambridge, MA. Daubner, Frank (1950). “‘What on earth became of them all?’ Continuity and Change in Macedonian Society After the Roman Conquest,” in: E. Perego, R. Scopacasa, and S. Amicone (eds.), Collapse or Survival: Micro-dynamics of Crisis and Endurance in the Ancient Central Mediterranean. Oxford, 139–154. Dunbabin, Katherine M. D. (2003). The Roman Banquet: Images of Conviviality. Cambridge. Erhardt, Wolfgang (2012). Dekorations- und Wohnkontext: Beseitigung, Restaurierung, Verschmelzung und Konservierung von Wandbemalungen in den kampanischen Antikenstätten. Rome. Faust, Sabine (1989). Fulcra: Figürlicher und Ornamentaler Schmuck an Antiken Betten. Mainz. Gazda, Elaine K. / Clarke, John, eds. (2016). Leisure and Luxury in the Age of Nero: The Villas of Oplontis Near Pompeii. Ann Arbor. Gazda, Elaine (2016). “Villas on the Bay of Naples: The Ancient Setting of Oplontis,” in: E.K. Gazda and J. Clarke (eds.), Leisure and Luxury in the Age of Nero: The Villas of Oplontis Near Pompeii. Ann Arbor, 30–45. Gee, Regina (2016). “Layered Histories: The Wall Painting Styles and Painters of Villa A,” in: E.K. Gazda and J. Clarke (eds.), Leisure and Luxury in the Age of Nero: The Villas of Oplontis Near Pompeii, Ann Arbor, 85–95. Gee, Regina (2019). “Chapter One. The Period Styles and Period-Style Restorations,” J. Clarke and N. Muntasser (eds.), Oplontis: Villa A (“of Poppaea”) at Torre Annunziata, Italy, vol. 2: The Decorations: Painting, Stucco, Pavements, Sculptures, New York, 254–369. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb90048. 0002.001 [accessed 1 August 2024]. Gruen, Erich (1984). The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome. Berkeley. Gruen, Erich (1990). Studies in Greek Culture and Roman Policy. Berkeley. Gruen, Erich (1992). Culture and National Identity in Republican Rome. Cornell. Hammond, N. G. L. (1989). The Macedonian State: The Origins, Institutions and History. Oxford. Lehmann, Phyllis Williams (1979). “Lefkadia and the Second Style,” in: G. Kopcke and M. Moore (eds.), Studies in Classical Art and Archaeology: A Tribute to P.H. von Blankenhagen. Locust Valley, NY, 225–229. Le Rider, Georges (1977). Le monnayage d’argent et d’or de Philippe II frappé en Macédoine de 359 à 294 av. J. C. Paris. McAlpine, Lynley (2016). “Luxury in Fantasy and Reality: Exotic Marble in Villa A,” in: E.K. Gazda and J. Clarke (eds.), Leisure and Luxury in the Age of Nero: The Villas of Oplontis Near Pompeii, Ann Arbor, 111–118. Miles, Margaret M. (2008). Art as Plunder: The Ancient Origins of Debate about Cultural Property. Cambridge. Meyer, Rudolf (2010). “The Conservation of the Frescoes from Boscoreale in the Metropolitan Museum,” in: B. Bergmann, S. De Caro, J. Mertens, and R. Meyer (eds.), Roman Frescoes from Boscoreale: The Villa of Publius Fannius Synistor in Reality and Virtual Reality, New York, 33–46. Niemeyer, Barbara (2007). Trasologie an römischem Silber: Herstellungstechnische Untersuchungen am Hildesheimer Silberfund. BAR International Series 1621. Oxford. Niemeyer, Barbara / Schwarzmaier, Agnes (2021). Silber aus zwei Jahrtausenden in der Berliner Antikensammlung. Berlin. Picón, Carlos / Hemingway, Sean (2016). Pergamon and the Hellenistic Kingdoms of the Ancient World. New Haven. Pfrommer, Michael (1987). Studien zu Alexandrinischer und Grossgriechischer Toreutik Frühhellenistischer Zeit. Berlin. Rotroff, Susan (1996). The Missing Krater and the Hellenistic Symposium: Drinking in the Age of Alexander the Great. Christchurch.

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Sideris, Athanasios (2016). “Toreutics in Macedonia: Confronting Contextual Evidence, Stylistic Analysis and Unprovenanced Objects,” in: M. Giannopoulou and C. Kallini (eds.), ἠχάδιν: Festschrift for Stella Drougou, vol. 2. Athens, 487–508. Sowder-Koch, Amy (2009). Greek Bronze Hydriai. Diss. Emory University. Strootman, Rolf (2014). Courts and Elites in the Hellenistic Empires: The Near East After the Achaemenids, c. 330 to 30 BCE. Edinburgh. Von Bothmer, Dietrich (1984). A Greek and Roman Treasury. New York. Wuilleumier, Pierre (1930). Le trésor de Tarente. Paris. Zarmakoupi, Mantha (2014). Designing for Luxury on the Bay of Naples. Oxford. Zimi, Elini (2011). Late Classical and Hellenistic Silver Plate from Macedonia. Oxford.

Alessandra Giumlia-Mair

Metallurgical Innovations at the Time of Julius Caesar and Augustus Introduction For this volume in honor of John Pollini I tried to think of a topic regarding Augustus or at least his time. I realized only then that exactly in that period, and in a short span of time, several important innovations had been introduced in the field of metallurgy. I decided to try and collect information and data on how this happened. Studies on the economy of the period between the rise and dictatorship of Caesar and the Principate of Augustus have highlighted various topics, such as the trading patterns and relationships between economy and politics,1 the development of capital, the transformation of private agricultural areas,2 the “industrial” activities of senators and equestrians,3 etc. However, very little has been written on the significance of the introduction in this period of new alloys and metallurgical techniques and how they influenced the society and culture of the time. In this relatively short period, a new type of gold, completely new alloys, such as brass (an alloy of copper and zinc), the precious and decorative Corinthian alloy and other surface treatments on metals, as well as ornaments with niello became widely employed in the territory of the Roman state for the first time. This paper discusses the provenance of the metallurgical innovations introduced during this period of Roman history, their political significance, the meaning they had for common people, and the impact of these new materials and techniques on both the economy of the state and contemporary society.

Julius Caesar, Augustus and Brass The economically most significant innovation of this period is certainly the introduction of brass and leaded brass for coinage and military ornaments, such as horse fittings and details on weapons. The copper-zinc alloy of brass was known in Greek as oreichalkos, a name that means “copper from the mountains,”4 and it became aurichalcum (i.e., golden copper) in Latin. Before Roman times there were some sporadic

   

Hopkins 2017, 432–487 (Chapter 13: “The political Economy of the Roman Empire”). Roudart/Mazoyer 2015, 6–16. Livy 21.63. Halleux 1973, 78.

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cases of objects made of brass,5 but no systematic production. This was due to the fact that the metal zinc could not easily be smelted like copper, tin or lead, because of its volatility. The most common ores from which zinc can be obtained are smithsonite and sphalerite (both also known as calamine), and they are relatively common. However, as zinc sublimates as white vapor at temperatures above 906°C, it could not be reduced from its ores but rather evaporated to the higher region of furnace and the flue, where it condensed as zinc oxide. From Pliny (HN 34.182) we learn that when the ores from the mine of Laurion in Attica, exploited at different times for both argentiferous galena and copper, were smelted, some zinc oxide (lauriotis in Latin) was carefully scraped from the internal walls of the furnaces for medical uses. However, under certain conditions in the furnaces some of the vapors would condense and be deposited as silvery zinc metal on the colder parts of the wall in the furnace, from which the deposited metal could then be collected. This seems to have happened in Anatolia. Strabo (13.56) reports a much quoted passage from the now lost Philippica by Theopompus of Chios (378–320 BCE), which states the following:6 There is a stone in the neighborhood of Andeira which becomes iron when burnt. After being smelted in a furnace with a certain earth it yields droplets of false silver. This, added to copper, makes the alloy, which some call oreichalkos.

Andeira is today’s Balya Maden in Anatolia, where mixed silver-rich pyrite ores containing zinc were exploited for silver in antiquity. The slag obtained after smelting would be an iron-rich speiss (looking like iron), and on the walls of the furnace there would be droplets of condensed zinc with a silvery color: Theopompus’s “false silver.”7 As there was only a small amount of this metal, its alloy, oreichalkos, was considered precious and was almost as valuable as gold for many centuries,8 until the cementation process was invented. The cementation process employed in the Roman production of brass involved mixing zinc ores and filings or fragments of copper and heating the mixture to temperatures above 906°C, all the way up to around 1000°C, in a sealed crucible, so that the vaporized zinc would react with the copper and form brass rather than escaping as vapor.9 The temperature was then raised to melt and subsequently cast the brass. As experiments have shown, the zinc content of the brasses produced with this method can only reach 28–30%,10 although some publica-

 Craddock 1998, 1–3; Craddock/Eckstein 2003, 216–-217; Thornton 2007, 123–125; Işıklı/Altunkaynak 2014, 78.  Caley 1964, 18–25; Halleux 1973, 65; Craddock 1998, 3.  Halleux 1973, 65–66; Craddock/Eckstein 2003, 217–218.  See for instance Hes. Sc. 122; Hom Hymn 6.9; Plat. Criti. 114 e; 116b; 116d; 119c.  Craddock 1995, 295–296; Craddock/Eckstein 2003, 223–225.  Werner 1970, 259–269; Haedecke 1973, 229–232; Weisgerber 2007, tab. 2; Bourgarit/Thomas, 2015, 257–260.

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tions suggest higher percentages up to 40%.11 Exactly when and where this process was invented is not clear, but it might have happened in Anatolia. A literary source, the Pseudo-Aristotelian On Marvellous Things Heard (835a 9.62), reports that: “They say that Mossynecian copper is very shiny and white, not because there is tin mixed with it, but because some earth is combined and molten with it” (transl. Hett 1980, 263). This passage seems to describe the cementation process and the mixture of zinc ores with copper in the production of brass. The cementation process for brass spread rather fast in the Roman territories. In this process the zinc content in brasses becomes much higher than in the case of earlier pieces, which only contained 5–8% Zn, and were produced by using some zinc-rich copper ores or small amounts of Theopompus’s “false silver.”12 Around the second century BCE, the first brass coins were minted in Western Anatolia.13 The earliest known are those of Mithridates VI, King of Pontus, and similar ones in Phrygia and Bithynia.14 According to the studies of Treister, around 10% of the analyzed metal from the Bosporos area were made of brass.15 Mithridates’s brass coins are mainly of the highest denominations and can be dated to 96–66 BCE.16 They bear Mithridatic symbols, such as the eight-rayed star, the eagle on a thunderbolt, a head of Dionysus and a standing Dionysus with a crouching panther. After Mithridates’s death, no brass coins were minted for some time, though they must have been still in circulation. It is known that in 80 BCE Julius Caesar was sent as an ambassador to the newly restored Nicomedes IV, king of Bithynia, with the task of raising a fleet. Caesar remained in Bithynia for such a long time that rumors about a relationship between him and Nicomedes began to circulate (Suet. Iul. 2.49; Cass. Dio 43.20). Whatever the reason for his long stay in Bithynia, Caesar must have seen the shiny golden coins that were not made of gold, and in 44 BCE he became the first to use this new (and greatly overvalued) alloy for his coinage in Macedonia.17 If at the time of his residence in Bithynia as a young man he was anything like the person he was later during his Gallic campaigns, he was likely seeking information about this alloy and how it was produced, and then later used this knowledge to his advantage. It is perhaps significant that the earliest known Roman brasses18 have been found in areas in which Cae-

       

Welter 2003, 27–36. Craddock/Eckstein 2003, 221–222. Burnett et al. 1982, 263–268; Craddock et al. 1980, 53–64. Smekalova 2009, 236. Treister 1992, 70–74. Smekalova 2009, 239. Grant 1969, 13–19, 87–90; Bahrfeldt 1905, 32–43; Barbato 2015, 110–112. Istenič/Šmit 2007, 140–147; Šmit 2015, 256–260.

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sar’s legions were allocated: the VII, VIII, and X in northeastern Italy (today’s Friuli) and in today’s Slovenia, then the VII-X and XI-XV legions in Gaul.19 Brass objects had been produced in Celtic areas for quite a long time.20 It is possible that the metalworkers of the Roman army were able to observe the local smiths and learn some tricks and details about the process from the Gauls as well, or they might have taken with them local specialized metalworkers. The important mines of zinc ores at Stolberg, near Aachen, had apparently already been exploited before the Romans arrived.21 More zinc ore sources are found at Moresnet, where later the Romans produced brass.22 Traces of Roman brass production were also identified at Anthée, near Dinant in Belgium.23 It must be stressed that brass was not only used for Roman coins, but also for ornaments of scabbards, military brooches24 and horse fittings.25 This seems to demonstrate that this alloy and, possibly, the knowledge of the production process of brass was brought to the Roman territories by the army. In later periods, at the time of the Empire, the use of pure brasses was limited to the same kind of items (coins and decorations related to the army, such as military brooches, phalerae or in general horse fittings), while the zinc-containing alloys used by the population for small decorative items was mainly a mixture of brass and bronze (the copper-tin alloy) or leaded bronze (alloys of copper with tin and lead) with a lower zinc content.26 This seems to indicate recycling and suggests that the brass production was controlled and may have been a kind of state monopoly. When Augustus became emperor, he reformed the coinage in 23 BCE and had sestertii and dupondii made of brass minted in Rome (Fig. 1).27 Quite clearly, the production process of brass was by this time an acquired knowledge. From this moment on, this alloy or, better, the mixture of brass and bronze, became the favorite material for the production of small personal ornaments, such as brooches, fibulae and pins (possibly produced by melting and re-using the metal of coins) all over the Roman Empire, while the Roman legionaries impressed barbaric populations with their gold-colored ornaments on weapons and horse fittings and with their silvery (tinned) helmets and belt decorations.

 Pollard/Berry 2015, 24–26.  Craddock et al. 2004, 340; 343; Northover 1992, 264, 292–293, 295; Hamilton 1969, 43; Dungworth 1996, 410; Dungworth 1997, 907–908.  Gechter 1993, 165.  Morton 2019, 22.  Morton 2019, 22.  Istenič/Šmit 2007, 141–144.  Craddock/Lambert 1985, 145–158.  See for instance Riederer 1993, 45–52; Bayley 1990, 19–20; Giumlia-Mair 2001, 12–19.  Burnett 1987, 54; Burnett et al. 1982, 263–268.

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Fig. 1: Dupondius of aurichalcum from Gallia Narbonensis, ca. 8 BCE. Specimen from Münzkabinett, Staatliche Museen Berlin. Obverse: Augustus with laurel wreath to right and Agrippa with rostral crown and laurel wreath to left. Inscription IMP DIVI F. Reverse: Crocodile chained to a palm. Wreath at top. Inscription COL NEM. Drawing by AGM-Archeoanalisi.

The tinning of copper-based alloys had been known and employed since the Bronze Age,28 but in the Roman Imperial period this decorative technique became very common, notably on military items such as helmets, belts, greaves, and horse trappings. The items so treated look so much like silver that in the archaeological literature they are often described as “silvered.” A layer of tin can be applied in a simple way on the surface of copper-based alloys: the surface must be degreased, for example with strong vinegar or alum, and then wiped with a heated piece of tin so that the metal partly dissolves into the copper alloy and forms rather wear-resistant, silvery, intermetallic compounds that render the tinned objects very similar to silver.29 The only necessary precaution is to avoid leaded alloys, because if the tinning is applied on alloys containing high amounts of lead the silvery surface might be marred by opaque dark spots.30 Under Augustus the soldiers were paid with the shiny gold-colored new coins for the first time, and this must have meant huge savings for the finances of the state, since producing brass was much cheaper than extracting silver. The name aurichalcum, which suggested the presence of gold in the alloy, also rendered the coins more desirable to both soldiers and the general population. It was perhaps not just a kind of erroneous translation of the Greek term, but an intentional, perhaps slightly deceptive designation.

 Giumlia-Mair 2005, 360–362.  For more details see Giumlia-Mair 2005, 361.  Giumlia-Mair/Meriani 2016, 255–258.

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The Gold Coins of Augustus Augustus’s coinage reform established a precise value system by which both the weight and the material of the coins had a fixed value ratio: an aureus was worth 25 denarii, one denarius was worth 4 sestertii, one sestertius was worth 2 dupondii, one dupondius was worth 2 asses, one as was worth 2 semisses, and one semis was equivalent to 2 quadrantes. The distribution of the smaller coins, the ones that most Roman soldiers had in their purses, indicates that their production, always conducted according to the Roman weight standard, was regional.31 We know that the Senate controlled the issues of copper-based coinage, while Augustus kept the control of gold- and silver issues and continued with what afterwards became the common tradition of the Empire: the depiction of the emperor, a living person and not a deity, on the coins. Before him only Titus Quinctius Flaminius (second century BCE), Sulla (82 BCE) and Julius Caesar had issued coins with their portraits.32 There are three groups of aurei struck by Augustus: one struck 19–12 BCE by the tresviri monetales33 in Rome; the second, which was similar, was minted at Lugdunum (Lyon, France); and the third, of a different style and dated between 20 and 16 BCE, was perhaps minted in Spain or in Gaul (Fig. 2).34

Fig. 2: Aureus of Augustus from Lugdunum, c. 8–7 BCE. Obverse: laureate head of Augustus. Inscription CAESAR AVGVSTVS DIVI F PATER PATRIAE. Reverse: Gaius and Lucius Caesars, the grandsons of Augustus by Marcus Agrippa, Principes iuventutis. Inscription: AVGVSTI F COS DESIG PRINC IVVENT / C L CAESARES. Drawing by AGM-Archeoanalisi.

 Werz 2018, 180.  Rowan 2019, 24–56.  “The moneyers,” meaning the executive magistrates overseeing the minting; Hamilton 1969, 187–192.  Sutherland 1984, 58–63, 96–116.

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After 12 BCE, the aurei were not minted in Rome anymore, but at the mint of Lugdunum.35 The various issues can be distinguished not only by their style, but also by their different purities and by the trace elements present in the gold, i.e. palladium and platinum, not associated with the common platinum-group elements (or PGEs) inclusions found in many cases in antiquity in gold,36 which would be removed by cupellation. The platinum-group elements (or PGEs), platinum (Pt), iridium (Ir), osmium (Os), palladium (Pd), rhodium (Rh), and ruthenium (Ru) are six metallic elements that tend to occur together and have similar properties. In modern times they are very valuable, but in antiquity they represented a nuisance for goldsmiths, because they are very hard and clump together, forming small “knots” in the gold that hinder normal working with the precious metal. Both platinum and palladium would remain in the gold even after going through metallurgical processes, such as melting, cupellation, and cementation.37 The gold coins minted in Rome before 19–18 BCE show erratic platinum and palladium traces. It is very difficult to attribute their gold to a mine or to the re-melting of earlier coins, but their composition is similar to that of the issues of the late Roman Republic. The trace element concentration changes instead in the coinage of 19–18 BCE, and the aurei from Lugdunum are the ones made of the purest gold and with the lowest platinum and palladium content, with less than 20 ppm Pt and 15 ppm Pd.38 This large amount of very pure gold might have come from Spain among the spoils of war. In 19 BCE, after the Cantabrian wars, Augustus annexed the entire Iberian Peninsula to the Roman territories (Flor. 2.33). As pointed out by Blet-Lemarquand et al.,39 the gold that comes from the famous gold mines of Las Médulas in the northwest of Spain has a fineness of 99.5% and trace elements similar to those of the aurei minted at Lugdunum after the conquest of Spain. Being more malleable and ductile, a gold with this fineness would be easier to work, especially in the production of fine jewelry consisting of parts of gold foil, thin wires, granulation, filigree etc. As is known, private customers brought gold coins to their goldsmiths to have them melted down and used as materials for their ornaments. The better material might be reflected in the fine jewels of this period.

    

Blet-Lemarquand et al. 2015, 108. See for instance Ogden 1977, 53–70; Craddock 2000, 240–242; Giumlia-Mair et al. 2021, 411, fig. 9. Blet-Lemarquand et al. 2014, 91–93. Blet-Lemarquand et al. 2015, 107–113. Blet-Lemarquand et al. 2015, 112.

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The Famed Corinthium Aes A large number of ancient sources mention this special copper-based alloy and describe it as very precious, a material for luxury items. As discussed elsewhere,40 this alloy is artificially black-patinated in a chemical bath and consists of copper with small amounts of gold and silver, in addition to being always inlaid with precious metals or at least with metals in contrasting colors. By changing the amount of gold present in the alloy (between 0.3% and around 5%) and very small quantities of other elements, such as tin, arsenic and iron, the color of the patina can be changed from deep black to purple and/or blue-black.41 As a last technical annotation on this material, it is important to explain that Corinthium aes should not be translated as Corinthian “bronze,” as it has been for centuries, because it is not bronze (i.e., copper alloyed with tin) at all. This alloy only in some cases contains tin, because this element turns the color of the patina to brown. In Latin the term aes does not mean bronze, but any kind of copper and copper-based alloy; therefore the correct translation of Corinthium aes is “Corinthian (copper-based) alloy.” Once again, the most important text for understanding the nature of this material is Pliny: Quondam aes confusum auro argentoque miscebatur et tamen ars pretiosior erat (Plin. HN 34.5) Loeb translation: “Formerly copper used to be blended with a mixture of gold and silver and nevertheless the artistry was valued more highly than the metal.” Literal translation by A. Giumlia-Mair: “Formerly the copper alloy, molten together (i.e., prepared), was mixed with gold and silver, nevertheless the artistry was more valuable.”

This passage states without doubt that the alloy contained gold and silver, as do passages in the texts of other ancient authors such as Florus (1.32), Petronius (Sat. 50), Plutarch (Mor. 395b-396c), Quintilian (Inst. 8.2.8) and others. Pliny’s description of the alloy deserves further attention, however. We know from Pliny the Younger that Pliny hated wasting time: he even scolded his nephew for walking during his errands instead of having slaves carry him on a litter so that he could write or dictate his texts to a literate slave en route (Plin. Ep. 3.5.16). Pliny’s way of writing was concise and to the point, without redundant words. Why did he use a participle and an imperfect (confusum and miscebatur) with more or less the same meaning in this sentence? The reason is found in the special meaning of the verb miscere, that can signify “to mix” but also “to combine, to put together or assemble differ-

 Giumlia-Mair/Craddock 1993, 8–11; Craddock/Giumlia-Mair 1993, 116–118.  Giumlia-Mair/Craddock 1993, 7–8; Craddock/Giumlia-Mair 1993, 102.

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ent things, so that the single components can still be distinguished.”42 Therefore, in this case he uses confundo when he refers to the preparation of the alloy and misceo when referring to the silver and gold inlays. In Plutarch’s text discussing the Corinthian alloy (Plut. Mor. 395b-396c), the Greek equivalent of the Latin confundo i.e., syncheo, and that of misceo i.e., hypomignymi and the substantive mixis (possessing the same root) are employed in the same way: confundo and syncheo indicate the preparation of the alloy and misceo and hypomignymi refer to the application of gold and silver inlays. The fact that both Pliny and Plutarch employ equivalent terms in Latin and in Greek is significant and certainly not an accident. A further significant word is artysis (seasoning), which Plutarch employs when he mentions the patination treatment of the alloy. Pausanias (2.3.3) reports that the Corinthian alloy had to be dipped red-hot into the water of the Peirene spring (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3: The Peirene spring at Corinth. According to Pausanias, the metalworkers patinated their Corinthia by dipping them into the water of the spring. The artisans’ quarter is located immediately below the spring. Photo: author.

 Georges 1962, s.v. misceo; Georges et al. 1939, s.v. misceo; OLD s.v. misceo; TLL s.v. misceo.

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He uses the verb bapto, which is employed in several contexts to express the coloring or dyeing of materials such as hair, cloth, and wool, but also of metals, by dipping them into a liquid. In particular, the Alexandrian alchemists use this verb when describing the coloring of metals by dipping them into acids.43 Seneca (Brev. vit. 12.2) defines objects made of this material as aeruginosae lamellae, i.e. rusty pieces of sheet metal, obviously referring to the dark patination, while Asclepiades of Mirlea, quoted in the Deipnosophistae of Athenaeus, describes how the gold decoration was applied on the keyed surface of the Corinthian vessels (Ath. 488c-d). These sources confirm that these objects were patinated and inlaid. Another nearby passage in Pliny (HN 34.8) has created some confusion, mainly because of very free translations, which for many decades gave scholars the idea that this alloy had a silvery or golden color and, further, a color that was a mixture of silver and gold (in which case it would be quite difficult to explain what this mixture was meant to be and how it was possible to distinguish it from other alloys): Eius tria genera: candido argento nitore quam proxime accedens, in quo illa mixtura praevaluit; alterum, in quo auri fulva natura; tertium, in quo aequalis omnium temperies fuit. Loeb translation: “There are three kinds of this sort of bronze: a white variety, coming very near to silver in brilliance, in which the alloy of silver predominates; a second kind, in which the yellow quality of gold predominates, and a third kind in which all the metals were blended in equal proportions. (trans. Loeb) Literal translation by A. Giumlia Mair: “There were three kinds of it (of the Corinthian alloy): one very nearly approaching silver in brilliance, in which this combination (mixtura) predominated, the second, in which there was the yellow nature of gold, and a third, in which there was an equal blend of all.”

The description is slightly confusing, but the use of the word mixtura, referring to the inlays, and the analysis results of patinated and inlaid objects clarify the matter. There are rather clear differences in both composition and workmanship of the various alloys. Corinthium aes objects inlaid with gold normally contain only gold in the patinated alloy, those inlaid with silver contain silver in the alloy and show a pale but shiny beige-greyish patina, while the ones inlaid with both gold and silver also contain both gold and silver in the alloy and are purple-black.44 Immediately after this passage Pliny reports that “there is also a further kind of copper-based alloy (aes) for which it is not possible to give a recipe, although it is man’s handiwork, but it is an alloy produced by chance (or luck) on portraits and statues, valued for its color, and tending to the appearance of liver, and because of this it is called hepatizon (liverish in Greek). It is far (in value) from the Corinthian alloy, yet much more valuable than the bronze from Aegina and that from Delos which for a

 Berthelot 1967a, 44–46, 84–85; Berthelot 1967b, 222.  Giumlia-Mair/Craddock 1993, 27–29; Giumlia-Mair 2020, 13–14.

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long time were the most appreciated” (Plin. HN 34.8, trans. Giumlia-Mair). In this passage Pliny refers to the reddish tarnishing of copper-based alloys, which is due to the development of a cuprite patina on the surface that takes place in some cases after casting and, as Pliny rightly says, at that time it could not be controlled or created on purpose (as opposed to the accurately prepared and chemically treated Corinthium aes), but rather appeared by chance. Nevertheless, the mention of this “liverish” metal immediately after the description of the Corinthian alloy is significant: this comparison confirms the fact that Corinthium aes was patinated and purplish. From earliest times and for different cultures, such as those in the Near East, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Byzantium, and medieval Europe, the purple color has been related to royalty, gods, temples, and priests, just as the expensive Tyrian purple that was the prerogative of kings and temples. The secret of production of such patinated alloys was jealously kept by a few workshops, one of which must have been at Corinth. However, this alloy and related treatments (at least those for obtaining a black patinated alloy) are found already in Bronze Age Egypt, where the earliest examples are dated to the time of Amenemhat III (ca. 1800 BCE).45 In Egypt this material was continuously in use until Roman times.46 These alloys were also known in the Levant,47 and not much later they spread to the Mycenaean world.48 However, until the discovery of Corinthium aes in 199349 and the subsequent analysis of these objects, the Egyptian and Mycenean black-patinated items were thought to be decorated with niello.50 There can be little doubt that the knowledge of this special alloy was brought to Rome from Egypt, perhaps when Caesar brought Cleopatra to Rome or, at the latest, when Augustus took possession of Egypt, though there might have been some examples brought to Rome sporadically in earlier times. Pliny believed that the alloy had been invented at Corinth, after Mummius’s victory in 146 BCE, but there are other literary sources that mention Corinthia as existing already in the fourth to third century BCE (Ath. 128d, 199e, 236b; Cic. Verr. 2.4.97). However, the furor, the passion (Sen. Brev. vit. 12.2) of Roman collectors exploded in Augustan times. Suetonius mentions the text of a graffito on a statue of Octavianus Augustus: Pater argentarius, ego Corinthiarius (my father was a banker, I am a lover of Corinthian ware”). Apparently even Augustus collected objects made of this material, and Suetonius, who was not exactly his admirer, reports that the emperor exiled some collectors just because he wanted the precious objects from their collections.

 Giumlia-Mair/Quirke 1997, 95.  Giumlia-Mair 1996a, 313–315.  Giumlia-Mair 1996b, 340.  Giumlia-Mair/Craddock, 1993, 19–21. Giumlia-Mair 2012, 107–116; Giumlia-Mair 2013, 98–106; Giumlia-Mair/Kanta 2021, 296–297.  Giumlia-Mair/Craddock, 1993, 27–29; Craddock/Giumlia-Mair 1993, 114–115.  See below all details on niello.

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Notatus est et ut pretiosae supellectilis Corinthiorumque praecupidus et aleae indulgens. Nam et proscriptionis tempore ad statuam eius ascriptum est : pater argentarius, ego Corinthiarius, cum existimaretur quosdam propter uasa Corinthia inter proscriptos curasse referendos. (Suet. Aug. 70.2)

Pliny narrates that Cicero “was proscribed by Antony for no other reason than because he had refused to give up to Antony some pieces of Corinthian ware” (Plin. HN 34.6) but does not mention Augustus in this context. Be it true or not that Augustus proscribed people to obtain their precious objects, it is a fact that he had a collection of Corinthia (Corinthian ware) and special slaves, called a Corinthiis and, possibly, Corinthiarii, who looked after it.51 From various hints in the literature, we can infer that there were abundant imitations and fakes of this precious material, so that there were people who styled themselves as experts or connoisseurs of Corinthia. Pliny (HN 34.6) comments: Ac mihi maior pars eorum simulare eam scientiam videtur ad segregandos sese a ceteris magis quam intelligere aliquid ibi suptilius.

The Loeb translation is in this case rather literal: “And to me the majority of these collectors seem only to make a pretense of being connoisseurs, so as to separate themselves from the multitude, rather than to have any exceptionally refined insight in this matter.” Martial also mocks a certain “expert” Mamurra, who strolled through the rich markets of Rome pretending to despise the luxury items, beautiful slaves, and jewelry on display and “consuluit nares an olerent aera Corinthon (“consulted his nose whether the alloys had the Corinthian smell,” transl. A. Giumlia-Mair). At the end he bought two cheap cups (evidently not made of the precious Corinthian alloy) and carried them home himself because he had no slave who would do it for him (Mart. Epigr. 9.59.11). Any copper-based alloy has a distinctive smell, particularly when wet or heated, but this is perhaps not exactly the best way to distinguish the real Corinthia from the fakes or from niello. Normal Roman citizens had no way of distinguishing the real thing from the fakes before buying them. Only after possessing them could they check whether, after being scratched, the beautiful patina could return by itself, this being the only certain way of knowing if they had bought real Corinthia or a fake.52

 Vössing 2004, 512, n. 7 and n. 9.  Giumlia-Mair 2021, 506–509.

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Niello, Imitation of Corinthia? When Corinthia became the collector’s rage in Rome, niello began to appear as well. As mentioned above, for a long time any black material on metal was called “niello” and nobody thought about verifying this scientifically. Because of this, the purple or black artificially patinated Egyptian alloy hmty km,53 the Mycenaean daggers and cups54 and the Roman objects with black inlays discussed above (all of them decorated with rich and intricate inlays of precious metals) were considered niello despite the black material being metallic. Niello consists of metal sulfides and has a completely different texture and properties, but often it is rather difficult to differentiate it from black patinated items just by sight, without any analysis. However, while copper-based alloys are malleable i.e., can be deformed by hammering, niello is very fragile and will immediately break like glass under a hammer. The Corinthian alloy contains precious metals and was only produced by specialized metalworkers who knew the secret of its manufacture. It was extremely expensive, as we learn from Suetonius (Tib. 34). Pliny defines it as “more precious than silver and almost as precious as gold” (immo vero ante argentum ac paene etiam ante aurum Corinthio, Plin. HN 34.1). Most objects made of this material are rather small and use the black-patinated alloy, gold and silver only as inlay. It is therefore unsurprising that some metalworkers tried to imitate or falsify the black material. Niello seems to be exactly this: a Roman imitation of the much more expensive Corinthian alloy. The earliest examples of items decorated with niello are dated to the end of the sixth and beginning of the fifth century BCE and all come from the countries around the Black Sea. For example, there exist from this region several magnificent silver rhyta in the shape of deer heads, decorated with repoussé figures, gilding and with eyes, nose and mouth underlined with niello;55 however, this particular material never arrived at Rome. The distribution of objects decorated with this early kind of niello remained limited to these regions and, possibly, to more eastern countries like the Achaemenid Empire and further east still. The technique employed in these regions was rather different from the one that was in use in the Roman Empire at the time of Augustus; the Anatolian and Bulgarian metalworkers were able to apply the black sulfides on large and convex surfaces, while Roman niello was mainly applied as a paste into the channels cut onto the body of the metal object or, depending on its composition, poured as a liquid into a keying, for instance as on the fibula of Fig. 4.56 It is possible that metalworkers belonging to some of the legions serving in Asia Minor copied this technique from the local artisans. However, the production of black    

Giumlia-Mair/Quirke 1997, 102–108. Giumlia-Mair 2013, 98–106; Giumlia-Mair/Kanta 2019, 296. Giumlia-Mair 2012, 108–110; Giumlia-Mair 2023, 247–252; Giumlia-Mair/La Niece 1998, 140–142. Giumlia-Mair 1998, 109–110.

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Fig. 4: Roman brass fibula with niello decoration from Colonia Agrippina (Cologne, Germany). Photo: author.

Fig. 5: A depiction of Putrefactio or Melanosis (the production of black metal sulfides) in the alchemistic treatise Aurora consurgens, 14th-15th century CE. Sulfur (a boy) and copper (a girl) are half melted together (as in niello) and in the clutches of a huge and menacing black bird. They are standing in a heap of dead crows and holding a bat and a dead hare, all symbols of the death they will experience during the process of turning to sulphide. After Calvesi 1986, 27.

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metal sulfides (substantially niello) had been long-known and was employed as one of the processes described in the texts of the alchemists.57 The process involved mixing in a sealed crucible either small fragments or pieces of sheet, wire etc. of the desired metals (these could be silver, copper and lead as single metals or combinations) with sulfur fragments. The prepared mixture had to be heated until the metals combined with the sulfur, became metal sulfides and lost all metallic properties (i.e., malleability, ductility, sheen, and color), becoming black, fragile, and emitting a bad smell during the process. For this reason, the process was considered “the killing of metals” and was called in Greek melanosis (blackening) or “putrefaction,” because the soobtained sulfides appeared to be dead and putrefied (Fig. 5).58 After “putrefaction,” the dead metal had to be “resurrected.” To do this, it was heated to eliminate the sulfur. During reheating, it again emitted a smell of putrefaction, and after a while it reverted to metal. Reverting from putrefactio—as the status of metal sulfides was called in Latin still in the eighteenth-century—to metal was considered a kind of rebirth and purification of the metal. After this process the metal was more malleable and had better properties because many impurities originally present in it as trace elements (for instance iron, tin, lead, arsenic, bismuth, or antimony) had been vaporized during heating. It is quite understandable why, for a long time, the smelly and black metal sulfides that resulted from this process were not considered usable for any purpose, and certainly not to be employed as decoration. It took some hardened metalworker in the army or a sly, dodgy and dishonest artisan who knew something about the practice of the alchemists to overcome the strong superstitious belief that metal sulfides were dead matter and to use them as decorative material, imitating (or faking) Corinthium aes! A further proof that niello did not officially exist as decorative material is the fact that not even Pliny, who listed all sorts of strange materials in his encyclopedia, mentions it. We do not know if there was a name for this material in Roman times, because neither Pliny nor any other ancient author ever refer to it. The Latin term nigellum is medieval, and it became “niello” in the Renaissance.59 Pliny was an extremely precise and even pedantic scholar who discussed all sorts of curiosities, including rare and seldom-employed materials and techniques. Quite often the names of rare materials mentioned in his enormous encyclopedia constitute a Latin hapax i.e., for example the previously mentioned hepatizon, which was very rare and only appeared by chance. If Pliny does not mention niello as decorative material, we can safely assume that the artisans who applied it on their small decorative objects never confessed that what they were using was not one of the Corinthian alloys.

 Smith and Hawthorn 1974, 40, n. 57–58 and n. 89B.  Giumlia-Mair 2021, 508–509; Giumlia-Mair 2023, 252–253.  Giumlia-Mair 1998, 113.

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We have yet another proof: in the fifth century CE, when Orosius relates that Corinthium aes and its imitations were all called by the same name (Oros. 5.3). unde usque in hodiernum diem siue ex ipso siue ex imitatione eius aes Corinthium, sicut memoriae traditum est, et Corinthia uasa dicuntur.

All of this demonstrates that the niello that appeared on metal objects at the time of Augustus and later was nothing but a cheaper imitation of the expensive Corinthian alloy.

Conclusions The innovations in the field of metallurgy that were brought about in the restless times of Caesar and during the long period of peace and prosperity ensured by Augustus can only be compared in significance to the revolutionary introduction of bronze (the copper-tin alloy) around the middle of the Middle Bronze Age after the long period of use of arsenical copper, or to the introduction of iron to the European economy and to warfare at the end of the Bronze Age. To observe a similar revolutionary phenomenon in later times, we have to arrive at the invention of the Champion method for the production of cheaper and purer brass in 1723, the invention in 1856 of the Bessemer process for the first mass production of steel that led to the industrial revolution, or the discovery of aluminum in 1845. This period represents not only a thorough political and social change, but it also brought about scientific and technical inventions that greatly influenced and changed society. The introduction of brass for coinage, the dupondii and sestertii of shiny aurichalcum, used as salary for the soldiers, represented both a huge savings for the state and a way to display wealth to newly submitted populations or neighboring countries. Bright golden horse fittings and silvery helmets expressed wealth and power and were a way to impress barbarians. Common people also profited from this, because they suddenly had a new gold-like metal they could use for brooches and other personal ornaments. We can assume that for this they used the brass coins in circulation and had them melted down by metal artisans to produce their jewelry, while the rich upper class could afford the fine jewelry made of the purer Spanish gold. Both brass and the purer gold coming from Spain supported, enhanced, and evidenced how the Pax Augusti and the order created by the Emperor in the state spread prosperity to all social classes. The acquisition of Egypt as a personal possession of Augustus brought exotic materials to Rome and the furor for objects made of Corinthium aes spread out among rich Roman collectors like a virus, so that even Augustus got infected. Perhaps in a less peaceful and wealthy period this would not have happened in the same way. The “contagion” seems also to have spread to the less wealthy classes, who, in addition to the new gold-colored brass fibulae and ornaments, liked the idea of objects with the

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new black inlays consisting of niello but called “Corinthian” like the more precious examples of the upper classes. New alloys, purer gold and fine jewelry, new techniques, and new luxury items all contributed to the feeling of peaceful prosperity in the golden period of the Pax Augusti.

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W.J.H. Willems (eds.), Acta of the 12th International Congress on Ancient Bronzes, Nijmegen 1992, Nijmegen, 137–148. Craddock, Paul T. / Lambert, Jan (1985). “The composition of the trappings,” in: I. Jenkins, “A group of silvered-bronze horse-trappings from Xanten (Castra Vetera),” Britannia 16,141–164. Craddock Paul T. / Burnett, Andrew M. / Preston, Keith (1980). “Hellenistic copper-base coinage and the origins of brass,” in: W. A. Oddy (ed.), Scientific Studies in Numismatics, British Museum Occasional Paper 18, London, 53–64. Dungworth, David (1996). “The production of copper alloys in Iron Age Britain,” Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 62, 399–413. Dungworth, David (1997). “Roman Copper Alloys: Analysis of artefacts from Northern Britain,” Journal of Archaeological Science 24, 901–909. Gechter, Michael (1993). “Römischer Bergbau in der Germania Inferior: eine Bestandsaufnahme,” in: H. Steuer and U. Zimmermann (eds.), Archäologie in Europa, Montanarchäologie, Sigmaringen, 161–165. Georges Karl, E. (1806–1895, reprint 1962). Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch. Hannover. Georges Karl, E. / Calonghi, Ferruccio / Rivoire, Paul (1939). Dizionario della lingua Latina. Turin. Giumlia-Mair, Alessandra (1996a). “Das Krokodil und Amenemhat III aus el-Faiyum,” Antike Welt 4, 313–321. Giumlia-Mair, Alessandra (1996b). “Das Sichelschwert von Balata-Sichem. Prunkwaffe der Staatlichen Sammlung Ägyptischer Kunst München metallurgisch untersucht,” Antike Welt 4, 340. Giumlia-Mair, Alessandra (1998). “Hellenistic niello,” in: Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on the Beginning of the Use of Metals and Alloys (BUMA IV), May 25–27 1998, Kunibiki messe, Matsue, Shimane, Japan, 109–114. Giumlia-Mair, Alessandra (2001). “Technical studies on the copper-based finds from Emona,” Berliner Beiträge zur Archäometrie 18, 5–42. Giumlia-Mair, Alessandra (2005). “Tin-rich layers on ancient copper-based objects,” Arts and Surfaces SMT18, Surface Engineering 21.5–6, 359–367. Giumlia-Mair, Alessandra (2012). “The Enkomi cup: niello versus kuwano,” in: V. Kassianidou and G. Papasavvas (eds.), Eastern Mediterranean Metallurgy and Metalwork in the Second Millennium BCE, Conference in honour of James D. Muhly, Nicosia, 10–11 October 2009, London, 107–116. Giumlia-Mair, Alessandra (2013). “Development of artificial black patina on Mycenaean metal Finds,” in: A. Giumlia-Mair (ed.), Arts and Surfaces SMT26, Surface Engineering 29.2, 98–106. Giumlia-Mair, Alessandra (2020). “Plating and Surface Treatments on Ancient Metalwork,” Advances in Archaeomaterials 1, 1–26. Giumlia-Mair, Alessandra (2021). “Black inlaid Roman inkwells from Trieste, Italy,” in: C. Leger and S. Raux (eds.), Des objets et des hommes: Études offertes a Michel Feugère, Drémil-Lafage, 503–512. Giumlia-Mair, Alessandra (2023). “On the Origins of Niello,” Kratkiye soobshcheniya Instituta Arkheologii 271, 243–255. Giumlia-Mair, Alessandra / Craddock, Paul T. (1993). Das schwarze Gold der Alchimisten. Zaberns Bildbände zur Archäologie 11. Mainz. Giumlia-Mair, Alessandra / Quirke, Stephen (1997). “Black copper in Bronze Age Egypt,” Revue d’égyptologie 48, 95–108. Giumlia-Mair, Alessandra / La Niece, Susan (1998). “Early Niello Decoration on the Silver Rhyton in the Trieste Museum,” in: D. Williams (ed.), The Art of the Greek Goldsmith, London, 139–145. Giumlia-Mair, Alessandra / Meriani, Sergio (2016). “A Roman bronze portrait-head from Iulium Carnicum: composition and technology in the 1st century CE,” in: A. Giumlia-Mair and C. Mattusch (eds.), Proceedings of the XVIIth International Congress on Ancient Bronzes, Autun, 253–261. Giumlia-Mair, Alessandra / Kanta, Athanasia (2021). “The Kuwano Sword from the Fetish Shrine at Knossos,” in: B. Török and A. Giumlia-Mair (eds.), Proceedings of the 5th International Conference

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“Archaeometallurgy in Europe”, 19–21 June 2019, Miskolc, Hungary, Monographies Instrumentum 73, Drémil-Lafage, 289–300. Giumlia-Mair, Alessandra / Ferrence, Susan C. / Muhly, James D. / Betancourt, Philip P. (2021). “New Evidence for Sophisticated Goldworking Techniques from Middle Minoan Crete,” in: B. Török and A. Giumlia-Mair (eds.), Proceedings of the 5th International Conference “Archaeometallurgy in Europe”, 19–21 June 2019, Miskolc, Hungary, Monographies Instrumentum 73, Drémil-Lafage, 407–416. Grant, Michael (1969). From Imperium zu Auctoritas: A Historical Study of Aes Coinage in the Roman Empire 49 BCE—CE 14. Northampton. Haedecke, K. (1973). “Gleichgewichtsverhältnisse bei der Messingherstellung nach dem Galmeiverfahren,” Erzmetall 26.5, 229–233. Halleux, Robert (1973). “L’orichalque et le laiton,” L’Antiquité Classique 42, 64–81. Hamilton, Charles D. (1969). “The Tresviri Monetales and the Republican Cursus Honorum,” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 100, 181–199. Hett, Walter S., trans. (1980). Aristotle: Minor Works. Cambridge, MA. Hopkins, Keith (2017). Sociological Studies in Roman History. Cambridge. Hornblower, Simon / Spawforth, Anthony, eds. (1999). The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. Oxford. Işıklı, Mehmet / Altunkaynak, Gülşah (2014). “Some observations on relationships between South Caucasus and North-Eastern Anatolia based on recent archaeometallurgical evidence,” in: G. Narimanishvili, M. Kvachadze, M. Puturidze, and N. Shanshasvili (eds.), Proceedings of the International Conference, 19–23 November 2014, Problems of Early Metal-Age Archaeology of Caucasus and Anatolia, Tbilisi, 73–93. Istenič, Janka / Šmit, Žiga (2007). “The beginning of the use of brass in Europe with particular Reference to the southeastern Alpine region,” in: S. La Niece, D. Hook, and P.T. Craddock (eds.), Metals and Mines: Studies in Archaeometallurgy, London, 140–147. Jones, Horace L., trans. (1929). Strabo: Geography of Strabo.Cambridge, MA. Licandro, Orazio (2018). Augusto e la res publica imperiale: studi epigrafici e papirologici. Turin. Morton, Vanda (2019). Brass from the Past: Brass made, used and traded from prehistoric times to 1800. Gloucester. Ogden, Jack M. (1977). “Platinum Group metal inclusions in Ancient Gold Artifacts,” Historical metallurgy 11.2, 53–72. Pollard, Nigel / Berry, Joanne (2015). The Complete Roman Legions. London. Riederer, Josef (1993). “Metallanalysen römischer Fibeln aus Kempten,” in: M. Schleiermacher, Die römischen Fibeln von Kempten-Cambodunum / Ch. Flügel, Die römischen Bronzegefäße von KemptenCambodunum, Campodunumforschungen V, Materialhefte zur bayerischen Vorgeschichte A 63, 45–52. Roudart, Laurence / Mazoyer, Marcel (2015). “Les acquisitions de terre à grande échelle: perspective historique,” in: Large-Scale Land Acquisitions: Focus on South-East Asia, Ch. Gironde, Ch. Golay, and P. Messerli (eds.), International Development Policy series No.6, Geneva: Graduate Institute Publications, Leiden, 3–29. Rowan, Clare (2019). From Caesar to Augustus (c.49 BCE-CE 14): using coins as sources. Cambridge. Smekalova, Tat’jana (2009). “The earliest Application of Brass and ‘Pure’ Copper in the Hellenistic Coinages of Asia Minor and the Northern Black Sea Coast,” in: J.M. Højte (ed.), Mithridates VI and the Pontic Kingdom, Black Sea Studies 9, Aahrus, 233–248. Šmit, Žiga (2015). “Metal analysis with ion-beam methods, Fémvizsgálatok ionnyaláb analitikai Módszerrekkel,” Archeometriai Mühely XII.4, 255–262. Smith, Cyril S. / Hawthorne, John G. (1974). Mappae Clavicula, a little key to the world of medieval technique. Philadelphia. Sutherland, Carol H. V. (1984). The Roman Imperial Coinage, vol. I: From 31 BCE to CE 69. London.

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Thornton, Christopher P. (2007). “Of brass and bronze in prehistoric Southwest Asia,” in: S. La Niece, D. Hook, and P.T. Craddock (eds.), Metals and Mines: Studies in Archaeometallurgy, London, 123–135. Treister, Mikhail Ju. (1992). “Bronzolitejnoe remeslo Bospora,” Soobshenie Muzeij Moskva 10, 66–110. Vössing, Konrad (2004). Mensa regia: das Bankett beim hellenistischen König und beim römischen Kaiser. Beiträge zur Altertumskunde 193. Leipzig. Weisgerber, Gerd (2007). “Roman brass and lead ingots from the Western Mediterranean,” in: S. La Niece, D. Hook, and P.T. Craddock (eds.), Metals and Mines: Studies in Archaeometallurgy, London, 148–158. Welter, Jean-Marie (2003). “The zinc content of brass: a chronological indicator?,” Techne 18, 27–36. Werner, Otto (1970). “Über das Vorkommen von Zink und Messing im Altertum und im Mittelalter,” Erzmetall 23, 259–269. Werz, Ulrich (2018). “Die Kleingeldversorgung augusteischer Zeit in Gallien und Germanien – Überlegungen zu den Kleinerzen aus dem römischen Marschlager von Wilkenburg,” Nachrichten aus Niedersachsens Urgeschichte 87, 167–182.

Sarah K. Yeomans

Portrait of a Medical Practice: The Marcianopolis Instrumentarium Artifacts from the ancient world all too frequently come to our attention completely devoid of archaeological context. In such cases, we must rely on other categories of evidence to flesh out an object’s history and the ways in which it may contribute to our broader knowledge of a particular historical period and subject. While the loss of archaeological sites and the information they provide is always regrettable, the ensuing detective work necessary to try to solve the “case” and tell an object’s story can also be enormous fun.1 For someone with an interest in such detective work, and Graeco-Roman medicine in particular, the Marcianopolis instrumentarium (collection of medical instruments) presents a unique opportunity. The cache of 32 surgical and pharmacological objects that comprise the collection were discovered in the mid-1970s in the Bulgarian town of Devnya (ancient Marcianopolis), located 30 kilometers west of the Black Sea port city of Varna (ancient Odessos). The objects were recovered from a room in what excavators believed was a domus that was destroyed by fire in the mid-fifth century CE, though this was impossible to confirm.2 The unfortunate circumstances surrounding their discovery (discussed below) were such that we have little more information other than the objects themselves. In quantity and quality of material, the Marcianopolis assemblage is second only to those recovered from the ancient spa town of Allianoi (Turkey) and the site of the “Domus del Chirurgo” (Rimini, Italy). Of those two other collections, only the group from the Rimini site surpasses the Marcianopolis instrumentarium in terms of the number of medical instruments found in a single, insitu cache from the Imperial era (first-fifth centuries CE).3 Despite the lack of archaeological context, there is nevertheless much to be gained by a closer examination of this extraordinary set of finds, a sophisticated array of in-

 I was extremely fortunate to learn the art of historical detective work from my mentor, John Pollini. His superlative scholarship, linguistic skills, teaching ability and deft guidance are directly responsible for my successful journey from student to scholar, and his prodigious contributions to the field have enriched us all. Any aspects of excellence that I may be fortunate enough to exhibit in my own work are due to him; any failings are entirely my own. Multas gratias meo clarissimo magistro ago.  Minchev 1980; Minchev 1983; Minchev 2016.  For the Rimini assemblage, see Ortalli 2007 and Ortalli 2009; for the Allianoi assemblage, see Baykan 2012; for comparative analysis of both collections with that of Marcianopolis, see Yeomans 2021. N.b. The total number of medically related objects recovered from Pompeii and Herculaneum does exceed the number in the Marcianopolis collection. However, if any of them were recovered in numbers equivalent to, or greater than, thirty-two from a single in-situ assemblage, such information was never recorded (see Bliquez 1994). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111182919-022

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struments that could only have belonged to a highly skilled surgeon. It is my hope that a close analysis of these objects in light of complementary evidence from the various other tools available in the proverbial toolbox will allow for a rough portrait to be painted of the fifth-century Roman physician, his expertise, and his community.

Setting the Historical Stage Today’s casual visitor to the small Bulgarian town of Devnya is hard-pressed to find evidence of the city’s ancient origins at first glance. A century of industrialization in the region, not to mention the changes to Devnya’s urban landscape brought about by two world wars and 44 years of de-facto Soviet control, have left few visible traces of the ancient city in the town’s modern landscape. Nevertheless, the ruins upon which the modest agricultural community of today is built were once the streets and buildings of an important Roman city. Established by Trajan at the beginning of the second century CE, Marcianopolis became even more important when it was eventually designated the capital of Moesia Secunda during Diocletian’s reorganization of the eastern provinces. The city’s tumultuous military history is perhaps a contributing factor to the presence of such an impressive medical instrumentarium and is, therefore, worth briefly summarizing. Trajan’s decision to establish the city was likely due to its strategic location. Marcianopolis was located along an important route that connected the port at Odessos to the interior and which ran along the northern flank of the Haemus Mountains, roughly parallel to the Via Militaris to the south of the mountain range.4 Its fortunes arose as a result of its designation as Moesia Secunda’s capital at the end of the third century, and the city experienced another economic and political boost during Constantine’s reign (306–337 CE). In 332 CE, the city temporarily gained an imperial resident when the emperor came to Marcianopolis to receive reports from his son, Constantine II, during the latter’s campaigns against the Gothic armies that continued to threaten the Empire’s northeastern borders.5 Events of the fourth century would see a continued rise in Marcianopolis’s importance as an imperial seat; during his first campaigns against the Goths (366–369 CE), Emperor Valens (364–378 CE) made Marcianopolis the temporary capital of the eastern Empire and the base of the Roman army, deeming the city the most suitable location for his army’s winter quarters.6 However, by the end of the fourth century, the decline of the Empire’s political and military strength in the region resulted from for-

 Lozanov 2015, 83–84.  Kulikowski 2006.  Amm. Marc. 27.5.5–6; Phot. 9.7–8; The late-fourth/early-fifth century historian Philostorigus similarly refers to Marcianopolis as the emperor’s temporary base. Philostorigus’s original, 12-volume Ec-

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eign attacks of increasing intensity. When Attila led his Huns in a sweeping invasion of the Empire’s northeastern territories in 447 CE, Marcianopolis was largely destroyed.7 Though perhaps not as long-lived as many other Roman cities, during the approximately 350 years of its existence Marcianopolis was center-stage for the martial dynamics of the Empire’s northeastern frontier, witnessing an almost constant flow of soldiers and commerce through its territory. The movement of military units heading toward or returning from the frontier regions meant that there was likely a number of soldiers and ex-soldiers among its residents. For a physician skilled in the types of surgical interventions used to treat combat injuries, Marcianopolis would have undoubtedly made an attractive place to establish a practice. While literary and epigraphic evidence gives us at least a broad historical portrait of Marcianopolis’ history from its founding in the early-second century to its destruction in the mid-fifth, archaeological evidence from the ancient city is disappointingly sparse.8 Indeed, only the “House of Antiope” and several ancient streets in its immediate vicinity were subject to intentional and methodical archaeological investigations, led by Dr. Alexander Minchev of the Varna Regional Museum of History between 1976 and 1986.9 The House of Antiope, a 21–room, late-third century villa urbana, is the only remnant of ancient Marcianopolis that has been restored and preserved. It is now the primary feature of the Museum of Roman Mosaics, Devnya’s small archaeological museum.10 While the House of Antiope is itself completely unrelated to the cache of medical instruments, its excavation was the reason for Minchev’s fortuitous presence in Devnya when, during the construction of a petrol station elsewhere in the city, the remains of what Minchev believes was a domus were revealed.11 The construction crew alerted Minchev to their discovery of what turned out to be a medical instrumentarium, which at the time was the largest single collection of such objects ever discovered from the Roman period.

clesiastical History is lost, but portions of it were reproduced in the works of Photius, who was appointed Patriarch of Constantinople in 853.  Angelov 2004, 2; Minchev 2016, 232; For a concise summary of the Gothic and Hunnic invasions of the Balkan territories in Late Antiquity, see Heather 2007.  The third-century historian Dexippus records the origins of Marcianopolis’s name, as does the fourth-century historian Ammianus Marcellinus (Exerpta de stategematibus 4F 25J; Amm. Marc. 27.4.12 and 31.5.4.). For the works of Dexippus see FGrHist 100 T5, s.v. “Dexippus.” For translations and analyses of this and other fragments of Dexippus’ Scythica from the Excerpta Constantiniana, see Davenport/Mallan 2013 and Martin/Grusková 2014.  Minchev 2002. The name of the site is derived from the subject of one of its series of spectacular floor mosaics.  Minchev 2002; http://www.museology.bg/en/museums/i159/museum-of-mosaics-devnya.html#. XTY52i3MwUs [accessed 15 July 2024].  While the instruments themselves are documented in Minchev’s three publications on the collection (Minchev 1980, 1983, 2016), the circumstances surrounding their discovery and excavation were related to me by Professor Minchev, who graciously agreed to meet with me on June 4, 2019 to discuss his work at the site.

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Minchev and his team were given only two days to excavate the objects, after which construction work would resume. The petrol station was to be dedicated to a local Soviet dignitary, and the ribbon-cutting ceremony to inaugurate the new building would not be postponed.12 In the course of their hurried recovery of the objects, which were found together under a mound of dirt that measured approximately half a meter in diameter, the archaeologists noted that they were partially melted as a result of exposure to intense heat.13 Minchev noticed that the 6–8 centimeter stratum immediately covering the instruments was composed of ash and charred wood, a burn layer that was consistent with what he and his team observed during the course of their formal excavation of the “House of Antiope” in another area of the city.14 This was the carbonized layer caused by the Huns’ 447 CE invasion, which resulted in a massive fire and the subsequent destruction of much of Marcianopolis.15

The Marcianopolis Instrumentarium Minchev’s priority during the rapid rescue excavation was the safe recovery of the objects, which turned out to be a collection of 32 surgical and pharmacological implements, the variety of which indicate that they had just rescued the instrumentarium of “an experienced physician who practiced in the city and used his very sophisticated and advanced medical knowledge in the first half of the fifth c. AD.”16 Minchev identified each of the objects as falling into one of 11 distinct categories: scalpels, probes, hooks, needles, forceps, bone levers/elevators (used to lift fractured or broken bones into place), specula, lithotomy extractors (for the removal of stones from the bladder, kidney or urinary tract), trepanning instruments, objects used in the making and mixing of medicines, and several “unidentified” tools. The poor condition of this final category precluded precise identification. However, fragments of one of these pieces are consistent with the design of a spatula probe, while a bronze, arch-shaped tool may well be part of the upper part of a pair of iron-handled scissors.17 An additional study

 Communication with Alexander Minchev on June 4, 2019.  Minchev 1983, 144.  Communication with Alexander Minchev on June 4, 2019.  Minchev 2002, 251.  Minchev 2016, 233.  The fragmentary nature of such finds can make accurate identification a challenge. Bronze, being relatively easy to smelt, was more malleable and rust-resistant than iron. Therefore it was the most common material for instruments that required complicated workmanship—such as the multiplecomponent speculum—or for the handles of instruments such as scalpels and needles. Iron, on the other hand, is a harder metal that is less prone to bending or losing its sharpness and was therefore the preferred material for instrument components such as blades, needles and ax heads. The preponderance of bronze examples among extant Graeco-Roman medical instruments is a result of that met-

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of the instruments, which are now held in the collections of the Varna Regional Museum of History, by Nadejda Kirova in 2002 substantiates Minchev’s interpretation of most of the surgical instruments.18 My own examination of the instruments in June of 2019 led me to concur with Minchev’s conclusions regarding the instrument types and functions.19 The inventory of medical implements belonging to our anonymous fifth-century medicus corresponds to expertise that includes the treatment of wounds, bone injuries, ophthalmology and gynecology. Furthermore, at least three of the instruments were identified as those used in lithotomy procedures to remove stones from the bladder and kidneys. Also recovered were the remains of at least two pairs of forceps, three scalpels/dissectors, two hooks, two needle handles, a bone lever, a bone drill, and at least two fragments from instruments known to have been used in trepanation procedures: a bronze bow, employed as the lever with which a cranial drill was rotated, and a ruler to determine the size of the hole needed for the procedure. Several of these instruments likely had a variety of uses. For example, Kirova suggests that the larger of the two hooks, which measures 20.5 cm in length, could have been used as a retraction device during surgeries as well as an extraction device to remove stones during lithotomy operations, which seems a reasonable suggestion.20 Another example of this type of instrument, which has a curved, spoon-shaped hook at one end and a two-pronged retractor at the other end, exists within a collection of lithotomy instruments from Asia Minor.21 However, the Marcianopolis exemplar has an additional feature: it has been folded inwards on itself, so that the entire instrument can be used as one large hook in addition to the smaller hooks/retractors at either end (Fig. 1).22 It is tempting to suggest that the modification was done deliberately by the physician so that the tool could be used as a retraction tool for larger wounds and/or surgical sites, while the smaller hooks on either end could be used in lithotomy procedures.23

al’s longevity and resistance to deterioration over time vis-à-vis iron; both metals were used frequently in the manufacture of medical instruments in antiquity.  Kirova 2002.  I am grateful to Professor Minchev and the officials of the Varna Regional Museum of History for allowing me to examine the Marcianopolis instrumentarium.  Kirova 2002, 76.  Künzl 1983, 490.  This is an example of a specially modified tool, though of course we cannot know if the modification was done by the Marcianopolis physician (or at his request) or if he acquired the instrument in its modified state. Extant examples of medical instruments that exhibit signs of “after-market” or specifically designed modifications are rare but not unheard of. For examples of such objects, see Bliquez 1994, 37 and 123, no. 54 and Jackson 2010, 408–409 and 414.  Instrument design that allowed for the use of a single instrument for multiple functions, such as double-bladed scalpels (i.e. one blade at either end of a single handle), is a common feature in medical

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Fig. 1: Modified lithotomy extractor. Varna, Museum of Archaeology, inv. II6236. Photo: courtesy of the Varna Museum of Archaeology.

The quality and decoration of many of the instruments, in addition to their being superlative examples of metallurgical craftsmanship, attest to the physician’s penchant for objects of beauty as well as function. For example, the bronze trephine bow features an intricate decorative motif with graceful rings and curves encircling one end of the instrument, while the two shorter plates on the opposite end are tipped with finials: a shaped ball on one and a delicate curved spiral on the other (Fig. 2). The workmanship of another instrument, a long, slightly curved bone drill possibly used in trepanation procedures, is described quite rightly by Kirova as “exquisite.”24 The two needle handles recovered from the site were found to be decorated with inlays of precious metals. The bronze handle of an ophthalmic needle was incised with floral and geometric patterns, which were then inlaid with gold thread (Fig. 3). A second bronze handle from a double needle instrument (of which the iron needles themselves were not recovered) is “a masterpiece of Roman bronze work.”25 The delicate piece was incised with a finely wrought floral motif which was then inlaid with silver. A third instrument decorated with precious metals has been tentatively identified as an aeneum spiculum, a rare gynecological tool mentioned by Tertullian as being used to assist in medically necessary abortions.26 According to Tertullian, an aeneum spiculum was a highly specialized tool used to puncture the cranium of an impacted fetus in the event that it could not be safely delivered.27 While the instrument’s frag-

instruments from the Graeco-Roman period. One presumes this reflects an interest in economizing (given the valuable nature of the material and craftsmanship) and an eye toward maximizing both portability and the number of procedures that could be performed. For a discussion of the design and manufacture of such objects, see Yeomans 2021, 96–100.  Kirova 2002, 86.  Minchev 2016, 232.  Tert. De Anim. 25.  Lawrence Bliquez notes that while Tertullian does not offer a description of the aeneum spiculum, its name is indicative of its form. Since the spiculum at Marcianopolis was found accompanied by a gynecological speculum, Bliquez concedes that it may have had the gynecological applications suggested by Minchev. However, Bliquez goes on to suggest that “Tertullian’s aeneum spiculum was not a

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Fig. 2: Bronze trephine bow with worked embellishments. Varna, Museum of Archaeology, inv. II6240. Photo: courtesy of the Varna Museum of Archaeology.

Fig. 3: Ophthalmic needle handle with gold inlay. Varna, Museum of Archaeology, inv. II6257. Photo: courtesy of the Varna Museum of Archaeology.

mentary nature precludes a definitive consensus as to its exact function, the elaborate inlay decoration of silver and electrum rings attests to its unquestionable value and craftsmanship. The Marcianopolis physician’s expertise in gynecology evidently was such that it justified the inclusion of such sophisticated instruments. While gold and silver inlays are indisputable signs of value, instruments lacking elements made of precious metals could nevertheless be finely decorated, and even an object with no visible decoration at all can be safely recognized as valuable by the high quality of the craftsmanship. An example of this from the Marcianopolis instrumentarium is found in the two remaining fragments of a trivalve vaginal speculum, an elaborately designed, three-component device type that is an excellent example of ancient metalworking skill (Figs. 4, 5).

special tool at all but merely an appropriate lancet or scalpel,” of which the Marcianopolis tool is an example. Bliquez 2015, 256.

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Fig. 4: Fragments of a trivalve speculum from the Marcianopolis instrumentarium. Varna, Museum of Archaeology, inv. II6233. Photo: courtesy of the Varna Museum of Archaeology.

Fig. 5: Example of a Roman trivalve speculum (replica). Claude Moore Health Sciences Library, inv. 00154. Photo: courtesy of the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library, University of Virginia.

Specula such as these, while well-attested in primary source literature as valuable diagnostic instruments, are very rarely found in archaeological contexts.28 The complexity of their construction meant they were difficult objects to make. Locating a craftsman skilled enough to manufacture one would have been a significant obstacle for a physician, as would the cost of its purchase. As a result, vaginal and rectal specula as well as other complex instruments were likely handed down from generation to generation and are rarely found among the medical implements recovered from physicians’ tombs.29 Like the example at Marcianopolis, the extant examples of specula come primarily from archaeological contexts in which cataclysmic events presumably prevented their owners from retrieving them, such as the three examples recovered from Pompeii.30 There is some uncertainty as to the function of a second speculum of simpler design identified in the collection. In most aspects, it is a standard example of a rectal speculum known from primary source literature as a device recommended for use in

 The earliest known reference to a speculum is found in the first/second century physician Soranus of Ephesus’s treatise on gynecology. While much of the text survives, the relevant chapter is missing. However, it is paraphrased by the fifth-century Latin writer Muscio. Rose 1882, 117–119.  The inclusion of medical tools in tombs eliminates the possibility that they can be sold to/used by another practitioner. It is rare that highly specialized, complicated, and expensive instruments were consigned to burial contexts; their value made it more likely that they stayed in circulation.  To date, there are only eleven known examples of gynecological specula from the Roman period, including the one from Marcianopolis, three of which are from Pompeii. See Bliquez 2015, 253.

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the treatment of hemorrhoids and fistulas (catopter).31 However, one of the insertion ends appears to have been deliberately fabricated to render it shorter than normal (Fig. 6).

Fig. 6: Possible rectal speculum and wound dilator. Varna, Museum of Archaeology, inv. II6239. Photo: courtesy of the Varna Museum of Archaeology.

Furthermore, the dilation ends are also positioned in a straight line from the handle, whereas other extant examples of rectal specula have dilation ends that are at a 90-degree angle to the handle (Fig. 7).32

Fig. 7: Example of standard Roman rectal speculum (replica). Claude Moore Health Sciences Library, inv. 2440415. Photo: courtesy of the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library, University of Virginia.

While observing that it could be a rectal speculum, Minchev also speculated that this instrument may have been used as a wound dilator, a device described by Celsus for use in the extraction of weapon points, an example of which has yet to be conclusively identified.33 However, Kirova rejects Minchev’s interpretation of the speculum

 Paul Aeg. 6.78 (= Adams 1847 vol. 2, 399–401); Minchev 1983, 119; Minchev 2016, 232.  Examples of this type are known from Pompeii are known from Pompeii and Worms, while several other examples are of uncertain provenance. See Matthäus 1989, 34; Bliquez 1982, 217; and Künzl 1979–1981, 13.  Cel. Med. 7.5.2; Minchev 1983, 119; Minchev 2016, 232. For a study of Roman bivalve studies and the literary evidence for the wound dilator described by Celsus, see Jackson 1991.

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as a possible wound dilator, asserting that this function is “impossible” and that the object’s smaller size alone precludes the possibility that it is anything other than a vaginal speculum.34 She asserts that this second speculum is simply a vaginal speculum of a different size and type, stating that “all of the instruments of the Marcianopolis set speak for a physician [who is] a specialist in healing gynaecological and urinary system diseases and not for a specialist of bone traumas.”35 This is a puzzling position to take, considering the presence of the bone lever, bone drill and trepanation devices included in the collection. The presence of such instruments clearly indicates the Marcianopolis physician did indeed treat bone injuries in addition to other types of conditions. Minchev’s interpretation is sound; there is no reason why this speculum could not have been used in a variety of ways, depending on the necessity of the situation. After all, as Ralph Jackson points out, “the function of the speculum was simply to hold apart the walls of a cavity, and, as with so many other Roman surgical instruments, that function might be adapted to a number of different operations.”36 Both specula could have been employed as vaginal, rectal, or wound dilators as a patient’s condition and physiology warranted. The inclusion of two different types of dilators suggests that the owner of the Marcianopolis instrumentarium carefully selected his instruments with an eye toward maximizing the versatility and range of procedures he was able to perform. To round out the comprehensive nature of this collection, a number of objects associated with the preparation and storage of medicines were also identified. These include a bronze pestle used to grind mineral substances into powder, a cylindrical lead box with a lid and a large, bronze, carafe-shaped bottle (used to store solid and liquid medicines, respectively) as well as two whetstones, which were used to sharpen scalpels and needles. In antiquity, there was little of the distinction so familiar today between medicine and pharmacology; Graeco-Roman medici frequently practiced both.

A Portrait of a Physician and His Practice Though his identity and circumstances must remain anonymous, we are nevertheless able to draw a few conclusions regarding our physician and his expertise by peering at him through the lens of his instrumentarium. For example, several of the instruments previously discussed suggest a practitioner who had some specific expertise in treating traumatic injuries. The trepanation bow and its accompanying ruler (used to precisely define and cut the circular hole in the skull in order to relieve intracranial

 Kirova 2002, 78.  Kirova 2002, 80.  Jackson 1991, 105.

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pressure), bone lever, and extraction forceps are all instruments that were used to address the types of injuries most commonly sustained in military conflicts. Likewise, if the second, modified speculum was indeed used as a wound dilator, one can easily imagine that the extraction of weapon points was part of this physician’s professional repertoire. Instruments such as those described above were neither simple to fabricate nor inexpensive to acquire. There would be little reason for a physician to invest in such tools if he did not have the expertise to use them as well as enough opportunity to justify the expense. For a fifth-century physician in Marcianopolis, as well as for the city’s inhabitants, such opportunities were likely to have presented themselves frequently. The city’s location and relative importance made it a target for the Gothic armies that threatened the Empire’s northeastern borders from the third century onwards. While injured civilians could well have sought the Marcianopolis physician’s services following attacks on the city, the fact that the city was also used at various times as a temporary base for the legions necessary to protect the region’s border meant that, in all likelihood, the Marcianopolis physician would have also treated soldiers, either those who were billeted in the city or those who were sent back from the front. Indeed, soldiers may have been the physician’s primary patients, for though it is believed the instruments were recovered from a domus, there is no way to know whether the physician was an active-duty member of the army’s medical service or a civilian physician at the time of the city’s destruction in the mid-fifth century.37 At that point, Marcianopolis could be considered a Roman city that was also, at least at times, a de facto legionary base and had been for approximately 150 years. Any clear distinction between the “military” and “civilian” nature of the city had ceased to exist by the early fourth century, when the emperors began using it as a staging ground for their northern campaigns. While soldiers and civilians injured during the various conflicts of the third, fourth, and fifth centuries would have provided a substantial client base for any medicus with expertise in trauma and bone surgery, there would have been other sources of patients who needed such skills. The precarious and somewhat dangerous nature of urban living was acerbically satirized by Juvenal, who, writing in the late-first and early-second century, describes the types of accidents that could befall the inhabitants of a large Roman city.38 While few Roman cities ever approached the scale of Rome, we can safely assume that any urban environment came with a few inherent dangers and injuries. Construction works, the transportation of heavy goods, and the volatility of the animals (and people) used to achieve such tasks are just a few examples of circumstances that could easily result in injury or death.

 For a discussion of the relationship between military and civilian medicine in the Roman Imperial period, see Yeomans 2021, 35–60.  Juv. 3.

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While the surgery-specific instruments recovered from Marcianopolis leave no doubt that their owner had surgical expertise, other instruments paint a portrait of a medicus who treated women as well as men. Whether the Marcianopolis physician may have first trained as a military surgeon (or was a civilian surgeon who treated soldiers) and then gained additional skills that served female patients, or vice-versa, is something we will never know. However, it is apparent that by the time of the city’s destruction in the mid-fifth century, this physician not only treated women but evidently did so with enough skill that he invested in (or somehow otherwise acquired) gynecological instruments that were both sophisticated and expensive. Also among the instruments and medically related objects from Marcianopolis are examples of more general medical tools that had a variety of uses. These include needles commonly used in treating ophthalmic issues, scalpels, forceps, and several different types of probes and spatulas of the types generally used to treat bladder and kidney stones, as well as a pair of caustic forceps that were used to remove inflamed uvula, hemorrhoids, or even tonsils. These instruments, as well as the various conditions they were used to treat, are more universal in that both soldiers and civilians suffered from these conditions equally, and examples of these medical tools are common in both military and civilian contexts. Indeed, these simple yet versatile instruments are most frequently represented in what might be considered the most basic of instrumentaria—sine qua non for even the humblest of practitioners. These most basic of medical instruments were often stored and carried in specially designed boxes made of wood or leather. Though few of these cases in which these were stored are extant today, there are a number of examples known from tomb imagery, such as that of the second-century physician Aelius Pius Curtianus (Fig. 8).39 Wealthier medici such as the Marcianopolis physician and his third-century CE counterpart in Rimini could—and did—invest in more expensive and specialized instruments, but few Roman medici would have neglected to include this basic set of tools in his instrumentarium; this fifth-century physician was no exception.40 The presence of a number of sophisticated instruments in the instrumentarium indicates a significant investment, as does the precious metal inlay decoration of several of the pieces. Interestingly, several of the high-quality implements in the collection date from the third and fourth centuries, which would have made them approximately 100–200 years old at the time they were buried by the mid-fifth century collapse of the building from which they were recovered.41 This, along with the “diversity, complexity,

 Krug 2008, 34.  Over 150 medical instruments were identified in the spectacular instrumentarium from the Domus del Chirurgo in Rimini, Italy—almost none were duplicates. Jackson 2003.  Minchev’s reports are not specific as to which objects have been precisely dated. He mentioned only that though they were recovered from a site that dates to the mid-fifth century, “most” of the instruments “were produced much earlier—in 3rd or 4th c. AD.” Minchev 2016, 233. Kirova dates the scalpels and the larger speculum in the Marcianopolis collection to the fourth century CE: Kirova 2002,

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Fig. 8: Second-century CE tomb relief of Aelius Pius Curtianus depicting a physician’s basic instrument kit in a folding case. National Archaeological Museum of Palestrina. Photo: C. Rossa, courtesy of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut—Rome, Neg. D-DAI-Rom 77.1575.

technical and artistic craftsmanship, and the sheer number of objects” from Marcianopolis has led Dan Aparaschivei to conclude that “we are dealing with a medical practitioner’s office that had functioned at least since the third century” and that “this place probably facilitated the professional activity of numerous physicians, under the tutelage of the city.” This, he concludes, “would explain the transmission of objects over several generations, the variety of operations that could be made (from ophthalmologic to gynecological operations, from very simple to very complex surgery) and, last but not least, their high material value for the period in question.”42 The collection is indeed impressive, and the idea of an established medical practice lasting for centuries in the same location is an interesting prospect. However, at present the evidence is simply insufficient to support the thesis that the structure in which the instruments were recovered was the site of a medica taberna (medical clinic) that had been in continuous operation from the third century until its destruction in the middle of the fifth. On the contrary, given the dynamics of the region, and the regularity with which Marcianopolis was impacted by Gothic invasions, it seems highly unlikely that the same building would have stood continuously for 200 years, let alone served as a medical practice for that same span of time. There is no support-

74, 83. My own examination of these objects has led me to agree with these interpretations based on both the quality and design of the instruments, which are consistent with comparanda from the second, third and early fourth centuries.  Aparaschivei 2010, 147–148.

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ing epigraphic or primary source evidence for the notion that there was any sort of school or physician’s training center in the city and no evidence for these institutions being in continuous operation for such a long period of time.43 It seems probable that this particular physician acquired the older instruments deliberately, either through purchase or perhaps as heirloom objects passed down through his family if he was a member of a household for whom the medical profession was an established family trade. High-quality medical implements that required particularly skilled craftsmen to fabricate them were undoubtedly difficult to come by, particularly in the later Imperial period when the Empire’s socio-political instability seems to have had a deleterious effect on workshops and production.44 This latter circumstance may explain why the Marcianopolis instrumentarium contained objects that were 100–200 years older than the site at which they were found; a physician who valued quality craftsmanship may have deliberately sought older objects in the event that contemporary versions of equivalent quality were difficult to obtain. However he may have acquired them, the high quality of these instruments made them useful and valuable additions to the instrumentarium of a skilled general practitioner.

Fate of the Marcianopolis Physician And what of the fate of the physician? It is impossible to know. However, the circumstances in which the Marcianopolis instrumentarium were found (i.e., under a substantial burn layer) allow one to imagine, at least broadly, the circumstances under which they came to be lost. The calamity that befell the owner of the Marcianopolis collection must have happened so swiftly that he was unable to retrieve and escape with what was a very valuable—and inherently portable—set of instruments. Had there been enough time to flee to safety, it is unlikely that the owner would have done so without the tools that not only represented a significant investment, but also would have allowed him to continue making a living by practicing his profession. It seems likely that the Marcianopolis physician was either killed or captured. If by chance he survived, then the circumstances following the invasion (which likely included the continued presence of the invaders, at least for a time) would have made returning to retrieve the instruments too dangerous an enterprise to undertake.

 There is, however, evidence of a collegium medicorum in Odessos (modern Varna), located 30 km east of Marcianopolis. The second-century tomb of the physician Asklepiades informs us that he was an archiatros as well as the head of the city’s medical collegium (IGBulg. I2 150). For the role of an archiatros, see BNP, 986–987 s.v. “archiatros” and Nutton 1977. For the collegium medicorum in Odessos, see Aparaschivei 2012, 75–77.  Jongman 2007; McCormick 2003, 25–119.

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These suggested conclusions regarding the fate of the physician are merely speculative and must remain so. However, while we will never know the exact circumstances of the physician’s ultimate fate, the nature of the instruments themselves are the best argument in support of an inability, rather than an unwillingness, to recover them. Surgical instruments were valuable objects, not just because of the high-quality bronze or iron from which they were made, but also because of the high degree of skill needed to craft them. Even the simplest tool in a surgeon’s instrumentarium would have been highly valued, and not easily or carelessly left behind.

Conclusions Despite the almost complete absence of archaeological context for the extraordinary instrumentarium of Marcianopolis, a bit of historical sleuthing together with analysis of the objects themselves has allowed for a rough sketch of the Marcianopolis physician, his expertise, the community in which he lived and worked, and some ideas as to his fate. The sophistication and value of the objects indicate a physician who was reasonably successful. The fact that some of the implements date to earlier periods suggests that he had both the means and the resources to seek out and obtain instruments that were of a higher quality than those which were available in his own time and location. The composition of the collection points to a practitioner who addressed a broad range of medical situations including bone and trauma injuries (including those to the head), eye conditions, kidney and bladder stones, hemorrhoids (a very common condition in antiquity), gynecological issues, and childbirth as well as conditions that required the dispensation of medications. In short, our physician was a general practitioner in the true sense of the term; he probably dealt with the whole range of medical issues presented by his fifth-century Roman community. His community would have been a diverse one. The constant presence of soldiers meant that not only was his community a mixture of martial and civilian populations, but that at least a portion of the population hailed from territories across the farflung empire. Given the degree to which the military and civilian spheres co-existed in Marcianopolis at various points in its history, and in light of the instruments themselves, it seems reasonable to suggest that this physician was able to address traumatic injuries as well as treat the more common health concerns of the civilian population. The composition of the Marcianopolis instrumentarium suggests a practitioner who had among his patients both soldiers and civilians, making this a compelling, if still somewhat speculative, example of the ways in which martial and civic medicine may have intersected in the person of this medicus, who likely met an unfortunate end in the same destructive invasion that destroyed much of the city in the mid-fifth century.

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The complexity and quality of the instruments has led to the suggestion that their presence in Marcianopolis indicates that the city itself was an important medical center.45 Conclusions regarding the relatively sophisticated nature of surgical interventions represented by the instruments are reasonable. Certain instruments, such as those used for trepanning procedures, are easily identified. Not only are they described in extant primary source literature, but they are also clearly the antecedents of instruments still used in modern operating theaters.46 Furthermore, such instruments are generally not found among the smaller, portable medical kits such as those recovered from the Piazza del Anfiteatro in Pompeii and Herculaneum, which are generally associated with the most basic of practitioners.47 So, could it be that Marcianopolis, in addition to being a military staging ground, also functioned as a center of healing and treatment? With the scant evidence from Marcianopolis that we have on hand, it is impossible to know, though I strongly doubt it. I propose instead that the degree of surgical and medical expertise represented by the Marcianopolis finds were possibly the norm, rather than the exception, for similarly sized towns in the Imperial period. Certainly, there is no indication that Rimini was particularly known for its medical culture, yet the Rimini medicus was even more well-equipped for his craft than his counterpart in Marcianopolis.48 Caution should therefore be exercised when interpreting the overall scarcity of civilian, nonsepulchral sites with medical finds and associations. I suggest that this scarcity is far more likely to be a result of historical and archaeological circumstances (and luck) than it is an indication of the general paucity of specialized, skilled practitioners in the Imperial period. When we are fortunate enough to find such a site, it is not necessarily an indication that such practitioners and the places where they worked were as exceptional and rare as the small number of extant sites might suggest. Evidence of such practitioners need not indicate that the town in which they practiced had any particular medical associations or economies. For example, of the eleven known examples of uterine specula from the Roman period, three of these are from Pompeii, a city that has been extensively studied.49 Yet there is no evidence to suggest that Pompeii was particularly noteworthy as a site frequented by patients seeking healing for illnesses or injuries; the presence of the specula are more easily explained by the fact that they probably represent the types of instruments that were typically to be found in the collections of at least some of the medici practicing throughout the Empire. In a case such as Marcianopolis, I suggest that we have an example of what was possibly the norm in similarly sized cities in terms of medical practices, expertise, and tools in the Imperial period.

    

Aparaschivei 2010, 147–148; Minchev 2016, 232; contra Yeomans 2021, 112–117. Cels. Med. 8.3–4; Gal. MM; Oribasius Coll. Med. 46.11.11; Bliquez 2015, 185–189. Bliquez 1994, 87–88; De Carolis 1993; Manjo 1975, 355. Jackson 2003 and Yeomans 2021, 105–117. Bliquez 2015, 251–255.

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Is the “case” then closed? I certainly hope not. Future excavations or construction projects in Devnya may yet shed more light on both the city and its inhabitants—and perhaps even on the physician who owned this remarkable instrumentarium. Discoveries elsewhere continue to provide us with a growing collection of comparanda and information that enables us to refine or revise our previous ideas and renders an ever-clearer picture of physicians and their craft in the Roman world. It is, after all, the ongoing process of discovery that makes such investigations so satisfyingly worthwhile.

Bibliography Angelov, Anastas (2004, 10 February). “Marcianopolis.” LiterNet. https://liternet.bg/publish10/aangelov/ marcianopolis.htm [accessed 15 July 2024]. Aparaschivei, Dan (2010). “Being a Physician in Moesia Inferior,” Dacia 54, 141–156. Aparaschivei, Dan (2012). Healthcare and Medicine in Moesia Inferior. Iaşi, Romania. Baykan, Daniş (2012). Allianoi Tıp Aletleri. Studia ad Orientum Antiquum 2. Istanbul. Bliquez, Lawrence (1982). “Roman Surgical Instruments in the Johns Hopkins University Institute of the History of Medicine,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 56.2, 195–217. Bliquez, Lawrence (1994). Roman Surgical Instruments and other Minor Objects in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. Mainz. Bliquez, Lawrence (2015). The Tools of Asclepius: Surgical Instruments from Greek and Roman Times. Leiden. Davenport, Caillan / Mallan, Christopher (2013). “Dexippus’ Letter of Decius: Context and Interpretation,” MusHelv 70, 57–73. De Carolis, Stefano (1993). “Una cassetta con strumenti chirurgici da Ercolano,” in: L. Capasso (ed.), Le Origini della Chirurgia Italiana, Tema e Problemi, Roma, 59–62. Heather, Peter (2007). “Goths in the Roman Balkans, c. 350–500,” in: A. Poulter (ed.), The Transition to Late Antiquity on the Danube and Beyond, Oxford, 163–190. Jackson, Ralph (1991). “Roman bivalve dilatators and Celsus’ ‘instrument like a Greek letter’—(De med. VII, 5, 2B),” in: G. Sabbah (ed.), Le Latin Médical, La Constitution d’un Langue Scientifique, Saint-Étienne, 101–108. Jackson, Ralph (2003). “The Domus ‘del Chirurgo’ at Rimini: An Interim Account of the Medical Assemblage,” JRA 16, 312–321. Jackson, Ralph (2010). “Cutting for Stone: Roman Lithotomy Instruments in the Museo Nazionale Romano,” Medicina nei Secoli Arte e Scienza 22, 393–418. Jongman, Willem (2007). “Gibbon Was Right: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Economy,” in: O. Hekster. G. Kleijn, and D. Slootjes (eds.), Crises and the Roman Empire: Proceedings of the Seventh Workshop of the International Network Impact of Empire, Nijmegen, June 20–24, 2006, Leiden, 183–199. Kirova, Nadejda (2002). “Specialized Instruments from Bulgaria in the Context of Finds from Other Roman Provinces,” Archaeologia Bulgarica 6, 73–93. Krug, Antje (2008). Das Berliner Arztrelief. Winckelmannsprogramm der Archäologischen Gesellschaft zu Berlin 142. Berlin. Kulikowski, Michael (2006). Rome’s Gothic Wars: From the Third Century to Alaric. Cambridge. Künzl, Ernst (1979–1981). “Medizinische Instrumente aus dem römischen Altertum im Städtischen Museum Worms,” Der Wormsgau 13, 49–63. Künzl, Ernst (1983). Medizinische Instrumente aus Sepulkralfunden der Römischen Kaiserzeit. Cologne.

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Lozanov, Ivaylo (2015). “Roman Thrace,” in: J. Valeva, E. Nankov, and D. Graninger (eds.), A Companion to Ancient Thrace, West Sussex, 75–90. Martin, Gunter / Gruskobá, Jana, (2014). “’Scythia Vindobonensia’ by Dexippus(?): New Fragments on Decius’ Gothic Wars,” GRBS 54, 728–754. Manjo, Guido (1975). The Healing Hand: Man and Wound in the Ancient World. Cambridge, MA. Matthäus, Hartmut (1989). Der Arzt in römischer Zeit: medizinische Instrumente und Arzneien: archäologische Hinterlassenschaften in Siedlungen und Gräbern. Württemberg. McCormick, Michael (2003). Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce A.D. 300–900. Cambridge. Minchev, Alexander (1980). “Roman Medical Instruments Found at Marcianopolis,” in: XXVIe Congrès international d’histoire de la médecine: actes du congrès, Plovdiv, 20–25 août 1978, Sofia, 119–120. Minchev, Alexander (1983). “Roman Medicine in Marcianopolis,” in: Concilium Eirene XVI: Proceedings of the 16th International Eirene Conference, Prague, 31 August—4 September, 1982, Prague, 143–148. Minchev, Alexander (2002). “’The House of Antiope’: A Late Roman Residential House with Mosaics at Marcianopolis (Devnya, Bulgaria),” in: L. Ruskeva-Slokosa (ed.), The Roman and Late Roman City: The International Conference, Veliko Turnovo, 26–30 July 2000, Sofia, 245–254. Minchev, Alexander (2016). “Roman and Late-Roman Medicine in Odessos and Marcianopolis: Archaeological and Epigraphic Data,” in: Asklepios: Proceedings from the Sixth Balkan Congress of History and Philosophy of Medicine Plovdiv, October 2015, Sofia, 229–234. Nutton, Vivan (1977). “Archiatri and the Medical Profession in Antiquity,” Papers of the British School at Rome 45, 191–226. Ortalli, Jacopo (2007). “Il Medicus di Ariminum: Una Contestualizzazione Archeologica dall Domus del Chirurgo,” in: G. Brizzi and G. Poma (eds.), Rivista Storica dell’Antichità, Bologna, 101–118. Ortalli, Jacopo (2009). “Archeologia e medicina: la casa del ‘Chirugo’ riminese,” in: S. de Carolis (ed.), Ars Medica: I Ferri del Mestiere. La domus ‘del Chirurgo’ di Rimini e la chirurgia nell’antica Roma, Rimini, 21–45. Rose, Valentin (1882). Sorani Gynaeciorum vetus translatio latina. Leipzig. Yeomans, Sarah (2021). “Roman Civic Medicine: The Archaeology of Practices and Practitioners in the Imperial Age.” Diss. University of Southern California.

Part V: After Antiquity: Restoration, Forgery, Reception

Claire L. Lyons

The Capitoline Lion Attacking a Horse—An Icon of Feline-Equine Combat In 2012, the J. Paul Getty Museum welcomed a generous loan under the auspices of the “Dream of Rome,” a project to share masterpieces from the Capitoline Museums with international audiences. Journeying from Rome for the first time in over 800 years was an extraordinary ambassador, a Hellenistic sculpture known as Lion Attacking a Horse.1 Among the most storied works to have come down from antiquity, the image of animal combat was the first example of ancient art documented on the Capitoline Hill. Displayed at the seat of Rome’s secular government in the late medieval era, the sculpture was joined by the Spinario, the horse-tamers Castor and Pollux, fragments of a colossal portrait of the emperor Constantine, and other mirabilia that formed the nucleus of the world’s oldest public art collection of the modern era. Although reduced to a fragment, over the following centuries the monumental group resonated as an artistic touchstone. When it was on view in the atrium of the Getty Villa in Malibu, the intense aura of struggling adversaries sparked emotional responses from visitors and fresh attention from specialists.2 Since its reinstallation in the Capitoline’s Exedra of Marcus Aurelius, the sculpture has been the subject of several recent publications. Building on the fundamental studies of von Hesberg (1987) and Schmidt-Nechel (1992), Hans Rupprecht Goette published thoughts on its style and iconography in 2019.3 A 2022–2023 exhibition at the Fondazione Prada in Milan, Recycling Beauty, featured it among an array of Roman antiquities that enjoyed influential afterlives.4 For a revised edition of Francis Haskell’s and Nicholas Penny’s classic, Taste and the Antique, Adriano Aymonino surveyed the reception of the group during the Renaissance and early modern periods.5 My aim here is to describe

 Lion Attacking a Horse, Musei Capitolini inv. 1366. I am grateful to the American Academy in Rome for a residency in the spring of 2022, which supported research for this article, and to Claudio Parise Presicce, Salvatore Settis, Andrew Stewart †, Jens Daehner, Chris Hallett, Kenneth Lapatin, Jerry Podany, Alexandra Sofroniew, and volume editors Ambra Spinelli and Peter Schertz for their generous advice.  Offered in gratitude for John Pollini’s engaging conversation on this sculpture and his many contributions to the Getty, this article expands on lectures presented in 2016 at the Institute of Classical Studies, University of London, and at the Tampa Museum of Art in 2017. My thanks go to Hans Rupprecht Goette for sharing a copy of his article (Goette 2019), which overlapped with my study but diverges on aspects of interpretation, and Filippo Coarelli, for discussing the sculpture’s third-century BCE date with me.  Goette 2019, with previous bibliography.  Parisi Presicce 2022, 271–272.  Aymonino/Dodero 2024, no. 54, 389–392. Thanks are owed to Adriano Aymonino for the opportunity to contribute to this entry, which mentions 25 copies or versions in various media. A further 18 instances of the Capitoline group’s post-antique artistic reception are cited in the appendix to the present essay. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111182919-023

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the technical analyses that were undertaken while the work was at the Getty and to propose new perspectives on this unusual variation of a conventional Tierkampf motif. Within the abundant repertoire of animal fights that stretches deep into prehistory, images of a lion mauling a horse are scarce and convey subtexts beyond the obvious metaphor of predators devouring prey. As it moved from its original location in the eastern Mediterranean to Rome, the sculpture became a vehicle for narratives around heroic hunting, imperial conquest, and arena spectacles.

Restoring an Antique Fragment The ancient core of the sculpture consists of two conjoined torsos: the foreparts of a lion and a fallen equid generally identified as a horse (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1: Group of a Lion Devouring a Horse. Rome, Musei Capitolini, Palazzo dei Conservatori, Esedra del Marco Aurelio, inv. S1366. Photo: Archivio Fotografico dei Musei Capitolini. With permission of the Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali, Rome.

Sprawling over the horse’s back, the lion tears into its left flank, stretching the hide up in its fangs and leaving deep vertical gouges on the belly. No longer preserved, added pigments coloring the bloody wounds would have intensified the depicted violence of the lion’s ambush and the strangling bite to which its quarry will inevitably succumb. The group’s battered condition notwithstanding, the workmanship is of high quality.

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By the late-fifteenth century, the feline’s hindquarters and the equine head, legs, and tail had already been lost and were replaced in 1594 by the Milanese sculptor Ruggiero Bescapè (or Bascapè, active 1580–1599), a follower of Michelangelo. Bescapè’s restorations realistically depict the horse’s flailing limbs and the turn of its head above a deep V-shaped cutting in the chest, but he embellished the horse with a wavy mane and tail. The missing parts freed several Renaissance artists to explore different solutions for the pose: glancing to its left with a pathetic expression as in Bescapè’s version, straining forward in a panic to escape, or pivoting to fight off its foe.6 The latter arrangement resolves the contorted figures’ actions and reactions most successfully, but there are no indications of taut muscles or wrinkled hide that give clues to the original position of the head. Least successful was Bescapè’s addition of the trunk-like feline rear legs clumsily planted behind the horse.7 Bulging muscles on the right hip and the vertical thigh demonstrate that the big cat’s weight was on its straightened right leg. Viewed from the rear, the break angle of the left leg shows that it was lifted with the paw pressed down on a visibly damaged area of the croup. Instead of pouncing, the lion originally pinned its victim, a standard schema in images of feline predation.8 Bescapè’s configuration of the lurching lion emphasizes the group’s threedimensionality but does a disservice to the original composition, which would have formed a more flattened triangle. The torsion and physical intensity of the wrestling bodies is best appreciated from the front and proper right side. The group is propped at a steep angle, which results in the awkward projection of the horse’s right rear leg from under the torso. A 1591 drawing made by Hubert Goltzius shows a low block beneath the chest of the horse, which leans further back than the current metal strut permits.9 In this position the sculpture depicts a victim taken to ground and allows the lion’s menacing stare to meet the upward gaze of spectators.10 Behind the lion’s neck, a rectangular cutting and two square holes were initially interpreted as entry points for weapons thrust down into the beast’s shoulder by a mounted hunter, who may have completed a now lost three-figure composition.11 Lowered to a more plausible orientation on the horse’s side, the presence of an attacking equestrian figure is problematic. The cuttings were subsequently attributed to the medieval practice of shackling condemned criminals to the leo marmoris.12 The three  See the works by Amico Aspertini and Adamo Scultori referenced in n. 60, and the Bellini sketchbook (Fig. 5) for conjectural restorations of the horse’s head.  For views of the back side and other features described below, consult the 3-D model prepared by Matthew Brennan: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/lion-attacking-a-horse-4460f986d69a4e2 bab896185c80c1f12 [accessed 3 January 2022].  For example, see von Hofsten 2007, pl. 15.  Haarlem, Teylers Museum, inv. K III 019: https://www.teylersmuseum.nl/en/collection/art/k-iii-019equus-cum-leone-beeldengroep [accessed 5 January 2023].  Goette 2019, 147.  von Hesberg 1987, 111–116. For a detail of the three cuttings, consult the 3-D model cited above in n. 7.  See infra 413 in the text with further discussion of this practice.

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cuttings, however, are relatively shallow and it cannot be entirely excluded that they belonged to an ancient intervention. Carved under the horse’s belly, several Greek letters have recently been reported.13 Awaiting further study, the inscription may have guided the group’s location within an architectural setting or multi-figure sculptural program on a commemorative structure. From at least the mid-twelfth century, when it stood in the market square on the Capitoline, the imposing figures have been exposed to the elements and the surface is worn and pitted, especially on the lion’s head and the front of the equine torso. The back has been better protected from weathering, suggesting that in its Hellenistic context the group may have stood against a wall or under a stoa. In 2012, the sculpture was lifted from a rocky base inside a fountain in the Giardino Caffarelli, where it had languished out of the public eye for nearly a century. Conservators cleaned and consolidated the surface and replaced deteriorating fills to achieve a uniform appearance.14 Analysis of the isotopic composition of oxygen and carbon characterized the stone as a fine-grained white marble with pale gray veins from Mount Penteli in Attica. Incorporating various marbles recycled from antique spolia for the reconstruction, the Renaissance restorer Bescapè also utilized Pentelic marble for the horse’s legs. The lion’s rear legs, on the other hand, were fashioned from a medium-grained light gray marble probably from a quarry on the north Aegean island of Thasos.15 Isotopic analysis of the strips of lead from a dowel hole inside the horse’s front right leg indicated that they were likely connected with a post-antique intervention, probably that undertaken by Bescapè in 1594.16 The dating of the Capitoline group has been debated among those who identify it either as a Greek sculpture of the late fourth century BCE or the third century BCE, or as a Roman copy after a Hellenistic Pergamene-style original. The chronology relies on the lion’s head, which has the visible ears of an Asiatic lion, small deep-set eyes, and a compact square muzzle. Unruly tufts of mane are divided into shallow strands, but the longer locks at the sides of the cheeks preserve deep drill-work. Several smallscale pedimental figures of a lion leaping onto the back of a bull invite comparison, including a third-century group in Pentelic marble reportedly from Pergamon and

 Parisi Presicce 2022, 271.  Conservation treatment at the Capitoline Museum, led by Dr. Carlo Usai, is documented at https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2Cr1z6VcNg [accessed 3 January 2023].  The stable isotope composition for oxygen and carbon was analyzed by Prof. Patrick Degryse, Center for Archaeological Sciences at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. The identification of Parian marble is erroneous in Goette 2019, 153 n. 20. The horse’s head was not sampled, but the appearance of the marble is consistent with that used by Bescapè for the limbs.  At the request of the Capitoline Superintendency, lead isotope analysis was undertaken by Marc Walton at the Getty Conservation Institute from samples extracted when the horse’s legs were removed during treatment. The results did not find a match on the Oxford Archaeological Lead Isotope Database (OXALID), and the packing of the dowel cavity with lead strips most likely took place during a post-antique intervention (personal communication, J. Podany).

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now in the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin.17 Beyond the plasticity of the mane, the torsion of the entwined bodies and the vivid impression of terror confronting ferocity should place this work in the third century BCE.18 Closer to later Hellenistic architectural reliefs, such as the lion biting the arm of a giant on the Pergamon Altar, the configuration of the group harks back to the high reliefs of lions killing bulls that decorated late Archaic temple pediments in Athens. Although the theme enjoyed something of a revival in the applied arts and as crowning figures on fourthand third-century grave markers, the sculptor of the Capitoline group imbued a longestablished literary and pictorial device of fighting animals with physical grandeur, creating a potent portrayal of pathos and dominance.

Predator or Prey? The startling episode of animal savagery reenacted in the Capitoline’s Lion Attacking a Horse presents a visual allegory of the triumph of strength and the inescapability of death. But is the lion simply the aggressor, or was it both predator and prey? Assaults on downed horses would allude to the dangers of the hunt, literary and visual episodes of which circulated in the courts of the Persian and Macedonian empires. However, the loss of appendages and pigments that would have highlighted body markings leaves the identity of the lion’s quarry open to interpretation. In its truncated condition, the torso could be that of a donkey or zebra. In Roman art, even centaurs were fair game, as on the well-known mosaic pavement illustrating a tiger slaughtering a female centaur, which is thought to derive from a famous late fifth-century painting by Zeuxis.19 In the case of the marble sculpture, the equine chest does not present a convincing transition to a centaur’s waist. But the reduction of that area for the Renaissance restoration of the head and the reinforcement of loose fragments at the sides makes the equid’s identity hard to determine. Comparing the composition of a second-century CE mosaic from the area of Sousse (Tunisia) at the Getty, Hans Goette identified the lion’s catch as an onager, a species of

 Oberlin College, Allen Memorial Art Museum, inv. 1948.28: https://allenartcollection.oberlin.edu/ob jects/956/ [accessed 3 January 23]. For comparable architectural fragments from Argos and the Kerameikos in Athens, see Sturgeon 1975–1976, 41–42.  The type bears the features of Asiatic lions, which are smaller in stature and have a short mane, visible ears, and tufts at the elbows. Compare third-century waterspouts: Willemsen 1959, 64, 70, pl. 70. Parisi Presicce 2022, 271 and Goette 2019 advocate for a late fourth century BCE date, while Andrew Stewart placed it around 300–275 BCE (“not earlier,” personal communication).  Centaur mosaic from the Villa of Hadrian at Tivoli, Berlin, Antikensammlung, inv. Mos.1, 120–130 CE. https://id.smb.museum/object/697074/kentauren-mosaik [accessed 3 January 2023].

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wild ass once native to western Asia, Persia, and India.20 Several anatomical features raise questions about this identification. Although the animals’ relative sizes need not be strictly to scale, the equid is larger than the lion, notwithstanding its voluminous mane and robust legs. Beneath the restored neck, the bulging pectoral muscles are atypical of onagers, which have a narrow chest and an erect mane that extends down the back to a thin tufted tail. Under the stylized waves of the Renaissance mane, a remnant of the original hair is preserved in front of the lion’s elbow.21 Though little remains, the hair does not continue along the back as might be expected for an onager (see Fig. 4, where this is clearly illustrated). Onagers, moreover, regularly fall prey to felines in Assyrian and Roman art, but rarely count among the quarry depicted in fourth- and thirdcentury hunting scenes. In Greek sculpture horses sport both the upright cropped fringe shown in hunting and military scenes and long manes with wavy forelocks. Lions feed on various animals in nature, but the presence of a horse implies a close encounter in the human domain. The equine torso is more likely related to an episode in which a lion at bay lunges against its pursuers in self-defense. The rich allegorical dimensions of the confrontation between a noble stallion and the king of beasts, moreover, offered a subject worthy of an imposing public monument.

On the Iconography of Struggle In ancient art, animal combats are configured as schemata, which subsume action (praxis), character (ethē), and emotion (pathē) into formulaic motifs signifying power. Functioning as elements of visual grammar, schemata are at once semantically dense and flexible, ensuring their mobility from one medium or narrative context to another.22 In an unpublished lecture on “Struggle,” Kenneth Clark explored lion attacks from ancient Mesopotamia to nineteenth-century paintings by Stubbs and Delacroix. As he defined them, motifs (“motives”) entail a fusion of form and content and become recognizable when they are reiterated across long spans of time or are deployed “with compulsive intensity” over shorter intervals. Akin to ideograms, “visual motifs compress all conflicting or amplifying associations into a single symbol.”23 Among the myriad images of one or two animals mauling another, fights between feline and equine opponents recur at particular times and places and express shifting allegorical values over the life cycle of the schema.

 Goette 2019, 149. For the mosaic Lion Attacking an Onager, 150–200 CE, acc. 73.AH.75, see https:// www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/103SYF [accessed 3 January 2023].  For these details, see above n. 7.  Settis 2015, 51–72, esp. 56–57. In general, on schemata see Catoni 2005.  Clark 1962, 30–32. On Aby Warburg’s iconological approach to emotive formulae (Pathosformeln), see Cohen 2018, 101–105.

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Anchored in the visual culture of Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and the Bronze Age Aegean, the canonical Tierkampf motif represents an asymmetrical contest between a carnivore and a wild or domesticated herbivore. The archetype pits lions and panthers against bulls and stags or less often against boars and goats. Lions ambush aggressive bulls and boars and chase swifter deer. Attacks on stags and boars connote predation in nature, while assaults on bulls and rams take place in the civilized realm where men must repel nuisance felines that prey on livestock. A black-figure Caeretan hydria made by an Ionian vase-painter depicted this situation in a vignette of herdsmen brandishing spears at a lion and leopard that tackle a fleeing mule.24 Frequent fights between ferocious lions and powerful bulls were charged with imperial, aristocratic, and cosmic symbolism, as for instance on the stair reliefs of the Apadana in Persepolis.25 In conventional attack schemata, the presence of a horse or ass in this traditional attack schema is the least common, accounting for just 4% of nearly 600 examples dating to the Archaic period (700–480 BCE).26 The motif is associated with the distant provinces where big cats stalked equids. It occurs in representations of hunts staged in game parks, which occupy a middle ground between nature and the city. Lion-horse fights are mainly a phenomenon of eastern cultural horizons, above all in areas where Achaemenid, Anatolian, and Greek cultural exchanges produced hybrid artistic forms. Theriomorphic designs derived from the “animal style” arts of the Pontic Steppe are echoed in Tierkampf scenes rendered in a composite GraecoScythian style. Lion attacks feature on precious metal vessels and weaponry made for local elites. A phiale found in the Solokha kurgan is decorated with repeating reliefs of wildcats dragging down horses and stags.27 (Fig. 2). Unlike Hellenistic gold phialai with concentric rings of figures, the animal groups on the Solokha vessel are densely arrayed in overlapping registers. Bearing an inscribed Greek dedication and made to a Greek weight standard, the shape, iconography, and organization of the Solokha phiale’s figure field reflect Persian and central Asian ancestry. Scythians, Amazons, and lion/griffin pursuits were common on red-figure vases in the later-fifth and fourth centuries and then inhabited interior décor.28 Gilded terracotta furniture and sarcophagus appliqués of lions pulling down horses and stags traveled the corridor of artistic exchanges that linked Macedonia with southern Italy.29 They evoke mythical northern landscapes where griffins confronted mounted  Caeretan hydria by the Busiris Painter, ca. 530 BCE, Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia, Rome.  Almagor 2021, 19–20.  von Hofsten 2007, 15, 22, 29, pl. 15. Most feline-equid constellations occur on portable terracotta altars from Magna Graecia and represent a variant schema (lion/s over a supine equid, legs in the air).  Jacobson 1995, 213–214; Meyer 2013, 128.  For western Achaemenid gems, see Boardman 1970, 186, pl. 391, 352, pl. 867 (lion attack); 292, pl. 579, 297, fig. 695 (griffin attack).  For example, Grandjouan/Markson/Rotroff 1989, 13, and the gilt clay Tarentine appliqué of a griffin and horse, which was used on furniture and sarcophagi, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: https:// www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/256862 [accessed 3 January 2023]. A pair of griffins assaults

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Fig. 2: Scythian gold phiale with a depiction of beasts being torn apart, from the Solokha Tumulus, side burial, late fifth to early fourth century BCE. St. Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum, inv. Dn 1913 1/ 48. Photo: © The State Hermitage Museum.

Arimasps trying to steal gold. Several mid-fourth century pebble mosaics, however, depict lion attacks that are excerpted from the theme of the dangerous hunt. On a pavement in room 9 of the luxurious House of the Mosaics at Eretria, the figural frieze around a central 16-point star is populated on two sides by pairs of griffins aggressing warriors. On the other sides, a lion bites the hindquarters of a stumbling horse with loose reins, implying that its rider has fallen off.30 In the visual culture of the western Persian empire, mounted hunts were an index of the sovereign’s legitimacy. Lions counter-attacking a horse or dismounted hunter were a topos in the iconography of royal expeditions. During the periods of Achaemenid and Macedonian expansion, the rescue scenario served as a metaphor of competent leadership as well as a challenge to royal authority. Ctesias recalled a lion attack on the horse of Artaxerxes I (465–424 BCE), who was saved when Megabyzus brought the ani-

a horse on a terracotta altar from Mozia (Museo G. Whitaker inv. 513), a theme that also appears in a pebble mosaic in the House of the Mosaics at that site: Belis 2016, entry 5.  Franks 2014, 158–160, fig. 4. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43188870 [accessed 3 January 2023]. For similar fights in pebble mosaics at Corinth, Sikyon, and the Pompeion in Athens, see Masiello et al. 2013, 358–359, figs 7–10.

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mal down with his javelin. Because he usurped the monarch’s prerogative of the first kill, the courtier was condemned to death. Polybius recounted, on the other hand, that when a lion leapt at the horse of the Persian king Artaxerxes II (404–358 BCE), a Persian slayed it, earning land in Cappadocia as a token of royal gratitude.31 A late fifth-century red-figure oinochoe pictures such a deadly encounter, in which a lion leaps onto the backside of a horse as its frightened Persian rider hastens away.32 Single and multi-prey hunts inspired the iconographic programs of sepulchral shrines and marble sarcophagi commissioned by the Achaemenid dynasts of Lycia, Caria, and Phoenicia. Juxtaposed with warfare and banquets, hunting reliefs signaled the heroic stature of patrons on the fourth-century shrines in Trysa and Limyra, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, and the sumptuous marble sarcophagi created for Sidonian rulers buried in the Royal Necropolis at Sidon.33 Inside a mausoleum uncovered in 2010 in Milas (Turkey), the sarcophagus of Hecatomnus features a lion crouching beneath a horse and snapping the Carian satrap’s spear in its jaws.34 The lion tearing into the chest of Abdalonymus’s steed on the Alexander Sarcophagus, which was found in Sidon and is now in Istanbul, is a graphic example of a topos that was repeatedly asserted in literary and artistic characterizations of Alexander the Great.35 As von Hesberg and Goette have observed, the Capitoline group evokes the lionhunting exploits much favored in the court arts of Macedonia.36 Mounted hunts were central to the self-representation of Alexander the Great, his noble companions (hetairoi), and the Diadochi who came to power following the king’s death in 323 BCE.37 Conducted in the Persian manner, Alexander’s mounted hunts strategically affirmed his authority by aligning with the cultural protocols of conquered territories and integrating local elites into the royal court.38 Heroic rescue is a leitmotif in the scene of two hunters who confront a snarling lion on a mosaic pavement from the House of Dionysos at Pella. Identified as Hephaestion and Alexander, one youth rushes in and slashes with a short sword, drawing the lion’s attention away from his companion,

 Poggio 2020, 96–97. On lion hunting in Achaemenid royal ideology, see Almagor 2021, 26–27; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts10030041 [accessed 3 January 2023].  Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, inv. 473, from Cyrenaica: http://medaillesetantiques.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/ c33gbqmsk [accessed 3 January 2023]. See also Briant 1991, 236–240 and Miller 1997, 56, pls. 14–15.  Poggio 2020, 110, fig. 85; 29–30, fig. 19. Fragments of free-standing animal sculptures from the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus also include a multi-prey hunting scene.  Grawehr 2020, 23, pl. 6d.  Istanbul, Archaeological Museum, inv. 370, 325–300 BCE: Cohen 2010, 119–123, fig. 54.  von Hesberg 1987, 120–126; Goette 2019, 153.  Palagia 2000, 201–202. In addition to the painted frieze of a multi-quarry hunt in Tomb II at Vergina, Palagia notes Euthycrates’ bronze group of Alexander hunting, which was dedicated at Thespiae, and suggests the possibility that a group monument in Larissa also portrayed Alexander and his royal hunting party.  Mullen 2019, 180–207, 237–242.

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who vainly thrusts a broken spear.39 A Hellenistic mosaic from “House B” in Palermo, which may derive from a late fourth- or early third-century painting, shows a mounted Macedonian rider (Alexander?) aiming his spear at a lion menacing a fallen Greek hunter as a Persian gestures in distress.40 On the late fourth-century Delphi Lion Monument, Lysippos and Leochares commemorated Krateros’s rescue of Alexander, an episode that must have included figures of the Macedonian king and his general confronting a lion on foot and horseback.41 Literary descriptions and portraits ascribe feline ruthlessness to Alexander’s skills in hunting and warfare. Beyond the attribute of a lionskin helmet, as Ada Cohen observed, his wavy “mane” of hair and cowlick (anastolē), intense gleaming eyes, pronounced brow, and the oblique twist of his head in an upward glance are visual tropes of leonine deliberation and aggression.42 Common in funerary sculptures of protective lions, the schema of advancing while warily looking back is no less evident in the Capitoline lion, which turns away from its quarry and directs its gaze toward an unseen adversary. This subtle psychological pause reinforces the dramatic narrative of a defeated horse in the context of a multi-figure hunting tableau. In addition to satrapal monuments in western Anatolia and the Levant, statuary groups depicting dangerous hunts embellished ambitious building programs in Macedonia. Recent excavations at Pydna unearthed the foundations of an unusually grandiose funerary pedestal. Thirty-five meters in length and raised to a height of four meters, it was built before 316 BCE for an aristocratic family, ostensibly that of one of Alexander’s hetairoi.43 The ensemble of free-standing sculptures includes an over-lifesize horse’s head and a cuirassed torso holding a bronze bridle, which was one of a pair of symmetrical equestrian figures that stood on the projecting wings of the podium. At the center and on one end, a family group is gathered for a warrior’s farewell (including Alexander?) and other armed figures advertised the patron’s military achievements. On the opposite end, a complex multi-quarry hunt comprised an attacking panther, locks of a lion’s mane, a deer head, and sections of canine tails. Pairs of hunters would have completed a paratactic figural composition. The scale of the Capitoline sculpture is more or less commensurate with the Pydna figures and may have occupied a pedestal of equivalent height. The Capitoline lion and horse sculpture is best understood as part of an extended narrative composition for a commemorative monument rather than as a stand-alone funerary group. Its grand scale and presumed cost were appropriate to an elite commission or benefaction, a practice that flourished after the mid-fourth century in

 Cohen 2010, 64–68, fig. 21. That the spear is broken is evident from the position of the hand, too close to the point. On hunting accidents, see Poggio 2020, 101–109.  Wootton 2002, 264–274.  Stewart 1993, 270–277; Cohen 2010, 76–78.  Cohen 2018, 112–123.  Bessios/Athanassiadou 2019, 235–243, pls. 60–66.

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prominent civic and cult settings. Novel architectural projects undertaken by rivalrous Achaemenid satraps relied on the patronage of Greek artists and the use of imported Pentelic and Parian marble for sculptured reliefs and figures in the round.44 Emulating Near Eastern models of kingship, their monumental constructions materialized hunting as an index of a ruler’s aretē. Further, the deployment of the motif of an attacking lion would have constituted a potent homage intended to reinforce local rulers’ claims of proximity to the leonine persona of Alexander.

Roman Adaptations of a Greek Motif The hypothesis that Lion Attacking a Horse was seized as a spoil of war and conveyed to Rome by a triumphant general following successful campaigns in the eastern Mediterranean is widely accepted. One of the thousands of works of sculpture, painting, and luxury furnishings paraded through the capital, the sculpture was transformed from a funerary or votive monument into an ornamentum urbis. Suitable as a private donation in a bath complex, villa garden, or amphitheater, its relocation may have taken place by the mid-first century BCE or later in the Augustan era, when emulation and control of Alexander’s legacy factored into imperial propaganda.45 Associated with legendary hunting expeditions, the contest between powerful adversaries condensed amplifying and conflicting values—Greek/Persian, heroic rescue/cowardly flight, strength/subordination, courage/cruelty, feral/tame—into a fitting emblem of Roman political hegemony. The heroic rescue trope endured, for instance, in epic hexameters composed by the Alexandrian poet Pankrates in the second century CE. When a lion charged, Antinous was saved by Hadrian and later acquitted himself by slaying an enormous Mauritanian lion.46 Empowered by its flexible semantics, the schema of a lion lunging from behind onto a collapsing equid, bovid, or cervid became a commonplace in the Roman visual repertoire. A spate of feline-equine combats in the applied arts clusters around the later first century BCE and first century CE. In some cases, the Capitoline group might have been a source of inspiration, as the motif appears on Arretine relief-ware and oil lamps, which often replicated well-known works of art (Fig. 3). It is possible that these scenes drew inspiration from stories of Alexander’s celebrated hunts, but most Roman Tierkampfen picture generic predation in the wild or in the circus.47

 Des Courtils 2020, 47–51; Grawehr 2020.  Wallace 2018, 180–182.  Athenaeus XV.21.677d-f and P.Oxy.VIII.1085. Opper 2008, 173.  Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, inv. 88.601 (Arretine fragment with a horse stumbling beneath a feline assailant: https://collections.mfa.org/objects/182875 [accessed 4 January 2023]); London, British Mu-

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Fig. 3: Lamp with a lion killing a mule, made in North Africa, first century CE. Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum, inv. 83.AQ.377.62. Photo: Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.

Similar scenes were incorporated into designs for Pompeian domestic interiors. The painter of frescoes flanking the nymphaeum fountain in the Casa del Centenario selected two standardized duels—leopard on onager and lion on bull—to recreate a Nilotic environment. Unlike the schema of the Capitoline group, here the subdued beasts are shown in an antiquated formula with one trailing rear leg. Concurrent with the spread of the cult of Isis, garden sculptures such as the lion overpowering an antelope from the Casa di Octavius Quartio dramatize feline savagery, but do not necessarily look back to the group on display in Rome, which seems not to have inspired any close copies in sculpture.48 Already a visual cliché by the Hellenistic period, lion attacks are the subject of an inverted caricature of Victoria crowning an ithyphallic ass that is mounting a strangely passive lion.49 Given the ubiquitous appeal of the feline/equine fight schema in Roman art, it is unsurprising that the Getty’s mosaic of a lion tackling an onager from Hadrumentum (Sousse) shares features with the Capitoline sculpture.50 Recognizable by the typical body and leg stripes, the onager’s frantic struggle mirrors the posture of the Hellenistic sculpture. Goette argued that the composition represents a regional mosaicist’s citation seum, inv. 1857,0804.24: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/G_1857-0804-24 [accessed 1 February 2023]. See Stewart 1993, 42–48, fig. 91.  For Egyptianizing motifs in the nymphaeum of the Casa del Centenario and the Casa di Octavius Quartio (II 2, 2), see Bellucci 2021, 88–89, 153, 356; Tronchin 2011, 45, fig. 2.12; and Goette 2019, 149–150.  Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, inv. 27683, from a shop in Pompeii (VII 6, 34–35).  J. Paul Getty Museum acc. 73.AH.75, https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/103SYF [accessed 1 January 2023]; Goette 2019, 153.

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of the illustrious work that was on public view in the metropolis. Scenes of lions capturing onagers, a speedy prey with a lethal kick, were frequently incorporated into mosaic bestiaries. Elaborate pavements show exotic species stalking one another in African and Syrian landscapes or being hunted to supply venationes, the wildlife slaughters that reenacted multi-prey hunts in Persian and Macedonian game parks.51 The most dramatic of these episodes is the lion that looms over an expired onager on a section of tessellated pavement found in Carthage in 187352 (Fig. 4). In its original pictorial context, however, this vignette was part of a menagerie of exotic wildlife that populated the field surrounding an emblem of a goddess (Diana?) in a stagdrawn chariot. The Getty mosaic fragment was probably cut from a pavement of this

Fig. 4: Roman mosaic with a lion attacking an onager, from the Temple of Juno, Carthage. Washington D.C. Smithsonian Institution, acc. 012416. Photo: Smithsonian Institution Archives, Acc. 11–007, Box 012, Image No. MNH-2871.

 Feline-onager fights decorate numerous mosaics, for example in El Djem, House of the Dionysiac Procession at Thysdrus (tiger with two onagers); Oudna, Villa of the Laberii (lion and onager); mosaic pavement from Lod (tiger leaping on a fleeing onager); Roman villa at Nennig (gladiator mosaic with a tigress assailing an onager); Ostia III, VII, 8, Building with Opus Sectile (arena scenes of harnessed lions attacking “deer.” Note, however, that from the body stripes and long tufted tail the victim should be an onager); Taranto, second-century CE triclinium mosaic from a domus on Piazza Maria Immacolata, with Dionysian scenes including a lion tackling an onager from the front and felines resting a paw on an ass’s head. For references see Belis 2016, no. 5: http://www.getty.edu/publications/romanmo saics [accessed 1 January 2023].  Washington D.C., Smithsonian Institution acc. 012416, https://collections.si.edu/search/detail/ edanmdm:nmnhanthropology_8030243 [accessed 5 July 2022].

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sort. Within the common stock of images drawing on conventional schemata, the subject was repeatedly adapted for Egyptian-style mises en scène, African wildlife hunts, and arena venationes that decorated aristocratic interiors. These compositions recycled a motif that recurred across multiple media with such regularity that a famous prototype needn’t account for its popularity.

Transformations of an Emblem From antiquity to the modern era, the successive lives of Lion Attacking a Horse epitomize “the restless process,” as Stephen Greenblatt commented, “through which texts, images, artifacts, and ideas are moved, disguised, translated, transformed, adapted, and reimagined in the ceaseless, resourceful work of culture.”53 An iconology of the entwined torsos—mutilated yet still charismatic—reveals the object’s trans-Mediterranean transformation. Adapting a traditional Tierkampf motif that was native to the western Achaemenid and Black Sea regions, the theme was widely disseminated in the arts of Macedonia. Enhancing its pathos, a late fourth- or third-century BCE sculptor magnified the motif as an element of a multi-figure composition. Dangerous hunts involving lion and panther attacks presuppose a daring rescue, a topos that forms a through-line in Late Classical and Hellenistic funerary art. The prevalence of this theme in royal and dynastic sculptural programs suggests that a monumental work of imported Pentelic marble was erected on a commemorative monument in western Asia Minor or the Greek mainland. Allusions to the legendary hunting exploits of Persian kings and Alexander the Great enhanced the work’s cachet. Like scores of sculptures by celebrated artists, the group was transported to Rome as a spoil of war sometime between the first century BCE and the first century CE. For some viewers, it would have retained an historical and artistic aura, but for Roman audiences, bloody circus performances were a more familiar point of reference. A description in the sculptor Flaminio Vacca’s 1594 register of Roman antiquities may corroborate the installation of this famous work in a public venue where violent spectacles of fighting animals and public executions were presented. He reported that the sculpture was found near the stream-fed mill known as the “mulino” at the eastern end of the Circus Maximus. The place-name suggests that the booty could have been placed near the barriers or on the central spina together with obelisks and statues of the gods.54

 Greenblatt 2010, 4.  Vacca 1988 [1594]: see Parisi Presicce 2009, 36. In general on the sculptural decoration of the Circus Maximus, see Humphrey 1986, 267–281.

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Afterlives of an Icon Conceivably, the Capitoline group was never buried and was always visible above ground, but its location before the Late Medieval period is unknown. Roman sarcophagi carved with lion attacks came to signify the opposition of the pagan and Christian realms and were repurposed as altars, reliquaries, and architectural spolia.55 The Christian gloss on animal combats as visual allegories of divine judgment informed the reception of antique relics as authoritative symbols of human justice. By 1143–1144, the leo marmoris presided over the center of the market square adjacent to a column on a stepped base, coinciding with the establishment of the Roman commune and the Renovatio Senatus. Condemned criminals were shackled to the monument, a punishment that shifted its meaning from an emblem of buon governo to an instrument of penal justice.56 Around 1300 it was moved to the staircase on the facade of Palazzo Senatorio, designating the spot known as the loco del leone, where judicial sentences were pronounced.57 Lion Attacking a Horse reigned as the emblem of Rome’s communal government for two centuries before it was demoted by the papal donations of the Capitoline Wolf and the equestrian portrait of Marcus Aurelius, which manifested the Church’s jurisdiction over the city and its antique heritage. After Michelangelo’s renovation of 1594, the group’s displacement to the courtyard of the Palazzo dei Conservatori, together with the colossal head and hand of the emperor Constantine, inaugurated the musealization of the once great marble, which grew in the estimation of painters and sculptors even as it faded from public recognition.58

 For instance, a Roman third-century CE strigilated sarcophagus with vignettes of a lion mauling a colt at the corners serves as an altar and reliquary for the relics of St. Herculanus in the eponymous Chiesa di Sant’Ercolano in Perugia. See also the numerous examples of recycled marble sarcophagi in the Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta and the Camposanto in Pisa: Huskinson 2015, 251–262, and 188–190 on lions as guardians and reminders of “the destructive power of death.”  The practice of staging public punishments in proximity to authoritative relics of antiquity is documented at numerous sites, including the Colonna Infame in Piazza Mercantile at Bari, a stepped base supporting a sculpture of a lion and a column to which convicts were bound. See Todisco 1994, 170–171, and Parisi Presicce 2009, 36.  Ensoli Vittozzi/Parisi Presicce 1991, 89–91; Parisi Presicce 2009, 22–23, figs. 1–2, 5, 7, 12. Gramaccini 1989, 38–41, proposed that the sculpture was installed on a stepped base supporting a column, which was positioned at the center of the piazza where the equestrian portrait of Marcus Aurelius long stood.  Ensoli Vittozzi/Parisi Presicce 1991, 90, fig. 49.

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Appendix More than most survivors from antiquity, the Capitoline group has been continually quoted by generations of artists up to the present day. Together with the Belvedere Torso and the Cesi Juno, Michelangelo praised the powerful sculpture, guaranteeing its inclusion in the canon of ancient art promoted in guides and souvenir prints. Twenty-five reproductions, several of which were produced as multiples, are described in a new edition of Haskell and Penny’s Taste and the Antique.59 A touchstone for early Renaissance painters, the sculpture first appeared in the late 1400s in sketchbooks attributed to Amico Aspertini, who restored the horse’s head in different positions.60 Topographical drawings of the Mons Capitolinus made by Maarten van Heemskerck between 1532 and 1535 document its successive movements around the Campidoglio.61 Some illustrations preserve informative, “archaeological” records of the fractured torsos before Bescapè’s 1594 restoration, while others represent inventive exercises in completing the original composition. The Capitoline group inhabits Giovanni Paolo Pannini’s ruinscapes and the Mediterranean backdrop of a Dutch family portrait by Jan Baptiste Weenix. Giambolognesque casts were available in artists’ workshops, including that of Rubens. Printed, engraved, and cast copies multiplied the emblem of primal struggle in collectors’ cabinets and Neoclassical gardens. The following list represents a further selection of works that reproduced or were profoundly inspired by this uniquely malleable icon. 1. Florence, Biblioteca Laurenziana. Cod. Plut. IX, 28, fol. 272r, Christian Topography of Cosmas Indicopleustes. Dated to the eleventh century, the Laurentian copy of Cosmas’s travel account of India, Ceylon, and Africa includes an extra illustration of a lion savaging a horse, which has been linked to the Capitoline group. The green tint of the horse more closely resembles a heavily restored Roman sculpture in the Sala degli Animali in the Museo Pio Clementino, but the availability of the Vatican sculpture at this early date is a matter of conjecture.62 2. London, British Museum. Sketchbook attributed to Jacopo Bellini, with lead point drawings of a lion tackling a horse, 1440–1470. Although Bellini’s drawings are credited as the earliest drawings of the Capitoline group, he may have been the

 Aymonino/Dodero 2024, no. 54, 389–392.  On Aspertini, see the entry on a pen and ink drawing in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence: https://euploos. uffizi.it/scheda-catalogo.php?invn=1383+E+v [accessed 1 January 2023]. The horse bites the lion in Adamo Scultori’s mid-sixteenth-century engraving modeled on a lost gem design by Giulio Romano: Massari 1993, 125–127, and Bellini 1991, 50–52.  DiFuria 2019, 302, 305.  For the Laurentian manuscript, see http://teca.bmlonline.it/ImageViewer/servlet/ImageViewer?idr= TECA0000126362&keyworks=Cosma#page/554/mode/2up [accessed 7 July 2023], and Ainalov 1961, 25–26, figs. 9–10. Vatican group: González-Palacios 2013, 293 cat. 172.

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owner and not the author of the drawings in the British Museum. The drawing on folio 7V resembles the Capitoline fragment but takes artistic license with the composition of the lion seizing the horse’s neck.63 (Fig. 5)

Fig. 5: Jacopo Bellini sketchbook. London, The British Museum, 1855,0811.7 (recto). Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum.

3.

Lucca, Basilica di San Frediano, Cappella di Sant’Agostino. Monochrome fresco cycle by Amico Aspertini, 1508–1509. Amico made the earliest drawings of the fragment prior to Bescapè’s restoration. He returned to the feline-equine duel theme several times and may have also included a vignette of the group among the fighting animals depicted in the lost paintings on the façade of the Stalle dei Marsili.64

 London, British Museum inv. 1855,0811.7: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_18550811-7 [accessed 1 January 2023]; Gramaccini 2021, 15 (on Bellini’s ownership of the album), 95, 98, 115.  Faietti/Scaglietti Kelescian 1995, 220–221, 223–224.

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4.

London, British Museum. Bronze medallion by Giovanni Bernardi, 1535. Bernardi was involved in the fabrication of forged sestertii of Commodus with the Capitoline group standing before the columns of a temple on the reverse.65 5. Braunschweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Netherlandish ink drawing of the Campidoglio with Santa Maria in Aracoeli and Palazzo Senatorio, 1552–1561. The Capitoline group stands on a low base near an arched portal in the retaining wall in front of the church, the location of the medieval marketplace.66 6. Princeton, Princeton University Art Museum, brown ink and wash drawing, central Italian, sixteenth century. Inscribed “in Capitolio,” this perspective view from the left front of the sculpture was made soon after Bescapè’s 1594 restoration.67 7. Claude Lorrain, pen and ink sketch, Lion Attacking a Horse, ca. 1630, private collection.68 8. Rome, Gabinetto Nazionale delle Stampe. Ink drawing by Stefano della Bella, ca. 1659. In della Bella’s drawing, the sculpture is positioned near the back of the courtyard of the Palazzo dei Conservatori, on a tall travertine base as described in the 1692 palace inventory.69 9. Karlsruhe, Staatliche Kunsthalle. Jan van Kessel, A Kunstkammer with Venus at her Toilet, oil on panel, 1659. A series of pictures from the workshops of van Kessel and Brueghel reimagine an amateur’s extravagant cabinet of curiosities. On a shelf in the background, pendant bronze casts of Lion Attacking a Horse, Lion Attacking a Bull, and other mythological inventions by Giambologna are displayed amidst paintings, naturalia, and antiquities.70 10. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Charles Le Brun, Everhard Jabach ( 1618– 1695) and His Family, oil on canvas, ca. 1660. Set on a bracket on the back wall is a gilded bronze statuette of a lion assaulting a horse by Antonio or Giovanni Francesco Susini after a model by Giambologna (1600–1625).71

 London, British Museum inv. 1922,0407.214: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/C_ 1922-0407-214 [accessed 1 May 2023]. Attwood 2000, 169–170, figs. 9.11 and 9.7.  Braunschweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Kupferstichkabinett, inv. Z 320 recto (attributed to Anonymous of the Louvre): http://kk.haum-bs.de/?id=z-00320 [accessed 2 January 2023].  Princeton University Art Museum, inv. x1953–88: https://artmuseum.princeton.edu/collections/ob jects/93988 [accessed 1 February 2023].  Christie’s, Old Master Drawings auction, New York, 9 January 1991, lot 36. Egerton 2007, 21, fig. 5.  “Inventario de’ Mobili Argenti suppellettili, et ogn’altra cosa dell’Inclito Popolo Romano, esistenti del Palazzo Vecchio di Campidoglio degli Eccellentissimi Signori Conservatori di Roma fatto in tempo del Magistrato degl’Eccellentissimi Signori Mutio de,” Adi 14 Decembre 1692, cited in https://www.mile stonerome.com/2015/04/the-forgotten-symbol-of-municipal-rome [accessed 15 July 2024].  See https://www.kunsthalle-karlsruhe.de/kunstwerke/Jan-van-Kessel/Eine-Kunstkammer-mit-Venus -bei-der-Toilette/C8EB87664C3648318711B4A1E3D47420 [accessed 2 January 2023].  Wolohojian 2017, 22, fig. 22. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/626692 [accessed 1 January 2023].

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11. Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum. Le cheval rayé, French tapestry from the series “Les Anciennes Indes,” Gobelins manufactory, about 1692–1730, woven after a cartoon by Albert Eckhout and Frans Post. At the center, a jaguar attacking a zebra is freely based on the Capitoline group.72 Art historical sources, such as Dürer’s woodcut of a rhinoceros, were appropriated to populate scenes of the exotic fauna of Brazil. 12. Florence, Uffizi. A statuette of the Capitoline group was displayed in the Tribuna, a cabinet of curiosities housing the jewels of the Medici collection. In the 1720s, Jonathan Richardson described the reduced scale bronze, posed on a shelf encircling the octagonal gallery as “much finer” than the original marble.73 13. Tyrwitt-Drake collection, Shardeloes, Amersham. James Russel, Conversation Piece, oil on canvas, 1744–1747. Set in the library of William Drake, this conversazione portrays members of the Roman Jacobite circle frequented by Russel, a Scots painter, antiquary, and art dealer. Behind them, a view of St. Peter’s and a model of the Capitoline fragment signal the group’s religious and political sympathies.74 14. Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery. Miniature marble copy of Lion Attacking a Horse, Italian, eighteenth century. Probably acquired in Italy by Henry Blundell for the collection at Ince Blundell Hall, reduced scale versions of Rome’s most admired ancient sculptures were widely available in marble, plaster, ceramic, and bronze.75 15. Cornelian intaglio signed “Aulos,” by Antonio Pichler, 1743–1756. Documented in glass molds and casts, a lost gem bore a device after the Capitoline group, on which Pichler forged the signature of the celebrated first-century BCE gem engraver. Not easily distinguished from ancient gems, Pichler’s intaglios were sought after by Grand Tour travelers and collectors.76 16. Los Angeles, Getty Research Institute. Giuseppe Vasi, engraving of the 1764 Festa della Chinea in Rome. A miniature Campidoglio was one of the architectural set pieces designed for the biannual Chinea festival by Paolo Posi, complete with iconic statues of the Dioscuri, the Cesi Roma, and Lion Attacking a Horse, which presides from the center of the balcony.77 17. Los Angeles, Getty Research Institute. Engraving in Comte de Robiano (1773), Collection des desseins des figures colossales & des groupes qui ont été faits de neige, Anvers. Frans van Ussel and Willem van den Kieboom’s ephemeral recreation after Giambologna’s bronze statuette of Lion Attacking a Horse was one of twenty-four

 Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, acc. 92.DD.21: https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/ 103SN4 [accessed 1 January 2023].  Egerton 2007, 28.  Kelly 2012, 69, fig. 2.  González-Palacios 2013, 293.  Tassinari 2021, 263–267, 279–280, figs. 7–12.  Festa della Chinea, Rome, 1722–1785, acc. 95-FO. See De Martino 2018, 155–156, entry 42.

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monumental statuary groups modelled in snow by students and faculty of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp during the freezing winter of 1772.78 18. Los Angeles. Charles Ray, Mountain Lion Attacking a Dog, 2017. After seeing Lion Attacking a Horse at the Getty Villa, Charles Ray adapted the Hellenistic marble in stainless steel and silver editions of a mountain lion devouring a dog after the Hellenistic marble.79

Bibliography Ainalov, Dimitri (1961). The Hellenistic Origins of Byzantine Art. New Brunswick, NJ. Almagor, Eran (2021). “The Horse and the Lion in Achaemenid Persia: Representations of a Duality,” Arts 10.4, 26–27. Attwood, Philip (2000). “Giovanni Bernardi and the Question of Medal Attribution in Sixteenth-Century Italy,” in: S.K. Scher (ed.), Perspectives on the Renaissance Medal. London, 165–176. Aymonino, Adriano/Dodero, Eloisa (2024), in: Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique. The Lure of Classical Sculpture: 1500–1900, an updated and amplified edition by Adriano Aymonino and Eloisa Dodero, 3 vols. Turnhout. Belis, Alexis (2016). Roman Mosaics in the J. Paul Getty Museum. Los Angeles. http://www.getty.edu/publica tions/romanmosaics [accessed 4 February 2024]. Bellini, Paolo (1991). L’opera incisa di Adamo e Diana Scultori. Vicenza. Bellucci, Nikola D. (2021). I reperti e i motivi egizi ed egittizzanti a Pompei. Indagine preliminare per una loro contestualizzazione. Oxford. Bessios, Manthos / Athanassiadou, Athena (2019). “Discovering the Monument of Pydna: Royal or Royal Hetairoi Tombs?,” in: H. Frielinghaus, J. Stroszeck, and P. Valavanis (eds.) Griechische Nekropolen: Neue Forschungen und Funde. Möhnesee, 235–243. Boardman, John (1970). Greek Gems and Finger Rings: Early Bronze Age to Late Classical. London. Briant, Pierre (1991). “Chasses royales macedoniennes et chasses royales perses: le thème de la chasse au lion de Vergina,” Dialogues d’Histoire Ancienne 17.1, 211–255. Catoni, Maria Luisa (2005). Schemata: Comunicazione non verbale nella Grecia antica. Pisa. Clark, Kenneth (1962). “Struggle,” unpublished lecture presented at Oxford University, 21 February 1962, London, Tate Archive, TGA 8812/2/2 Manuscripts. Cohen, Ada (2010). Art in the Era of Alexander the Great: Paradigms of Manhood and their Cultural Traditions. Cambridge. Cohen, Ada (2018). “Turning Heads: Alexander and the Animals,” Illinois Classical Studies 43.1, 88–136. De Martino, Federico (2018). In: E. Dodero and C. Parisi Presicce (eds.), Il Tesoro di Antichità. Winckelmann e il Museo Capitolino nella Roma del Settecento. Rome, cat. no. 42, 155–156. Des Courtils, Jacques (2020). “Some Considerations on Greek Art in Asia Minor in the 4th Century BC,” in: M. Grawehr, C. Leypold, M. Mohr, and E. Thiermann (eds.), Klassik—Kunst der Könige: Kings and Greek Art in the 4th Century BC, Zürcher Archäologische Forschungen 7, Rahden, 45–53. DiFuria, Arthur J. (2019). Maarten van Heemskerck’s Rome. Antiquity, Memory, and the Cult of Ruins. Leiden. Egerton, Judy (2007). George Stubbs, Painter. New Haven.

 Scholten 2012, 274, fig. 6.  See https://www.charlesraysculpture.com/collections/mountain-lion-attacking-dog [accessed 2 January 2023].

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Ensoli Vittozzi, Serena / Parisi Presicce, Claudio (1991). “Il reimpiego dell’antico sul Colle Capitolino sotto il pontificato di Sisto V.,” in: L. Spezzaferro and M.E. Tittoni (eds.), Il Campidoglio e Sisto V, Rome, 85–115. Faietti, Marzia / Scaglietti Kelescian, Daniela (1995). Amico Aspertini. Modena. Franks, Hallie (2014). “Traveling, in Theory: Movement as Metaphor in the Ancient Greek Andron,” The Art Bulletin 96.2, 156–169. Goette, Hans Rupprecht (2019). “Zur ‘Löwenkampfgruppe auf dem Kapitol’,” in: H. Rupprecht Goette and I. Leventi (eds.), Excellence: Studies in Honour of Olga Palagia, Rahden, 145–156. González-Palacios, Alvaro (2013). Il seraglio di pietra: La sala degli animali in Vaticano. Vatican City. Gramaccini, Norberto (1989). “La prima riedificazione del Campidoglio e la rivoluzione senatoriale del 1144,” in: S. Danesi Squarzina (ed.), Roma—Centro ideale della cultura dell’Antico nei secoli XV e XVI. Da Martino V al Sacco di Roma, 1417–1527, Milan, 21–33. Gramaccini, Norberto (2021). Jacopo Bellini’s Book of Drawings in the Louvre: and the Paduan Academy of Francesco Squarcione. Berlin. Grandjouan, Clairève / Markson, Eileen / Rotroff, Susan (1989). Hellenistic Relief Molds from the Athenian Agora. Hesperia suppl. 23. Princeton. Grawehr, Matthias (2020). “Introducing Kings and Greek Art in the 4th Century BC,” in: M. Grawehr, C. Leypold, M. Mohr, and E. Thiermann (eds.), Klassik—Kunst der Könige: Kings and Greek Art in the 4th Century BC, Zürcher Archäologische Forschungen 7, Rahden, 11–36. Greenblatt, Stephen (2010). Cultural Mobility: A Manifesto. Cambridge. Humphrey, John (1986). Roman Circuses. Arenas for Chariot Racing. Berkeley. Huskinson, Janet (2015). Roman Strigillated Sarcophagi: Art & Social History. Oxford. Jacobson, Esther (1995). The Art of the Scythians: The Interpenetration of Cultures at the Edge of the Hellenic World. Leiden. Kelly, Jason M. (2012). “Letters from a Young Painter Abroad: James Russel in Rome, 1740–1763, [Introduction and Critical Edition of the James Russel Manuscripts],” Walpole Society 74, 61–164. Masiello, Laura et al. (2013). “Recenti scoperte archeologiche sull’acropoli di Oria: un mosaico policromo a ciottoli,” in: G. Andreassi, A. Cocchiaro, and A. Dell’Aglio (eds.), Vetustis novitatem dare. Temi di antichità e archeologia in ricordo di Grazia Angela Maruggi, Taranto, 355–363. Massari, Stefania (1993). Giulio Romano Pinxit et delineavit. Opere grafiche di collaborazione e bottega, exhibition catalogue. Rome. Meyer, Caspar (2013). Greco-Scythian Art and the Birth of Eurasia: From Classical Antiquity to Russian Modernity. Oxford Studies in Ancient Culture & Representation. Oxford. Miller, Margaret C. (1997). Athens and Persia in the Fifth Century BC: A Study in Cultural Receptivity. Cambridge. Mullen, James Stephen (2019). The Royal hunts of Alexander the Great: Engaging with Local Traditions of Kingship Throughout his Empire. Diss. Newcastle University. Opper, Thorsten (2008). Hadrian. Empire & Conflict. Cambridge, MA. Palagia, Olga (2000). “Hephaestion’s Pyre and the Royal Hunt of Alexander,” in: A.B. Bosworth and E.J. Baynham (eds.), Alexander the Great in Fact and Fiction. Oxford, 167–206. Parisi Presicce, Claudio (2009). “Dalla renovatio senatus al Giubileo del 1300. Il Campidoglio nel XII e XIII secolo,” in: E.B. Di Gioia and C. Parisi Presicce, Carlo I d’Angiò. Re di Sicilia e Senatore di Roma: Il monumento onorario nel Campidoglio del Duecento, Rome, 19–55. Parisi Presicce, Claudio (2022). in: S. Settis (ed.), with Anna Anguissola, Recycling Beauty. Milan, 270–272, cat. no. 30, 270–272. Poggio, Alessandro (2020). Dynastic Deeds. Hunt scenes in the funerary imagery of the Achaemenid Eastern Mediterranean. Oxford. Schmidt-Nechl, Barbara (1992). “Zur Löwenkampfgruppe auf dem Kapitol,” AA 2, 267–275.

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Scholten, Frits (2012). “Malleable marble: The Antwerp snow sculptures of 1772,” Netherlands Yearbook for Art History 62.1, 266–295. Settis, Salvatore (2015). “Supremely Original. Classical Art as Serial. Iterative. Portable,” in: S. Settis, A. Anguissola, and D. Gasparotto (eds.), Serial/Portable Classic: The Greek Canon and its Mutations. Milan, 51–72. Stewart, Andrew (1993). Faces of Power: Alexander’s Image and Hellenistic Politics. Berkeley. Sturgeon, Mary (1975–1976). “Hellenistic Lion-Bull Group in Oberlin,” Allen Memorial Art Museum Bulletin 33.1, 28–43. Tassinari, Gabriella (2021). “Animali in lotta nella glittica post-antica,” in: S. Perea Yébenes (ed.), Animales en la glíptica greco-romana y en su tradición clásica. Madrid, 263–267. Todisco, Luigi (1994). Scultura antica e reimpiego in Italia meridionale. Bari. Tronchin, Francesca (2011). “The Sculpture of the Casa di Octavius Quartio at Pompeii,” in: E. Poehler, M. Flohr, and K. Cole (eds.), Pompeii: Art, Industry, Infrastructure. Havertown, 24–40. Vacca, Flaminio (1988 [1594]). Memorie di varie antichità trovate in diversi luoghi della città. Rome. von Hesberg, Henner (1987). “Die Löwenkampfgruppe auf dem Kapitol und ihre Wiederholung in Augsburg,” RM 94, 109–130. von Hofsten, Sven / von Hofsten, Helène Whittaker (2007). The feline-prey theme in archaic Greek art: classification, distribution, origin, iconographical context. Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis. Stockholm Studies in Classical Archaeology 13. Stockholm. Wallace, Shane (2018). “Metalexandron: Receptions of Alexander in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds,” in: K.R. Moore (ed.), Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Alexander the Great. Leiden, 162–196. Willemsen, Frank (1959). Die Löwenkopf-Wasserspeier vom Dach des Zeus Tempels. Olympische Forschungen IV. Berlin. Wolohojian, Stephan (2017). “A Grand Tableau. Charles Le Bruns’s Portrait of the Jabach Family,” in: S. Wolohojian, M. Watt, and M. Gallagher (eds.), A Grand Tableau: Charles Le Bruns’s Portrait of the Jabach Family: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 75.1, 5–27. Wootton, William (2002). “Another Alexander mosaic: reconstructing the Hunt mosaic from Palermo,” JRA 15, 264–274.

Kenneth Lapatin

Gnaios: In Search of an Artistic Personality Introduction Admirable artifacts arouse curiosity about those who produced them. While most objects that survive from classical antiquity are the products of anonymous artisans, some are signed and others, though uninscribed, have been attributed by scholars to craftspeople whose names we know as well as to those whose names we do not. Ancient Athenian painted pots—and the ground-breaking classification of them by Sir John Beazley—are the best examples of this phenomenon: some painters signed their wares, allowing unsigned objects to be attributed to them by modern scholars based on shape, technique, imagery, and, above all, style; other, anonymous painters have been given names based on particular characteristics of their work (e.g., Elbows-Out Painter), the iconography of a notable object (e.g., Gorgon Painter), or the city or collection in which a specific “name vase” is held (e.g., Berlin Painter).1 Although generally less well recognized, the same is true of ancient gems and those who engraved them.2 The names of more than 80 Greek and Roman gem cutters are known from surviving signatures on the stones themselves; eight others are preserved in Greek and Latin literature; and epigraphic sources record more still.3 The most famous of these carvers, Pyrgoteles and Dioskourides, are known from Greek and Latin literary sources to have worked for renowned rulers, Alexander the Great and the emperor Augustus, respectively, while Theodoros of Samos is reputed to have engraved the seal of the Samian tyrant Polykrates. Of these, only works by Dioskourides undoubtedly survive, although

 Hurwit 2015 is a recent treatment of signatures, although it deals predominantly with Greek vase painting and sculpture. Guarducci 1967–1978, III.377–561 is a more comprehensive study of the phenomenon across multiple media. On Beazley and his legacy see, e.g., Arrington 2017.  Gesztelyi 1993.  See e.g., Lapatin 2021 with previous bibliography. Acknowledgements: I am grateful to the editors for their patience and suggestions and to the individuals and institutions who kindly provided photographs and permission to publish them here, as well as friends and colleagues who generously assisted me in the course of my research. My greatest debt is to the late Gertud Platz-Horster, whose untimely death in 2019 greatly diminished our field. Thanks too to Ruth Allen, Matilde Avviseau-Broustet, Judith Barr, Professor Sir John Boardman†, Sash Giles, Paweł Gołyźniak, Dorothy Lobel, Laure Marest, Georg Plattner, Hadrien Rambach, Duane Roller, David Saunders, Andrew Stewart†, Lisbet Thoresen, Alex Truscott, Marjorie Trusted, Alexandra Villing, Claudia Wagner, Karoline Zhuber-Okrog, and Erika Zwierlein-Diehl, none of whom necessarily share the opinions expressed here. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111182919-024

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several attributions remain contested.4 As in the case of Athenian pottery, technical and stylistic features of signed gems sometimes allow uninscribed ones to be attributed to specific carvers: to cite but one example, four uninscribed late Archaic scarabs and scaraboids with distinctive renderings of hair, musculature, and pose have been convincingly assigned to the late Archaic engraver Epimenes, who signed a fifth gem depicting a figure with nearly identical details.5

Gnaios Almost 300 gems bear the name of the engraver Gnaios. The vast majority of these, 277, were part of the Poniatowski collection, formed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries: they are demonstrably forgeries.6 Having recently spent much time and effort closely examining and tracing the history of one of these, a portrait of Mark Anthony that departs from the typical florid style and mythological iconography of most of the “ancient” gems commissioned from outstanding modern carvers by Prince Stanislas Poniatowski (1754–1833),7 I turn here to the remaining gems, which might actually bear authentic signatures of the ancient gem engraver; to unsigned gems that might plausibly be attributed to him; and to what, if anything, might confidently be said about his career, for although not mentioned explicitly by ancient writers he has been held in high esteem by post-antique collectors and scholars since at least the early 1600s. This essay revisits the carver’s oeuvre, seeking to apply reliable criteria for attribution, to explore the implications of his Roman name and Greek signature, and to examine what, if anything, might be gained through such efforts.

 For gems bearing the signature of Dioskourides and others attributed to him see, e.g., Stosch 1724, 32–41, pls. XXV-XXXI; Bracci 1784–86, II.16–77; Vollenweider 1966, 56–64; Richter 1971, 142–144, nos. 664–673; Megow 2001; Plantzos 2007; Zwierlein-Diehl 1990; Zwierlein-Diehl 2005; Zwierlein-Diehl 2007, esp. 117–119, figs. 459–467; and Lapatin 2021, 223.  Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, inv. 21.1194, 27.677; Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum, inv.81.AN.76.22, 85. AN.370.6; New York, MMA 31.11.5: see Boardman 1970, 148, pls. 355–357; Beazley 2002, 25–27, nos. 27–28; Lapatin 2015, pls. 81–83; Lapatin 2021, 195–196, figs. 12.7–12.8a-d.  Bibliography on the Poniatowski gems is vast: see, e.g., Poniatowski n.d.; Poniatowski 1833; Christie/ Manson 1839; Toelken 1832; Prendeville 1841; Ogle 1841 and 1842; Rudoe 1990; Seidmann 1999; PlatzHorster 2005; Wagner 2008 and 2013; Rambach 2014; Gołyźniak 2018; Dmitireva 2018; Cresci Vangelli 2019; Di Castro 2019; Lapatin 2022; and especially the Beazley Archive’s on-line Poniatowski Gem database compiled and maintained by Claudia Wagner: https://www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/gems/poniatowski/da tabase.asp [accessed 25 July 2022].  Lapatin 2022.

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The Signed Gems The first unequivocally ancient gem signed by Gnaios to be recognized as such is a fragmentary beryl (aquamarine) intaglio depicting the youthful Hercules, inscribed “Gnaios” and now in the British Museum, but formerly in the collections of Fulvio Orsini (1529–1600), Leone Strozzi (1638–1703), and Louis, Duc de Blacas d’Aulps (1815– 1866) (Fig. 1).8

Fig. 1: Beryl (aquamarine) intaglio of Hercules inscribed ΓΝΑΙΟC, set in a modern gold mount, 24 x 20 mm. London, British Museum, 1867,0507.318 (Gems 1892). Photo: © Trustees of the British Museum.

In 1606, Johann Faber (Jean-Rodolph Le Fèvre) first published the inscription ΓΝΑΙΟC (retrograde like all of the inscriptions discussed below) in the nominative beneath the figure, taking it to be a label rather than a signature, and, apparently as Orsini himself had done, identified the image as a portrait of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey the Great), who sometimes styled himself a second Hercules. Faber, seeming to follow Orsini, even suggested that Pompey employed the stone as a personal seal, despite Plutarch’s statement that the triumvir’s signet, sent to Caesar after his murder, featured a lion holding a sword (Pompey, 80.5); others apparently considered the gem to depict Pompey’s elder son, also called Gnaeus Pompeius.9 Although the authenticity of the inscription has subsequently been doubted by some scholars, by 1724 it was recog-

 London, British Museum, 1867, 0507.318 (Gems 1892).  Faber 1606, 65–66, no. 114. For Fulvio Orsini’s identification of Hercules as Pompey, see his handlist of 404 intaglios and cameos published by de Nolhac 1884, 153, no. 9. Orsini acquired the gem ‘del Maf-

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nized as a signature by Baron Philippe von Stosch in his seminal bilingual study Gemmae antiquae caelatae, scalptorum nominibus insignitae / Pierres antiques gravées, sur lesquelles les graveurs ont mis leurs noms.10 Although the stone was mistaken for a sapphire, Stosch also properly identified the curly-haired, bare-cheeked youth with the club as Hercules (Fig. 2), and others have subsequently linked the image to fourthcentury BCE sculptural types, such as the figure reflected in marble formerly in the Lansdowne collection.11

Fig. 2: Engraving of Fig. 1 by Bernard Picart. After Stosch 1724, pl. XXIII.

This is the only gem by Gnaios included in Stosch’s corpus of 70 signed gems, although he vaguely mentions false signatures of the carver added to other gems “to impress the curious and to sell them at higher prices” (“pour en imposer aux Curieux & les leur vendre plus cher”). Stosch later acquired another (the athlete now in Baltimore discussed below, Fig. 6) and had it engraved for a subsequent publication that never came to fruition.12 Gnaios’s Hercules was soon reproduced in other publications, such as Antonio Francesco Gori’s Dactyliotheca Smithiana of 1767 (where there is no indication of the break at the top of the hero’s head, replaced with gold, unlike the thin line in

feo,’ presumably his friend the antiquary Achille Maffei (d. 1568). For identification of the sitter as Pompey the Younger see https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O349617 [accessed 25 July 2022].  Stosch 1724, 28–31, pl. XXIII; see also Brunn 1889, 381–385; Furtwängler 1913; Zwierlein-Diehl 2005.  Lansdowne Hercules, now Malibu, JPMG 70.AA. 109: see https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/ob ject/1097PM [accessed 25 July 2022] for complete bibliography. See, e.g., Richter 1971, 139–140, no. 656 for the association between gem and statue.  Richter 1971, 139–140, no. 656; see also Zwierlein-Diehl 2007, 275, 481, fig. 877; Platz-Horster 1993.

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Bernard Picart’s engraving for Stosch). This finely carved gem also came to be reproduced in diverse media in three dimensions: hardstone and glass intaglio replicas, emulations in cameo as well as ceramic (including by Wedgewood), and even an enlargement in ivory apparently intended for some kind of luxurious chest or cabinet (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3: Eighteenth-century ivory plaque after Fig. 2, Gori 1767, pl. XXIII, or Bracci 1784, pl. XXXIX, 60 x 82 mm. London, Victoria & Albert Museum, inv. A.116-1978. Photo: © V&A.

Several of the hardstone replicas were the autographed works of renowned modern gem-carvers, such as Giovanni and Luigi Pichler (1734–1791; 1773–1854, respectively), Giovanni Antonio Santarelli (1758–1826), Giuseppe Cerbara (1770–1856), Giuseppe Girometti (1780–1850), and Giovanni Calandrelli (1784–1853).13 The fame of and admiration for Gnaios’s Hercules led several scholars to consider Gnaios among the ancient world’s most notable gem-cutters, although he is not mentioned in a single surviving Greek or Latin text and thus little can be known about the ancient reception of his work.14 (Similarly, the Athenian potter and pot painter Exekias is often described as

 Stone imitation by Giovanni Antonio Santarelli (1758–1826), British Museum 1867,0507.789; by Giuseppe Cerbara (1770–1856), Christie’s, London, sale 12299, 15 September 2016, lot 142; by Luigi as well as Giovanni Pichler, Sotheby’s, New York, sale N08306, 24 April 2007, lot 49; by Giovanni Calandrelli, Cades, Impronte dell’Istituto Archeologico Germanico di Roma (Rome, 1829-), 75–1113. There are many other imitations in stone, including British Museum 1913,0307.83, ex-Hull Grundy, Gere 1983, no. 96; Royal Collection, RCIN 65827, Aschengreen Piacenti and Boardman 2008, 160, no. 265; Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum IX B 653, Zwierlein-Diehl 1973, 165–166, no. 543; Zwierlein-Diehl 2007, fig. 946; Munich, Stiftung Leo Merz, Willers/Nydegger 2003, 172–173, no. 181. Imitations in glass include London, British Museum, 1913,0307.83, Dalton 1915, no. 682. And those in ivory include London, Victoria and Albert Museum A.116–1978, Trusted 2013, 310–311, no. 306. Svoronos 1913, no. 207, pl. III appears to be an ancient version of the same type. For references to further replicas, by Wedgwood among others, see Tassinari 2012, 266–269. An additional modern intaglio replica, a cornelian, is on display in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Venice.  Bracci 1784, 264–299, pls. xxxxviii-liii. Furtwängler 1900, III.357 shared Bracci’s positive estimation (“Auch Gnaios ist ein vortrefflicher Künstler”), while others have written of carver’s fame, e.g., Zazoff 1983, 289: “Nun was Gnaios ein berühmter Künstler”; Roller 2018, 42: “Gnaios was a famous gem

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one of the most famous artists of antiquity, although his fame is recorded only in modern textbooks). Over a decade after Stosch’s publication of the Hercules, a cornelian intaglio with a female bust in profile inscribed ΓΝΑΙΟY surfaced in Rome (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4: Cornelian intaglio of a female bust with a scepter inscribed ΓΝAΙΟY, set in a modern gold ring, 16.8 x 13 mm. New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 10.110.1. Photo: MMA, Open Access.

It was reportedly found in a vineyard near the Colosseum and soon thereafter, on 29 March 1737, was acquired by Marchese Alessandro Gregorio Capponi.15 The female figure was initially identified as the goddess Diana, and subsequently as Juno Regina and Sappho, among others. In his 1784 bilingual sequel to Stosch’s volume, Commentaria de antiquis scalptoribus qui sua nomina inciderunt in gemmis et cammeis / Memorie degli antichi incisori che scolpirono i loro nomi gemme e cammei, Domenico Agostino Bracci called the subject of the cornelian the “head of an unidentified woman” (caput mulieris ignotum) in his text, but in the caption to the engraving (by Niccolo Mogalli) she is labeled as Cleopatra, an identification which, in his text, Bracci ultimately prefers to Juno or Euterpe, the Muse of lyric poetry. In Rudolf Erich Raspe’s 1791 catalogue of gem impressions made by James Tassie, the head is identified as Cleopatra Selene, the daughter of Cleopatra and the Roman general Mark Antony. At that time, the gem was in Rome, in the Museo Kircheriano of the Collegio Romano, to which Capponi had bequeathed his antiquities in 1746; subsequently it is said to have belonged to an unidenti-

cutter . . . ” For Sena Chiesa and Facchini (1985, 19 n. 112) Gnaios is “forse il più interessante incisore neoattico operante in Roma.”  Ubaldelli 2001, 299–301, no. 233.

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fied member of the Este family before passing through the hands of the Florentine dealer Emilio Costanti and John Marshall before being acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1910.16 Metropolitan Museum curator Gisela M. A. Richter appears to have initially misread the ribbed scepter topped by a sphere as a hair-pin, but later recognized it and suggested that the figure might be a Ptolemaic princess or queen. She also noted that the woman’s coiffure resembled that depicted in Greek sculptures of the fourth century BCE, particularly Praxiteles’s Knidian Aphrodite. She described the hair as “tied with a fillet wound three times round her head and . . . done up in a chignon at the nape of the neck.”17 The fine diagonal lines cut into the foremost of the figure’s three hairbands, however, suggest that it may be intended as a distinctive emblem of priestly or royal authority, while the other two may be a fillet wrapped twice around her head, an attribute of Aphrodite; small dots decorate the fourth wrap, at the base of the chignon. Richter also commented aptly on the portrait’s “finished, cold elegance,” which she considered to be “in line with Augustan . . . representations.” Subsequently, the intaglio has frequently been identified as Cleopatra Selene, even though we have no confirmed portraits of her as an adult for comparison. Although these two intaglios are cut from different minerals, depict male and female busts, and have their carver’s name is inscribed in different grammatical cases,18 they share many features—enough, in fact, to attribute them to the same hand: the flaring nostrils and the profiles of the lips and chin are almost identical, as are the treatments of the eyes. In both intaglios, careful attention is paid to the delicate locks of the hair, which, though different in arrangement, are soft and lively. The flesh of both figures, however, is smooth and taught, with little subcutaneous anatomical definition. Unlike many ancient sculptors working in marble and bronze—and some gem engravers—the carver of these gems apparently had little interest in the relation of flesh, muscle, and underlying bone structure.19

 New York, MMA 10.110.1: Lippert 1755, 21, no. 52; Bracci 1784, 298–299, pl. liii; Raspe 1791, 231, no. 3362; Brunn 1889, II.384; Furtwängler 1900, I.20, pl. xlix; Richter 1920, 130–131, no. 222; Richter 1956, 101–102, no. 463, pl. 56; Vollenweider 1966, 45–46, pl. 43.1–3; Richter 1971, 140–141, no. 659; Vollenweider 1973–1975, II.188–189; Zwierlein-Diehl 1986, 106–107, no. 149; Ubaldelli 2001, 299–301, no. 233; Roller 2003, 150–151, 160; Pirzio Biroli Stefanelli 2007, 41, nos. i-153; Zwierlein-Diehl 2007, 416–417, fig. 478; Picón and Hemingway 2016, 312, no. 263; Gołyźniak 2017, 1004 n. 10; Prioux 2017, 264–265, fig. 18; Mertens 2020, 386–388. Gołyźniak (2020, 194–195) wrongly identifies this gem as a modern forgery. See also the museum’s online collection page: https://www.metmuseum.org. Note that “Lippert 1755: 84, no. 52” and “1767: 21, no. 52” cited by Richter 1956, 102 are not the same gem. The former is identified by Lippert as Polyhymnia on account of a lyre above the shoulder; the latter he identifies as Juno on account of the scepter.  See Richter 1920, 130–131, no. 222; Richter 1956, 101–102, no. 463; Richter 1971, 140–141, no. 659.  Signatures on gems appear in both the nominative and genitive, and some carvers evidently employed both formulae. See, e.g., Lapatin 2021, esp. 193 n. 29, 217, tab. 12.1.  See especially the analysis of Zwierlein-Diehl 1986, 104–107, nos. 148–149. Compare, e.g., the amethyst Demosthenes signed by Dioskourides, Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum, 2019.13.15: https://www. getty.edu/art/collection/object/109Q08 [accessed 2 August 2024].

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A third intaglio with a female head in profile inscribed ΓΝΑΙΟC was published by Bracci in 1784. She wears a cowskin cap, knotted under the chin, and was identified as Juno Lanuvina. This gem, a cornelian then in the collection of Joachim Reindorp in Amsterdam, is now in the Beverley collection at Alnwick Castle. Johann Joachim Winckelmann questioned the authenticity of the signature, attributing it to the modern engraver Antonio Pichler (1697–1779, the father of Giovanni and Luigi Pichler mentioned above), which Bracci apparently accepted. Today both the inscription and the carving are considered post-antique.20 Bracci published three additional gems inscribed with the name of the Gnaios, all in the genitive, ΓΝΑΙΟY, which came to light in the eighteenth century, after the publication of Stosch’s volume.21 Each of these depicts a complete male figure and thus they are not so readily comparable to the profile busts mentioned above. One, a banded agate in the Devonshire Collection at Chatsworth, still set in its ancient gold ring, features the Greek hero Diomedes seated on a wreathed altar, holding a sword in his left hand and the statuette of Athena known as the Paladion in his right, while before him, on a pillar but looking away, is the statue of a god (perhaps Poseidon, who sometimes appears in such scenes, but looking more like Hermes, wearing a short cloak and brimmed hat) (Fig. 5).

Fig. 5: Banded agate intaglio of Diomedes with the Palladion inscribed ΓΝAΙΟY, set in an ancient gold ring, 19 x 17 mm. Chatsworth, The Devonshire Collection. Photo: author, with kind permission of the Devonshire Collection.

 Bracci 1784, 266–267, 270–279, pl. xxxxviii; Köhler 1851, 98–99; Brunn 1889, II.384; Scarisbrick/Wagner/Boardman 2017, 110, no. 99. See also Tassinari 2012, 187–189, no. i.45, for discussion of this gem in the context of a similar “Theseus” by Pichler.  Bracci 1784, 264–299, pls. xxxxviii-liii. Chatsworth: e.g., Köhler 1851, 168; Brunn 1889, II.384; Furtwängler 1900, pl. xlix, 2; Vollenweider 1966, 45, pl. 41.1–2; Richter 1971, 140, no. 657; Plantzos 1999a, no. 622, pl. 76.1.

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This is a conventional, albeit highly detailed, rendition of a popular scene that was carved most fully by the ancient gem-engraver Felix on a famous gem now in Oxford, as well as by Dioskourides on a now lost gem formerly in the possession of Lorenzo de’Medici, and by a host of anonymous carvers.22 The other two gems inscribed ΓΝΑΙΟY published by Bracci both depict standing athletes. One, a garnet now in the Walters Art Museum (Fig. 6), was in the possession of Apostolo Zeno in Venice by 1736, passed through the hands of Stosch by the end of that decade too late for inclusion in his publication of 1724, entered the Bessborough Collection by 1754, and, by 1765, was part of the renowned Marlborough Collection, which was dispersed in 1875.

Fig. 6: Garnet intaglio of an athlete pouring oil inscribed ΓΝAΙΟY, set in a modern gold ring, 18 x 15 mm. Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, inv. 42.109. Photo: WAM, Public Domain.

It features a nude male, standing frontally with weight on his right leg, the left slightly withdrawn. His left hand, holding an alabastron, is raised to the height of his ear, while the right is lowered across his body in a position to receive the oil. Here, given both the scale of the figure and loss of detail from later over-polishing, features of the face and hair appear less developed, but the carver was nonetheless clearly interested in the anatomy of the chest, abdomen, and knees, as well as the contours of the arm and leg muscles. To the athlete’s right, a table, with lion’s paw feet and a crossbar between the legs, supports a partially fluted hydria. The carver’s signature runs vertically downwards along the left side of the figure.23

 See, e.g., Plantzos 1999b; Golyźniak 2020, 230–231.  Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, inv. 42.109: full provenance information at https://art.thewalters. org/detail/9513 [accessed 25 July 2022]. See, e.g., Venuti 1736, pl. 75; Natter 1754, pl. 25; Köhler 1851, 98; Brunn 1889, II.383; Furtängler 1900, pl. l, 9; Vollenweider 1966, 45, pl. 42.5; Richter 1971, 140, no. 660; Hill 1975; Zazoff 1983, 289, pl. 82.3; Platz-Horster 1993; Zwierlein-Diehl 2007, figs. 476, 877; and Boardman et al. 2009: 190, no. 429.

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The second intaglio of an athlete, reported to be a cornelian once in the collection of Joachim Reindorp in Amsterdam, depicts an apoxyomenos in profile, holding a strigil before him in the pose of the bronze statue from Ephesos now in Vienna, the bronze statue recovered off the coast of Croatia, and a marble in the Uffizi, all of which may well represent the pose of the famous statue by Lysippos mentioned by ancient literary sources rather than the better known marble in the Vatican with arms extended directly forward, which has become a staple of modern art history text books.24 This gem has been associated with a nicolo once in the possession of Alexandre-Marc-René Estienne Daugny (d’Augny) that entered the collection of the Cabinet des médailles of the Bibliotheque nationale de France in 1798 (Fig. 7).25

Fig. 7: Nicolo intaglio of an apoxyomenos, inscribed ΓΝAΙΟY, set in a modern gilt silver mount, 10 x 7 mm. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, inv. 58.1865. Photo: © BnF.

While the athlete’s face, like that of the figure on the garnet in Baltimore, lacks definition, his anatomy is similar, with particular attention paid to abdominal musculature. This athlete, too, stands on an abbreviated groundline, and the inscription ΓΝΑΙΟY runs vertically upwards behind him. Quite similar is a dark glass intaglio in Vienna published by Erika Zwierlein-Diehl in 1979.26 It too depicts an Apoxyomenos facing left, with arms lowered, holding a strigil in his right hand and with his weight on his straight right leg, the left foot withdrawn. The inscription ΓΝΑΙΟY runs vertically upwards behind him (Fig. 8).

 See, e.g., Daehner/Lapatin 2015, 271–281.  Paris, Bibliothèque Nnationale de France, 1856: Bracci 1784, pl. lii; Catalogue . . . Daugny 1798, 17, no. 89; Cointreau 1800, 188–189; Chabouillet 1858, 248, no. 1856; Horster 1970, 66 n. 2; Platz-Horster 1993, 13; Claudio Parisi Presicce in Moreno 1995, 323, no. 6.5.1; Lapatin 2022, fig. 6.  Vienna, KHM ANSA XI 1547: Zwierlein-Diehl 1979, 59, no. 770, pl. 31; Boardman 1981, 64.

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Fig. 8: Glass intaglio of an apoxyomenos, inscribed ΓΝAΙΟY, 8.6 x 6.3 mm. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. ANSA XI.1547. Photo: © KHM.

Recent autopsy of the Vienna gem, however, confirms the suggestion that it is actually an early modern replica of the Apoxyomenos now in Paris, for the carving of the figure and signature aligns precisely and the Vienna gem has no provenance prior to its acquisition by the Kunsthistorisches Museum in 1924.27 If the nicolo in Paris is not by our carver, it may well have been cut by an ancient emulator and thus, perhaps, offers some slight evidence for the ancient reception of Gnaios’s work. Another inscribed intaglio, a cornelian now in London (Fig. 9), must also be addressed, if only to dismiss it as a work of our carver. It depicts a female figure with long, flowing hair, whose garment, apparently a chiton with buttoned sleeves, slips from her left shoulder. Depicted with the head in profile but with her body in ¾ view from the rear, she looks towards a tragic mask placed atop a pillar. Thus, she has been identified as a muse, perhaps Melpomene. Behind her is the artist’s signature, [Γ]ΝΑΙΟY, its first letter missing. Furtwängler, who evidently accepted the work, nonetheless considered it “a little too dainty” (“etwas allzu zierlich”).28 Neither the rendering of the face of this figure nor the hair is as fine as that of Gnaios’s two intaglio busts considered above, and the letterforms of the signature appear somewhat clum-

 Zwierlein-Diehl 1986, 286, no. 865; Platz-Horster 1993, 13, n. 22; see also Claudio Parisi Presicce in Moreno 1995, 323, no. 6.5.1.  Furtwängler 1900, pl. xlix, 28; II.238; III.357. See also Faber 1606, pl. 148; Köhler 1851, 168; King 1867, 209; Brunn 1889, II.385; Dalton 1915, 112, no. 777; Richter 1971, 140, no. 658; Zwierlein-Diehl 1986, 106, no. 7.

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Fig. 9: Cornelian intaglio of a Muse with a mask, inscribed ΓΝAΙΟY, set in a modern gold ring, 12.7 x 12.7 mm. London, British Museum, 1913, 0307.74. Photo: © Trustees of the British Museum.

sier than all the others, with the hastae (straight lines) between the drill points rather thicker. Tellingly, when this gem was first published by Faber in 1606, the figure was identified as “Vergilius” and no signature was recorded. (Fig. 10)

Fig. 10: Engraving of Fig. 9 omitting inscription and labeled VIRGILIVS. Published in Faber 1606, pl. 148.

Recent autopsy of the much-weathered gem itself reveals that no gamma could ever have been present between the tied bun of the female figure’s coiffure and the beginning of the preserved inscription, suggesting that the name might have been copied from a less well-preserved example, such as that now in New York, also missing the

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initial letter. This gem thus seems to be an example of a practice described by Stosch and others of adding false signatures to genuine ancient gems to increase their value. Stosch, Brunn, and Furtwängler cited additional gems inscribed with Gnaios’s name that cannot be traced. These include depictions of Alcaeus, Theseus, Brutus, a sister of Caligula, and, most unlikely, Antinous.29 The 18th-century engraver Lorenz Natter explicitly mentions yet another instance by his Neapolitan rival, Carlo Costanzi: “I saw lately at Dresden a Head of Hercules when a Youth, done by him, with the Name of ΓΝΑΙΟC to it.”30

Unsigned Gems In addition to the above-mentioned intaglios that we can confidently ascribe to Gnaios, a splendid unsigned cameo now in Naples can also be attributed to the master (Fig. 11).31

Fig. 11: Banded agate cameo of Hercules inscribed LAV R MED, 30 x 23 mm. Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, inv. 25851. With permission of the Ministero della Cultura – Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli.

Depicting the youthful Hercules wearing the lionskin (and therefore sometimes identified as Omphale), this exquisite three-layered stone was in the possession Pietro Barbo (Pope Paul II) before entering the collections of the Medici (Lorenzo il Magnifico carved his initials upon it, like so many other of his ancient gems) and thence the  Stosch 1724, 23; Brunn 1889, II.385; Furtwängler 1913, 239. See also Zwierlein-Diehl 2005 and 2007.  Natter 1754, xxix.  Naples, MAN 25851: Vollenweider 1966, 46, pl. 42.3; A. Giuliano in Dacos et al. 1973, 55, n. 24; Gasparri 1994, 16, 30 n. 51, 70, no. 45, fig. 91; Pannuti 1994, 208–209, no. 176.

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Farnese. It was attributed to Gnaios by Marie Louise Vollenweider in 1966, and although such attributions should be accepted only with great caution, this one is supported by the similar features of both versions of the young hero, the profile of his chin and lips, flaring nostril, thin lower and thicker upper eyelid, bulging brow, as well as the tight curls of hair, which, in the cameo, are enhanced by drilled centers. A large sard intaglio now in Boston (Fig. 12), formerly in the collection of Edward Perry Warren, was also attributed to Gnaios by Vollenweider as it shares many characteristics of the above-mentioned gems.32

Fig. 12: Cornelian intaglio of a woman with a bow, Diana or an Amazon, 27 x 20 mm. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, inv. 27.775. Photo: © BMFA.

It depicts a female with exposed right breast; the left is apparently draped. The deep bust, although common in marble sculpture only in the second century, appears in several other intaglios of the Augustan age.33 The figure wears a twisted fillet and her hair is gathered in a half-knot in the rear. A bow topped with a griffin head occupies the field before her, and thus she has been identified as either Diana or an Amazon. The profile of chin, lips, and nostrils, as well as the rendering of the eyes and brow, are identical to those of the Hercules in London and “Cleopatra”/“Cleopatra Selene” now in New York, and the rendering of tight curls with drilled centers across the brow is similar to those on the cameo in Naples. The hooked ends of the loose curls that hang behind her neck also recall those of the New York intaglio.

 Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, inv. 27.775: Vollenweider 1966, 46. See also Zazoff 1969, 200, who considers the attribution doubtful (“zweifelhaft”) and Sena Chiesa and Facchini 1985, 19, pl. 3, no. 13.  Vollenweider 1966, 45.

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Conclusions Gnaios’s Diomedes at Chatsworth, Dimitris Plantzos observed, “betrays a Classicizing taste,” an opinion of the carver’s work shared by several other scholars.34 For the same can readily be said for his standing athletes, which reference earlier statue types: the female figure in New York (whomever she represents), the two busts of Hercules carved in different techniques,35 and the Boston Diana/Amazon. Such classicism was much in vogue in many media in the first century BCE and early first century CE, and it is in this period that Gnaios has been placed. Scholars have constructed a more specific chronology and geography for his career, based in part upon the iconographic (but not stylistic) similarity of the two Hercules busts to coins minted by King Juba II of Mauretania and the identification of the female on the New York intaglio as Cleopatra Selene. Vollenweider has suggested that the carver, who bears a Roman praenomen, arrived in the Numidian court with the Ptolemaic princess, who grew up in Rome and was, ca. 25 BCE, married to the Mauretanian monarch, who was also raised in Rome and became a noted connoisseur of engraved gems.36 The putative connection between the carver and the offspring of Mark Antony and Cleopatra was subsequently reinforced by the erroneous acceptance as ancient of an amethyst intaglio inscribed ΓNΑΙΟϹ that depicted the triumvir, which was created in the early 19th century by Giovanni Calendrelli for Prince Poniatowski but was widely considered to be a classicizing posthumous portrait of her father commissioned by Cleopatra Selene herself.37 Thus, Gnaios, who in 1960 was considered likely to be a Greek freedman living in Rome—a position articulated by A. Stazio in a short entry on the carver in the Enciclopedia dell’arte antica, classica e orientale38—came to be thought of as having been trained at Alexandria before ending his career in Mauretania.39 Indeed, in some more recent publications such hypoth-

 Plantzos 1999a, 94 n. 8.  Several gem engravers certainly employed both techniques: Dioskourides, his son Hyllos, Aulos, Boethos, Skylax, and Sostratos all signed both intaglios and cameos, see, e.g., Lapatin 2021, Table 12.2.  Vollenweider 1966, 46.  See esp. Boardman 1968, 19, 27–28, and 93–94; Lapatin 2022.  Stazio 1960, 996–997: “. . . probabilmente liberto Greco vissuto a Roma.” See also Richter 1971, 129–130.  See, e.g., Boardman 1968, 27–28; Boardman 1970, 365: “. . . the artist Gnaios, who seems to have worked at first at Alexandria and may later have traveled west, with Anthony’s daughter, to the kingdom of her husband, Juba II of Numidia (Algeria), who was himself a gem connoisseur”; Hill 1975, 103: “. . . the course of Gnaeus’s life may be deduced: living through the age of Antony’s glory in Alexandria, where he learned his art, he then wandered afield, perhaps to Numidia, where King Juba II was a collector and the daughter of Anthony and Cleopatra, Cleopatra Selene, became Queen”; Roller 2018, 42: “Gnaios was a famous gem cutter who had worked for the triumvir and who came to the Mauretanian court, carving a portrait of the queen as well as mythological figures and possibly also supervising the art of the Mauretanian coinage.”

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eses have been presented as fact, upon which further theories have been built.40 “Master Gnaios” has even become a sympathetic character in modern historical fiction.41 Other than the appearance of Hercules on some Numidian coins and the possible identification of the woman on the New York cornelian as Cleopatra Selene, however, there is little to connect the carver with either Alexandria or Mauretania. Indeed, the presence of most of the gems referenced above in early modern collections in Italy, along with the carver’s name, suggest that he was active in Rome. His Latin praenomen, however, does not necessarily mean that he was Roman (any more than the Greek names of many contemporary artisans prove that they were ethnic Greeks42), for, as Erika Zwierlein-Diehl has observed, such names appear in the Greek east from the second century BCE; indeed, the gem-engraver Alexas named his sons Aulus and Quintus.43 Nor is there any evidence that he may have been enslaved, although that possibility cannot be discounted. To my knowledge, only two gem-engravers, Dexamenos and Eutyches, the son of Dioskourides, tell us explicitly where they were from (Chios and Aigeiai, respectively). Felix could well be the name of an enslaved individual or freedman, but its Latin form reveals little of his background. He, like Gnaios and all of the engravers mentioned above, signed his name in Greek, as did others with Latin names: Gaius (ΓΑΙΟϹ), Heios (ΗΕΙΟΥ), Quintus ([Κ]ΟΙΝΤΟϹ), Rufus (ΡΟΥΦΟϹ), and Saturninus (ϹΑΤΟΡΝΕΙΝΟΥ). Was Gnaios—or Gnaeus—even our carver’s real name? In the end, the stones themselves are what we have as evidence for a highly skilled engraver who worked in the fashionable, retrospective style prevalent in the late first century BCE and early first century CE. He was clearly a meticulous craftsman, but his links to the courts at Alexandria and Mauretania appear to have been overstated. To say more about the life of the carver is pushing the evidence.

 See, e.g., Roller 2003, 150–151: “Only one artist at the royal court is known by name, the distinguished gem-cutter Gnaios, who was part of Kleopatra Selene’s entourage and had worked for her father in Alexandria . . . He may also have been involved in producing the Mauretanean coin types. Gnaios, who came from a Hellenisitic court, where he had worked for a Roman aristocrat, demonstrates the artistic cross-fertilization of the Mauretanian kingdom”; Picón/Hemingway 2016, 312: “One of the few master gem cutters known by name in the Hellenistic period, Gnaios was active in Alexandria under the patronage of Mark Antony and later in Mauretania at the court of Kleopatra Selene and Juba II.”  Dray 2011.  See, e.g., Marvin 2008; Donderer 2018.  Zwierlein-Diehl 2005, 339.

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Furtwängler, Adolf (1913). “Studien über die Gemmen mit Künstlerinschriften,” in: J. Sieveking and L. Curtius (eds.), Kleine Schriften ii, Munich, 147–293 = Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 3 (1888), 105–139, 193–224, 297–325; 4 (1889), 46–87. Gasparri, Carlo (1994). Le gemme Farnese. Naples. Gere, Charlotte (1983). The Art of the Jeweller. A Catalogue of the Hull Grundy Gift to the British Museum: Jewellery, engraved gems and goldsmiths’ work. London. Gesztelyi, Tamás (1993). “Die Probleme der Meister, der Werkstatt und der Koine in der Steinschneidekunst,” in: K. Zimmermann (ed.), Der Stilbegriff in den Altertumswissenschaften, Rostock, 19–22. Gołyźniak, Pawel (2017). Review of D. Scarisbrick, C. Wagner and J. Boardman, The Beverley Collection of Gems at Alnwick Castle (London and New York, 2017), in: Göttinger Forum für Altertumswissenschaft 20, 1004. Gołyźniak, Pawel (2018). “A rediscovered Poniatowski gem in the National Museum in Krakow” Jewellery Studies: The Journal of the Society of Jewellery Historians 1, 3–11. Gołyźniak, Pawel (2020). Engraved Gems and Propaganda in the Roman Republic and under Augustus. Oxford. Gori, Antonio Francesco (1767). Dactyliotheca Smithiana gemmarum ectypa et Antonii Francisci Gorii ennarationes complectens. Venice. Guarducci, Margherita (1967–1978). Epigrafia Greca. Rome. Hill, Dorothy Kent (1975). “From Venuti and Winckelmann to Walters,” Apollo 102, 100–103. Horster, Gertrud (1970). Statuen auf Gemmen. Bonn. Hurwit, Jeffrey (2015). Artists and Signatures in Ancient Greece. Cambridge. King, Charles William (1867). “The Blacas Gems, Part II,” Archaeological Journal 24, 203–221. Köhler, Heinrich Karl Ernst (1851). “Abhandlungen über die geschnittenen Stein mid den Namen der Künstler,” in: L. Stephani (ed.), Gesammelte Schriften, III, St. Petersburg. Lapatin, Kenneth (2015). Luxus: The Sumptuous Arts of Greece and Rome. Los Angeles. Lapatin, Kenneth (2021). “Greek and Roman Glyptic: alibi ars, alibi materia,” in: H. Hochscheid and B. Russell (eds.), The Value of Making: Theory and Practice in Ancient Craft Production, Studies in Classical Archaeology 13, Turnhout, 189–231. Lapatin, Kenneth (2022). “The Getty Gnaios: A Love Story,” Journal of the History of Collections 34.1, 51–71. Lippert, Philipp Daniel (1755). Dactyliothecae universalis signorum exemplis nitidis redditae. Leipzig. Marvin, Miranda (2008). The Language of the Muses: The Dialogue between Roman and Greek Sculpture. Los Angeles. Megow, Wolf-Rüdiger (2001). “Dioskourides (IV),” in: R. Volkommer (ed.), Künstlerlexikon der Antike, Leipzig, I.182–183. Mertens, Joan R. (2020). “A Selection of Roman Works and their Modern Histories,” in: P. Zanker et al. (eds.), Roman Art: A Guide Through the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Collection, New York, 377–391. Moreno, Paolo (1995). Lisippo, l’arte e la fortuna. Rome. Natter, Lorenz (1754). A Treatise on the Ancient Method of Engraving on Precious Stones Compared with the Modern. London. Nolhac, Pierre (1884). “Les collections d’antiquités de Fulvio Orsini,” MEFRA 4, 153–172. Ogle, Nathaniel (1841). “Modern antiques: the Poniatowski gems,” The Spectator 703, 1217. Ogle, Nathaniel (1842). Review of Catalogue des pierres gravées antiques de S.A, le Prince Poniatowski (Florence, 1833), in: British and Foreign Review European Quarterly Journal 13, 66–91. Pannuti, Ulrico (1994). Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli. La collezione glittica, II. Rome. Prendeville, James (1841). Explanatory Catalogue of the Proof-Impressions of the Antique Gems Possessed by the late Prince Poniatowski and now in the Possession of John Tyrrell, Esq. London. Poniatowski, Stanislas (n.d.). Catalogue des pierres gravées antiques de S.A. le Prince Stanislas Poniatowski. Florence.

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Poniatowski, Stanislas (1832–1933). Catalogue des pierres gravées antiques de S.A. le Prince Stanislas Poniatowski. Florence. Picón, Carlos A. / Hemingway, Seán (2016). Pergamon and the Hellenistic Kingdoms of the Ancient World. New York. Pirzio Biroli Stefanelli, Lucia (2007). La collezione Paoletti: stampi in vetro per impronte di intagli e cammei, I. Rome. Plantzos, Dimitris (1999a). Hellenistic Engraved Gems. Oxford. Plantzos, Dimitris (1999b). “The Price of Sacrilege: Diomedes, the Palladion and Roman Taste,” in: M. Henig and D. Plantzos (eds.), Classicism to Neo-classicism: Essays dedicated to Gertrud Seidmann, Oxford, 39–47. Plantzos, Dimitris (2007). “Dioskourides,” in: G. Campbell (ed.), The Grove Encyclopedia of Classical Art and Architecture, Oxford, I.388–389 Platz-Horster, Gertrud (1993). “Der ‘Ölgießer’ des Gnaios Granat in der Walters Art Gallery,” Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 53, 11–21. Platz-Horster, Gertrud (2005). L’antica maniera: Zeichnungen und Gemmen des Giovanni Calandrelli in der Antikensammlung Berlin. Berlin. Prioux, Évelyne (2017). “Épigrammes et camées: la culture d’une reine amie de Rome, entre influences alexandrines et art augustéen?,” in: P. Linant de Bellefonds and É. Prioux (eds.), Voir les mythes: poésie hellénistique et arts figures, Paris, 247–272. Rambach, Hadrien J. (2014). “The gem collection of Prince Poniatowski,” American Numismatic Society Magazine 13.2, 34–49. Raspe, Rudolf Erich (1791). Descriptive Catalogue of a General Collection of Ancient and Modern Engraved Gems, Cameos and Intaglios, Taken from the most celebrated cabinets in Europe; and cast in coloured pastes, white enamel, and sulphur by James Tassie. London. Richter, Gisela Marie Augusta (1920). Catalogue of Engraved Gems of the Classical Style. New York. Richter, Gisela Marie Augusta (1956). Catalogue of Engraved Gems of the Classical Style. New York. Richter, Gisela Marie Augusta (1971). Engraved Gems of the Romans. London. Roller, Duane W. (2003). The World of Juba II and Kleopatra Selene: Royal Scholarship on Rome’s African Frontier. New York. Roller, Duane W. (2018). Cleopatra’s Daughter: And Other Royal Women of the Augustan Era. Oxford. Rudoe, Judy (1990). “The Poniatowski Gems,” in: M. Jones (ed.), Fake? The Art of Deception, London, 149–151. Scarisbrick, Diana / Wagner, Claudia / Boardman, John (2017). The Beverley Collection of Gems at Alnwick Castle. London. Seidmann, Gertrud (1999). “A genuine fake Poniatowski gem?” Bulletin Antieke Beschaving 74, 263–270. Sena Chiesa, Gemma / Facchini, Giuliana M. (1985). “Gemme romane di età imperiale: produzione, commerci, committenze,” ANRW 12.3, Berlin, 3–31. Stazio, Attilio (1960). “Gnaios,” in: R. Bianchi Bandinelli (ed.), Enciclopedia dell’arte antica, classica e orientale III, Rome, 996–997. Stosch, Baron Philippe von (1724). Gemmae antiquae caelatae, scalptorum nominibus insignitae / Pierres antiques gravées, sur lesquelles les graveurs ont mis leurs noms. Amsterdam. Svoronos, Ioannis N. (1913). “Δωρεὰ Κωνσταντινου Καραπάνου. Συλλογὴ γλυπτῶν λίθων,” Journal International d’Archéologie Numismatique 15, 147–176. Tassinari, Gabriella (2012). Giovanni Pichler: raccolta di impronte, di intagli e di cammei del Gabinetto numismatico e medagliere delle raccolte artistiche del Castello Sforzesco di Milano. Milan. Toelken, Ernst Heinrich (1832). Review of Catalogue des pierres gravées antiques de S.A. le Prince Stanislas Poniatowski, in: Jahrbücher für Wissenschaftliche Kritik 39–40, 309–320. Trusted, Marjorie (2013). Baroque & Later Ivories, Victoria & Albert Museum. London. Ubaldelli, Marco-Leopoldo (2001). Dactyliotheca Capponiana: Corpus Gemmarum. Rome. Venuti, Ridolfino (1736). Collectanea antiquitatum romanarum. Rome.

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Vollenweider, Marie-Louise (1966). Die Steinschneidekunst und ihre Künstler in spätrepublikanischer und augusteischer Zeit. Baden-Baden. Vollenweider, Marie-Louise (1972–1974). Porträtgemmen der römischen Republik. Mainz. Wagner, Claudia (2008). “A picture book of antiquity: the neoclassical gem collection of Prince Poniatowski,” in: IMAGINES: La Antigüedad en las Artes Escénicas y Visuales. International Conference at Logroño, Universidad de La Rioja, 22–24 October 2007, La Rioja, 565–572. Wagner, Claudia (2013). “Fable and history: Prince Poniatowski’s neoclassical gem collection,” in: H. Wiegel and M. Vickers (eds.), Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor, BAR International Series 2512, Oxford, 145–150. Willers, Dietrich / Nydegger, Lilian Raselli, eds. (2003). Im Glanz der Götter und Heroen: Meisterwerk antiker Glyptik aus der Stiftung Leo Merz. Mainz. Zazoff, Peter (1969). Review of Vollenweider 1966, Gnomon 41.2, 195–200. Zazoff, Peter (1983). Die antiken Gemmen: Handbuch der Archäologie. Munich. Zwierlein-Diehl, Erika (1973). Die antiken Gemmen des Kunsthistorischen Museums in Wien, I. Munich. Zwierlein-Diehl, Erika (1979). Die antiken Gemmen des Kunsthistorischen Museums in Wien, II. Munich. Zwierlein-Diehl, Erika (1986). Glaspasten im Martin-von-Wagner-Museum der Universität Würzburg, I. Munich. Zwierlein-Diehl, Erika (1990). “Griechische Gemmenschneider und augusteische Glyptik,” AA 4, 539–557. Zwierlein-Diehl, Erika (2005). “Gemmen mit Künstlerinschriften,” in: V. M. Strocka (ed.), Meisterwerke: Internationales Symposion anläßich des 150. Geburtstages von Adolf Furtwängler; Freiburg im Breisgau 30. Juni – 3. Juli 2003, Munich, 321–343. Zwierlein-Diehl, Erika (2007). Die antiken Gemmen und ihr Nachleben. Berlin.

Linda Nolan

“Time is Truly Forgetful”: The Black Stones in Early Modern Rome The Apostolic Visitation during the reign of Pope Urban VIII (1623–1644) to the church of S. Maria in Cosmedin strayed from the typical itinerary when the committee took time to transcribe two inscriptions.1 One inscription read: Here stones of the greatest weight and of black color A cruel hard sphere had been fastened from above, Bound to the feet of the saints, their bodies, hanging from on high, [they] twisted under its weight . . . There are those for whom they are continually heavy, but for Martyrs [they are] light.

It describes the appearance and use of a pair of heavy black stones still located inside the church. The stones are partially immured in small arched niches, the insides of which are painted with faded yellow and white radiating lines (Fig. 1). As the inscription notes, the stones were attached to the feet of saints while suspended. Their bodies twisted under the weight of the pendulous objects. A second inscription noted during the Apostolic Visitation states how the stones were attached to the necks of martyrs whose arms were tied behind them.2 And even if the stones were light for them, the stones caused the limbs to be torn violently from the body to “sever life” vitam abrumperent). Visually evocative, the inscriptions seem to describe a print published in Antonio Gallonio’s Trattato de gli Instrumenti di Martirio (1591) (Fig. 2).3

 An expanded version of this essay benefited from conversations with and readings by Lila Yawn, Todd Olson, and Ingo Herklotz. Gratitude to Simon Ditchfield. I thank Karen Klaiber Hersch and Sarah Nix for help with Latin. For John Pollini, con grande stima ed affetto. The two inscriptions are now lost but are recorded in: Archivio Apostolico Vaticano (henceforth AVV), Misc. Arm. VII, no. 111, f. 136r. See Appendix I. Revived by the Council of Trent and renewed with enthusiasm during the pontificates of Clement VIII (Ippolito Aldobrandini, 1592–1605) and Urban VIII (Maffeo Barberini, 1623–1644), the Apostolic Visitations were ordered to conduct condition checks of the cult and physical states of churches. See Rice 1997, 62, n. 5. For an index of the visits, see Pagano 1980, 317–442.  AVV, Misc. Arm. VII, no. 111, f. 136r.  Section entitled “Delle maniere di sospendere.” Gallonio 1591a, 5–19, with five illustrations. For Gallonio, see Ditchfield 1995, 46–50; Touber 2014. The black stones illustrated in Gallonio’s treatise are briefly referred to in Touber 2009, 62 as “various kinds of weights” when he notes the general contents of the book. Mansour 2005, 175 notes in passing weights in a print from the 1591 edition of Gallonio. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111182919-025

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Fig. 1: Black stone, inner facade of S. Maria in Cosmedin, Rome. Photo: author.

The print shows two men hanging from a column and beam rack, ropes tied to the ankles of one and to the wrists of the other.4 Black stones pull on the neck and legs of one man, making his torso fold forward as his hands are bent painfully backwards. The print shows precisely the impact of the stones on the bodies of early Christians. The no-longer-present inscriptions documented in the 1628 Apostolic Visitation to the church of S. Maria in Cosmedin narrated the now-unrecognizable black stones for the visitation committee. For their history of display, the text notes their location to either side of the central door on the inner façade, thus confirming that they are still in their original locations.5 Without reference to a patron, a date, or names of saints, the visitation committee ruefully concludes their discussion of the stones by noting: “Time is truly forgetful” (Tempus vero est immemorabile). Ever-present but unfamiliar today, heavy black stones still reside in Roman churches.6 No modern study has brought attention to the meaning of these objects in the Early Modern period. For the modern archaeologist, they are ancient Roman weights.

 The prints were made by Antonio Tempesta after drawings by Giovanni Guerra. See Pupillo 1995, 513–515.  AVV, Misc. Arm. VII, no. 111, f. 136r.  In Rome, the black stones are still located in publicly accessible locations inside the churches of S. Sabina, S. Maria in Cosmedin, S. Maria in Trastevere, SS. Cosma and Damiano, and the baptistery at S. Giovanni in Laterano. All are without inscriptions. Additional black stones are documented in other churches and museums in Italy. Modern guidebooks and related studies only make passing reference to the black stones.

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Fig. 2: “Martire sospeso con pesi al collo, & a’ piedi.” From: Antonio Gallonio, Trattato de gli Instrumenti di Martirio . . . (Rome, 1591), 17. Photo: UCLA, Special Collections.

However, the objects figured in the discourse of the Early Modern cult of saints and the visual culture of martyrs. Ecclesiastical historian Cesare Baronio (1538–1607) calls attention to them in the annotated, 1586 edition of the Martyrologium Romanum, which compels Early Modern writers to seek them out and to assert their validity as torture instruments. Records from the Apostolic Visitations, the inspections of the churches in Rome after the Council of Trent (1545–1563), note them and do not find fault with the legendary objects in extra-liturgical spaces. However, site-specific historical conditions emerge for representing and narrating the black stones that point to the complicated relationship

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between local traditions and institutional reform. The black stones were represented in Early Modern visual culture with specific iconographic meanings: miraculous object, torture device, and trophy of the Christian victory in an honorific death (martyrdom).

The Archaeological Evidence of Torture and the Martyrdom of Early Christians The seemingly providential discovery of a catacomb in 1578, located not far from the Via Salaria, the so-called catacomb of S. Priscilla fueled the search for the history of early Christians in Rome.7 Wall paintings in the catacombs were part of the evidence to support the martyr cult. Giovanni Angelo Santini (called Toccafondo) accompanied Antonio Bosio into the catacombs to document wall paintings, viewed in less-than-ideal conditions with low light and incorrectly identified some as martyr scenes.8 For example, a scene they interpreted as showing the martyrdom of a female saint engulfed in flames while four men bring forth firewood depicts the Adoration of the Magi.9 The human remains of saints could provide the ideal evidence to support the martyr cult, providing they survived intact. In the time of the Farnese pope Paul III (1534–1549), a group of miraculously preserved bodies was found north of Rome near Nepi that retained the signs of torture and torment: cuts on the neck and miraculously still-liquified blood attesting to horrific deaths.10 Despite the importance of the discovery, the location outside Rome and the tenuous dating and identifications did not sustain its fame. In general, the names of specific saints could not be attached to the bulk of the relics found in the Early Christian catacombs. Inside church sacristies, most relics were fragmented bodies that had been parceled out centuries earlier.11 When  Herklotz 2012, 426–427.  Haskell 1995, revised, 102, 107; Ditchfield 1997, 359, notes how Bosio identified an adult baptism as a martyr being boiled in water or oil. There were problems identifying subjects of the wall paintings. See Herklotz 2012, 432, n. 15, and passim.  Buser 1976, 431–432, figs. 14–15; Haskell 1995, revised, 107, 109, figs. 81–82; see also Ghilardi 2012, 14–15, figs. 7–8, which includes color reproductions of both the original wall painting in the catacomb of S. Domitilla and the watercolor drawing attributed to Giovanni Angelo Santini (“Toccafondo”) from the Biblioteca Vallicelliana.  Boldetti 1720, 100, 579, provides the details of how the uncorrupt bodies of Saint Tolomeo and other martyrs were found in the catacomb of S. Savinilla in 1540 during construction ordered by Pier Luigi Farnese. Boldetti 1720, 579: “Aperta dunque la tomba di S. Tolomeo, fu ritrovato doppo 1500 anni in circa del suo martirio il corpo ancora intiero, ed incorrotto colla ferita nel collo fresca, e col sangue liquido, siccome fu parimente trovato nella maggiore parte dei compagni. La fama di questa prodigiosa Invenzione trasse da Roma il Pontefice Paolo III per vedere quei sagri Corpi. . .”.  One of the earliest examples was the transfer of the relics of Saints Primus and Felicianus by Pope Theodorus I (642–649) from the catacomb of S. Alessandro. Brandenburg 2005, 213; Thunø 2015, 235, notes that the legendary story of Pope Boniface transferring twenty-eight cartloads of relics from the

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altars were opened to examine the relics, as in the case of Saint Bibiana, whose remains were re-discovered in 1624, little more than bone fragments and dust remained, while her head was preserved at the church of S. Maria Maggiore.12 There were exceptions, such as the widely discussed rediscovery in October of 1599 of the miraculously preserved bodies under the high altar at the church of S. Cecilia in Trastevere, which included the body of the titular Roman virgin saint.13 Saint Cecilia’s body was the ideal relic: the neck of the saint held the mark(s) of attempts to decapitate her and the wound(s) and blood were still visible on the miraculously preserved flesh—or so the witnesses attested.14 The sculptor Stefano Maderno made a point to include a mark on the neck of his marble sculpture of the saint, depicting the vulnerable female body lying prostrate under the high altar of her church. An anonymous drawing made by an eyewitness just after the exhumation and published by Tomaso Montanari calls into question the veracity of the pose of Maderno’s sculpture, but it does not undermine the promotion of the miraculous preservation of the body.15 When well-preserved bodies of early Christian saints were scarce, the archaeological record in the form of torture and instruments of martyrdom provided the evidence that clearly pre-dated the making of images. Some archaeological traces of Christian torture and martyrdom could be found in the churches of Rome but, for the most part, the instruments were in pieces because these types of contact relics were also fragmented and dispersed like bodily relics. Parts of the grate of Saint Lorenzo and pieces of the stones used to martyr Saint Stefano (Stephen of Acts 7) are included in the relic lists of Roman churches.16 The fragments needed assistance to be under-

catacombs to the Pantheon in the seventh century does not truly reflect relic cult practice during that time and was likely invented by Cesare Baronio.  Nolan 2015, 217–218.  Kampf 2001, 13–14, 19, n. 23 for the Avvisi.  Kampf 2001, 19, n. 23, quotes an Avviso of 30 October 1599: “. . .et nel collo la ferita, ch’hebbe nel suo martirio col sangue ancor vivo;” Montanari 2005, 156, quotes an anonymous eyewitness who notes three wounds on the neck: “. . .verso la gola, sulla veste e velo et giù per il petto vi é gran quantità di sangue preso, per rispetto delle tre ferite che ha sul collo. . .” Montanari also notes that some early authors were clearly describing the statue, not the relic, hence the confusion in the description of the number of wounds on the neck.  Montanari 2005, 157–158, is careful to note that the drawing is not the “key” to solving the problem of what was really inside Cecilia’s sarcophagus when it was opened on October 20, 1599. See his fig. 6 for the drawing from the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (henceforth BAV), Codex Chigi, N.III.60, f. 428r.  Le cose maravigliose dell’alma città di Roma. . .1572, 7 (S. Lorenzo fuori le Mura), 10 (S. Lorenzo in Lucina), 15 (S. Lorenzo in Palisperna). Gallonio 1591a, 84, refers to pieces in S. Lorenzo in Lucina and S. Lorenzo in Palisperna and provides a detailed description of what the grate relic would have looked like whole. Contarini says the body of the saint rested on the stone while Severano says it was used to “grill” him. Contarini 1575, 95v; Severano 1630, 658 (“Pietra sopra la quale fù arrosito S. Lorenzo”).

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stood; costly altarpieces or reliquaries were commissioned that showcased the person associated with the relic fragment.17 The intact torture instrument could provide a clear image of how the saint had suffered. During the time of Pope Paul III, a well-preserved pair of claw-tooth flesh ripping tongs (ungula) was uncovered in the necropolis buried under Old Saint Peter’s Basilica.18 Found inside a coffin with the remains of an anonymous person, the metal tongs provided a familiar object direct from the sealed Apostolic layer to associate with the torture of an early Christian.19 But the object did not have a specific story tied to a known saint. At the end of the sixteenth century, Antonio Gallonio saw (and even touched and kissed with devotion) the ungula at the basilica of Saint Peter. Gallonio assembled a list of saints who were tortured with tongs, but in no way connected this specific pair of tongs to any of the saints on his list.20 Even complete contact relics needed narrative associations with known saints to give them sustained authority. In an unpublished manuscript about the life of the virgin martyr Saint Bibiana, Francesco Maria Torrigio (1580–1649) discusses and draws the different types of whips (piomborale) that were potentially used to torture Saint Bibiana while she was tied to a column.21 The type, shape, and even materials of the whips are discussed by the early writers who wished to imagine in precise detail the instruments used to torture and kill their revered saints.22 Antonio Gallonio disagrees with Antonio Bosio that an example represented in fresco at the church of S. Lorenzo fuori le Mura was the type used to martyr Saint Bibiana.23 Instead, Gallonio supports Pompeo Ugonio’s  Gennaioli/Sframeli 2014, 144, cat. 18, for an early seventeenth-century example of a crucifix reliquary. See also Hahn 1997, 20–31.  Ghilardi 2009, 153–198.  Herklotz 2012, 430–431 notes that the necropolis under the basilica of S. Pietro in the Vatican is the only one that can be dated to the Apostolic period.  Gallonio 1591a, 62–63. See Ghilardi 2009, 162ff.  BAV, Barb Lat. 4490. The full title of the text runs: “Historia del martirio di S. Bibiana Vergine e Martire, nobilissima Romana, il cui Corpo é stato trovato in Roma á di 24. di Febbraio 1624 nella sua Chiesa, nel Pontificato della Santità di N. S. Urbano VIII. Cavata da diversi antichi manoscritti & celebri Bibliotheche & Archivi con varie annotazioni utili e santamente curiose da Francesco Maria Torrigio Romano.” For the relationship between this unpublished manuscript and Gianlorenzo Bernini’s sculpture of St. Bibiana, and her church, see Nolan 2015, 217–229.  Gallonio 1591b, 238, notes that Bibiana “. . .ad essere con piombate battuta, e con simil tormento diventò martire del Signore.” Baronio 1586, 251, n. letter “d”, Plumbatus cesus), participates in the discussion of the whips (“Beaten with whips,” Plumbatus sesus), in which he distinguishes that the pondera plumbea (lead weight) was not used to whip early Christians, but was attached to their feet to burden them while suspended. He relies entirely on textual sources.  BAV, Barb Lat. 4490, f. 19v: “. . .piombo il che é lontano dalla forma di sopra formata che anco si vede in Roma nella Basilica di Lorenzo fuor delle mura addotta da Antonio Bosio. Cosi pare che si dilungasse dal vero il tradottore volgare del Martirologio Romano che parlando di S. Bibiana dice che fu ba[ttut]a con verghe piombate.” Torrigio is referring to a fresco representing the whip, still located in the portico of the church, which was noted by Bosio. Bosio 1600, 92: “Plumbatarum forma visitur adhuc in antiqua pictura Ecclelisae S. Laurentij extre Urbis menia. . .”

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proposal for the form of the whip but notes that other forms exist, such as the one Gallonio illustrates in his life of the saint.24 Even without surviving archaeological examples, the early authors try to sort out the visual appearances of the instruments, no doubt in the event that an example should come to light during the explorations of the catacombs.25 Although not discovered in the catacombs, the black stones were waiting in the churches of Rome for interpretation and were discussed by the early writers who connected them with known saints. What makes the black stones different from the other instruments of torture are their survival rate and their resistance to obvious narrative. Instruments such as ripping tongs and whips have manual familiarity even if we have never used them. They are objects meant to be handled, while the black stones are not handy. In modern scholarship, when images are the focus, sometimes the non-representational objects get overlooked despite their importance as material culture for a history of martyrdom.

The Origin of the Black Stones as Torture Instruments during the Counter-Reformation During an Apostolic Visitation on July 17, 1564 to the church of S. Apollinare, located near Piazza Navona, the committee notes a “black marble [weight] which was commonly said to have been applied [to martyrs] ordered hung on the rack” [marmoreum nigrum quod vulgo dicatur applicasi eculeo affixit].26 It was located near the high altar in the central apse, in close proximity to a relic ‘pit’ of numerous saints.27 The note vulgo dicatur (“it is commonly said”) is not helpful in understanding the origin story of the black stone. The 1564–1566 inspections of churches in Rome, post-Council of Trent, were the first in a series of what would eventually become systematic inspec-

 BAV, Barb Lat. 4490, f. 19r: “La forma delle piombarole era questa come di propria mano formis il dottissimo Pompeo Ugonis in un libro, ch’e appresso di une della vita di santa Cecilia da lui di proprio pugno postillato [drawing 1] overo eran cosi [drawing 2] et alle volte si trovanano formae in questa quisa appresso il Gallonio [drawing 3] cioe corde con palle di piombo in cima quindi. . .”; Gallonio (as in note 25), 236.  Bosio 1632, Libro I, Cap. XX, 21a discusses several examples of torture instruments that were found in the catacomb of S. Callisto. An example is noted in Gli atti di Santa Cecilia. . . 1775, 39, n. 1: “. . .e si conserva nel Museo del Collegio Romano una di queste piombarole; e sono palle di piombo pendenti da piccole catene. . .”.  AAV, Sacra Congregazione della Visita Apostolica 1, f. 31r: “deinde sub quas crate ferrrea abscondita dicunt’ corpora S. Eustatii Onesti Nardarii Maxentii Eugenii et Auxentii martiris ante summum altare iuxta locum repertum fuit quoddam ponens marmoreum nigrum quod vulgo dicatur applicavi eculeo affixit ordinatum.” Date of visit: July 17, 1564.  Mancini 1967, 16 also notes the relic pit but does not note a black stone.

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tions. The perfect storm of the lack of precedent and improvisation on the part of the visitation committee led to a black stone being identified as a torture instrument in 1564. In the early 1580s, the artist Pomarancio (Niccolò Circignani) was commissioned by Michele Lauretano, the rector of the Jesuit German-Hungarian Collegio, to paint the martyr cycle of Saint Apollinaris at the saint’s eponymous church.28 The fresco cycle was located in the central apse and surrounding area, close to the black stone noted during the Apostolic Visitation in 1564.29 The fresco cycle at the church of S. Apollinare no longer survives but was recorded in a set of prints by the artist Giovanni Battista Cavalieri.30 One print depicts Saint Apollinaris suspended from a rack with a black stone tied to his ankles (Fig. 3). A man pushes a small stone into the saint’s mouth to silence him, and another man prepares to swing a club at the saint’s suspended body. At the bottom of the print, the legend is merely descriptive: “S. Apollinaris is beaten with clubs and his mouth crushed with a stone” (S. Apollinaris fustibus caeditur et lapidibus os ei contunditur). Before both the 1564 Apostolic Visitation and the creation of the fresco cycle in the early 1580s, the life of Saint Apollinaris was published in 1560 in Paris.31 A detailed account of what is shown in the fresco cycle—and in turn, print—is given, suggesting that the artist either had access to the text or a summary of it. A riot broke out when other Christians saw Apollinaris having a stone pushed into his mouth to silence him. The disturbance caused the death of two hundred “pagans,” which led the judge to take revenge on Apollinaris: he was strung to a rack with the heaviest of weights attached to him.32 The lost fresco depicting the torture of Saint Apollinaris by means of suspension made a point to refer to the black stone formerly at the church. The 1560 life of Saint Apollinaris called it the “heaviest of weights” (gravissimo ponderi), but the material and shape are not noted. The life of Saint Apollinare from the 1584 Golden Legend notes a weight made of iron (ferro).33 The early hagiographers were not necessarily specialists of materials. The brilliant black surface of the basalt stone could have appeared to be metal, or they may have omitted mention of the material so as not to contradict the material (iron) given in the widely read Golden Legend. It seems that it was an ancient object in the right place at the right time to serve as archaeological  Pomarancio (Niccolò Circignani) worked on numerous martyr-cycles in churches in Rome, including S. Cecilia in Trastevere (lost), S. Stefano Rotondo, St. Thomas of Canterbury (lost), the old church of S. Andrea al Quirinale, and others. See http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/circignani-nicolo-detto-il-po marancio_(Dizionario-Biografico) [accessed 17 August 2024]. For the commission and dating of the fresco cycle, see Monssen 1983, 11–106; and 19, fn. 22.  Mancini 1967, 16.  Beati Apollinaris martyris. . .1586, plate 9. Monssen 1982, 254–256; Monssen 1981, 130–137.  Abdiae Babyloniae primi episcopi. . .1560.  Abdiae Babyloniae primi episcopi. . .1560, 149r: “Apollinarem vero cum gravissimo ponderi ferre iussit. . .in ligno exte[n]di...”.  de Voragine 1584, 403: “. . .e cosi legato con un grave peso di ferro. . .”.

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Fig. 3: Giovanni Battista Cavalieri. Engraving. In: Beati Apollinaris martyris primi Rauennatum Episcopi res gestae. Prout Romae in eiusdem aede sacra apud collegium Germanicum et Vngaricum a Nicolao Circiniano depictae visuntur. A Ioanne Baptista de Cauallerijs typis aeneis expressae (Rome: Bartholomaei Grassi, 1586), pl. 9. Photo: Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek.

evidence, a contact relic of the torture inflicted upon the specific early Christian body of Saint Apollinaris. Materials can confuse, but so can the references to the type of stones. In the Golden Legend, numerous saints were tortured with stones or had some type of stone

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attached to their bodies.34 Saint Callisto was thrown into a well with a stone (sasso) attached to his neck, which resulted in his death; the stone is not described.35 In the life of Saint Vincenzo, the body of the Spanish saint was thrown into water with a millstone (mola) attached to his neck.36 Instead of sinking to the bottom, the millstone floated the body of the saint to shore. A late thirteenth-century fresco of this exact moment in the life of saint Vincenzo was located in the portico of his church at the Tre Fontane near Via Ostiense outside Rome.37 The fresco, now lost, was recorded in watercolor drawings by Antonio Eclissi, commissioned by the Barberini.38 The stone in the drawing looks natural and unlike both the black stones or a traditional millstone. Yet a black stone is documented at the church of SS. Vincenzo e Anastasio alle Tre Fontane in the Early Modern period.39 A modern publication notes that the stone was a torture instrument used for submerging the victims in water, but does not identify the martyrs.40 Likely dated to the thirteenth century, an inscription at the church of S. Sabina refers to a black stone as a “millstone” (molaris).41 The reference to the black stone as a millstone in the inscription is part of an earlier tradition about these objects. As at the church of S. Apollinare, the archaeological object seems to have been in the right place at the right time to serve as the material evidence for the story of the torture or miraculous survival of the bodies of saints. At the church of S. Apollinare, frescoes depicting histories of martyrdom asserted archaeologically unstable details. The Golden Legend and other early lives did not support identification of the black stones as torture devices for particular saints. A durable, anonymous object associated with what appears to be an oral tradition noted in the Apostolic Visitation in 1564 raised the status of the object to a key piece of evidence for the torture of early Christians. How the black stones are represented unifies them as miraculous objects of torture: the saints did not die from the application of

 Saints Callisto, Cristina, Eugenia, and Vincenzo. See de Voragine 1584.  de Voragine 1584, 598: “sasso.” A set of black stones (three total) and another type of stone are located at the church of S. Maria in Trastevere.  de Voragine 1584, 123: “Dipoi lo fede gittare nel profondo del mare con una mola al collo. . .”.  Another scene from the fresco cycle shows Saint Anastasio suspended from a rack with a natural stone attached to his feet. For the church and the lost fresco cycle, see Barclay Lloyd 1997, 287–348. Barclay Lloyd dates the murals to 1294.  BAV, Barb. Lat. 4402. Barclay Lloyd 1997, 320–321 for images. See also Amadio 2010, 271–281.  Gallonio 1591a, 6, based on textual sources, notes Saints Simone and Guria; Saint Procopio; Saints Andochio, Tirso, and Felice; and Saints Mena, Hermogene and their companions.  S. Paolo e le Tre Fontane. . .1938, tav. XIII, no. 100: “Lo strumento di tortura destinato ai condannati per immersione.”  Ugonio 1588, f. 15r-15v: “Di questo miracolo, sotto esso sasso si leggevano non ha molto questi versi assai all semplice: Credidit orantem iacto contundere saxo, Sanctum hic Dominicum hostis versutus, ad illu[m] ille sum Dominus servat, mirabile factum, Marmoris illist confractio monstrat in auum, Hic que fidem praebet suspensus & iste molaris.” Text underlined in Ugonio’s guide. The inscription is now located inside the choir stall of the church.

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the stones, but rather survived the torture. The black stones, not mere archaeological instruments of criminal punishment, were narrated as miraculous objects.

Discussing the Black Stones: Weighing Things or Weighting Down Bodies The 1586 edition of the Martyrologium Romanum, with a substantial historical introduction and annotations by Cesare Baronio, was published with an elaborate frontispiece (Fig. 4).42 The image shows a sixteenth-century altarpiece frame with its broken pediment, double Corinthian columns, and large space for a painting or sculpture.43 At the center of the print is an altarpiece depicting the second coming of Christ, who is holding the instruments of his passion. Personifications of Religion and the Church sway on projecting bases faced with inscriptions.44 Hovering in the empty space of the broken pediment is the miraculous image of the Virgin and Christ, which is still located at the high altar of the church S. Maria in Vallicella (Chiesa Nuova). Dangling from the corner of each pediment are martyr trophies, grotesque mobiles composed of instruments used to torture (and kill) early Christians. A black stone weighs down the trophy near the personification of the Church. It is rounded and flat on top, with rings used to attach ropes. The black stone is depicted among many instruments of torture. Cesare Baronio figures prominently in scholarship on early Christian history.45 His interest in the Christian history of ancient monuments and early Christian sites is discussed by numerous scholars, especially in terms of his patronage of early Christian churches once he was promoted to the position of Cardinal in 1596.46 Ten years earlier, his familiarity with the archaeological evidence for the history of saints and martyrdom was less substantial. In the prefatory treatise published for the first time

 Baronio 1586. The second edition of Baronio’s Martyrologium Romanum, Antwerp 1589, has a different frontispiece without the black stone. See Pupillo 2009, 831 for the possible identity of the print maker and the general iconography. See also Pupillo 1995, 497–498.  Ostrow 1996, 151–158, for examples of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century altar tabernacles.  The inscriptions on the 1586 frontispiece read, on the base of Ecclessia: “Sola coronat / esse martyr non / potest / qui in ecclesia / non est.—Cypr. de unit Eccl”; on the base of Religio: “Nec ilia nec rosae / de sunt / pax et acies habet / flores suos / quibus XPI milites / coronentur.—Cypr. Ad Confes. epist. 2.” Also noted in Pupillo 1995, 497.  The scholarship on Cesare Baronio has grown significantly since the anniversary of his death in 2007. See the papers in Guazzelli/Michetti/Scorza Barcellona 2012; Gulia 2009; and, still fundamental, De Maio 1985.  See essays by Maryvelma Smith O’Neil (145–171), Alessandro Zuccari (489–510), and Philip J. Jacks (75–96) in Romeo De Maio 1985; Herz 1988, 590–620; and Carlo La Bella in Gulia 2009, 791–830.

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Fig. 4: Baronio, Cesare. Martyrologium Romanum . . . (Rome: Dominico Basa, 1586), frontispiece. Photo: UCLA, Special Collections.

in the 1586 edition of the Martyrologium Romanum,47 Baronio apologized that he could not be more precise about torture instruments due to understandable errors in  The 1586 edition of the Martyrologium Romanum was the first revised edition that contained Baronio’s prefatory treatise and his extensive explanatory notes (“Notationes”). As Giuseppe Antonio Guazzelli notes, the Martyrologium Romanum was updated and reprinted several times until the 1630 definitive edition, and the “Notationes” were essentially a work in progress written at the same time as

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his textual sources.48 Baronio had some experience with the archaeological evidence of the early Christians,49 but for the most part his evidence for the history of martyrdom was textual.50 When Baronio mentions weights used to torture early Christians in the 1586 edition of the Martyrologium Romanum, he draws upon earlier sources such as the stories of the martyrs found in the writings of the Venerable Bede (c. 673–735). In his entry for September 16, Baronio relies on Bede for the list of punishments suffered by Saint Euphemiae: imprisonment, the wheel, fire, stone weight, beasts, etc.51 But Baronio departs slightly from his source with the reference to the stone weight. Bede notes pondera lapidum angularium (corner stone, or squared stone weight) while Baronio notes pondera lapidum (stone weight) and adds a note (Notationes) to the term, an extraordinary feature of his text.52 In his note, Baronio opens up the discussion of his ancient sources for the stone weights and how they can be identified. He starts with the object itself; he notes examples in Roman churches, citing the church of SS. Apostoli and unnamed “other” churches.53 He describes the stones by noting their general shape (rotundi, vel oblongi) and that they have iron rings (ferreum anulum) used for attaching a rope (funiculus ad ligandum) to the feet of martyrs. The majority of Baronio’s note for Pondera lapidum is dedicated to the earlier sources, arguing against the (unnamed) people who think the stones were not used to torture Christians. He refutes what he takes to be their erroneous idea that they were merely commercial weights by noting a late antique treatise by Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636) and a sixteenth-century treatise by Andrea Alciati (1492–1550), both of which explain that Roman commercial weights had numbers inscribed upon them.54 Baronio then pro-

the Annales. Guazzelli in Van Liere/Ditchfield/Howard 2012, 55, fn. 10. For the editions of Baronio’s Martyrologium Romanum, see especially Guazzelli in Guazzelli/Michetti/Barcellona 2012, 67–110.  Showing some sympathy towards the authors of his sources, he notes at the end “we are all human” (homines enim sumus omnes). In the foreword (“Pio ac veritatus studiosissimo lectori”) to the 1586 editon, unpaginated. First noted in Mansour 2005, 174, fn. 31, who cites the 1589 edition.  Herklotz 2012, 425–444.  Touber in Gulia 2009, 389–409, with bibliography.  Baronio 1586, 419 (September 16): “Chalcedone natalis sanctae Euphemiae [a] virginis & martyris, quae sub Diocletiano Imperatore & Prisco proconsule, tormenta, carceres, verbera, argumenta rotarum, ignes, pondera [b] lapidum, bestias, plagas virgarum, ferras acutas, sartagines igitas pro Christo superavit,”; Giles 1843, 123–124: “XVI Kal. Natale S. Euphemiae virginis: quae martyrizavit sub Diocletiano imperatore, proconsule autem Prisco, in civitate Calcedonia: quae tormenta et carceres, verbera et argumenta rotarum, ignes et pondera lapidum angularium, bestias et clavas virgarum, serras acutas et sartagines ignitas, rursum morsum bestiae pro Christo superavit,”  Baronio 1586, 418–419, “[Note] b. Pondera lapidarum.”  Baronio 1586, 418–419, “[Note] b. Pondera lapidarum. Frequens est reperiri in actis sanctoru[m], eosdem inter alia cruciamenta ponderibus aggravatos. Qualia autem fuerint ist haec lapidae pondera; Rome in basilicis Apostolorum, aliisque;”  Isid. Etym. 16 (“De Lapidibus et Metallis”); Andrea Alciati (1492–1550), Libellus, De Ponderibus et Mensuris, Venice 1532, Cap. I.

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vides a long quote from the first-century CE author Flavius Josephus, who discusses orbicularia and explains in vivid detail how they were attached to the bodies of the victims while suspended, leading to the limbs being pulled apart.55 Baronio also refers to the ancient Roman Twelve Tables to explain that the black stones should not be confused with the types of fetters used on debtors, which, in the end, the emperor Constantine abolished.56 The black stones figure both in text and images in the extraordinary treatise by Antonio Gallonio (1556–1605), Trattato de gli Instrumenti di Martirio (1591), dedicated to the torture instruments used on early Christians.57 And although he does not cite him explicitly in his 1591 treatise, Gallonio’s source (in part) for information about the black stones is Baronio.58 In the 1594 Latin edition of Gallonio’s text, he cites Baronio.59 Opher Mansour has pointed out the differences between the 1591 and 1594 editions of Gallonio’s treatise: the 1594 Latin edition includes explicit anti-Protestant passages not present in the 1591 edition, and the accompanying prints were much reduced in quality, format, and number.60 For the point of the current study, the significant differences between the 1591 and 1594 editions regarding the black stones are the explicit reference to Baronio in the 1594 edition and the lack of unambiguous representation of the black stone in the prints of the 1591 edition. Following Mansour, if the 1594 edition had an anti-Protestant international audience, it is less likely that the audience would recognize in prints the specific shape of the black stones found primarily in Roman churches.61 The instruments of torture discussed by Gallonio vary: ax, hammer, swords, whip, rack, stones, tongs, torches, oil, and more. The methods were just as wide-ranging as the variety of tools: Christians might be suspended, stretched, tied, whipped, ripped, crushed, pressed, dropped, pulled, grilled, flayed, boiled, and so on.62 At the end of the

 Baronio is quoting Josephus 1580, 927.  Baronio cites the law on weights used on debtors recorded in Table III, Sec. 3, Twelve Tables, 449 BCE, recorded in Gell. NA 20.1.  Gallonio 1591a. The text was translated into Latin in 1594, with subsequent editions: Gallonio 1594. See Mansour 2005, 171–172 regarding the 1594 translation.  Baronio 1586, 418–419, note b, “Pondera lapidum”: “...ponderis lapides rotundi, vel oblongi ferreum anulum saxo impactum habentes, quo immittatur funiculus ad ligandum, ac suspendendum ad pedes, vel manus in sublime.”  Gallonio 1594.  Mansour 2005, 171–172.  The 1594 edition includes round-shaped weights, but none with the distinctive flat top or ring on top to attach a rope. Gallonio 1594 (as in note 68), 21–31. Other examples of black stones inside churches I have found outside of Rome are located in the Duomo of Civita Castellana, the location of the martyrdom of Saints Abundius and Abundantius, honored at the church of SS. Cosma e Damiano; and mini versions in the Duomo of Sulmona.  For a discussion of the rack, see Mansour 2005, 175–176. See Touber 2014, Chapter Five, “Martyrological Technology,” for a discussion of the horse-shaped rack (equuleus). Touber illustrates a pair of claw-tooth ripping tongs (ungula, Tesoro di San Pietro, Vatican) that roughly correspond to the ones

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1591 edition of the Trattato, the main instruments are artfully gathered as a monumental martyr trophy. Inspired by ancient Roman war trophies, the multivalent monument is composed of a cross, wooden horse, bull, table, wheels, spiked bed, ball whip, etc. At the bottom of the trophy is a black stone with a metal ring set into the top. The black stone is one of many torture instrument options. In the section “Delle maniere di sospendere” of the 1591 treatise, Gallonio discusses a variety of weights attached to early Christians while they were suspended.63 The weights are described as made of iron, stone, and metal. The accompanying illustrations (five total) show different forms of suspension with explicit illustrations of the shapes of the weights. In the section “Avvertimento circa questo primo modo,” Gallonio makes reference to known examples of black stones in churches in Rome. Evoking his experience with the sites, he notes that the black stones were in churches “until the present day,” listing the churches of S. Pietro, S. Apollinare, S. Paolo, SS. Vincenzo e Anastasio, and “others.”64 As already noted, the churches of S. Apollinare and SS. Vincenzo e Anastasio have complicated histories of black stones, saints who had stones or weights attached to them, and images that give authority to the black stones. Gallonio’s text with its highly descriptive images further strengthens what was an oral tradition that was made authoritative by means of frescoes and prints from the early 1580s. Gallonio is quite specific about the objects when he notes their shape (forma quasi circolare, piane di sotto, e di sopra) and the defining feature of the ring for attaching a rope (nel mezzo incavate, ad effetto di potervi incastrare, & impiombare qualche anello de ferro, per lagarvi le funi).65 The majority of the stones still located in churches in Rome today are flat on top and bottom, have holes in the top, and some contain traces of metal inside the holes. Turning to one of the five prints representing suspension, noted at the start of this essay (Fig. 2), the almost circular stones, flat on

represented in Gallonio; Touber 2014, 248, fig. 5t. For the ungula in the Vatican, see Ghilardi 2009, 153–198.  Gallonio 1591a, 5–9: “Delle maniere di sospendere”; and five prints, 10–19.  Gallonio 1591a, 5–6: “Delle maniere di sospendere”: “Erano queste pietre...di queste se ne veggono molte fino hoggi in diverse chiese della Città, e fuori, in particolare di S. Pietro, di S. Apollinare, di S. Paolo, de SS. Vincenzo, & Anastasio, alle Tre Fontane, & altrove delle altre”; Gallonio 1591a, 165, Index: “Pietre, le quali si attaccavano d’piedi di martiri, se ne trovano fino al d’i di hoggi.” Gallonio 1594, 21, at SS. Apostoli, S. Apollinare, and S. Anastasio.  Gallonio 1591a, 5–6: “Delle maniere di sospendere”: “Erano queste pietre di forma quasi circolare, piane di sotto, e di sopra, gravi assai, e nel mezzo incavate, ad effetto di potervi incastrare, & impiombare qualche anello de ferro, per legarvi le funi. . .” The names used in various texts to describe the black stones vary, but most are specific about the color (negro, nigri, negra, paragone): “Pietra negra” (Le cose. . .1565, 26, and later editions); “Pietra nera” (Contarini 1575, f. 97r); “Sasso negro” (Ugonio 1588, f. 15r); “Pesi di globi” or “queste pietre” with further description (Gallonio 1591, 5–6); “Pietre grossissime” (Panciroli 1600, 910); “Lapides nigri” (AVV, Misc. Arm. VII, no. 111, f. 136r: Apostolic Visitation, 1628, S. Maria in Cosmedin); “Pietre di paragone” (Boldetti 1720, vol. 2, 794); “altre pietre, una pietra” (Severano 1630, 306–307).

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top and bottom with rings to attach ropes, are easily distinguished from the other types of weights. Gallonio quotes (and cites) Baronio’s discussion of how one could tell the difference between the stones used to torture early Christians and the stones that were used in ancient Rome to weigh things. Gallonio cites Baronio’s “Note b” to the entry for September 16 when he repeats what Baronio says in support of the black stones as torture instruments.66 Like Baronio, Gallonio explains that stones used for measuring goods had numbers inscribed upon them to indicate their value. As if to provide the archaeological evidence that was missing in Baronio’s text, Gallonio notes additional examples of black stones in Roman churches, which, as he states, apparently do not have numbers inscribed on them (notam numeri inscriptam, quam hos non habere apparet).67 The “note b” from Baronio’ Martyrologium Romanum was key content for Gallonio’s treatise on torture instruments. What was a note for Baronio’s text became the body of a section in Gallonio’s treatise. Gallonio bolstered Baronio by adding examples and analysis necessary to provide the specimens he needed for his history of torture instruments. When Antonio Bosio’s publication Roma Sotterranea (1632 [1634]) finally came out after his death in 1629, it was not a document of that moment.68 It harkened back to the early phase of exploration of the catacombs and the culling of textual sources to interpret what they found.69 In the 1632 posthumous edition of Bosio, the text notes only unspecified types of stones that were tied to saints when they were thrown in the sea, rivers, or wells.70 It is not until the 1651 Latin edition of Bosio, revised by Paolo Aringhi, that we see an explicit connection with known examples of the black stones. Like Gallonio, Aringhi uses Baronio’s 1586 edition of the Martyrologium Romanum as his main source of information.71 Baronio’s note on the black stones had longevity in that references were made to it in subsequent texts. The frontispiece for Bosio’s publication brings us full circle in the late-sixteenth century, interconnected scholarly moment when the history of martyrdom of the saints was rediscovered (Fig. 5).72

 Gallonio 1594, 9, quoting Baronio 1586, 418–419, note b, “Pondera lapidum.”  Gallonio, referring to Baronio, continues his discussion of the black stones noting that they were different from the weights used in ancient Rome as punishment for debtors, citing the Twelve Tables (Table III, Sec. 3) and Gell. NA 20.1. Gallonio 1594, 9; Baronio 1586, 418–419, note b, “Pondera lapidum.”  Bosio 1632.  Pompeo Ugonio accompanied Bosio on his first visit to the catacombs on December 10, 1593. Ditchfield 1997, 351 and 358–359, quoting Baronio, Annales.  Bosio 1632, Libro I, Cap. V: “Delle Corpi de’Santi Martiri gittati nell’acque.” Bosio notes S. Luciano, S. Alexander (pope), S. Florian, S. Antimo, SS. Simplicio and Faustino, and S. Callisto (pope) all had a stone (“lapidem”) attached to their body.  Aringhi 1651, 167.23 [24]: “Lapides magni ponderis Martyrum pedibus ad eos torquendos appendebantur.” Aringhi quotes Baronio 1586, 418–419, note b, “Pondera lapidum.”  For the development and typological origins of the main scenes on the frontispiece, see Merz 2003, 229–244.

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Fig. 5: Bosio, Antonio. Roma sotterranea opera postuma di Antonio Bosio Romano. Compita, disposta, & accresciuta dal M.R.P. Giovanni Severani da S. Severino. Nella quale si tratta de sacri cimiterii di Roma del sito, forma, et uso antico di esside, cubicoli, oratorii, imagini, ieroglifici, iscrittioni, et epitaffi, che vi sono. Publicata dal commendatore Fr. Carlo Aldobrandiono (Rome: Guglielmo Faccioti, 1632), frontispiece. Photo: University of Cologne.

The print shows a compression of diverse martyrdom imagery: the images of torture in the top scenes, the mixing of seemingly historical scenes of burial and discovery, and ornamental martyr trophies and crowns in the middle and at the bottom. The frontispiece is an ideal ensemble of elements that work in tandem to show the passio of early Christians: suffering by means of torture (including a black stone), the instru-

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ments as symbols of their victory (again, a black stone), the merciful act of their burial, and the rediscovery of their remains in the catacombs.73 It lacks historical specificity concerning any one saint. Still, the black stones figure in two discrete areas of the print, both as torture instruments and as symbols of the martyrs’ victory in death. The authority of the black stone was bolstered by the Early Modern church authorities. Baronio and then Gallonio both note the black stones. Baronio points to only one specific example but cites numerous texts to support the idea that the black stones are torture instruments, not simply ancient commercial Roman weights. Gallonio builds upon Baronio, adding further examples that help to support the identification of the black stones as instruments of torture. More importantly, Gallonio’s publication helped others identify the stones. His detailed description of the shape and color, coupled with the print showing how the stones were used, made the objects visible to the Early Modern writers of guidebooks and church histories.74 Although the object is one of many torture instruments, it is the most pervasive example in Rome.

“Time is Truly Forgetful” The Early Modern church historians would inform the next generation of writers. The early eighteenth-century Canon of the church S. Maria in Cosmedin, Giovanni Mario Crescimbeni, cites Gallonio (and by default, Baronio) to support the idea that the black stones, set into the inner façade of his church, are valuable archaeological evidence for the history of the torment of Christian martyrs.75 He states that Gallonio refuted the idea that stones like the ones in S. Maria in Cosmedin were used as ancient weights because they do not have Roman numerals inscribed on them to indicate their value. And the physical evidence of two holes on top of each stone, partially filled with metal—the remnants of the rings—further supports the idea that the stones were used to torture, and possibly even to martyr, early Christians.76

 Ditchfield 1997, 354 notes that the frontispiece places importance on the act of burial.  Panciroli’s guide includes the most extensive list of known examples in churches in Rome. Panciroli 1600, 910; and u.p., Index, 1625.  Crescimbeni 1715, 146.  Boldetti 1720, 325 notes that a Saint Valentine (Nov. 3) was martyred by being thrown into the Tiber River with a black stone attached to him. Relics of a Saint Valentino are located at the church of S. Maria in Cosmedin. The relics have a complicated history, but could have been translated with other items from a nearby destroyed church as early as early as 1570. Crescimbeni 1715, 97–100; Boldetti 1720, II.324–325 notes the black stones at S. Maria in Cosmedin but does not connect them explicitly to any particular saint.

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The same archaeological method that had its origins in the late-sixteenth century antiquarian discussion of relics and early Christian objects helped to argue the evidence in support of the black stones being ancient torture devices. Ancient text, archaeological object, and first-hand accounts led to the discussion of the stones. Each church dealt with their relics and legendary objects on a case-by-case basis. Historically, specific meaning tended to triumph in the face of institutional reform as the Church depended on local traditions for its continued success. Some stones were in the right place at the right time with the right stories to retain their revered status.

Appendix AAV, Misc. Arm. VII, no. 111, f. 136r fol. 136r: (Ab olio latere) Ponderis hi[c] lapides summi nigriq[ue] coloris, Queis super impactus ferreus orbis erat, Sanctorum pedibus vincti, pendentia in altum, Corpora torserunt pondere pressa suo, Sed mage quam Sanctos se[a]uos praessere Tirannos, Sunt quibus usque graves, Martyribusq[ue] leves. (Ab uno latere) Lapides isti ad inferendos cruciatus ad hibiti pedibus Martyrum sublime pendentium brachijs post tergum revinctis, quandoq[ue]; simul etiam collo alligabantur, ut gravi pondere membris divulsis violenter vitam abrumperent. Asservantur etiam honorifice duo lapides nigri & oblongi, qui Sanctorum Martyrum pedibus alligabantur unus à dextris, alter à Sinistris ianuae Ecclesiae muro affixi cum inscriptionibus infra scriptis, ignoratur tamen, cuius authoritate in Ecclesia fuerint introducti. Tempus vero est immemorabile.

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Aringhi, Paolo (1651). Roma subterranea novissima, in qua post Antonium Bosium Antesignanum. Et celebres alios scriptores antiqua Christianorum et praecipue Martyrum Coemeteria, tituli, monimenta, epitaphia, inscriptiones, ac nobiliora sanctorum sepulchra sex libris distincta illustrantur et quamplurimae res ecclesiasticae iconibus graphice. Rome. Barclay Lloyd, Joan E. (1997). “The medieval murals in the Cistercian abbey of Santi Vincenzo e Anastasio ad Aquas Salvias at Tre Fontane, Rome, in their Architectural Settings,” Papers of the British School at Rome 65, 287–348. Baronio, Cesare (1586). Martyrologium romanum ad novam Kalendarii rationem et ecclesiasticae historiae veritatem restitutum, Gregorii XIII . . . iussu editum. Accesserunt notationes atque Tractatio de Martyrologium romano. Rome. Baronio, Cesare (1589). Martyrologium romanum . . . Antwerp. Boldetti, Marco Antonio (1720). Osservazioni sopra i cimiteri de’ santi martiri, ed antichi cristiani di Roma . . . Rome. Bosio, Antonio (1632). Roma sotterranea opera postuma di Antonio Bosio Romano. Compita, disposta, & accresciuta dal M.R.P. Giovanni Severani da S. Severino . . . Rome. Bosio, Antonio (1600). Historia passionis B. Cecilia Virginis, Valeriani, Tiburtii, et Maximi martyrum. Rome. Brandenburg, Hugo (2005). Ancient Churches of Rome from the fourth to the seventh century: the Dawn of Christian architecture in the West. Turnhout. Buser, Thomas (1976). “Jerome Nadal and Early Jesuit Art in Rome,” The Art Bulletin 58.3, 424–433. Contarini, Luigi (1575). L’antiquità di Roma, Sito, Imperadori, Famiglie, Statue, Chiese, Corpi Santi . . . Venice. Crescimbeni, Giovanni Mario (1715). L’istoria della basilica diaconale, collegiata, e parrocchiale di S. Maria in Cosmedin di Roma. Rome. Ditchfield, Simon (1995). Liturgy, Sanctity and History in Tridentine Italy: Pietro Maria Campi and the Preservation of the Particular. Cambridge. Ditchfield, Simon (1997). “Text Before Trowel: Antonio Bosio’s Roma sotterranea revisited,” in: R.N. Swanson (ed.), The Church Retrospective, Studies in Church History 58, Woodbridge, 343–360. Gennaioli, Riccardo / Sframeli, Maria, eds. (2014). Sacri Splendori: Il tesoro della ‘Cappella delle Reliquie’ in Palazzo Pitti. Livorno. Gallonio, Antonio (1591a). Trattato degli instrumenti di martirio, e delle varie maniere di martoriare usate da gentili contro Christiani, descritte et intagliate in rame. Rome. Gallonio, Antonio (1591b). Historia delle sante vergini romane. Rome. Gallonio Antonio (1594). De SS. Martyrum Cruciatibus. Rome. Ghilardi, Massimiliano (2012). “Il pittore e le reliquie. Giovanni Angelo Santini e la Roma sotterranea nel primo Seicento,” Storia dell’arte 133.33, 5–23. Ghilardi, Massimiliano (2009). “Forceps ferreus seu instrumentum ad torquendum martires: la tenaglia del Vaticano tra devozione apologetica e propaganda controriformistam,” Miscellanea Bibliothecae Apostolicae Vaticanae XVI, 153–198. Giles, J.A., ed. (1843). The complete works of Venerable Bede. London. Guazzelli, Giuseppe Antonio / Michetti, Raimondo / Scorza Barcellona, Francesco, eds. (2012). Cesare Baronio tra santità e scrittura storica. Rome. Guazzelli, Giuseppe Antonio (2012). “Cesare Baronio and the Roman Catholic Vision of the Early Church,” in: K. Van Liere, S. Ditchfield, and L. Howard (eds.), Sacred History: Use of the Christian Past in the Renaissance World. Oxford, 52–71. Gulia, Luigi, ed. (2009). Baronio e le sue fonti. Sora. Hahn, Cynthia (1997). “The Voices of the Saints: Speaking Reliquaries,” Gesta 36.1, 20–31. Haskell, Francis (1995). History and its Images: Art and the Interpretation of the Past, revised edition. New Haven.

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Herklotz, Ingo (2012). “Che era Priscilla? Baronio e le ricerche sulla Roma sotteranea,” in: G.A. Guazzelli, R. Michetti, and F.S. Barcellona (eds.), Cesare Baronio tra sanità e scrittura storica, Rome, 425–444. Herz, Alexandra (1988). “Cardinal Cesare Baronio’s Restoration of SS. Nereo ed Achileo and S. Cesare de’ Appia,” The Art Bulletin 70, 590–620. Jacks, Philip J. (1985). “Baronius and the antiquities of Rome,” in: R. De Maio (ed.), Baronio e l’arte: Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Sora, 75–96. Josephus, Flavius (1580). Opera Iosephi viri inter Ivdaeos Doctissimi ac Disertissimi, qvae ad Nostram Aetatem Pervenervnt, Omnia, Nimirvm: de Antiqvitatibvs Ivdaicis Libri XX. Qvibvs, Vita Iosephi per Ipsvm conscripta, est adiecta: de Bello Iudaico Libri VII, contra Apionem Libri II, de imperio rationis, liber vnus, cvm Figvris et Indice. Frankfurt. Kampf, Tobias (2001). “Framing Cecilia’s Sacred Body: Paolo Camillo Sfondrato and the Language of Revelation,” Sculpture Journal VI, 10–20. La Bella, Carlo (2009). “Recuperi di Antichi Frammenti. Tracce dell’eredità dei Restauri Baroniani nelle Grotte Vaticane de Paolo V Borghese,” in: Gulia (ed.), Baronio e le sue fonti, Sora, 791–830. De Maio, Romeo, ed. (1985). Baronio e lʼarte: atti del convegno internazionale di studi. Sora. Mancini, Claudio M. (1967). S. Apollinare, la chiesa e il palazzo. Le chiese di Roma illustrate 93. Rome. Mansour, Opher (2005). “Not Torments, but Delights: Antonio Gallonio’s Trattato de gli Instrumenti di Martirio of 1591 and its Illustrations,” in: A. Hopkins and M. Wyke (eds.), Roman Bodies: Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century, London, 167–183. Merz, Jörg Martin (2003). “Pietro da Cortona und das Frontispiz zu Antonio Bosios ‘Roma sotterranea,” Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft 30, 229–244. Monssen, Leif Holm (1983). “The Martyrdom Cycle in Santo Stefano Rotondo, Part 2,” Acta ad archaeologiam et artium historiam pertinentia 3, 11–106. Monssen, Leif Holm (1982). “The Martyrdom Cycle in Santo Stefano Rotondo, Part 1,” Acta ad archaeologiam et artium historiam pertinentia 2, 175–318. Monssen, Leif Holm (1981). “Rex Gloriose Martyrdom: a contribution to Jesuit Iconography,” The Art Bulletin 63.1, 130–137. Montanari, Tomaso (2005). “Una nuova fonte per l’invenzione del corpo di Santa Cecilia: testimoni oculari, immagini e dubbi,” Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft 32, 149–165. Nolan, Linda (2015). “The Simulacrum of St. Bibiana: expression and design in early 17th-century Rome,” in: C. Miner (ed.), The Eternal Baroque: Essays in Honor of Jennifer Montagu, Milan, 239–250. Ostrow, Steven F. (1996). Art and Spirituality in Counter-Reformation Rome: the Sistine and Pauline Chapels in S. Maria Maggiore. Cambridge. Pagano, Sergio (1980). “Le Visite Apostoliche a Roma nei secoli XVI-XIX: repertorio delle fonti,” Ricerche per la Storia Religiosa di Roma 4, 317–442. Panciroli, Ottavio (1600). Tesori nascosti nell’alma città di Roma . . . Rome. Pupillo, Marco (2009). “Gli incisori di Baronio: il maestro ‘MGF’, Philippe Thomassin, Leonardo e Girolama Parasole,” in: L. Gulia (ed.), Baronio e le sue fonti. Sora, 831–866. Pupillo, Marco (1995). in: C.M. Strinati (ed.), La regola e la fama: San Filippo Neri e l’arte. Milan, 497–98 and 513–515. Rice, Louise (1997). The Altars and Altarpieces of New St. Peter’s: Outfitting the Basilica, 1621–1666. New York. Severano, Giovanni (1630). Memorie sacre delle sette chiese di Roma e di altri luoghi . . . Rome. Smith O’Neil, Maryvelma (1985). “The patronage of Cardinal Cesare Baronio at San Gregorio Magno: renovation and innovation,” in: R. De Maio (ed.), Baronio e l’arte: Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi. Sora, 145–171. Thunø, Erik (2015). “The Pantheon in the Middle Ages” in: M. Wilson Jones and T. Marder (eds.), The Pantheon: from Antiquity to Present. Cambridge, 231–254. Touber, Jetze (2014). Law, Medicine, and Engineering in the Cult of the Saints in Counter-Reformation Rome: the Hagiographical Works of Antonio Gallonio, 1556–1605. Leiden.

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Dietrich Boschung

Finding the Particular: On the Ancient Portrait in the History of Scholarship In the following essay I am not concerned with whether the names and thus the interpretation of the ancient sculptures in the last five centuries were correct or erroneous according to our present state of knowledge. What I am interested in is the identification process in the Early Modern period: What interests motivated the identification? What arguments and methods were used? And what was the effect of attaching names to sculptures? What were the consequences of those identifications? After the end of antiquity, some sculptures became much admired sights in the Middle Ages and beyond. Some were publicly presented, often as fragmented showpieces, others were accidental finds that demanded an explanation. The most famous example is the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, which stood in front of the Lateran Palace in the Middle Ages.1 Interest in individuals of Greek and Roman history began to grow in the last quarter of the fifteenth century, after the works of ancient historians (Thucydides, Herodotus, and Livy) and biographers (Suetonius and Plutarch) had become more widespread through the printing of books.2 A book entitled Illustrium imagines, published by Andrea Fulvio in 1517, responded to this interest. It presents persons of Roman history in chronological order but also includes Byzantine and German emperors. On one or two pages, biographical information is combined with an illustration based on coin portraits. The series begins with Janus and Alexander the Great. This is followed by protagonists of the Roman Republic such as M. Claudius Marcellus and Marius. The work is particularly detailed for the time of Caesar and for the emperors of the first and second century CE, who are presented with their numerous relatives. Together with Caesar, his parents L. Caesar and Aurelia and his grandmother Marcia are listed, as well as his aunt, sister, daughter, and wives; further, Cleopatra is listed as Caesaris amica and her son Caesarion. The families of the emperors from Augustus to Septimius Severus are presented in similar detail. The starting point of the book was obviously a chronological list of names of rulers and their relatives taken from ancient historians. To each name, a portrait and biographical details were searched for and added. Fulvio claims that the visual representations were reproduced ex probatissimis miraeq(ue) vetustatis numismatibus, “after the most excellent coins of astonishing age.” This may be true for some of the portraits printed, such as Caesar and the emperors. But many of the supposedly an-

 Boschung 2020, 269–273.  Boschung 2021, 263–285. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111182919-026

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cient portraits are fictitious: If no portraits were found for the names, Fulvio invented heads and arranged coin legends. It was precisely the combination of portrait and name inscription that made the identification highly suggestive. When Fulvio depicted invented coin portraits, he translated his own ideas about the historical persons into images: The names were given visible shape and an evident vividness. The depictions of C. Octavius and Atia (or Accia, as she is called here), the parents of Augustus, with the name inscribed around the head in profile, also appear to reproduce coin portraits. But in fact, there are no ancient models for them. Below each individual’s portrait is a short biography that follows the ancient historians. Atia is depicted as an elderly matron with sunken cheeks whose decency is expressed by the veiling of the head and whose dignity is expressed by a narrow diadem. The circular legend summarizes the most important biographical data. For it calls Atia the daughter of Caesar’s sister and the mother of Octavius (Augustus). The father’s head has full, short hair, as might be found in portraits of Emperor Tiberius (Fig. 1). Wrinkles on his cheeks and neck also indicate an advanced age. The inscription does not mention his achievements and offices but rather identifies him as the father of Augustus: C. Octavius C. Octa(vii) C(a)es(aris) Aug(usti) pater. The name form Octavius Caesar Augustus was never used by the son, but it is found in the second century CE in Florus’s Epitome (2.14.5).3 The ideas and concepts of personalities from Greco-Roman antiquity were visualized not only in the imaginary coin portraits but also by association with preserved ancient sculptures. In this case the depictions were not invented but found in ancient monuments. The three-dimensional, life-size portraits had a much more impressive vividness and presence than the alleged or actual coin portraits. An initial overview of the numerous names of heads, busts, and statues in Rome is given by Ulisse Aldrovandi in his book on the Statue Antiche in Rome, written in 1550,4 which lists a large number of portraits of historical persons. Many of the sculptures described by Aldrovandi are known to us through the drawings in the album of Alonso Chacón.5 Here it was not a question of finding portraits for a series of given names or inventing them where necessary. Rather, it was the preserved heads, busts, and statues that demanded a name and thus an interpretation. The series of names is therefore not as complete and systematic as in the book by Andrea Fulvio. Aldrovandi names the emperors from Julius Caesar to Caracalla and Geta, also including their relatives. Personalities from the early era of ancient Rome are also mentioned, such as Romulus and his wife Hersilia. From the Roman Republic, Aldrovandi identifies nu Similar in the late antique breviaria of Eutropius (7.3; 7.4) and Festus (5.2; 11.3; 13.3; 19.1; 19.2): Octavianus Caesar Augustus.  Aldrovandi 1562, 115–315.  Christiane Vorster et al. 2018.

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Fig. 1: C. Octavius Augusti pater. After Andrea Fulvio 1517.

merous portraits, such as Valerius Publicola, Scipio Africanus, Scipio Nasica, Marius, Sulla, Cicero, and Cato the Younger. Among characters in Greek history, Pyrrhus and Cleopatra are most frequently mentioned. Aldrovandi provides arguments for his identifications only in exceptional circumstances. In most cases we do not know their origins. Only rarely does he mention the corresponding inscriptions. Sometimes Aldrovandi reveals that it was the connection

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to events and descriptions from literary sources that made individual characters identifiable. Statues of women who had wounds under their breasts could be interpreted as representations of Lucretia, who had stabbed herself to save her honor and caused the expulsion of the kings with her suicide.6 Two statues of Cleopatra had on her arm the viper that she used to kill herself in order to escape capture by Octavian.7 Individual features that were historically attested could also contribute to the identification. For example, a bust of Cicero can be recognized from a wart on his nose, from which he is said to have gotten his name.8 In addition to these procedures, comparison with coin portraits proved to be helpful for the portraits of the Roman emperors. In his work De statuis et simulacris, published in 1527, Andrea Fulvio justifies his interpretation of the equestrian statue on the Capitol as Marcus Aurelius or Lucius Verus by its similarity with images on coins.9 In 1570 the first edition of the book by Fulvius Ursinus (Fulvio Orsini) was published: Imagines et elogia virum illustrium et eruditorum ex antiquis lapidibus et nomismatib(us) expressa.10 The title alone shows that Orsini followed a different interest than Andrea Fulvio, because this is not about the emperors and their relatives. The subject of interest is rather ancient poets, philosophers, and scholars. The representations are not limited to authentic or invented coin portraits, but also reproduce preserved ancient monuments: statues, herms, reliefs, inscriptions, book illuminations, and gems. Above all, the book contains a large number of portraits that are clearly identified by inscriptions. Here it is the direct connection of inscription and portrait that established a name. This seems to be a methodologically sound procedure, but in reality the results were often rather questionable. For in many cases the heads of inscribed herms and statues are lost. In such cases, modern sculptors could assemble ancient inscriptions and heads that did not originally belong together. And sometimes the supposedly ancient inscriptions are in fact modern, to attribute a name that has been obtained by other means. This is obvious for the three ascribed portraits of Euripides (Fig. 2) reproduced by Orsini. It is true that all have inscriptions indicating the name. But the heads of the statue and the herm are lost, so nothing can be said about the poet’s appearance. And the third portrait, now in Modena, is complete, but it is a work of the sixteenth century.11

 Aldrovandi 1562, 164; Vorster 2018, 156–158.  Aldrovandi 1562, 117–118.  Aldrovandi 1562, 221: “Cicerone, col cecce nel naso presso gli occhi, onde fu egli cosi cognominato.”  Fulvio 1527, IV 79v: “ . . . eamque M. Aurelii Antonini esse tradunt sive L. Veri, ut in eius numismatibus similitudo satis expresse patet.”  Ursinus 1570; Ursinus 1606; Faber 1606.  Ursinus 1570, 27; Modena, Galleria Estense, inv. 7486, “Euripides”, head and inscription of the 16th century: Huelsen 1901, 135–136, pl. 7.

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Fig. 2: Euripides. After Fulvius Ursinus 1570, 27.

A concise guide to the interpretation of ancient sculpture is found three generations later in Henry Peacham’s book The Compleat Gentleman of 1634:12 The “ingenuous Gentleman” had to be able to distinguish and interpret ancient statues in order to stand up to his peers. Peacham recommends four procedures. The first is “by generall learning in History and Poetry.” Literary texts make it possible to recognize the char-

 Peacham 1634, 109–110.

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acters by their attributes, such as Jupiter by his thunderbolt, Hercules by his club and his lion skin, Cleopatra by a viper, and Cicero by the wart. For statues without attributes and without inscription, Peacham recommends comparing the head profile with coins. Another possibility is to study a book entitled Icones statuarum quae hodie visuntur Romae. And finally, visiting collections accompanied by connoisseurs helps to broaden and deepen one’s knowledge of ancient sculpture. Peacham’s catalog of significant attributes also includes the viper as a characteristic of Cleopatra and the wart as a characteristic of Cicero, both of which are already used in Aldrovandi’s list of names, as we have already seen. It is obvious that Peacham recommends practices of the study of antiquity, which had already been used a century earlier in Rome for the identification of portraits and which are reflected, for example, in Aldrovandi’s text. In the meantime, they had spread beyond the circle of trained antiquarians and were part of the general knowledge that could be expected from persons of rank. The statue of Cleopatra in the Belvedere Court of the Vatican, already mentioned by Aldrovandi, also appears in Joachim von Sandrart as a representation of Cleopatra dead or dying.13 After the conquest of Alexandria, the queen committed suicide by letting a viper bite her arm. During his spectacular triumphal procession in Rome, Octavian carried a representation of the dead Cleopatra lying on her couch, with the snake curled around her arm.14 Sandrart believed that it was this statue that was kept in the Belvedere Court.15 The reason for identifying the statue was the small snake on her upper arm. But a closer look at the statue shows that it is a bracelet, not a living snake. And even the rock on which the woman sleeps does not fit very well with the depiction of the dead Cleopatra in Octavian’s triumphal procession, where she, according to Cassius Dio, lay on a couch. Sandrart’s illustration avoids these discrepancies by depicting the bracelet as a living snake moving towards the chest of the reclining person and the rock as a couch and a large pillow. Thus, the interpretation of the statue as a representation of the dead Cleopatra remains valid in spite of its contradictions to the historical tradition. We can conclude that the identification of the statue as Cleopatra was based on ancient literary accounts but ignored the inconsistencies between statue and text. The example of a seated statue of the philosopher Chrysippus, now in the Louvre,16 also shows that although the interpretation of statues was an expression of his-

 Sandrart 1675 I.2, 35: “Cleopatra Königin in Egypten: in Vatikan; Diss Bild ward von Kais. Augusto im Triumph zu Rom eingefuhret” (“Cleopatra Queen of Egypt: in the Vatican; this image was carried before the emperor Augustus in triumph in Rome”).  Plut. Ant. 84–86; Dio Cass. 51.21.8: τά τε γὰρ ἄλλα καὶ ἡ Κλεοπάτρα ἐπὶ κλίνης ἐν τῷ τοῦ θανάτου μιμήματι παρεκομίσθη.  Wolf 2002, 68–87; 290–291, pl. 76.  Paris, Musée du Louvre Ma 80; von den Hoff 1994, 100 cat. no. 1; Kunze 2002, 243–246; Zanker 2016, 33–35, no. 8.

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torical interest, it was not always the result of in-depth studies of historical sources. Instead, it was often rather intuitive. The statue has been interpreted by Joachim von Sandrart as a portrait of the Byzantine general Belisarius from the sixth century CE. Sandrart reports that mighty Belisarius was falsely accused of treason, whereupon Emperor Justinian ordered his eyes to be gouged out. The once rich and highly honored, but now impoverished, Belisarius was forced to beg, and it is this situation that Sandrart believed he saw in the statue. This interpretation was guided by the unusual gesture of the openly spread right hand, which Sandrart understood as representing the act of begging.17 The episode that Sandrart evokes is not reported by the historians of the Justinian period. It only goes back to the twelfth century. But in the seventeenth century, the fate of Belisarius became a theme of theater and painting, as an example of the destructive power of envy. Thus the ancient statue became the testimony of a historical event of the sixth century CE, which never took place in reality but which occupied the imagination of Baroque contemporaries. A discussion among trained antiquarians about the interpretation of an ancient portrait becomes evident in the correspondence between Peter Paul Rubens and Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc in 1622. The subject of the letters is a likeness of Demosthenes in the collection of the mayor of Antwerp, Nicolaas Rockox.18 Peiresc questions the authenticity of the inscription. He mentions the herms made famous by Fulvio Orsini, some of which had received modern inscriptions, as he knows from an informant in Rome. Later Peiresc expresses his amazement at the hairstyle of the portrait of Demosthenes, because he believes that half of the head is bald. Then he reports on the explanation he has received from Rubens: Plutarch writes that Demosthenes had deliberately disfigured his appearance by partially shearing the hair of his head, forcing himself to stay at home and carry out his rhetorical exercises until the hair had grown back.19 An engraving by Lucas Vorstermann shows the collector Nicolaas Rockox and his treasures including the herm (Fig. 3).20 Vorstermann emphasizes the different hair of both halves of the skull, giving the impression that one part has actually been shaved off. At the same time, the engraving explains the name by an addition written on the herm in the manner of an ancient inscription: ΔΗΜΟΣΘΕΝΗΣ cur ἡμιξύρητος, semitonsus. Vide Plutarchi eius Vita (“Demosthenes, because he is half shorn. See his biography by Plutarch”). The name is thus authenticated by reference to the ancient biography, repeating the argument put forward by Rubens.

   

Sandrart 1679, II.7, pl. G; III.63–64; Boschung 2021, 275–277. Boschung 2021, 277–282; Boschung 2005, 7–39. Plut. Dem. 7; cf. Plut. X orat.; Mor. 844d–e. Boschung 2005, 12–14, Q 6 fig. 5; Boschung 2021, 278–279.

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Fig. 3: Nicolaas Rockox as collector. Engraving by Lucas Vorstermann, c. 1630. Photo: University Library of Antwerp: Special Collections, https://anet.be/record/opacuaobj/tg:uapr:1249/E [accessed 2 August 2024].

Today the herm is in the National Museum at Stockholm.21 It is composed of two ancient pieces that did not originally belong together: a herm with the name of Demosthenes and a head representing the poet Anacreon. The herm was indeed an ancient portrait of Demosthenes, but it was found without its head. The restoration of the sculpture, which must have already taken place in Rome, obviously did not reveal the  Stockholm, Nationalmuseum Sk 65; Boschung 2005, 25–26, A.

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modern additions and revisions. Rubens, himself the owner of an important collection of ancient sculptures, did not doubt that the head and the herm belonged together. Vorstermann’s engraving not only refers to the ancient text but also seems to quote it with the addition ἡμιξύρητος, semitonsus, which is supposed to justify the name with cur (because). However, the Greek word is not found in Plutarch, but only in Diogenes Laertius (VI 33), who uses it once, but for Diogenes, not for Demosthenes. The striking hairstyle is also reported for the philosopher Peregrinus, whom Lucian reports as having shaved half his head in order to pose as a cynical philosopher.22 Those who recognized the head to be half-shaved could have interpreted it to be Diogenes or Peregrinus by referencing ancient literature. But perhaps the well-kept beard seemed inappropriate for the Cynic. While in the case of the portrait of Demosthenes, a single passage from ancient literature was sufficient to allow for identification, Lorenz Beger interpreted the portraits in the collection of the King of Prussia in Berlin in a more nuanced way.23 The text explaining the large-format illustration of the bust (Fig. 4) is designed as a dialogue between two scholars, one of whom is called Dulodorus (this is the pseudonym of Beger himself), the other Archaeophilus. The conversation about this sculpture is opened by Dulodorus with the statement that scholars in Italy interpreted the bust as a gladiator and as the lover of Empress Faustina, since ancient authors reported that the wife of Emperor Marcus Aurelius fell in love with a gladiator and conceived with him the successor Commodus. However, Dulodorus argues that the impression is too noble for a gladiator. He states that the bust is reminiscent of a group in the Villa Borghese, which some identify as Coriolanus with his wife, others as Faustina with the gladiator. Beger refers here to the older publication by François Perrier: Both interpretations can be found there, and Perrier leaves open which of the two is more likely. He too would prefer Coriolanus, says Archaeophilus. But he thinks that the helmet and the sword strap would go well with a gladiator, referring to Justus Lipsius. But Dulodorus replies, quoting many ancient authors, that even heroes and soldiers were equipped in this way. He mentions the so-called ‘Shield of Scipio Africanus’ (Fig. 5): For Dulodorus, the depicted scene proves that in Scipio’s time the sword was carried on a strap worn across the chest. I would like to add a brief comment on Jacob Spon’s interpretation of this silver plate from the fourth century CE before returning to Beger’s text.24 This is because Jacob Spon’s interpretation as the shield of Scipio makes the process of the historical interpretation of the ancient remains and their premises particularly clear. The image shows, as Spon points out with reference to Polybius and Livy, “the memorable act of

 Lucian De mort. Peregr. 17: ξυρόμενος μὲν τῆς κεφαλῆς τὸ ἥμισυ.  Beger 1701, 331–333 with fig.; Boschung 2021, 282–285.  Boschung 2020, 281–284; Leander-Newby 2014, 90–95.

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Fig. 4: Lorenz Beger. After Berlin 1701, 331.

Scipio Africanus, when he returned untouched and without ransom, a beautiful maiden who had been captured in the conquest of Carthago Nova, who had been betrothed to the Celtiberian chief Allucius.”25 Spon gives a more detailed interpretation of the picture: The seated young man is Scipio in his grand audience hall. The weapons in the foreground are some of the spoils of Carthago Nova; the bearded men next

 Spon 1683, 1–32: Clypeus votivus . . . Exhibiens Scipionis Africani memorandam actionem, qua captam in expugnatione Carthaginis novae eximia forma Virginem, Allucio Celtiberorum Principi cui desponsata erat, intactam gratis deddidit. Polyb. lib. 10. Livius lib. 26.

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Fig. 5: Late antique silver bowl, so-called ‘Shield of Scipio.’ Photo: Spon 1683, plate in front of page 1. Image taken from the manuscript at Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, 2875.

to Scipio are the father and relatives of the young woman, the youths with helmets, Roman officers. On the left, Allucius holds his fiancée in his arms. Scipio himself supposedly had the votive shield made and lost it while crossing the Rhône. Although Jacob Spon cites ancient sources for his interpretation, he is even more strongly influenced by the premises and conventions of his time. It is assumed—as the first premise—that contemporary events in the Middle Roman Republic would have immediately become motifs of the visual arts, which in reality happened very rarely, if ever. The Continentia Scipionis (Continence of Scipio) was a subject of art only in the early modern era, from the sixteenth century. The images were inspired by Valerius Maximus’ use of the event as an example of continentia. A painting of the story by Nic-

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olas Poussin dates from 1640.26 In the painting, most elements of Spon’s later interpretation are anticipated: Scipio sitting on a raised dais in front of architecture, the youthful Allucius with fur boots and in civilian attire but with a sword hanging at his side, his veiled fiancée led forward, the Roman soldiers, and the father of the young woman. Poussin painted all these details in his Continentia Scipionis even before Spon found them on an ancient silver bowl thirty-three years later. Spon thus interprets the ancient relief according to the iconographic conventions of art in his own time and makes a second assumption by equating ancient and contemporary viewing habits. This assumption was reinforced by the fact that with some modern pieces, such as engraved gems, knowledge of their recent origins had been lost.27 As supposedly ancient works, they seemed to authenticate the continuity of motifs and pictorial schemata from antiquity. For example, Bernard de Montfaucon considered the modern intaglio with the inscription casti continentia Scipionis to be an ancient work. A third premise of Spon and his contemporaries was the assumption of a uniform transmission of texts and monuments. Ancient works of art, so the axiom goes, reproduce what ancient texts pass down. It therefore made sense to start from the (allegedly) more complete and coherent ancient literary tradition and subsequently group and interpret the disparately preserved statues and reliefs. From a contemporary perspective, Spon’s findings may appear mistaken, but his interpretation was in no way arbitrary. He determined the function of the object as a votive shield by analogy with images on ancient coins, and he developed his interpretation of the scene from ancient historical texts. This methodological approach required a high degree of familiarity with ancient monuments and texts and also gave Spon’s claims a high level of credibility and secured the acceptance of his interpretation for almost a hundred years. Let us return to Beger and to his interpretation of the bust. When Dulodorus mentions the shield of Scipio, Archaeophilus asks whether the bust might also represent Scipio. He recognises that the youthful head, the long hair and the head tilt are quite appropriate. Archaeophilus still has trouble believing this, for the publication of Fulvio Orsini shows a different portrait of Scipio. But Dulodorus also has an answer to this: both can be portraits of Scipio, depicting him in different phases of his life. Beger’s method of interpreting the bust by way of a dialogue offers the reader the opportunity to follow the exchange and evaluation of different opinions and arguments, but also of doubts and contradictions. The starting point of the discussion is the ancient texts, some of which are quoted literally and some of which are quoted in general terms.  Moscow, Pushkin Museum Ж-1048: Rosenberg/Prat 1994, 290–291, no. 96.  Dalton 1915, 124–125, no. 852: Sard with Continentia Scipionis; inscribed Cast(i) cont(inentia) Scipi(onis), work by Giovanni Bernardi di Castelbolognese (1496–1553); Montfaucon 1724, 46–47, pl. 24, considers the gems to be Augustan.

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Equally important are ancient monuments that can serve as comparanda thanks to the publications: the statuary group in the Villa Borghese, the Column of Trajan, the shield of Scipio, and the head of Scipio. They can either contradict the interpretation or confirm it by analogy. In Beger’s text, earlier interpretations are partly rejected, such as the identification of a gladiator. Other designations are simply left aside, such as the interpretation as Coriolanus. Iconographic elements such as hairstyle and helmet decoration are used, as well as the results of Early Modern authorities like Justus Lipsius, Jacob Spon, or Fulvio Orsini. Due to the structure of the text as a dialogue, the reader is able to observe how the results are developed: He can verify and weigh up the arguments of the two speakers. This gives him the opportunity to reflect on open questions himself and perhaps find his own solutions. The ancient sculptures only acquired their significance through identification. This can be illustrated by the example of the so-called Seneca portrait. In the second edition of his Imagines illustrium, Fulvio Orsini had illustrated the head of a bearded man with this name. At the same time Johann Faber, in his commentary on Orsini’s illustrations, had justified the naming.28 His most important argument was its similarity to a late antique medallion of bronze (contorniate). From then on, this portrait appeared as a manifestation of Stoic philosophy. Faber interpreted the portrait biographically: He believes that Seneca is depicted in his old age, when Nero had ordered him to commit suicide. Faber referred to the writings of Tacitus and Dio Cassius, which give a detailed account of the life, death, and deeds of Seneca. In the new edition of Seneca’s writings published by Justus Lipsius, the ‘Seneca’ bust discovered by Orsini is illustrated in the chapter on the philosopher’s vita.29 The text says that the portrait corresponds to the fact that Seneca had been exhausted at the end of his life by illness, strenuous studies, and ascetic lifestyle. After doubts had arisen about the identification as Seneca—in the meantime, the contorniate had disappeared—Ennio Qurino Visconti defended it at the beginning of the nineteenth century.30 Visconti states that the physiognomy of the portrait type corresponds to the ideas that Seneca himself and Roman historians express about his personality. The head shows the philosophically justified carelessness of Seneca’s last years, when he withdrew from the imperial court and devoted himself to agriculture. Visconti continues that this head of Seneca has the hair of a man who never perfumed himself, as Seneca himself claims (Ep. 108.16), and that the portrait corresponds to an old body that is emaciated by insufficient food, as described by Tacitus.31 The profile is that of a laboriously breathing, almost dying man.

   

Ursinus 1606, pl. 131; Faber 1606, 74 on no. 131. Lipsius/Gronovius 1672. Visconti 1817, 419–422. Tac. Ann. 15.63: senile corpus et parvo victu tenuatum.

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The ancient head was not created to represent Seneca, his fate, and his Stoic philosophy.32 Rather, as far as we know today, it is the portrait of a poet from the Hellenistic period. It was created to represent a Greek intellectual as a distinctive personality, centuries before Seneca. After the loss of the original name, it was possible to see Seneca in its special features. The identification was convincing to the scholars of the early modern period by the authority of Fulvio Orsini. They placed the portrait in a historical context and made it a testimony to the arbitrariness of the morally degenerate tyrant Nero and to the greatness of mind of the philosopher condemned to death. After the identification was generally accepted, the head with its anguished but restrained features confirmed the greatness of the philosopher and showed that the negative description in Dio Cassius (e. g. 61.10) was based on groundless slander. As we have seen, the designations of the early modern period were often projections of knowledge and ideas about historical persons onto the ancient artifacts. Those who admired in Demosthenes his strength of will and self-discipline could find it in the hairstyle of a marble head that had once been created as a portrait of Anacreon. Numerous early modern namings became obsolete at the end of the nineteenth century, in particular through the systematic and critical examination by Johann Jacob Bernoulli.33 One reason for this was the development of stylistic criticism, which allowed a more reliable dating of the sculptures. Stylistic dating thus made it possible to check the plausibility of many proposed designations, and it not infrequently led to refutation. The second factor was the development of photography and its use as a means of archaeological documentation. It allowed reliable comparison of pieces stored far from each other. In many cases, this raised doubts as to whether they could actually represent the same person. From these considerations, some general conclusions may be drawn: 1. Scientific results are always based on implicit axioms. They have a stronger effect the less they are conscious. For example, anyone who assumed that only the powerful and distinguished were honored with portraits had to see a senator, a consul, or an emperor in every Roman portrait. 2. The international and long-lasting success of scientific findings is no proof of their correctness: This is shown, for example, by the research history on the Seneca portrait. The decisive factor is rather whether the results fit into the discursive framework of their time, i.e. whether they correspond to the expectations and needs of their epoch.

 von den Hoff 2016, 41–43, no. 29; Gasparri 2009, 17–20, 128–133, no. 3–5; Zanker 1995, 150–154, fig. 80a–c: “Hesiod (?).”  Bernoulli 1882–1894.

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4.

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Once established, orders of knowledge can be continuously confirmed over centuries in a circular manner; but they can also become obsolete within a short time. This may be related to the introduction of new media, for example, photography in Bernoulli’s time. Those who see archaeological monuments just as illustrations of literary texts misjudge their character. Historical artifacts transmit a persistent vocabulary of forms that reflects ideas current in their time of origin that do not necessarily correspond to the literary tradition. They are sources of their own nature and must be investigated with appropriate methodologies.

Bibliography Aldrovandi, Ulisse (1562). “Tutte le statue, che in Roma in diversi luoghi, e case particolari si veggono,” in: L. Mauro, Le antichità della città di Roma, Venice, 115–315. http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/artdok/ volltexte/2009/704 [accessed 22 February 2022]. Beger, Lorenz (1701). Thesaurus Brandenburgicus, vol. 3. Berlin. Bernoulli, Johann Jacob (1882). Römische Ikonographie part 1, Die Bildnisse berühmter Römer mit Ausschluss der Kaiser und ihrer Angehörigen. Stuttgart. Bernoulli, Johann Jacob (1886). Römische Ikonographie part 2, Die Bildnisse der römischen Kaiser und ihrer Angehörigen, vol. 1, Das julisch-claudische Kaiserhaus. Berlin. Bernoulli, Johann Jacob (1891). Römische Ikonographie part 2, Die Bildnisse der römischen Kaiser und ihrer Angehörigen, vol. 2 Von Galba bis Commodus. Berlin. Bernoulli, Johann Jacob (1894). Römische Ikonographie part 2, Die Bildnisse der römischen Kaiser und ihrer Angehörigen, vol. 3, Von Pertinax bis Theodosius. Berlin. Boschung, Dietrich (2005). “Die Sammlung antiker Skulpturen des Nicolaas Rockox in Antwerpen,” MüJb 56, 7–39. Boschung, Dietrich (2020). Art and Efficacy: Case Studies from Classical Archaeology, trans. by Ross Brendle. Morphomata 44. Paderborn. Boschung, Dietrich (2021). Effigies: Ancient Portraiture as Figuration of the Particular, trans. by Ross Brendle. Morphomata 53. Paderborn. Dalton, Ormande Maddock (1915). Catalogue of the engraved Gems of the Post-Classical Periods in the British Museum. London. Faber, Johann (1606). In imagines illustrium ex Fulvii Ursini bibliotheca, Antverpiae a Theodoro Gallaeo expressas, commentarius. Antwerp. Fulvio, Andrea (1517). Imagines illustrium. Rome. Fulvio, Andrea (1527). Antiquitates Urbis. Rome. Gasparri, Carlo / Capaldi, Carmela / Luigi Spina, eds. (2009). Le sculture Farnese, vol. 2, I ritratti. Naples. Huelsen, Christian (1901). “Die Hermeninschriften berühmter Griechen und die ikonographischen Sammlungen des 16. Jahrhunderts,” RM 16, 123–208, pl. 6–7; reprinted in: K. Fittschen, Griechische Porträts, Darmstadt, 1988, 117–140, pl. 159–160. Kunze, Christian (2002). Zum Greifen nah. Stilphänomene in der hellenistischen Skulptur und ihre inhaltliche Interpretation. Munich. Leander-Newby, Ruth (2014). “Heroes, Lions, and Vandals: Four Late Roman Missoria,” in: K. Lapatin (ed.), The Berthouville Silver Treasure and Roman Luxury. Los Angeles 89–106. Lipsius, Justus / Gronovius, Joannes Fredericus (1672). L. Annei Senecae Opera, quae exstant. Amsterdam.

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Montfaucon, Bernard de (1724). L’ Antiquité expliquée, Suppl. IV, qui comprend la guerre, les ponts, les aqueducs, la navigation, les phares & les tours octogones. Paris. Peacham, Henry (1634). The Compleat Gentleman. London. Rosenberg, Pierre / Prat, Louis-Antoine (1994). Nicolas Poussin 1594–1665. Paris. Sandrart, Joachim von (1675). L’Academia Todesca della Architectura, Scultura & Pittura: Oder Teutsche Academie der edlen Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste. Nuremberg. Sandrart, Joachim von (1679). Der Teutschen Academie Zweyter und letzter Haupt-Theil: Von Der Edlen BauBild- und Mahlerey-Künste, part II, Von der sculptura oder Bildhauerkunst; part III, Von der Pittura oder Mahlerey-Kunst. Nuremberg. Spon, Jacob (1683). Recherches curieuses d’ antiquités. Lyon. Ursinus, Fulvius (1570). Imagines et elogia virum illustrium et eruditorum ex antiquis lapidibus et nomismatib(us) expressa. Rome. Ursinus, Fulvius (1606). Illustrium imagines, ex antiquis marmoribus, nomismatibus, et gemmis expressae. Editio altera. Theodorus Gallaeus delinebat. Antwerp. Visconti, Ennio Quirino (1817). Iconographie romaine I. Paris. von den Hoff, Ralf (1994). Philosophenporträts des Früh- und Hochhellenismus. Munich. von den Hoff, Ralf (2016). “Porträtkopf eines Dichters, sog. Pseudo-Seneca,” in: A. Scholl (ed.), Katalog der Skulpturen in der Antikensammlung der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin I. Griechische und römische Bildnisse. Petersberg. Vorster, Christiane (2018). “Aufstellung, Deutung und Ergänzung antiker Skulpturen in Sammlungen des 16. Jahrhunderts,” in: C. Vorster et al. (eds.), Die Antikenalben des Alphonsus Ciacconius in Braunschweig, Rom und Pesaro. Dokumentation und Deutung antiker Skulpturen im 16. Jahrhundert, Braunschweig, 144–167. Wolf, Claudia Marie (2002). Die schlafende Ariadne im Vatikan. Ein hellenistischer Statuentypus und seine Rezeption. Hamburg. Zanker, Paul (1995). The Mask of Socrates. The Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity. Berkeley. Zanker, Paul (2016). Roman Portraits. Sculptures in Stone and Bronze in the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York.

Hans Rupprecht Goette

A Late Republican Statue from Rome and Its Transformation Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. (1909–1988) collected art from a very young age. Initially he acquired primarily French modernist paintings, and then American sculpture, crafts, and glass. Another focus of his interest was a large art historical and music library, as well as numerous Egyptian, Greek, and Roman antiquities,1 which constituted a littleknown area of Chrysler’s collecting. Since 1971 all of these acquisitions have been housed in a museum that bears his name, the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia. Standing out among the few antique displays in the museum is a life-size draped female statue (Fig. 1 a‒c).2 The statue is carved in a fine, white type of limestone, referred to in archaeological literature as travertine. This particular stone was used for a number of late Republican male togate statues, a few female figures, and so-called coffered tomb reliefs (Kastengrabreliefs), most of which come from the surroundings of Rome, as well as from the city itself.3 Consequently, it is highly likely that the female statue in the Chrysler Museum also comes from Rome or the surrounding area, especially since the collector acquired many of his ancient objects in Rome himself. This figure represents a woman dressed in a long, pleated chiton (dress) with a himation (cloak) tightly wrapped around her body. Because of her weighted right leg, the lady’s right hip appears accentuated, while the slightly bent left leg turns out to the side, so that its form appears more clearly defined under her garments than her right leg. Her closed shoes are only visible with their tips in front of the hem of the long chiton, which is lying on the ground. The woman’s left arm crosses the body almost horizontally, while the long end of her himation is draped over the forearm and falls in front of her lower body. Her left

 For a list of publications of individual antiquities from the collection and their origin, see Goette 2011, as well as Goette 2016.  Norfolk, Virginia, Chrysler Museum of Art, inv. 78.429. Unpublished. H. 203 cm. The little finger of the right hand was once restored with a (rusty) iron pin; the restoration is now lost. The index finger and thumb of the right hand are broken but were partly restored together with a separate piece of the woman’s garment. Her veiled head, broken off irregularly, has been joined to the statue with plaster. There are small chips missing in the folds of her garment, and a section of the plinth on the left side together with part of its back side is broken off. The entire back of the figure has been roughly worked with a pointed chisel and not been smoothed down.  Regarding late Republican togati, see Kleiner/Kleiner 1980/1981 and in general Kockel 1993, 57–58; Vorster 2013, 112, 114 n. 17. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111182919-027

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Fig. 1: Norfolk, Virginia, Chrysler Museum of Art, inv. 78.429: pudicitia statue. Photos: author.

hand gathers the fabric at the right hip.4 Her right arm, on the other hand, which is wrapped tightly in her himation, is acutely bent at the elbow and directed vertically upwards. Diagonally below her chin, her right hand grasps the hem of the section of garment that is draped over her head, then one corner of the mantle extends down in front of her body to just below her left knee after overlapping her left forearm next to the wrist. The woman’s facial features are idealized, while her face is framed by a wavy hairstyle parted over the middle of the forehead with the long locks of her hair swept to the sides and pulled back from the temples, leaving her ears mostly visible. At the back of the head, under her himation there are no contours of a larger part of any hairstyle depicted; one could imagine at least a lock of hair (like a braid) that is worn

 A statue from the Giustiniani Collection (Rizzo 1905, 7–10, no. 11, fig. 3) is similar in this regard, while the similar figure from the Mattei Collection in the Palazzo Altemps (Rome, Museo Nazionale Romano inv. 420803: de Angelis d’Ossat 2002, 112–113 dating the statue about six decades too early) shows a variant pose of the right arm that extends diagonally up to the left shoulder.

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low at the nape of her neck, as in Livia’s late (Caligulan/Claudian) hairstyles that part over the front of her forehead and are often worn with a diadem.5 The Chrysler statue is a variant of the so-called pudicitia type.6 The drapery of the himation, falling from the right hand and over the left upper arm, is a little different from Linfert’s “Braccio Nuovo” type, which is known in many replicas and transformations (‘Umbildungen’). In the second century BCE, this statue type had been invented in the Greek East;7 in Italy it became popular during the late Roman Republic and is particularly well documented in funerary reliefs. But impressive statues in the round such as the figure in the Chrysler collection are much rarer;8 such works carved in fine travertine can only be attested in small numbers. The best parallel, in terms of size and material, is a fragmented torso of a pudicitia in the Accademia di S. Luca, Rome (Figs. 2a‒b).9 The statue in the Chrysler Collection, with its broad and deep structure, can be considered a high-quality copy that preserves its Hellenistic model. This is also evident in the richness of detail in the treatment of the drapery, particularly in the fine vertical folds of the chiton, which appear through the fabric of the himation on the figure’s side (Fig. 3). In its stylistic tendency, the Chrysler figure belongs to the older examples in the group of Italic figures, as Schmidt has convincingly shown in statues of the pudicitia type that she discussed.10 The Chrysler figure can be dated to about the middle of the first century BCE, to a time when travertine was still used, before the use of Luna (Carrara) marble started, being extracted for Roman funerary statues almost exclusively since the early Augustan period. It has been assumed with good reason that most of these statues that came down to us without any information about their original context (and the above mentioned reliefs) once stood in sepulchral contexts, i.e., they decorated the tombs along roads

 For this “Diva Augusta” type see Bartman 1999, 102–145. J. J. Winckelmann considered a dating to the Augustan period and probably accepted her identification as Livia: See further below with n. 22.  Horn 1931, 81–82; Schmidt 1967, 11–22; Linfert 1976, 151–152 with nn. 597–601 (list of replicas); additionally: Linfert 1988, 506 n. 4 to no. 968; Bieber 1977, 132–133; Kockel 1993, 25–26 nn. 220–225 (list of replicas); Eule 2001, 15–25 with figs. 5–18 (21–22 n. 32–39: grave reliefs; 23–24: statues); Alexandridis 2004, 261–265 (list of replicas with several variants).  That a workshop in Asia Minor really created this type (so Linfert 1976, 1998, as well as others following him; but see more cautiously, Vorster 2013, 114), cannot be ascertained. An art center on the Aegean islands is also possible.  After all, we also find them in Italian country towns, as at Cartoceto (Ancona: bronze statue), Castel di Sangro, Chiusi, Mentana, Osimo, Pompeii, or Venafro, but also as far away as in the Spanish provinces (Pollentia [Mallorca], Cartagena [in Murcia], and Tarragona): See further Kockel 1993, 25 n. 223, 226; Eule 2001, 23–24 (statues); Linfert 1998, 506 n. 4.  Vorster 2013, 116. This statue appears somewhat later than our figure in the hardening and simplification of detailed motifs.  Schmidt 1967, 15–24, esp. 22–23.

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Fig. 2: Rome, Accademia di S. Luca: pudicitia statue. Photos: author. With permission of Accademia Nazionale di S. Luca, Roma.

Fig. 3: Detail of left side of Fig. 1. Photo: author.

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outside the gateways of Rome (as well as other cities) to honor the deceased.11 This idea is supported by the observation that those three-dimensional statues are only roughly worked on their back sides with a pointed chisel,12 suggesting that they were placed in front of a wall or in a niche of a mausoleum. The back of the female figure in the Chrysler Collection (Fig. 1) also has such a rough finish, as in the case of the fragmented female torso in the Accademia di S. Luca (Fig. 2). This is yet another indication that our statue should be interpreted as a funerary figure. However, all those representations of pudicitia figures whose heads are still preserved show portrait features and fashionable hairstyles of the late Republican and early Imperial periods.13 The Chrysler statue, on the other hand, shows an ideal head carved out of the same travertine, mounted with an irregular break on the statue’s body and crowned with a diadem decorated with a tendril pattern. This suggests that the entire statue should be interpreted as a representation of a goddess,14 which, of course, would be without parallel in travertine. A close examination of the traces of the attachment between the Chrysler head and the statue body, as well as the area on the right side of the neck where the hand appears from beneath the cloak below the head, clearly shows that the head cannot have originally belonged to the body (Fig. 4 a–b).

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Fig. 4: Details of head and right hand of Fig. 1. Photos: author.

 Vorster 2013, 98–119 reconstructs one or more neighboring sepulchral find contexts for the two Dresden pudicitia statues and the togati acquired together with them.  For this phenomenon, see Kockel 1993, 6 n. 46 with further bibliography.  In addition to the examples given by Linfert 1976 and 1998, as well as those by Kockel, see the following literature, which also deals with the pudicitia type with reference to sepulchral sculptures: Kleiner 1977, 162–164; erroneously mirrored in Leunissen 1985, 60–66.  In the Chrysler Museum (and probably also according to W. Chrysler) this statue is considered to represent Melpomene, an idea that perhaps goes back to the old identification of the pudicitia figure in the Vatican Museums (see n. 15 and fig. 5) as the muse of poetry based on the high shoes that she wears.

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On the one hand, in the space between the neck and the fabric of the himation at the upper edge of the statue body (hardly visible from the front), there are breaks that show no continuation with the adjacent part of head; rather, the surfaces of the breaks are smoothly chiseled. On the other hand, the bent fingers cannot grasp the fabric, which then falls vertically, while at the same time the tip of the index finger touches the right side of the chin, as damage there clearly indicates. In addition, on closer inspection of the surface of the head one notices that it shows a very even, rough ‘weathering’ that also occurs in protected areas (where the elements could not reach the stone) but is absent on the body of the statue. The somewhat poorer quality of the travertine used for the head, in which there also appear small defects, was artificially roughened to characterize it as if it were weathered. For the attachment of the head to the statue, the restorer prepared it in such a way that the irregular break and the course of the folds (more suitably on the left than on the right side) could fit with the ancient break with a thin layer of plaster. It was not noticed for a long time that the measures taken to imitate weathering do not match the sharp-edged forms of the eyelids and the tendril patterns on the diadem. And the intact nose that would have been damaged had the head broken off (as would also have been the case with the diadem) is at variance with the idea that this head originally belonged to the body. In searching for the model of the head, which the restorer of the statue sculpted and mounted on the body very skillfully, one discovers the answer in the high diadem with the tendril pattern that develops symmetrically from the center outwards on the statue in the Braccio Nuovo of the Vatican Museums (Fig. 5),15 the one that in Linfert’s nomenclature was the eponymous figure of his “Braccio Nuovo” type. This statue shows exactly the same facial and hairstyle forms as the Chrysler statue, including its pearl-lined high diadem16 with a tendril pattern in relief (Fig. 6).17 It is clear in all details and proportions that this marble statue served as the model for the restored head of the travertine statue in the Chrysler Collection. This is then a further compelling argument for the post-antique origin of the head on the Chrysler figure,18 because the head of the Vatican pudicitia is a post-antique restoration and

 Amelung 1903, 33, no. 23, pl. 4; Helbig I4 321–322, no. 415 (W. Fuchs).  However, on the diadem of the statue in the Braccio Nuovo the pearls appear like the upturned ends of pelta-shaped shields. Therefore, the diadem of the statue in the Chrysler Collection with its pearl-lined pattern is a simplification of the form on the rim of the Vatican statue’s diadem.  The tendril motifs on the statue in the Braccio Nuovo spiral outward on either side of the diadem from a central threefold calyx flower. This motif is also slightly simplified in the Chrysler statue. Ancient private portraits of females prove that the same kind of diadems also occur in grave contexts, see Fittschen 2021, 140–141 no. 82a, pls. 86.7; 87.1–3 for a portrait of a woman in the J. Paul Getty Museum (inv. 70.AA.100): https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/6540 [accessed 23 May 2022].  The artificially produced ‘weathered’ surfaces of the travertine material and the attempt to suggest an ancient break between head and statue body to make it appear that the two parts originally belonged to the same figure probably indicate an intentional attempt to deceive the viewer.

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Fig. 6: Detail of head of Fig. 5. Photo: DAI Rome / Chr. Rossa, D-DAI-ROM-76.2122.

Fig. 5: Rome, Musei Vaticani, Braccio Nuovo 23, inv. 2284: pudicitia statue. Photo: Chr. Rossa, D-DAI-ROM-76 2120.

does not belong to an ancient statue type of that impressive sculpture.19 Conversely, this also means that the pudicitia of the Chrysler Collection in its original, ancient form was represented with a portrait of the late Republic20 and confirms what has already been deduced from the parallels above; namely, that it is an impressive sepulchral statue from one of the grave-lined streets of late Republican Rome. The question that still remains to be clarified is how the head type used for the Chrysler statue was accessible to its restorer as a sculptural model to be copied. It should be noted first of all that the pudicitia in the Braccio Nuovo has been known for

 The right hand, which is erroneously shown uncovered in both statues and should have touched the side of the chin with a finger in the Chrysler figure, is likewise restored in the prototype.  Cf., for example, the head of the pudicitia in the Museo Gregoriano Profano ex-Lateranense of the Vatican: Giuliano 1957, 8, no. 9, pls. 6–7.

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Fig. 7: Rom, Villa Borghese: modern copy of the pudicitia statue, Fig. 5. Photo: DAI Rome / Chr. Rossa,D-DAI-ROM76.1326.

centuries and was published in drawings as well as later on in photographs.21 This statue, which probably came from the Villa Mattei, was acquired by Clement XIV in 1774 for the Vatican collections, and it has been repeatedly discussed, several times by Winckelmann alone.22 There also exists a cast of the statue,23 so it cannot be ruled out

 One of the oldest seems to be an 1859 photograph by James Anderson: See the albumen silver print: https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/217954 [accessed 23 May 2022].  Amelung 1903, 36–37; Borbein/Gaethgens 2006, 269–270 with further bibliography. For the effect of the statue in recent art history and the history of its impact, see also Hartmann 1979, 79–81 with pls. 30–31; Haskell/Penny 1981, 300–301 no. 74, fig. 157.  Bertel Thorwaldsen created a statue of Maria Fjódorovna Barjátinskaja in 1818 on the model of pudicitia. Whether he had a cast of the statue in the Braccio Nuovo for his work is unclear: Hartmann

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that the restorer even had a three-dimensional model at his disposal. Such a model can be deduced for a modern marble copy of the entire Braccio Nuovo figure, today in the Villa Borghese in Rome (Fig. 7).24

Bibliography For the sigla, see https://www.dainst.org/publikationen/publizieren-beim-dai/richtlinien [accessed 4 February 2024] Alexandridis, Annetta (2004). Die Frauen des römischen Kaiserhauses: Eine Untersuchung ihrer bildlichen Darstellung von Livia bis Iulia Domna. Mainz. Amelung, Walther (1903). Die Sculpturen des vatikanischen Museums I. Berlin. Bartman, Elizabeth (1999). Portraits of Livia. Cambridge. Bieber, Margarete (1977). Ancient Copies. New York. Borbein, Adolf H. / Gaethgens, Thomas W., eds. (2006). J. J. Winckelmann, Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums: Katalog der Denkmäler. Schriften und Nachlaß 4, 2. Mainz. de Angelis d’Ossat, Matilde, ed. (2002). Scultura antica in Palazzo Altemps. Museo Nazionale Romano. Milan. Eule, J. Cordelia (2001). Hellenistische Bürgerinnen aus Kleinasien: Weibliche Gewandstatuen in ihrem antiken Kontext. Istanbul. Fittschen, Klaus (2021). Privatporträts mit Repliken: Zur Sozialgeschichte römischer Bildnisse der mittleren Kaiserzeit. Wiesbaden. Giuliano, Antonio (1957). Catalogo dei ritratti romani del Museo Profano Lateranense. Rome. Goette, Hans Rupprecht (2011). “Arsinoe Philopator und Menander. Zwei griechische Portraits in Norfolk (Virginia),” in: O. Palagia and H.R. Goette (eds.), Sailing to Classical Greece. Papers on Greek Art, Archaeology and Epigraphy Presented to Petros Themelis. Oxford, 56–61. Goette, Hans Rupprecht (2016). “The Head of a Young Athlete,” in: D. Katsonopoulou and E.C. Partida (eds.), ΦΙΛΕΛΛΗΝ Essays Presented to Stephen G. Miller = ΦΙΛΕΛΛΗΝ. Mελέτες προς τιμήν του Στεφάνου Μίλλερ. Athens, 189–196. Hartmann, Jörgen Birkedal (1979). Antike Motive bei Thorvaldsen: Studien zur Antikenrezeption des Klassizismus. Tübingen. Haskell, Francis / Penny Nicholas, (1981). Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500‒1900. New Haven. Horn, Rudolf (1931). Stehende weibliche Gewandstatuen in der hellenistischen Plastik. Munich. Kleiner, Diana E. E. (1977). Roman Group Portraiture. Rome.

1979, 79–80, pl. 30, thinks that this was the model because of a drawing by Thorwaldsen of the funerary relief in the Villa Borghese, on which a pudicitia statue appears with two togati, while Zahle I, 2020, 195 with n. 964, fig. 155 considers it possible that in the sculptor’s large cast collection there was also a cast of the Vatican pudicitia, especially since a section of a bust of another figure (Zahle II, 2020, 160, no. L 196, perhaps from the Galleria Giustiniani) still exists today. The Skulpturenhalle in Basel has a cast of the Braccio Nuovo statue, which was made in 1990 by the Italian restorer Vito Castellarin in San Giovanni di Casarsa (information kindly provided by T. Lochmann).  See https://arachne.dainst.org/entity/1106006 [accessed 23 May 2022]. This statue is damaged in the area of the right upper arm and the hand, and the chin has been repaired. The surfaces are only roughly smoothed and still show the traces of a fine flat chisel. According to ancient criteria, this would be described as unfinished. That is also true of the simplified, flat and angular elaboration of the folds and hair, as well as the diadem.

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Kleiner, Diana E. E. / Kleiner, Fred S. (1980/1981). “Early Roman Togate Statuary,” BullCom 87, 125–133. Kockel, Valentin (1993). Porträtreliefs stadtrömischer Grabbauten: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte und zum Verständnis des spätrepublikanisch-frühkaiserzeitlichen Privatporträts. Mainz. Leunissen, Paul M. M. (1985). “Die drei römischen Statuen in der städtischen KLM-Dienststelle in Rom,” MededRom 46, 60–66. Linfert, Andreas (1976). Kunstzentren hellenistischer Zeit: Studien an weiblichen Gewandfiguren. Wiesbaden. Linfert, Andreas (1988) in: P.C. Bol (ed.), Forschungen zur Villa Albani: Katalog der antiken Bildwerke V. Berlin. Rizzo, Giulio Emanuele (1905). “Sculture antiche del Palazzo Giustiniani II,” BullCom 33, 7–10. Schmidt, Erika E. (1967). Römische Frauenstatuen. Place of publication not identified. Vorster, Christiane (2013) in: K. Knoll and C. Vorster (eds.), Katalog der antiken Bildwerke III: Die Porträts, Munich. Zahle, Jan (2020). Thorwaldsen. Collector of Plaster Casts from Antiquity and the Early Modern Period I‒III. Aarhus.

Roger Von Dippe

A Putative Second Century CE Roman Sarcophagus in Los Angeles: The Dynamics of Establishing a Fake According to Brunilde Ridgway, replication in the visual arts dates back at least to the Archaic period of Greek art.1 After their conquest of the Greek world, the Romans became known for their production of copies, including variants and pastiches of admired Greek sculpture. In view of the enormous sums paid for Greek masterpieces attested in ancient sources, some of these copies would surely have been fraudulently marketed as Greek originals.2 The revival of interest in Greco-Roman antiquity during the Renaissance resulted in the wide dissemination of modern copies based on newly excavated sculpture.3 Replicas, some of which were undoubtedly fakes intended to be accepted as originals, continued to be produced throughout the early modern and modern periods. The enormous proliferation of fakes, which peaked in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, ensures that a large number of museums and private collections have at some time purchased a purported work of ancient art, only to have it assessed as fraudulent at a later date. In the past, such mistaken purchases were usually quietly removed from display and sequestered in the storerooms, with minimum attendant publicity. More recently, however, the production and identification of fakes, together with the artistry involved in the restoration of ancient sculpture, have become matters of serious concern to archaeologists and art historians, as evidenced by the symposium on these subjects organized in 2001 by the J. Paul Getty Museum.4 Questioning the authenticity of the Getty’s Archaic Kouros statue initiated a lively debate, and the museum, far from removing the statue from display, arranged a special exhibition and a public discussion of the issues involved.5 By analyzing and publishing such works of art we not only improve our ability to determine what is a genuine work of ancient art and what is a modern pastiche or fake but also come to appreciate the artistry involved in their creation.  Ridgway 1989, 127–140. The recent literature on Roman copying is extensive. See Gazda 2002, Perry 2005 and Marvin 2008 for bibliography on this subject.  See Hallett 2005, 431–432 for the staggering prices paid for both Greek masterpieces and copies of these works and Ridgway 1984, 22 for the possibility of fakes produced in the Roman era.  Frances Haskell and Nicholas Penny Haskell (1981) have recorded the extensive copying of antique sculpture in the period 1500–1900.  The Getty symposium, titled “History of the Restoration of Ancient Stone Sculpture,” was held at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Villa in October, 2001.  Credit must be given to the Getty Museum for initiating this debate. The proceedings of the symposium have been published as The Getty Kouros Colloquium: Athens, 25–27 May, 1992: J. Paul Getty Museum and Nicholas Goulandris Foundation, Athens 1993. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111182919-028

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A child’s sarcophagus, purported to date from the second century CE, has been displayed in the Edward J. Doheny Jr. Memorial Library at the University of Southern California since shortly after the library opened in 1932 (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1: Doheny Sarcophagus, front panel. Edward L. Doheny Jr. Memorial Library, University of Southern California. Photo: J. Pollini.

The sarcophagus, long considered to be a work of ancient art but lacking any provenance prior to its acquisition by the library, provides an excellent subject for the investigation of a possible fake. This study delineates the procedures that should be followed in assessments of authenticity and demonstrates how the accrued evidence led to conclusions regarding the origin of the sarcophagus. The sarcophagus is displayed on a footed modern stand. The stand is incised with the name “Chapin,” and the back of the sarcophagus has a similar inscription, “Henry H. Chapin.” An assessment of the sarcophagus was produced in 1938 by Professor Ivan Lopatin, of USC’s Department of Slavic Studies, who considered it to be an Eastern Roman sarcophagus of the first or second centuries CE and the stand to be of Assyrian origin. This account, filed in the Doheny Library archives, states that the sarcophagus was donated to the library in October 1937 by Henry H. Chapin of Los Angeles. In 1966 the sarcophagus was reassessed by Mary K. Reaves, the wife of Gibson Reaves, Professor of Astronomy at USC. Ms. Reaves, who had an academic background in art history, identified the sarcophagus as a Roman child’s sarcophagus and dated it to 117–138 CE. Unfortunately, no further details of the donation or the provenance of the sarcophagus are available in the library archives. The sarcophagus was examined again in

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1999 (albeit briefly) by a visiting European expert in Roman and post-classical art, who had no doubts about the sarcophagus’s authenticity as an ancient work.

The Condition and Description of the Doheny Sarcophagus The sarcophagus is cut from a single block of fine-grained white marble. Its polished surfaces have a yellow/ocher coloration, while the uncut surfaces are an opaque white to slightly grayish marble. The top right corner of the front has a red stain. A recent conservation report identifies the stain as fruit juice of recent origin.6 Evidence of vegetal remains from a climbing plant was identified on the back of both the sarcophagus and the stand. The vegetal remains consist of raised, red oxide protuberances and suggest that both the sarcophagus and its accompanying stand were displayed in an outdoor setting at some period in its earlier history. The dimensions of the sarcophagus, which are consistent with those of a child, are as follows: total height: 0.32 m, length: 1.29 m, width: 0.38 m, depth of interior: 0.29 m.7 The sarcophagus is in good condition, showing no signs of restoration. The sculptural decoration is completely intact, with only slight signs of abrasion and no evidence of root marks. There are numerous chips in the rim and bottom edge of the sarcophagus. These chips include a 5 x 10 cm triangular break in the bottom right corner and a large chip in the upper right front. The sides and front panel have been polished; the back panel is smoothed but not polished; and the underside and rim have been left rough. The surface of the interior has also been left somewhat rough and the bottom of the interior has a raised shelf at the left end, elevated approximately 6 cm and extending the entire width of the interior. The rim has two indentations on the rear and one at the center front, presumably for lid pins (Fig. 2). The sarcophagus is of the so-called “Western” type, designed to be placed against the wall of a tomb, with sculptural decorations on the front and side panels.8 Represented on the front is a battle between Greeks and Amazons. The figures are arranged essentially at three levels. At the extreme left side of the sarcophagus is a helmeted Greek warrior. Behind him and facing right is another helmeted soldier with a short trumpet raised to his lips. Below the trumpeter on the left side of the sarcophagus is an armored and helmeted male restraining his rearing horse. To the right of these figures is another group of combatants. Here, a female on foot, wearing a chiton and

 The conservation report and cleaning of the sarcophagus were performed by Williams Art Conservation Inc. Los Angeles, California, in June 1999.  Huskinson 1996, 2.  See Toynbee 1971, 27; Koch 1982, 162–165.

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Fig. 2: Doheny Sarcophagus, interior. Photo: J. Pollini.

armed with a dagger and an oval shield, battles a mounted, helmeted male armed with a dagger. He bears a round shield embossed with a gorgoneion (a Medusa head) and wears a chiton, cloak and boots. Behind this pair a mounted, helmeted Amazon pursues a mounted, backward-glancing fleeing Greek. At the feet of the woman with the oval shield is a fallen male warrior, hunched forward on his knees with his face towards the ground and his helmet lying on the ground. He wears a chitoniskos and has a round shield. To the right of this group, occupying the center of the composition, are four figures. In the central position a frontally facing, armored and helmeted Greek warrior is shown stepping over a naked, dead Greek who lies supine on the ground with his head flung backwards. To the left of these two central figures a Greek has fallen from his horse. He wears a chitoniskos and helmet and is seen in rear view, seated on the ground, and reaching up toward his rearing horse. Behind him a mounted Amazon in a chitoniskos is turned sideways, brandishing a dagger in her upraised right hand. To the right of center, a mounted male figure wearing a helmet and an exomis charges to the right. Beneath his rearing horse a helmeted, decapitated head lies on the ground. This mounted warrior attacks a bearded and helmeted figure on foot. This male foot soldier, presented in rear view, is armed with a dagger and a round shield, which he raises against the mounted attacker. Behind this pair in the background two mounted men face off against each other with drawn daggers. The one to the right has a backward-flowing cloak. At the feet of the warrior on foot lies a dead naked male, slumped over a boulder face down with a shield in front of his face. At the right edge of the sarcophagus is a final group, comprised of two figures, a naked, helmeted male with a dagger in his right hand and a large round shield on his left arm, preparing to cut the

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throat of an Amazon wearing an exomis, whose head he pulls back by her hair.9 The woman is down on her left knee with her outflung right leg trailing sideways. Directly above the fallen Amazon and closing the scene at the far right is a bearded and helmeted figure with his right arm outstretched. On the two side panels of the sarcophagus are tropaea, military trophies decorated with arms and armor (Figs. 3, 4).10

Fig. 3: Doheny sarcophagus, left end panel. Photo: J. Pollini.

Fig. 4: Doheny Sarcophagus, right end panel. Photo: J. Pollini.

 The motif of a warrior gripping a kneeling opponent by the hair or helmet crest is extremely ancient and can be found in Minoan and late Geometric art. Its association with the Amazons is first attested on a votive shield from Tiryns, dated to the early seventh century BCE. On the shield a Greek warrior grasps a kneeling Amazon by the helmet crest: Blok 1995, 366–369.  See Picard 1957, 130 for the origin of the Roman tropaeum, the triumphal display of the arms and armor of a defeated enemy.

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On the left panel appears an upright, knobbed pole with two pairs of spears crossed behind it. In front of the pole are arranged a cuirass and an unadorned oval shield. The same type of decoration appears on the right panel. However, the cuirass is smaller, as are the crossed spears. Below the cuirass on either side are two shields, an oval shield and a round shield emblazoned with a gorgoneion.

The Iconography of Amazonomachy Sarcophagi It is clear from the iconography that the scene on the front panel of the Doheny Sarcophagus is intended to represent an Amazonomachy. At first sight the sarcophagus appears to belong to a group of Amazon sarcophagi that dates to the early to late Antonine period, in the latter half of the second century CE. The Amazonomachies on Roman sarcophagi have been divided into three distinct categories, depending on whether they are centered on stories of Hercules and Hippolyta, Achilles and Penthesileia, or Dionysus and Amazons.11 In addition, there is a less clear-cut fourth category of sarcophagi for which the exact subject of the Amazonomachy cannot be identified because of insufficiently defined iconography. The second-century sarcophagi that demonstrate an affinity with the Doheny sarcophagus are to be found in this fourth category. On these sarcophagi the Amazonomachies are generic; they cannot be assigned to any particular encounter between Greeks and Amazons that is attested in ancient literature. The battle scenes in this indeterminate category were, for the most part, constructed from a limited repertoire of figural groups and single figures, the archetypes probably being retained for future reference by the Roman workshops as either sketches in pattern books or as clay models.12 The replication of a limited number of figural groups was recognized by Robert Redlich in his study of the Roman Amazon sarcophagi of the second and third centuries.13 This sort of repetition was reaffirmed in Dagmar Grassinger’s contribution to Volume XII of Die antiken Sarkophagreliefs, a revision of Carl Robert’s initial publication in Volume II.14 No single group is replicated on all sarcophagi of the series, groups popular on earlier examples of the genre being gradually replaced by new inventions. Some sarcophagi contain examples of unique figures that were not repeated on other sarcophagi belonging to the group. In addition, no specific group can be considered central to the narrative, since the sequence of repetitive groups is frequently rearranged. The Doheny

 Devambez 1981, 587–605.  Ludwig Curtius (1929) first proposed the use of pattern books in private art, in order to explain the repetition of themes in Pompeian wall paintings. More recently, the concept of sketches or cartoons collected in pattern books has been extended to account for the repetition and rearrangement of themes on both mythological sarcophagi—Andreae 1972, 388–432; Brilliant 1984, 125—and wall paintings: Ling 1991, 216–219.  Redlich 1942.  Grassinger 1999, 138–157.

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Sarcophagus displays an identical arrangement of five figural groups that appear on one of the latest examples of the genre, a sarcophagus now in the Belvedere of the Vatican Museums, dated to c. 180 CE (Fig. 5).15

Fig. 5: Belvedere Sarcophagus. Rome, Vatican Museum, inv. no 896. Photo: Courtesy of DAIR Neg.1992.0266.

These five groups, in order of their appearance from left to right on the Belvedere Sarcophagus, are shown in the line drawings (Fig. 6). The figural groups on the Belvedere and Doheny sarcophagi first made their appearance about 140–150 CE, towards the end of the classicizing period of sarcophagus carving. On a sarcophagus from this period in the Capitoline Museum (Fig. 7), the warrior controlling his horse (Group 1) forms the center of the composition.16 All four figures from Group 3, the central group on the Belvedere and Doheny sarcophagi, are positioned on the right-hand side of the front panel. The figures in the left-hand portion of the composition do not appear on the Belvedere Sarcophagus. A later sarcophagus can be reconstructed from fragments found in the Museo Chiaramonti of the Vatican, the Palazzo Salvati and the British Museum.17 All five groups on the Doheny Sarcophagus are present, but they are bracketed by additional groups on the extreme right and left sides of the sarcophagus. These additional groups can be found on the right-side panel of the Belvedere Sarcophagus. On the front panel of the Chiaramonti/Salvati Sarcophagus the “Hair-puller” and his victim (Group 5) occupy the center of the composition. To the left of center are Groups 2 and 3, in the same order as on the Belvedere and Doheny Sarcophagi. To the right of Group 5 are the figures of Group 4.

 ASR II 80; ASR.XII.1.101; inv. 896; Amelung II 1908, 169–176; Redlich 1942, 42–44; Helbig4 I 1966, 217; Koch 1982, 13; Grassinger 1999, 240–241.  ASR II.77; ASR.XII.1.94; inv. 726; Helbig4 II 1228; Redlich 1942, 33; Sichtermann 1975, 22–25; Koch 1982, 138; Grassinger 1999, 237.  ASR II.79a; ASR II.79b; ASR.XII.1.100; Grassinger 1999, 239–240.

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Fig. 6: Figural groups on the Belvedere Sarcophagus. Adapted from ASR II, pl. xxxv, fig. 80.

A large sarcophagus fragment in the Museo Correale in Sorrento (Fig. 8) contains a portion of the Doheny Sarcophagus’s composition in the same order of arrangement, with Group 3 and 4 on the left and Group 5 on the right.18 On the Sorrento fragment the kneeling Amazon on the right has been destroyed except for her right leg. In addition to the Sorrento fragment and the sarcophagi discussed above, a number of smaller fragments also contain groups found on the Do-

 ASR.II.84; Grassinger 1999, 166–167. The Sorrento fragment contains an additional group, interpolated between Group 4 and Group 5, consisting of a mounted Greek whose horse rears above a prostrate Amazon.

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Fig. 7: Capitoline Sarcophagus. Rome, Capitoline Museum, inv. 1735. Photo: After Sichtermann 1975, pl. 21.

Fig. 8: Sorrento Fragment, Museum Correale, Sorrento. After Grassinger 1999, pl. 98.1.

heny Sarcophagus.19 Three lost Amazon sarcophagi have survived only as drawings in the seventeenth century Dal Pozzo collection of drawings from the antique.20 These

 A fragment in the Villa Albani (ASR II. 82) has, on the left, a portion of Group 4, the Greek on foot supporting the arm of his fallen comrade, followed by Group I and part of Group 2, the Amazon fighting the Greek with the shield blazon. A fragment in Ince Blundell Hall (ASR II.83) has part of Group 2, the Amazon on horseback to the rear, the upper portion of the mounted Greek and the Amazon on foot. In both these versions the Amazon on foot wears a Phrygian cap.  Vermeule 1960, 1966. One of the drawings (ASR II 79m) shows a sarcophagus very similar in iconography and composition to the Chiaramonti/Salvati Sarcophagus, except that the additional groups to the far left and right sides of the Chiaramonti/Salvati Sarcophagus have been eliminated. A second

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drawings indicate that the sarcophagi also featured figural groups found on the Doheny Sarcophagus. Only two of the five groups on the Belvedere and Doheny sarcophagi appear to have survived on third-century sarcophagi. The first of these surviving groups is that of the “Hair-puller” and his victim. On two early-third century sarcophagi this group forms the center of the composition. One of the sarcophagi, formerly in Venice, has been lost and is recorded only in drawings.21 The other is in the Cathedral in Mazara del Vallo (Fig. 9).22

Fig. 9: Mazara Sarcophagus, Cathedral, Mazara del Vallo. After Grassinger 1999, pl. 110.2.

Also retained on these sarcophagi is the Greek restraining his horse (Group 1), which is placed on the far left of the sarcophagi. Later in the third century the central “Hairpuller” appears to have metamorphosed into the figure of Achilles supporting the dead body of Penthesileia, usually with portrait features on both figures. On the Mazara and Venice sarcophagi the nude torso of the “Hair-puller” is twisted to his right, with his weight supported on his bent right leg and his left leg extended sideways to the left. On an early example of an Achilles and Penthesileia sarcophagus in the Palazzo Borghese (Fig. 10) the pose is inverted, the torso twisted to the left, with weight on the left leg and the right leg extended to the right.23 This later version of the pose and the motif of Achilles bearing the dead body of Penthesileia continued as a major feature of Amazon sarcophagi until the genre died out about 270 CE. The same pose and motif can be seen on a sarcophagus in the Vati-

drawing (ASR II 80u) shows a sarcophagus that follows exactly the sequence of the Belvedere Sarcophagus’s composition, while a third drawing has the same sequence except that Group 3, the central group on the Belvedere Sarcophagus, has been completely eliminated.  ASR XII.1.117; Redlich 1942, 62; Koch 1982, 139; Grassinger 1999, 246–247.  ASR II. 86; ASR.XII.1.116; Redlich 1942, 60; Koch 1982, 139; Grassinger 1999, 246.  ASR II. 88; ASR XII.1.119; Redlich 1942, 81–82; Devambez 1981, 600; Koch 1982, 139; Berger 1994, 300.

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Fig. 10: Palazzo Borghese Sarcophagus. After Grassinger 1999, pl. 111.3.

can Museum (Fig. 11), dated to 220–230 CE,24 and appear in a modified form on one of the last sarcophagi of the Amazon type (Fig. 12), dating to about 260 CE, which is in the British Museum.25

Fig. 11: Vatican Sarcophagus. Rome, Vatican Museum, inv. 933. After Sichtermann 1975, pl. 26.

Careful study of the iconography on the Belvedere example and its related sarcophagi indicates that no figure can be firmly identified with a specific protagonist named in literary accounts of Amazon battles. Carl Robert assigned these sarcophagi to the Trojan  ASR II. 92; ASR XII.1.127; inv. 933; Helbig4 I, 244; Amelung II 1908, 120–121; Redlich 1942, 107–108; Sichtermann 1975, 23–24; Devambez 1981, 600; Koch 1982, 139.  ASR II. 104; ASR XII.1.127; inv. 1947.7–14.7; Rodenvaldt 1940, 53; Redlich 1942, 107; Wiegartz 1965, 54; Brenk 1968, 256; Laubscher 1975, 134; Koch 1982, 140.

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Fig. 12: British Museum Sarcophagus. London, British Museum, inv. 1947–14.7: After Koch 1982, pl. 146.

War cycle, and it is probable that the sculptors intended sarcophagi of this indeterminate type to refer to the story of Achilles and Penthesileia, as given in the Aethiops.26 Any attempt to find a close correspondence between established Greek myths and Roman representations of Amazonomachies in a private art form is likely to frustrate. Sculptors working in the Roman period tended to adapt earlier Greek representations and motifs and combine incongruous and anachronistic themes according to their own ideas of suitability and interest.27 For example, Greeks and Amazons mounted on horseback are not in keeping with epic tradition. In the Iliad, warriors were conveyed to the battle in chariots, whereupon they dismounted and fought on foot. An example of such a duel is the fight between Menelaos and Alexandros (Il. 3.19–29). Menelaos arrived at the field of battle in a chariot but sprang to the ground in order to meet Alexandros. In the earliest Greek representations of Amazonomachies in the Trojan War the battle took place on foot. By the mid-sixth century BCE, however, Greeks were, on occasion, shown as mounted.28 By the end of the sixth century, horses tended to be associated more with the Amazons than with the Greeks, as a result of the equation of the Amazons with barbarian Scythian and Thracian horsemen.29 The majority of Classical Greek and Hellenistic Amazonomachies reverted to the battle on foot, but second-century Roman sarcophagi revived the tradition of the equestrian battle.30 Josine Blok has suggested that the provision of horses for Greeks in sixth-century BCE Amazonomachies

 Blok 1996, 323.  Nock 1946, 166.  Blok 1996, 387.  Vos 1963, 26–43.  For examples of Classical Amazonomachies, see Harrison 1982 and Stewart 1995. For the Hellenistic Amazonomachies on the Mausoleum at Halicarrnassus and on temples at Alabanda and Magnesia, see Cook 2005 and Webb 1996, 88, 106.

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may reflect the status associated with horse ownership in Archaic Athens.31 A similar association between horse ownership and aristocracy may have motivated the revival of mounted battles on Roman sarcophagi. A further break with Greek tradition is the provision on the Doheny, the Belvedere, and the Capitoline sarcophagi of an animal pelt (obviously a panther skin on the Capitoline Sarcophagus) to serve as a saddle covering for the rearing horse in Group 1. In both the Doheny and Belvedere versions, the Greek carrying a shield with a gorgoneion device has a similar saddle covering. It would be more consistent with Greek tradition to provide the Amazons with panther skins. Amazons in sixth-century Greek art wore panther skins, either as a reference to Dionysiac lack of self-restraint or as evidence of their barbaric nature.32 The mounted Greek and Amazon in Group 2 also seem generic and indicate that Greco-Roman sculptors were adapting earlier Greek iconographies rooted in Archaic Greek Amazonomachies. The iconography of Achilles represented with a shield embossed with a gorgoneion had been established in Greek art since the seventh century BCE. A fragment of an Attic terracotta relief from about 600 BCE, inscribed with the name of Achilles, shows the hero with such a shield.33 Provision of a similar shield for the mounted Greek of Group 2 on the Doheny, Belvedere, and other related sarcophagi suggests that this figure represents Achilles battling Penthesileia. However, on certain second-century CE sarcophagi, such as the Sorrento fragment, the motif of the gorgoneion has been generalized and placed on the shields of two or more Greeks, so that it cannot be regarded as an attribute of Achilles. In addition, the Greek with the gorgoneion shield is shown as bearded. All but the earliest depictions of Achilles in Greek art show him as young and beardless. Roman representations of Achilles in which he can be firmly identified also show him as a beardless youth. The only confirmed iconography of Achilles and Penthesileia on Roman sarcophagi features a beardless Achilles supporting the dead body of Penthesileia, except in some cases where portrait features of private individuals have been substituted for those of the hero. Close dating of the various Amazonomachies in the group of second century sarcophagi is difficult. Sarcophagi can be assigned to the second half of the second century CE on the basis of the number of planes on which figures are arranged and the complexity of the composition.34 The single plane of the Capitoline Museum Sarcophagus argues

 Blok 1996, 393.  Blok 1996, 270–274.  See Blok 1996, pl. 1.  Fuchs 1959, 180; Koch 1982, 5. Neo-attic classicizing relief sculpture of the Hadrianic period was characterized by classically-modeled, paratactic figures on a single plane. The Antonine period showed increased crowding and inclusion of figures on several planes. Crowding and the number of planes became progressively greater in the early third century CE.

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for an early Antonine date for this sarcophagus, approximately 140–150 CE.35 On the Belvedere Sarcophagus in the Vatican, the increased complexity of the composition and the elongated and graceful figures indicate that the sarcophagus was carved in the last quarter of the second century.36 The Chiaramonti/Salvati Sarcophagus is probably from the same period.37 The stocky bodies and large heads on the Doheny Sarcophagus are more similar to those on the Sorrento fragment than to the figures on the Belvedere Sarcophagus, but this may be a consequence of scaling down a larger composition to fit the sarcophagus of a child.38 The division into three planes would be consistent with a date in the last quarter of the second century CE for the Doheny Sarcophagus.

The Doheny and Belvedere Sarcophagi Compared: The Question of Authenticity In the case of any work of art of unknown or dubious provenance, the question of authenticity must necessarily be considered. The excellent condition of the Doheny Sarcophagus might be used to argue for a modern date. It should be noted that there is no damage to the relief sculpture, nor any root marks or other features that would support the antiquity of the sarcophagus. What damage exists is carefully limited to the peripheral areas of the sarcophagus. A second consideration in determining authenticity is the subject matter of the front and side panels. In her study of Roman children’s sarcophagi, Janet Huskinson found no precedent for the use of an Amazonomachy on the sarcophagus of a child.39 However, as Huskinson points out, many mythological scenes appearing on adult sarcophagi are also found on those of children, with no special adaptation for a child. Other mythic battles on child sarcophagi include examples of a Centauromachy and a Gigantomachy.40 According to Alfred Nock, mythological scenes on sarcophagi were intended to provide a dignified and cultured reference to antiquity, and such references would not be inappropriate for a child.41 Mythological sarcophagi appropriated the virtus of a hero for the deceased, and in the case of a child, substituted the virtus

 Sichtermann 1975, 23.  Koch 1982, 139 gives the date as the late second century CE. Helbig 1966, 217 favors an earlier date of 160–170 CE.  Andreae 1956, 34.  Dagmar Grassinger 1999, 167 has categorized the Sorrento fragment as an inferior provincial product, copied from a Roman model. It is possible that the Doheny sarcophagus had a similar origin, or it could be the product of a lower-class Roman workshop.  Huskinson 1996, 26.  Huskinson 1996, 27.  Nock 1946, 166.

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he would have acquired if death had not intervened.42 Additionally, the decoration of the side panels with trophies is unique within the entire category of Roman Amazonomachies.43 Of extant Roman sarcophagi only the Belvedere Sarcophagus contains all the groupings and figures found on the Doheny Sarcophagus, arranged in the same order. However, the two sarcophagi do not appear to be by the same hand or even from the same workshop. The carving on the Doheny Sarcophagus is decidedly inferior. It is cruder and less precise in its details. In addition, the proportions of the figures on the Doheny Sarcophagus are less accurate than those on the Belvedere Sarcophagus, the heads being disproportionately large in comparison to the stocky bodies. The sculptor of the Doheny Sarcophagus had trouble representing helmets when seen directly from the front or the rear, as evidenced in the helmets of the central figure and the warrior who has been unhorsed. Certain details on the Doheny Sarcophagus differ from those on the Belvedere Sarcophagus. For example, the mounted Greek with the gorgoneion shield in Group 2 on the Belvedere Sarcophagus is armed with a spear, as is the central figure and the Greek with a flowing cloak. The weapons of all the remaining warriors on the Belvedere Sarcophagus are swords, except for a dagger wielded by the Amazon on foot in Group 2. Without exception, the Doheny Sarcophagus’ warriors are armed with short daggers. There are also differences in the sex of certain warriors on the two sarcophagi. The central figure of Group 3 on the Doheny Sarcophagus is male, whereas the comparable figure on the Belvedere Sarcophagus is an Amazon. Similarly, the mounted figure in Group 4, who fights a Greek on foot, is an Amazon on the Belvedere Sarcophagus and a Greek on the Doheny Sarcophagus. On the Belvedere Sarcophagus the Greek on foot in this group supports the arm of a fallen warrior at his feet, as he does on all sarcophagi that contain this group, except for the Doheny Sarcophagus. On the Belvedere Sarcophagus the Amazon on foot in Group 2 carries a modified form of the pelta instead of an oval shield.44 The compositional similarity between the Doheny and Belvedere sarcophagi does not in itself indicate a lack of authenticity, because the copying of popular designs,

 Koortbojian 1995, 7.  The earliest sarcophagus in the group, the Capitoline Sarcophagus, has a similar collection of arms on the lid. However, they are not arranged as a trophy. It should be noted that the collection of arms on the right-side panel of the Doheny Sarcophagus is inconsistent with a trophy. A trophy should consist of the arms of a defeated enemy, but this trophy contains the arms of both victor and vanquished, the oval shield of the Amazon in Group 2 and the gorgoneion shield of her opponent. See, however, Picard 1957, 342, who indicates that Roman artists allowed themselves considerable latitude in sculpted or painted depictions of battle trophies. Examples are known in which not only the arms of both defeated and victorious armies are included, but also anachronistic arms, derived, presumably, from Hellenistic pattern books.  The pelta was a light, wicker, half-moon shaped shield, assigned specifically to the Amazons in Greek art of the sixth century BCE.

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either directly or from pattern books, was a common Roman practice. A Dal Pozzo drawing of a lost sarcophagus shows a similarly close correspondence with the Belvedere Sarcophagus.45 The substitution of a male figure for the Amazon who is the central figure of Group 3 on the Belvedere Sarcophagus occurs on both the Doheny Sarcophagus and the sarcophagus of the Dal Pozzo drawing. However, the Doheny Sarcophagus presents several unique anomalies that, taken together, raise questions about the antiquity of the sarcophagus, since these unique elements are not found in any Amazonomachy on authentic sarcophagi from the second half of the second century CE. In some cases the anomalies are anachronistic in the context of Roman art of the second century and indicate that the sculptor of the sarcophagus was unfamiliar with the iconographic tradition in which an ancient sculptor would have worked. Of primary importance is the weapon wielded by the Amazon on foot in Group 2. On the Belvedere Sarcophagus this figure has been heavily restored, and the restorer has provided her with a short dagger. As pointed out by Carl Robert, the use of a dagger as a weapon is anachronistic in Roman art of the second century CE, yet all the warriors on the Doheny Sarcophagus are shown wielding daggers.46 Except on the Belvedere and Doheny sarcophagi, all second-century versions of the Amazonomachy show the Amazon in Group 2 carrying a sword, which is held with its point up in the normal fashion of sword-wielding warriors. On the restored section of the Belvedere Sarcophagus and on the Doheny Sarcophagus, this Amazon carries a dagger with its point held downwards. Substitution of this weapon on the two sarcophagi indicates that the Doheny sarcophagus was in all likelihood copied from the Belvedere Sarcophagus at some time after its restoration, which is considered to have occurred in the eighteenth century.47 The oval shield carried by the Amazon in Group 2 on the Doheny Sarcophagus is also unattested on authentic Amazon sarcophagi. The majority of these show Amazons carrying peltae, although a few (about 10%) represent Amazons with round shields.48 Another discrepancy between the Doheny Sarcophagus and all other authentic ancient sarcophagi in the late-second century group is the replacement of the mounted Amazon at the right of center in Group 4 with a male, so that this group becomes an illogical battle between two males. It could be argued that these battling males represent a conflict between a Greek and a Trojan but, if so, this encounter on the Doheny Sarcophagus is the only known example of such a battle group on Amazon sarcophagi. In addition, they wear the same helmets rather than different helmet types, which would distinguish opposing warriors of distinct ethnicities. On the Doheny Sarcophagus, the male foot soldier in Group 4 does not support the arm of his fallen comrade, as he does on all other sarcophagi that feature this group. Similarly, all sarcophagi of the group, except the Doheny Sarcophagus, show    

ASR II 80n. Robert, ASR II, 99–101. Amelung II 1908, 175. Devambez 1984, 587–605.

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the man who has fallen from his horse (Group 3) with his leg extended upwards against the side of his horse. In the Doheny version the man is sitting with upraised knees. The extended leg is difficult to see on the Belvedere Sarcophagus, particularly in photographs, which may account for its omission on the Doheny Sarcophagus. A final anachronism displayed on the Doheny sarcophagus is the addition of tassels to the reins of the horse ridden by the Greek in Group 4. Tassels on the reins of a horse are unparalleled in ancient Roman art of any century.49 Although the sarcophagus in the Doheny Library could be a representative of a select group of second century Roman sarcophagi, the aggregate of evidence detailed above strongly suggests that it is modern. Whether the Doheny Sarcophagus was created in modern times as a replica with no intention to deceive buyers or was to be passed off as a genuine work of antiquity, and hence a fake, is open to question. Sandor Radnoti has defined fakes as “works deliberately intended as counterfeits and fraudulently manipulated later.”50 The evidence that the Doheny Sarcophagus, together with its anachronistic stand, served at some time as a garden ornament raises the possibility that it was designed specifically for this purpose without fraudulent intent. It was, however, subjected to fraudulent manipulation at some period. The description of the sarcophagus by Dr. Lopatin, made shortly after its acquisition by the Doheny Library, indicates that the sarcophagus was accepted at that time as a genuine Roman artifact. Therefore, it is most likely that this sarcophagus was sold as an original work of ancient art.

The Date of the Doheny Sarcophagus The first attested forgeries of Roman antiquities appeared during the Renaissance, in response to the desire of collectors to acquire such works.51 Forgeries of art increased in the eighteenth century and peaked in the nineteenth century, which is regarded as the Golden Age of forgery.52 Restoration of classical sculpture, on the other hand, was most popular during the eighteenth century.53 According to Walter Amelung, the Belvedere Sarcophagus, the proposed model for the Doheny Sarcophagus, has been in

 For a survey of Roman equestrian sculptures, see Bergemann 1990. The reins of Roman horses were of either plain or braided leather.  Radnoti 1999, 5.  Radnoti 1999, 15–16; Fleming 1975, 6.  Fleming 1975, 6–7; Radnoti 1999, 15: The prevalence of fakes follows the law of supply and demand. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, recent excavations of Greek and Roman antiquities stimulated an enthusiasm for collecting at many social levels and led to a rash of fakes of ancient artifacts.  Vaughan 1992, 6. In this period restored or reproduced classical art was actually preferred to originals. By the nineteenth century the accepted credo was that antiquities, apart from cleaning, should be left in the condition in which they were discovered.

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the Cortile del Belvedere since the mid-sixteenth century.54 Amelung considered the most likely date for the restoration of this sarcophagus to be 1733, when Pope Clement XI refurbished and reorganized the Belvedere collection. If this date for the restoration is accepted, it provides only a terminus post quem for the creation of the Doheny Sarcophagus in modern times. The use of copies of classical sculpture as garden ornaments dates back to the Romans, who installed copies of Classical and Hellenistic sculpture in their gardens. The practice of using works of art modeled on the antique was revived in Italy during the Renaissance.55 In England and the United States the employment of classically inspired art in gardens became popular only in the nineteenth century, and the peak period for such garden ornaments was the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.56 The majority of garden sculpture was imported from Italy, but some pieces were also manufactured locally. The sculptural style of the Doheny Sarcophagus, with its stocky bodies, large heads and lack of fine detail, is consistent with late nineteenth-century practices and therefore provides a likely date for the creation of this sarcophagus.57 The Belvedere Sarcophagus is an excellent model for fraudulent copying. It is located in a famous and easily accessible museum, published with photos, features an interesting and relatively well-known myth, and is of high quality. An example of such a copy can be found in Krakow, Poland.58 This sarcophagus follows the Belvedere Sarcophagus in the distribution and grouping of the figures, but with some major differences. For example, the man who has fallen from his horse in Group 3 has been completely eliminated. The naked “Hair-puller” in Group 5 on the Belvedere Sarcophagus has been provided with Roman armor, as has the Amazon on foot in Group 2, the supposed Penthesileia. This sarcophagus does not follow the example of the restored Belvedere Sarcophagus by providing the Amazon with a dagger, held pointdown. She carries a sword, point upwards, as do all other sword-wielding figures on both the Krakow and Belvedere sarcophagi. It must be assumed, therefore, that the sculptor of the Krakow Sarcophagus either worked before the restoration of the Belvedere Sarcophagus or else decided to make his version in conformity with other sarcophagi of the second-century group.

 See n. 47.  Plumptre 1989, 103.  Israel 1999, 37–61.  Goette 2015, 75–99. A further possible origin for the Doheny sarcophagus has been suggested by Professor Hans Goette. He has been studying a class of fraudulent sarcophagi, produced in the 19th century, in which ancient sarcophagi with little or no decoration have been recarved to display battle scenes from Greek mythology. He has published examples of these sarcophagi located in a Budapest museum and elsewhere. Several of the sarcophagi Dr. Goette describes are in California museums, and an example in the Huntington Library is a close copy of the Belvedere Sarcophagus. He is of the opinion that the Doheny sarcophagus belongs to this group; however, it cannot be a direct copy due to the high number of errors.  Mikocki 1998, 114.

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The Importance of Identifying Fakes The Getty symposia and the number of books published on fakes in recent years indicate an interest in fraudulent works which goes beyond the immediate motives for establishing the authenticity of works of art. These motives relate to both financial and scholarly concerns, uncovering the fraud involved in the sale of spurious art, and exposing the false idea of antiquity promulgated by the acceptance of a fake as genuine.59 It is obvious that the study of fakes is illuminating for the age in which they were produced rather than for the eras they purport to represent. Prevalence of fakes in a particular time period is informative for attitudes towards copying and authenticity. In the Middle Ages, for example, the subject matter of a painting or sculpture was considered of far greater importance than its provenance, and few fakes have been attributed to this period.60 Increased interest in fakes is also predicated on assessing the techniques and skills employed by modern artists in producing plausible forgeries of ancient art. Choice of artwork to be copied in a particular time period indicates what was considered of value at the time, and changes introduced by the copyist can be considered a reflection of local culture, designed to make the work more satisfying or more readily comprehensible to the audience for which it was intended. Thus, fakes contribute to the study of the historicizing process in art, whereby copies, variants, and pastiches of original art gradually change content and style to develop works in accordance with the interests and tastes of the period in which they are produced.

Abbreviations ASR

Die antiken Sarkophagreliefs, edited by C. Robert, K. Matz. (Berlin 1890-).

LIMC

Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, edited by H.C. Ackermann and J.R. Gisler (Zurich and Munich 1981–).

Bibliography Amelung, Walther, ed. (1908). Die sculpturen des Vaticanische Museums II. Berlin. Andreae, Bernard (1956). Motivgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zu den römische Schlachtsarkophagen. Munich. Andreae, Bernard / Oehlschlegel, Georg / Weber, Klaus (1972). “Zusammenfügung der Fragmente eines Meleagersarkophagus in Frankfurt und Kassel,” JDI 87, 388–432.

 In 1968 the Metropolitan Museum of Art devoted a bulletin to the discussion of art forgery, concerned mainly with issues of fraud and its artistic consequences. See The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 24, number 6, February 1968.  Fleming 1975, 6.

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Bergemann, Johannes (1990). Römische Reiterstatuen: Ehrendenkmaler im öffentlische Bereich. Mainz am Rhein. Berger, Ernst (1994). “Penthesileia,” LIMC VII, 300–318. Brendel, Otto (1979). Prolegomena to the Study of Roman Art, revised edition. New Haven. Brenk, Beat (1968). “Die Datierung der Reliefs am Hadrianstempel in Ephesos,” Istanbuler Mitteilungen 18, 238–258. Brilliant, Richard (1984). Visual Narratives: Storytelling in Etruscan and Roman Art. Ithaca. Blok, Josine (1996). The Early Amazons: Modern and Ancient Perspectives on a Persistent Myth. Leiden. Cook, Brian (2005). Relief Sculpture of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. Oxford. Curtius, Ludwig (1929). Wandmalerei Pompejis. Hildesheim. Devambez, Pierre (1981). “Amazonen,” LIMC II, 587–605. Fleming, Stuart (1975). Authenticity in Art: The Scientific Detection of Forgery. New York. Fuchs, Werner (1959). “Die Vorbilder der neuattischen Reliefs,” JDI-EH 20, 178–189. Gazda, Elaine (2002): “Beyond Copying: Artistic Originality and Tradition,” in: The Ancient Art of Emulation: Studies in Artistic Originality and Tradition from the Present to Classical Antiquity, Ann Arbor, 1–24. Goette, Hans / Nagy, Árpá (2015). “Zum Schlachtsarkophage in Museum der bilderenden Künst, Budapestnachantike Überarbeitungen antiker Sarcophage,” Bulletin des Musée Hungrois de Beaux-Arts 118, 75–99. Grassinger, Dagmar (1999). Die mythologischen Sarkophage; Achill bis Amazonen. ASRXII.1. Berlin. Hallett, Christopher (2005). “Emulation versus Replication: Redefining Roman Copying,” JRA 18. 419–435. Harrison, Evelyn (1982): “The Motif of the City Siege on the Shield of Athena Parthenos,” AJA 85, 281–317. Haskell, Francis / Penny Nicholas, (1981). Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500–1900. New Haven. Helbig, Wolfgang (1966). Führer durch die öffentlichen Sammulungen klassischer Altertümer in Rom, 4th ed. Tübingen. Huskinson, Janet (1996). Roman Children’s Sarcophagi: Their Decoration and Its Social Significance. Oxford. Israel, Barbara (1999). Antique Garden Ornament: Two Centuries Of American Taste. New York. Jones, Mark (1992). “Do Fakes Matter?” in: M. Jones (ed.), Why fakes matter: essays on problems of authenticity. London, 7–14. Jongkees-Vos, Maria Frederika (1963). Scythian Archers in Archaic Vase Painting. Gröningen. Koch, Guntram / Sichtermann, Hellmutt (1982). Römische Sarkophage. Munich. Koortbojian, Michael (1995). Myth, Meaning and Memory on Roman Sarcophagi. Berkeley. Laubscher, Hans (1975). Der Reliefschmuck des Galeriusbogens in Thessaloniki. Archäologische Forschungen I. Berlin. Ling, Roger (1991). Roman Painting. Cambridge. Marvin, Miranda (2008). The Language of the Muses: The Dialog between Roman and Greek Sculpture. Los Angeles. Mikocki, Tomasz (1998). “Sarkophage in Polen. Originale und Nachahmungen-ihre Rolle in den Kunstammlungen Mittel-und Osteuropas,” in: G. Koch (ed.), Akten des Symposiums 125 Jahre Sarcophag-Corpus. Marburg, 111–116. Nock, Arthur Darby / Beazley John, (1946). “Sarcophagi and Symbolism,” AJA 50, 140–166. Perry, Ellen (2005). The Aesthetics of Emulation in the Art of Ancient Rome. Cambridge. Picard, Gilbert (1957). Les Trophées romains: Contribution à l’histoire de la Religion et de l’Art triomphal de Rome. Paris. Plumptre, George (1989). Garden Ornaments: Five Hundred Years of History and Practice. London. Radnoti, Sándor (1999). The Fake: Forgery and its Place in Art. Lanham, MD. Redlich, Roman (1942). Die Amazonen Sarkophage des 2. und 3. Jahrhunderts n. Chr. Berlin. Ridgway, Brunilde (1984). Roman Copies of Greek Sculpture: The Problem of the Originals. Ann Arbor.

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Ridgway, Brunilde (1989). “Defining the Original: The Greek Period,” in: K. Preciado (ed.), Multiple Originals, Copies and Reproductions, Studies in the History of Art 20. Washington, 127–140. Rodenwaldt, Gerhart (1940). “Römische Reliefs Vorstufen zer Spätantike,” JDI 55, 12–58. Sichtermann, Hellmut / Koch, Guntram (1975). Griechische Mythen auf römischen Sarkophagen. Munich. Stewart, Andrew (1995). “Imag(in)ing the Other: Amazons and Ethnicity in Fifth Century Athens,” Poetics Today 16, 571–597. Toynbee, Jocylen (1971). Death and Burial in the Roman World. Ithaca. Vermeule, Cornelius (1960). The Dal Pozzo and Albani Drawings of Classical Antiquities in the British Museum. TAPS 50.5. Philadelphia. Vermeule, Cornelius (1966). The Dal Pozzo and Albani Drawings of Classical Antiquities in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. TAPS 56.2. Philadelphia. Vaughan, Gerard (1992). “The Restoration of Classical Sculpture in the Eighteenth Century and the Problems of Authenticity,” in: Mark Jones (ed.), Why Fakes Matter, London, 41–50. Webb, Pamela (1996). Hellenistic Architectural Sculpture. Madison, WI. Wiegartz, Hans (1965). Kleinasiatische Saulensarkophage: Untersuchungen zum Sarkophagtypus und zu den figurlichen Darstellungen. Berlin.

Robert Cohon

Experts: The Story behind a Forged Roman Sarcophagus Introduction “. . . the third sarcophagus is a very big and very fine one, which cost me $10,000 and for which I have been offered $15,000 by the Detroit Museum. I want to put this last one in a very good place . . .”1 Thus, William Randolph Hearst wrote to his architect Julia Morgan on 23 February 1921. They had been working since the end of 1919 on his cottages on the hilltop at San Simeon.2 Hearst bought this “1st century BC sarcophagus” portraying “an homage to Ceres” from the Neapolitan dealers Cesare and Ercole Canessa.3 Other than a telegram of 18 February 1921, in which Hearst mentioned the purchase to Morgan,4 this letter is the earliest recorded mention of the sarcophagus; Cornelius Vermeule was first to publish the sarcophagus 41 years later—and that, as a forgery.5 In this paper, I establish that the chest of the sarcophagus was ancient but had little or no decoration; I precisely date the addition of modern relief carving; I demonstrate that the sarcophagus is far larger and, because of its numerous ancient sources, more sophisticated than contemporaneous forgeries of Roman art. The forger’s advisor was an expert in ancient art. Monumental in size, the sarcophagus measures 206.1 cm long (front, top) x c. 99 cm high (front, left) x 102 cm deep (right, top).6 The ratios of height to length and depth to length fall slightly short of 1:2. The whitish marble with bluish-grey streaks and medium-sized grains (0.5–1.0 mm) is most likely Proconnesian.7 On the front (Fig. 1), eight female worshippers and one child process from left to right towards Ceres; on each narrow side (Figs. 2, 3), two paterae flank a large tripod. Python appears on the right narrow side and a swan on the left. The maximum height of the frieze’s relief is 3 cm, and  Correspondence, Hearst Castle curatorial files for inv. no. 529-9-415; Coffman 2003, 141. For its setting: Aidala 1981, 222. My thanks to Doug Barker of Hearst Castle for permission to publish the Ceres sarcophagus and to Vickie Garagliano and Amber Rack for their superb photographs of it. Scholar and former director of the Castle, Mary L. Levkoff provided invaluable advice. Christine Droll and Peter Schertz edited the original manuscript. Any errors are my own.  Levkoff 2008, 57.  For quoted date and subject matter, see Hearst Castle curatorial files for inv. no. 529-9-415. For the Canessa brothers, see: Iasiello 2017, 357-62; D’Orazi 2018.  Coffman 2003, 141.  Vermeule 1962, 107, no. 8. Brinkerhoff 1978, 274 mentions it in an abstract (cited by Froning 1981, 164 n. 35). See text below.  Measured with a standard tape measure.  On Proconnesian, Walker 1993. See further n. 16 below. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111182919-029

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Fig. 1: Hearst Castle Ceres sarcophagus, frontal view. Photo: © Hearst Castle® / CA State Parks.

of the narrow sides, 1 cm. An egg-and-dart molding above bead-and-reel crowns the front and narrow sides. The back is rough with punch and flat-chisel marks; the underside appears to have punch marks only. A slanted headrest occupies the right narrow side of the interior’s bottom. The relief’s condition is fair: all the heads, hands, some drapery, and parts of the molding appear damaged in varying degrees.

Fig. 2: Hearst Castle Ceres sarcophagus, left narrow side. Photo: © Hearst Castle® / CA State Parks.

Fig. 3: Hearst Castle Ceres sarcophagus, right narrow side. Photo: © Hearst Castle® / CA State Parks.

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The frieze is tripart: Ceres on the right and a procession of two nearly equal groups of women in the middle and left. Cradling a cornucopia, Ceres sits enthroned before a tetrastyle temple with Corinthian pillars; a disk (a globe, shield, or patera?) adorns the pediment, which extends over the molding. Two nude boys holding long laurel branches flank Ceres. As though offering a votive, the foremost adorant of the procession holds up a statuette of Ceres cradling a cornucopia (Fig. 4). Ceres extends her right hand to receive the statuette or greet the adorants. Three additional women in the middle group follow, carrying, in order, a basket, a vase, and an acerra and jug. A little girl in the middle of this group leads a horned sheep. An adorant holding two torches heads the next group and three women follow: the first with no offerings; another, carrying a vase; and the third, holding an acerra (the jug in her right hand thoroughly damaged). Each of the two women shouldering a vase turns her torso to the viewer, exposing one breast. On the left corner, a tree with a long, narrow trunk extends its branches overlapping the molding on the front and narrow side.

Fig. 4: Hearst Castle Ceres sarcophagus, detail of front. Photo: © Hearst Castle® / CA State Parks.

Much of the composition is well laid out. It focuses primarily on Ceres and secondarily on the figure with the statuette and the woman shouldering the vase in the middle of the frieze. Vertical compositional lines predominate, reinforcing the relief’s quiet, monumental grandeur; these and other compositional lines create a harmonious unity in the right and middle. Here, layers of relief offer a limited degree of three di-

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mensionality. The group on the left, however, is a jumble, and its figures repeat elements of the middle group. The style is linear; the running drill is used throughout the drapery.8 The execution is fair but botched in the left group’s adorant shouldering the vase. Fine detailing punctuates the relief, as in the boys’ laurel sprigs and the throne’s turned legs.

Forged and Genuine In his briefly annotated list of sarcophagi in America, Vermeule described this sarcophagus as an “eclectic work after Greek and Roman reliefs from the Parthenon frieze onwards;” he further noted that the Augustan Sorrento Base was a key model and that the style recalled Vincenzo Monti’s, a forger active in the 1820s.9 In 1978 Brinkerhoff noted stylistic similarities with Monti’s Agamemnon and Chryses relief (Cambridge, England).10 Koch in 1977 and 1978 labeled the sarcophagus a forgery, perhaps of the nineteenth century, and also noted the Sorrento Base as its prototype.11 In 1982, dating the sarcophagus c. 1900, Koch reaffirmed the Base’s importance as a model, adding that the molding typified Attic sarcophagi; the raised lip along the walls’ upper edges (for securing the lid) typified sarcophagi of Greece and Asia Minor.12 Vermeule condemned the sarcophagus probably in part because many of the models were reliefs on state monuments rather than sarcophagi. I note here several mistakes that are characteristic of forgeries: the systematic damage on the relief ground and damage on the molding are inconsistent with accidental breaks;13 many dresses are rendered inaccurately (for example, the folds of a chiton appear only between the feet of the procession’s penultimate figure);14 and the coiffures are incorrect (for example, the loose tufts of hair around the ear and band of the last adorant of the procession).15 The sarcophagus chest, however, is ancient and was at most minimally decorated and quite possibly even unfinished.16 Who would prefer to laboriously and wastefully carve out the interior of an enormous marble block to forge a sarcophagus than to  M. Levkoff (conversation with Cohon, summer 2018; correspondence with Cohon, 18 October 2019) noted the relief’s unclassical “brittle” style, “the repetitive, rigid verticals.”  Vermeule 1962, 107, no. 8; for Monti as forger: Froning 1981, 157–167; Paul 1982, 118–124.  Brinkerhoff 1978, 274; for the relief: Paul 1982, 123, fig. 98.  27 September 1977 (on-site comments, Hearst Castle curatorial files); letter of 19 September 1978 to G. Fialho (Hearst Castle curatorial files).  3 April 1982 (Hearst Castle curatorial files).  On fake weathering and damage, see Wünsche 1986, 211–217; Cohon 1996, 239–242; Cohon 2018, 984–985. M. Levkoff noted the molding’s unnatural damage (conversation 31 July 2019).  Such errors can be found as early as the eighteenth century (Voutiras 2016, 66, 68–69).  Other examples: Türr 1984, 192–193, RK 4; 214–215, RK 20.  Undecorated or modestly decorated sarcophagi: Brandenburg 1978, n.b. sarcophagus of P. Paquius Scaeva, Vasto, 280–282; Gasparri 2013, 212–214; Palmentieri 2013, n.b. sarcophagus at San Leucio di

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slice out many slabs for forged reliefs? Indeed, late nineteenth- and early twentiethcentury forgers elaborated with reliefs undecorated or slightly decorated ancient sarcophagi.17 Because the battered condition of the sarcophagus’s lip, band under the lip, and base reflect so consistently the accidents of time, they are original.18 The length of the front accords with integers of large, basic Roman units of measure, falling just 1.1 cm short of 207.2 cm, 7 pedes; the depth is 1.6 cm short of 103.6 cm, 3.5 pedes.19 The forger’s fortuitous coming upon such a large, unelaborated sarcophagus chest offered a grand field suitable for monumental models and possibly helped inspire their use.

Verifiable Models In supplementing Vermeule’s list of models for the reliefs and in drawing on those objects readily visible and/or published before 1921, I find that the models were Augustan and classical and that a single figure may have multiple sources. One model is unexpected. Vermeule identified several borrowings from the Sorrento Base: the procession and enthroned Ceres from its processing Vestal Virgins and seated Vesta; the tripods from Apollo’s; the torches from Artemis’s; and the statuette from the Palladium.20 For brevity’s sake, Vermeule skipped the most obvious—the position of the temple behind Ceres derives from the round temple’s and Ceres’s cornucopia, from the cornucopia of the seated figure opposite Mars. The two youths flanking Ceres, especially the one to her right, are partially inspired by the Eros beside Mars and replaced the two figures flanking Vesta. The Base’s rich molding influenced the addition of the sarcophagus’s crowning molding; the Base’s battered condition was a partial model for the relief’s battered aspect. The Base’s large size21 and elaboration on multiple sides made it a suitable model for the grand sarcophagus chest. Among Vermeule’s unspecified Roman models for a procession honoring a goddess must be the Ara Pacis’s long panels. The forger also quoted specific passages. By her size, curls, and to a fair degree her clothes and pose, the little girl on the sarcoph-

Caserta, 183–188. Unfinished Proconnesian sarcophagi: Asgari 1977, 329–335; Asgari 1990, 110–117; Russell 2013, 265–267. Note also Sapelli 1985, Rome, Museo Nazionale Romano, inv. 263794.  Goette 2016, 105–113; Cohon 2018, 980–985; Cohon 2019, 8.  For the lip’s authenticity, see also text and n. 53 below. The cavity for a clamp in each narrow side is modern, as the area above each cavity lacks channeling for the clamp. For numerous examples of channels, Papagianni 2016 (n.b. 132, cat. 53, pls. 42.2–3); for forged cavities, Cohon/North 2020, 86 n. 38.  29.6 cm equaling 1 pes: Wilson Jones 2000, 72, 214–220, 249–250, 252–253; Cohon/North 2020, 186.  For the Base, recently: Cecamore 2004.  Rizzo 1932, 17–22: ca. 194.4 cm long (estimated) x 117.2 cm high x 100 cm deep.

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agus recalls the south panel’s young Asiatic prince between Agrippa and Livia;22 so too her position relative to the figures around her and the concomitant use of layered space. The two figures with acerrae mimic the camillus at the center of the north frieze. Before the Ara Pacis’s reconstruction in 1937, this camillus was the final figure on the 13-figure panel in the Uffizi. The sarcophagus’s procession also ends with a figure holding an acerra, turning her head back. The acerrae of the central group’s adorant and the altar’s camillus are embellished with figured scenes.23 The elaborate patrician shoes on the altar perhaps led the forger to detail the penultimate figure’s footwear.24 The sarcophagus’s swan (Fig. 2) derives from those in the altar’s scrollwork.25 The introduction of the two laurel branches held by the two youths (Fig. 4) may reflect the preponderance of laurel on the Ara Pacis;26 however, the branches’ length and the fact that two youths hold them in front of themselves recall the Lares with their long laurel branches on the Altar of the Vicus Aesculeti.27 Indeed, the Lares are also a youthful pair. Noting the Parthenon frieze, Vermeule emphasized its hydriaphoroi (North VI. 16, 17, 18) as a source for the two women shouldering vases. I add that the attendant and horned sheep (North IV. 11) reappear as the child with horned sheep.28 I find that the east frieze29 played a fundamental role beyond the overarching theme of female worshippers processing toward seated deities. The sarcophagus’s first adorant (Fig. 4) wears the idiosyncratic mantle of the kanephoros (East VI. 51, 54, 55).30 The position of her right arm and hand recalls East VI. 51, 54, 55, but it is too common to assert a definitive connection. The drapery folds against the forward leg of the basket-carrier (Fig. 4) mimic those of East VI. 51–56. The position of her raised right arm, her carrying a container, and the position of her himation below her right arm, over her left shoulder and forward recall the nearby marshal holding the kanoun (East VI. 49). The vertical folds of the adorant behind the basket-carrier are Parthenonian, and the drapery folds of the forward leg of the torch-bearer recall those of East VI. 51–56. The throne’s sphinx, considerable depth, and low backrest with a rounded element derive from Zeus’s throne (East V. 30). Given the east frieze’s great influence, the addition of a youth at the knee of the enthroned Ceres derives in part from Eros beside Aphrodite

 Rossini 2006, 58, 66, 68; Kleiner and Buxton 2008, 72–74.  Rossini 2006, 63.  Petersen 1902, 84–86.  Petersen 1902, 27–29; Pasqui 1903, 566–567, fig. 12.  Petersen 1902, 24, 81, 92, 94, 100–101.  Rome, Musei Capitolini, inv. 855; Stuart Jones, Cons., 74–75, no. 2 (with bibliography), pl. 26; Strong 1907, 73–74, pl. 24; Russell 2020, 29–30.  Brommer 1977, 27–30, pls. 55, 58.  Brommer 1977, 112–123, pls. 174–175, 179, 186–187.  Roccos 1995, 654–659.

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(East VI. 41, 42).31 The model of the youth on Ceres’s left? —the classical leaning satyr attributed to Praxiteles and exemplified by the Capitoline satyr.32 The tresses curling down to the chest of the vase-carrier in the sarcophagus’s second group are probably owed to the Apollo Mantua type, exemplified by the bronze from Pompeii.33 The classical source for the tripod is surprising. While there is the tripod on the Sorrento Base, a stater from Croton, c. 400 BCE, is the chief model.34 Both the tripods and their fillets on the stater and sarcophagus match (Figs. 2, 3). On the stater and the sarcophagus’s right side, Python, with a similar body, is to the right of the tripod. The tripods on the narrow ends of two sarcophagi known before 1921 are not similar enough to have served as models.35

Other Possible Models Other models are less certain. The Palladium may have inspired the Ceres statuette, but let us also consider the entire scene: a woman holding out a statuette to a seated figure. While a few reliefs show figures bearing statuettes,36 the Belvedere Altar and Boscoreale Augustus Cup are the scene’s likely models. On the Altar, however, Augustus stands

 The east frieze’s considerable influence precludes as sources sphinxes on furniture in Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale; e.g., Achille (Bechi 1843); Didone abbandonata (Ruesch 1911, 330, no. 1386; Sampaolo 1986, 152, no. 210); Fedra (Pappalardo 1986, 96, 212, cat. 45, with bibliography).  Martinez 2007, 236–248, 260–267 (260–262, cat. 60 for the Capitoline example).  Bronze from Pompeii: Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, inv. 5630; Kekulé von Stradonitz 1870, 27, no. 7, pl. 3. 1; Ruesch 1911, 205, no. 831; Zanker 1974, 61, no. 7. 1; 61–64 (for the type).  DarSag 1, s.v. “Apollo” (L. de Ronchaud) 319, n. 201 (with bibliography), fig. 378; Roscher I, s.v. “Apollon in der Kunst” (A. Furtwängler) 458; Münzkabinette Staatliche Museen zu Berlin 2022.  Triptolemos sarcophagus, Wilton House (Robert 1919, 509–514, cat. 432, pl. 136; Stewart 2020, 212–215, cat. 133, pl. 133. a, b) and Birth of Dionysos sarcophagus, Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, inv. 23.33 (see Matz 1969, 350–351, cat. 199, pl. 217. 3–4; first published with photographs in Lehmann-Hartleben and Olsen 1942, figs. 3–4). A garland sarcophagus in Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, inv. 150860 with a tripod, laurel trees, and patera-like shield on the narrow sides was first published in 1938 and loaned to the museum in 1941; how long it was previously in a private collection, what access one had to the collection, and when it was discovered are unknown (Herdejürgen 1996, 169–170, cat. 169, pls. 100. 3, 4). The combination of attributes is intriguing, but the lack of information leads to a dead end.  “Carpenter Altar,” Rome, Musei Capitolini, inv. 1909 (Stuart Jones, Cap., 120–121, cat. 47a, pl. 31. 2; Madigan 2013, 10–14, fig. 5); Polyxena Relief, Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Antikensammlung Sk 1504 (Kekulé 1907, 180–183; Rodenwaldt 1913, 322–324); a relief with figures carrying Lar-statuettes, Musei Vaticani, Museo Gregoriano Profano, inv. 9485 (Fless 2018, 136–138 [with bibliography], cat. 10, pls. 72.2; 73); fragment of a relief, Rome, Villa Medici (Petersen 1902, 101–102, pl. 6 [restored on the Ara Pacis]; Fless 1995, 52–53, 106, cat. 22.I, pl. 16. 2).

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(rather than sits) and is separated from the officials by an altar.37 On the Augustus Cup,38 Venus offers a statuette of Victoria to mount on a globe that the emperor extends to her. Like Ceres, Augustus sits on a throne raised on a platform and there is no altar. Perhaps not coincidentally, the group behind Venus recalls the sarcophagus’s first group of adorants—Eros in the child’s position and Roma, like the adorant, with one breast exposed. Replacing the circular with a tetrastyle temple and columns with pillars probably reflects the forger’s hesitancy–or inability?–to execute a complex, richly threedimensional subject. Tetrastyle temples appear on several similar reliefs,39 and the forger may have drawn on this tradition. One ancient relief stands out as a possible single model: a marble in the Albani collection that was understood as an Augustan relief of Vesta and four Vestal Virgins.40 Possibly Artemis’s torch on the Sorrento Base inspired those on the sarcophagus, even though they are dissimilar and held differently. The forger may, however, also be following traditional images related to the myth of Ceres: Persephone holding two torches. Although she often holds them at diagonals and is often frontally posed with them,41 the forger may have modified the type to fit the procession with the torches’ upright position mimicking the statuette. (Some of the figure’s characteristics also echo those of the basket-carrier’s.) Alternatively, a specific model may be the image of Persephone on a large hydria discovered in 1883.42 She holds two torches upright before her as she approaches the seated Dionysos and her pose approximates the adorant’s. The vase was frequently illustrated and well known in Rome, and in 1909 Studniczka used the imagery to help reconstruct the Ara Pacis’s Roma relief.43

 Bowerman 1913, 46 (identifying one minister as a woman); Buxton 2014, 106–108 (reinterpreting the scene); Fless 2018, 113–114, cat. 7, pl. 67. 2.  Villefosse 1899, 134–138, pl. 31. 1; 32. 2; Strong 1907, 83–84, pl. 27. 1; Reinach 1909, 92. 2; 93. 1 (drawings).  Altar, Sanctuary of the Genius of Augustus, Pompeii (Ryberg 1955, 81 n. 2 [early bibliography]; Dobbins 1992, 253, pl. 72. 2, 4); Mattei Relief, Paris, Louvre, inv. MA 992 (Koeppel 1983, 140–141, cat. 37); Villa Albani reliefs (Cain 1989, 44–48, no. 9, pl. 133; 80–88, no. 124, pls. 218–221).  Samter 1894, 127–133; Cain 1989, 421–425, no. 132, pls. 234–235.  E.g., LIMC 8, s.v. “Persephone” (G. Güntner) 958, 961–962, 964–965, nos. 22, 68, 71–72, 87, 131, 161, pls. 642, 644–645; LIMC 4, s.v. “Demeter” (L. Beschi) 876–877, 880, nos. 333, 435, pls. 591, 596. For Hekate with two torches, see e.g., LIMC 6, s.v. “Hekate” (H. Sarian) 991, 994–995, nos. 21, 62, 65, 69, pls. 655, 659.  Fiorelli 1883.  Rollin et Feuardent 1898, lot 20 (with early bibliography and illustration); Reinach 1899, 232. 1; Svoronos 1901; Harrison 1903, 557–558, fig. 159; Studniczka 1909, 939, pl. 6. 3. More recently: LIMC 4, s.v. “Demeter” (L. Beschi) 877, no. 400, pl. 591; LIMC 8, s.v. “Persephone” (G. Güntner) 965, no. 160.

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Paterae (Figs. 2, 3) with their interiors fully facing outward appear on other sarcophagi (although never two on one narrow side)44 and on the narrow sides of altars.45 The combination of such paterae and tripods, however, were also well known on numerous issues of coins under Augustus, Claudius, and Nero.46 The preponderance of Augustan models for the sarcophagus and the tripod’s numismatic origins support this source. Alternatively, the sarcophagus’s reliance on the Ara Pacis (especially the swan) suggests the altar as the source for the sarcophagus’s paterae.47 There are numerous parallels for the throne’s turned legs48 and for trees elaborating the corners of sarcophagi.49 While the use of molding derived initially from the Sorrento Base, the forger chose the simpler egg-and-dart over bead-and-reel. Molding is unusual on sarcophagi found in Italy, and this type is rare;50 Koch, however, noted that egg-and-dart over bead-and-reel is typically found on Attic sarcophagi.51 Figures overlapping the molding also appear on Attic works.52 That the Hearst sarcophagus’s raised lip typifies sarcophagi made in Greece and Asia Minor, not those of Roman manufacture, most prob-

 E.g., these garland sarcophagi: Berlin, Pergamonmuseum SK 843a (Herdejürgen 1996, 77, cat. 1, pl. 1. 2–3); Rome, Via Poli 37 (Herdejürgen 1996, 82–83, no. 12, pl. 7. 3).  E.g., Altmann 1905, 57, no. 15; 74, no. 23; 76, no. 27; 77, no. 33; 78, no. 36; 79–80, no. 41; 102–103, no. 84; 132, no. 146; 213, no. 274. See also Winter 1908, 312–313, no. 402 for a relatively obscure garland relief with paterae and a tripod from Pergamon.  BMCRE I, 20, no. 98; 24, no. 119; 176–177, nos. 84–89; 397, no. 242bis.  Petersen 1902, 39, 156, figs. 23–25, pl. 2.  E.g., in Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale: Didone abbandonata (see n. 31 above); Ippolito e Fedra (Ruesch 1911, 325, no. 1367; Sampaolo 1986, 150, no. 195); the so-called bisellium (Ruesch 1911, 385, no. 1783). See also the bronze couch and litter in the Conservatori Museum, Rome (Stuart Jones, Cons., 175–178, no. 11, pl. 62. 4; no. 12. 178–179. pls. 64–65).  E.g., Pannychis (Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale; Matz 1969, 323–326, no. 176, pls. 198–200); Indian War of Dionysos (Cortona, Museo Diocesano; Matz 1969, 426–428, cat. 237, pl. 258. 1, Beilage 110. 1, 3); Endymion, Rome, Musei Capitolini, inv. 725 (Robert 1897, 76–78, cat. 61, pl. 16. 1, 2; Sichtermann 1992, 114–116, cat. 51, pl. 58).  On molding in general, see Altmann 1902, 88–89. For sarcophagi in Italy with egg-and-dart over bead-and-reel: thiasos, Musei Vaticani, Cortile Ottagonale 28 (Matz 1968, 126–128, cat. 35, pl. 30. 1); Labors of Hercules, Rome, Villa Borghese LXXIX.VC (Robert 1897, 147–148, cat. 127, pl. 38. 2, 3; Helbig4 II, 720–721, no. 1960). For sarcophagi in Italy with other kinds of moldings: Achilles, Rome, Musei Capitolini, inv. 218 (Stuart Jones, Cap. 77–81, no. 1, pl. 16; Rogge 1995, 136–138, cat. 24, pl. 44); Achilles, Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, inv. 124325 (Ruesch 1911, 95, no. 291; Rogge 1995, 133, cat. 19, pls. 26. 2; 37. 1; 38. 3).  See n. 12 above and Koch 1982, 370. See, e.g., a Meleager sarcophagus, Athens, National Museum, inv. 1186 (Robert 1904, 277–278, cat. 216, pl. 70; Koch 1975, 138, cat. 160, pl. 128).  E.g., Achilles sarcophagus, St. Petersburg, Hermitage, inv. A1026 (Robert 1890, 23–26, cat. 20, pls. 6–7; Rogge 1995, 138–139, cat. 28, pls. 26. 1; 38. 1, 2). Note further Hippolytus sarcophagus, Istanbul Archaeological Museum, inv. 508 (Robert 1904, 176–178, cat. 151, pl. 46; Koch 1982, 396, 473, fig. 567). For the two Achilles sarcophagi in Italy that have figures overlapping moldings but of a different type, see n. 50 above.

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ably did not determine the choice of molding: the raised lip’s connection with Greek manufacture was first established in 1925.53 The lip probably was too minor and too labor-intensive of a detail for consideration by the forger, whose clamp cavities suggest that he may have had no understanding or concern for the lip’s function.

Dating the Sarcophagus The sarcophagus’s terminus post quem is determined not just by the initial publications (with illustrations) or discoveries of the models. The selection and weaving together of certain Augustan models and the combining of the Ara Pacis and Parthenon frieze cannot be coincidental: they reflect a sophisticated knowledge of chronology and the complex relation of the models to each other. The dates for the publication of relevant analyses are thus also critical. In 1902 the forger would have had all the information necessary to design the relief if we discount the less certain models. The Sorrento Base’s fragmentary relief of Vesta was uncovered in 1864, and the Base was soon moved to the Sedile Dominova, Sorrento.54 The Base was first fully illustrated in a line-drawing in 1889 by Heydemann, and in 1894 Hülsen demonstrated that the imagery reflected the Augustan Palatine Hill.55 In 1902 Petersen wrote in his classic study of the Ara Pacis that the Base was roughly contemporaneous with the great altar. After illustrating, describing, and analyzing the Base, Petersen used it to restore Vesta onto the Ara Pacis.56 Michaelis published all known parts of the Parthenon frieze with line drawings in 1870, and in 1899 Courbaud became first to show that the frieze was a model for the Ara Pacis.57 The relevant processional reliefs of the Ara Pacis, which had been in Florence since the eighteenth century,58 were well illustrated by Petersen in 1902.59 The famous Capitoline leaning satyr and the Belvedere Altar were in Rome throughout the nineteenth century; the Altar of the Vicus Aesculeti was discovered in 1889 and henceforth displayed in the Conservatori; the bronze Apollo Citharist was discovered on 8 November 1853 in Pompeii and was subsequently well-published.60 The Croton stater was also well-published.61 As for the less certain models, the Augustus Cup, discovered in

 Rodenwaldt 1925, 5.  Heydemann 1867, 110–111; Rizzo 1932, 11–12; Cecamore 2004, 105.  Heydemann 1889, pl. 10; Hülsen 1894.  Petersen 1902, 69–72. For a later drawing of the Base: Reinach 1912, 421.  Michaelis 1870–1871, pls. 12, 14. Courbaud 1899, 84.  Morretti 1948, 14; Rossini 2006, 14.  Petersen 1902, pls. 4, 6. Note also illustrations of elaborate footwear and swans, nn. 24–25 above.  Satyr: see n. 32 above. Belvedere Altar: Fless 2018, 110. Vicus Aesculeti Altar: see n. 27 above. Citharist: see n. 33 above.  See n. 34 above.

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1895, was published with illustrations in 1899 by Villafosse, who saw the Ara Pacis as the cup’s inspiration.62 In 1894, Samter published and illustrated the Albani Vesta Relief, defining it as Augustan and relating it to the Sorrento Base.63 Robert published sarcophagi with similar moldings (one overlapped by figures) in 1890 and 1897.64 Particular events or relevant publications may have stimulated the forging of the relief after 1902; for example, the excavation of additional parts of the Ara Pacis in 190365 or Strong’s 1907 publication and illustration of several Augustan works, including the Augustus Cup and Altar of the Lares Augusti.66 If the hydria’s Persephone was a model, a terminus post quem might be 1909, when Studniczka published it in reconstructing the Ara Pacis.67 In 1910 Smith published deluxe illustrations of the Parthenon frieze and Collignon in 1910–1912.68 In 1911 the popular International Exhibition in the Baths of Diocletian celebrated Italy’s 50th anniversary as a nation.69 It emphasized the Age of Augustus.70 A later terminus post quem is, however, most likely. The Canessa brothers sold the sarcophagus as portraying “an homage to Ceres.” The cornucopia and torches reinforce her identity, but why portray Ceres and not some other deity?71 In the 1914 Journal international d’archéologie numismatique, Svoronos reinterpreted the Sorrento Base as a first-century BCE copy of a fourth-century BCE Greek original. The subject: Demeter Agelastos, “the sorrowful.” The goddess facing the procession and the seated figure near Leto was Demeter. Svoronos restored Demeter before Cybele; the Base supported Demeter’s statue.72 The sarcophagus’s forger consequently introduced Demeter’s Roman counterpart, Ceres. The Great War followed, and in 1918 the Base was transferred to the future Museo Correale, where it was exhibited in 1924.73

 Villefosse 1899, 161–163.  See n. 40 above.  See nn. 50, 52 above. Note also the thiasos sarcophagus, Musei Vaticani (n. 50 above).  E.g., Pasqui 1903.  See nn. 27, 38 above.  Studniczka 1909, 41, pl. 6. 3.  Smith 1910, 54, pls. 34, 37–38, 41–42; Collignon 1910–1912, pls. 117, 123–127.  Esposizione internazionale di Roma 1911; Palombi 2009, 73–95.  Esposizione internazionale di Roma 1911, 10–11, 35–38, 164–168, 174–180; Liberati 2016, 215.  DarSag I.2, s.v. “Cornucopia” (E. Pottier) 1517–1518 for the goddesses with cornucopias (Fortuna, Abundantia, Pax, Felicitas, Concordia, Spes, Cybele/Ge, Demeter/Ceres, Juno, Hestia/Vesta, Isis, Bona Dea, Annona); note the early identification of Fortuna or Concordia on the Manlius Base (Fless 2018, 136 n. 44).  Svoronos 1914.  Rizzo 1932, 11; Museo Correale 2022.

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The Canessa Brothers, the Forgery, and Hearst During the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, forgers recarved undecorated or scarcely decorated sarcophagi to sell in part to large estates, many of which were in America.74 The quality is poor to mediocre and many are small, as though for children;75 the rest, medium-sized.76 These forgeries rely at most on a few homogeneous model sarcophagi; battle and Dionysian scenes and strigillated examples are popular, while a few portray myths.77 Although the Ceres sarcophagus was also recarved from a plain or minimally decorated ancient sarcophagus chest, in most respects it differs from the recut mediocrities. It measures about twice the height and depth of the recarved medium-sized sarcophagi; the imagery draws from many diverse models and relies largely on state monuments; and it reflects a considerable knowledge of ancient art. By comparison, roughly contemporaneous forgeries of other types of Roman reliefs rely on few sources, although they sometimes share with the sarcophagus a trend to systematic weathering.78 In its complexity and fullness, the sarcophagus surpasses nineteenth-century marble forgeries based on the Parthenon frieze.79 In terms of size, the best parallels are the remarkably contemporaneous terracotta Etruscan Warriors at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and tomb of Maria Catherina di Sabello at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.80

 See n. 17 above.  E.g., Amazonomachy, University of Southern California, Los Angeles (Goette 2016, 107–109); seathiasos (Sotheby Park Bernet Inc. [New York] 21 May 1977 lot 110); Muses, Tower Hill Botanic Garden, Boylston, Massachusetts (Cohon 2019, 8); thiasos, Santa Prassede, Rome (Sichtermann 1982, 634; Cohon 2019, 8); thiasos, San Antonio Museum of Art (Sotheby Park Bernet Inc. [New York], 21 May 1977 lot 109); Hippolytus (Sotheby’s [New York] 12 June 1993 lot 158); Adonis and Hippolytus (Christie’s [New York] 11 June 2003 lot 216); strigillated, Wellington (Ahrens/Pomeroy/Deuling 2008). I have not seen all of these firsthand and it is possible some of them were carved from solid blocks.  Galatomachy: Dallas, Museum of Art, inv. 1999,107; Budapest, Szépművészeti Múzeum, inv. A.364; Amazonomachy: San Marino, California, The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, inv. 10.151 and 12.9 (Goette 2016, 105–110; Cohon 2018, 980–985). See also Triumph of Dionysos, formerly Phoenix Art Museum (Parke-Bernet Galleries Inc. 24 May 1969 lot 104; Sotheby’s [New York] 25 June 1998 lot. 142); Triumph of Dionysos, Polesden Lacey (National Trust 2022); Griffins (Christie’s [New York] 8 June 2012 lot 251, by the restorer of a hunt sarcophagus [Sotheby’s {New York} 21–22 November 1985 lot 307]); Centaurs, Oslo (Grimstad 1972, by the forger of two other reliefs [Arachne 2022a; Arachne 2022b); strigillated (Jean-David Cahn AG [19 November 2014] lot 268); battle sarcophagus, formerly Copenhagen (Cohon 2018, 984).  See nn. 75–76 above; Goette 2016, 105–113, Cohon 2018, 980–985. The author is finishing an article on the forged strigillated sarcophagi in the Hammond collection, Gloucester, Massachusetts.  Cohon 1996.  Ashmole 1954; Paul 1982, 131–132.  Etruscan Warriors: von Bothmer/Noble 1961; tomb of Maria Catherina di Sabello: Sox 1988, 53–62.

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At the time, clear evidence—the reliance on state monuments and systematic weathering—was available for experts to determine that the sarcophagus was a forgery. Much remained, however, that was deceptive. In 1932 Rizzo wrote that the Sorrento Base was scarcely known among academics, up until 1918 it was poorly displayed with little light, drawings of it were misleading, and photographs of the Vesta and the procession had never been published.81 Relevant photographs of the Augustus Cup—in Rothschild’s private collection—were published only twice.82 The sources of many figures were obscured by changing their genders. The adoption of the leaning satyr was obfuscated by posing the boy in profile. The common tetrastyle temple replaced the distinctive round temple closely connected with the Base. The molding was well done and differed from the Base’s. For a non-expert, the sarcophagus seemed legitimate. The Canessa brothers cleverly targeted Hearst. He was spending a fortune on art to adorn his San Simeon estate.83 He had already demonstrated an interest in sarcophagi through his purchases between 1907 and 1913 of a Muse sarcophagus at $5,000, an Endymion sarcophagus at $9,732.50, and an additional still unidentified sarcophagus.84 The first two were essentially complete and magnificent; the third was either the entire chest or just the intact front panel. The fully preserved Ceres sarcophagus was perfect for him. Hearst could accommodate—indeed, welcome—the large size of the sarcophagus in his new estate.85 The figures’ solemn grandeur, the charming detailing, the theme of thankfulness for abundance, and the mildly titillating half-nude worshippers would have appealed to almost any contemporaneous collector. The brothers had already sold a marble doorway (said to be from a government building of Frederick II in Sicily) and a mantelpiece for $5,500 to Hearst in 1920.86 The brothers had an international reputation, having already sold the Boscoreale Treasure to Rothschild87 and auctioned off the Boscoreale paintings to major museums.88 Enrico Caruso, Henry Walters, J. P. Morgan, and even Vittorio Emanuele III were clients.89 They were international with offices in New York, Paris, and Naples.90 (Although, like many dealers of the time, they had auctioned a few marble forgeries, none of these

 Rizzo 1932, 7, 9, 11. Note also Heydemann 1889, 313.  See n. 38 above.  See, e.g., Cohon/North 2020, 173–174.  Cohon/North 2021, 174, n. 7, no. 8 (Muse); n. 10, no. 1 (unidentified); no. 2 (Endymion).  Hearst eventually purchased three other enormous sarcophagi (Cohon/North 2021, 175 [lion sarcophagus]; 174, n. 7. no. 4 [garland sarcophagus] and no. 7 [strigillated]).  Coffman 2003, 104, 126–127. In 1911 Hearst purchased from the brothers “Roman garden jars” for $540; in 1915 he probably saw their collection at the San Francisco International Exposition (Coffman 2003, 45–46, 67).  D’Orazi 2018, 9–13.  D’Orazi 2018, 10–12, 16–17.  D’Orazi 2018, 7–8.  D’Orazi 2018, 25–29.

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had yet been recorded as such.)91 Probably the brothers had also targeted Hearst because he was far removed from sharp-eyed wary scholars and curators, especially those in Europe: already Adolf Furtwängler had uncovered several forgeries in 1899, and a four-day conference on forgeries had been held in Copenhagen in 1902.92

Elusive Identities Who designed or crafted the sarcophagus? Might their identity be revealed by comparison with other works? Despite the relief’s distinctive character, there is scant evidence for works by the same craftsman or designers. A little boy, nude, with a laurel branch, stands before a tetrastyle temple on a forged Apollo relief that was on the Rome art market in 1929–1932; the present whereabouts of this relief, sold in 1932 to the Wellcome collection, are unknown.93 The relief was partly modeled on one in the Albani collection, but differs from Hearst’s in the drapery’s rich three-dimensionality and the meticulous detailing of the hair and ears.94 (Based on the similar style, a relief on the London market before 1929 was probably also by the forger of the Apollo relief.)95 The precise relation of the makers of the two reliefs and the sarcophagus—a small, loosely connected circle of forgers?—remains unclear. Although a fair part of the sarcophagus was probably designed simply by blending published images of elements of the Ara Pacis and Parthenon frieze, its many lesser-known sources establish that the craftsman consulted an expert art historian. It may have been any number of scholars. Wolfgang Helbig? Accusations against Helbig as knowingly selling forgeries—or even designing them—have been made but remain unproven.96 The opportunity for the forger to collaborate with him would have been brief, as Helbig died in October 1915. Dealers, with their obvious interest, may have had a limited advisory role; indeed, one dealer, Francesco Martinetti, actually manufactured forgeries.97 The Canessa brothers were numismatists,98 especially Cesare,99 and had sold the Augustus Cup;100 their office in Naples was not far from Sorrento. Pietro Stettiner, also a numismatist as well as an archaeologist and dealer, possibly

 Canessa 1919, nos. 49–50, 62; American Art Association 1924, nos. 97, 103–105.  Furtwängler 1899; Moltesen 2012, 190, 192, 197, 199.  Arachne 2022b; Wellcome Collection 2022a; Wellcome Collection 2022b. A forthcoming article by this author examines Simotti-Rocchi’s sales to Wellcome.  Cain 1989, 380–388, no. 124, pls. 218–221.  Paul 1982, 254, fig. 207.  Moltesen 2012, 188–201. My thanks to Richard De Puma for his helpful comments on Helbig.  De Puma 2000.  D’Orazi 2018, 5, 12–15, 19–25, 42–43.  Iasiello 2017, 358 n. 30; D’Orazi 2018, 32–34.  D’Orazi 2018, 9–13.

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played a role.101 He had sold the largest Etruscan forgery to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a neat parallel to the largest Roman forgery. The craftsmen who forged medium-sized sarcophagi made his funerary monument. Having died in 1920,102 he had enough time to be involved. Possibly at his death, the Canessa brothers picked up his unsold stock. The forgers with whom Stettiner was associated produced, however, nothing so complex. The truth in these cases is elusive—nor should one be surprised. After all, the early twentieth-century art market and its expert advisers thrived on opacity and deceit.

Bibliography Ahrens, Sven / Pomeroy, Arthur J. / Deuling, Judy K. (2008). “The Sarcophagus of Albius Graptus in Wellington,” in: C. Franek, S. Lamm, and T. Neuhauser (eds.), Thiasos: Festschrift für Erwin Pochmarski zum 65. Geburtstag, Vienna, 31–38. Aidala, Thomas (1981). Hearst Castle, San Simeon. New York. Altmann, Walter (1902). Architectur und Ornamentik der antiken Sarkophage. Berlin. Altmann, Walter (1905). Die römischen Grabaltäre der Kaiserzeit. Berlin. American Art Association (1924). Illustrated catalogue of the art collection of the expert antiquarians, C. & E. Canessa. New York. Arachne (2022a): “Bestand-Microfiche-D-DAI-ROM-2637_C14.jpg,” iDAI.objects Arachne. https://arachne. dainst.org/entity/775654 [accessed 1 August 2022]. Arachne (2022b): “Relief mit Nike, Dichter und Muse vor einem Tempel,” iDAI.objects Arachne. https://arachne.dainst.org/entity/2299371 [accessed 1 September 2022]. Arachne (2022c): “Sarkophag-Relief mit Kentauren (Fälschung?),” iDAI.objects Arachne. https://arachne. dainst.org/entity/6208282 [accessed 1 November 2022]. Asgari, Nuşin (1977). “Die halbfabrikate kleinasiatischer Girlandensarkophage und ihre Herkunft,” AA, 329–380. Asgari, Nuşin (1990). “Objets de marbre finis, semi-finis et inachevés du Proconnèse,” in: M. Waelkens (ed.), Pierre éternelle du Nil au Rhin: Carrières et préfabrication, Bruxelles, 107–126. Ashmole, Bernard (1954). “Five Forgeries in the Manner of the Parthenon,” in: R. Lullies (ed.), Neue Beiträge zur klassischen Altertumswissenschaft: Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag von Bernhard Schweitzer, Stuttgart, 177–180. Bechi, Guglielmo (1843). “Achille—dipinto pompeiano,” in: Real Museo Borbonico 13, Naples, pl. 37 with text. Bowerman, Helen Cox (1913). Roman Sacrificial Altars: An Archaeological Study of Monuments in Rome. Lancaster, PA. Brandenburg, Hugo (1978). “Der Beginn der stadtrömischen Sarkophageproduktion der Kaiserzeit,” JDI 93, 277–327. Brinkerhoff, Derickson (1978). “Genuine and not so genuine Roman sarcophagi from the Hearst Monument, San Simeon, California,” in: Greece and Italy in the Classical World: Acta of the XI International Congress of Classical Archaeology, London, 3–9 September 1978, 274.

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List of Contributors Beryl Barr-Sharrar, Ph.D. Visiting Scholar Institute of Fine Arts New York University Dietrich Boschung Professor of Classical Archaeology Archäologisches Institut der Universität zu Köln Patricia A. Butz University of California at Riverside Department of Art History Faya Causey, FSA National Gallery of Art (ret.) Robert Cohon Adjunct Professor Kansas City Art Institute Owen Doonan California State University Northridge Diane Favro Professor Emerita Department of Architecture and Urban Design University of California Los Angeles Bernard Frischer Professor Emeritus Indiana University University of California Los Angeles University of Virginia Alessandra Giumlia-Mair, Dr.Phil, M.Sc. AGM-Archeoanalisi, Merano (BZ) Italy Hans Rupprecht Goette Peter J. Holliday Emeritus Professor of the History of Classical Art and Archaeology California State University Long Beach

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111182919-030

Anne F. LaGatta Visiting Assistant Professor of Art History Kenyon College Kenneth Lapatin Curator of Antiquities J. Paul Getty Museum Candace Weddle Livingston Associate Professor of Art History South Carolina School of the Arts at Anderson University Claire L. Lyons Curator of Antiquities J. Paul Getty Museum Carol C. Mattusch, FSA Mathy Professor Emerita George Mason University Trinidad Nogales-Basarrate Director Museo Nacional de Arte Romano Spain Linda Nolan, PhD Independent Researcher Rome Italy Olga Palagia Professor of Classical Archaeology Emerita The University of Athens Greece Peter Justin Moon Schertz Independent Scholar H. Alan Shapiro Professor of Classics and W. H. Collins Vickers Professor of Archaeology Emeritus The Johns Hopkins University

532

List of Contributors

Ambra Spinelli, Ph.D. Adjunct Professor Department of Archaeology & Classics American University of Rome; and Lecturer Department of Art History John Cabot University

Susan Walker Honorary Curator and former Keeper of Antiquities Ashmolean Museum Emeritus Fellow Wolfson College University of Oxford

Andrew Stewart† Emeritus Professor of History of Art and Classics University of California Berkeley

Dr. Dyfri Williams CReA Université libre de Bruxelles

Eric Varner Associate Professor of Classics and Art History Emory University Roger Von Dippe Independent Scholar

Susan Wood Professor Emerita of Art History Department of Art and Art History Oakland University Sarah K. Yeomans, PhD

Index Monuments can be found listed under their location (e.g., Ara Pacis is listed under “Rome”). Abdalonymus 407 Abdera 211–212 acanthus 2, 239, 303, 307, 309, 353, 354–355 accession (of a Roman emperor) 46–47, 50 n. 35, 51, 54–55, 306 Acharnai 215, 220 Accia (= Atia), mother of Augustus 464 Accius, Lucius 145, 145 n. 48 Achilles 97, 100 n. 6, 104, 106, 174–175, 177, 177 n. 41, 326–328, 494, 498, 500–501, 519 n. 50–51 Actium 48, 234, 240 – Battle of 215, 235 actor 15, 144 n. 41, 170 n. 4, 171, 171 n. 9, 172 n. 22, 173, 173 n. 23, 179, 180 n. 52, 181–183, 183 n. 69, 195, 197–198, 329, 342 n. 8 adlocutio 290 Aegean 64–65, 70, 73 n. 48, 74–75, 111 n. 1, 211–212, 214, 342, 402, 405, 481 n. 7 Aegisthus 136–137 Aelius Aristides 90–91 Aelius Caesar, Lucius (= Aelius Verus) 81–84, 88, 91 Aemilius Paullus 27 n. 68, 210, 343–347 Aeneas XI, 230–231, 268–275 aeneum spiculum 384, 384 n. 27 Aeneid see Virgil Aeschylus 79, 137, 141, 145–146 Aesculapius 80 Aethiops 500 Aezani 69–70, 74–75 agalma IX, 32, 36–37 Agamemnon 98, 137, 145, 175, 175 n. 39, 177, 325, 327, 514 Aglaureion 215 agonothete 69 Agrippa, Marcus Vipsanius 48, 237, 263, 275, 363–364, 516 Agrippa Postumus 49, 49 n. 30 Aigai (Vergina) 348 n. 23, 354 – Tomb of Alexander IV of Macedonia 354, 407 n. 37 – Tomb of Philip II 346 Ainos 211–212

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111182919-031

Ajax 104, 320–321, 323, 325–328, 335 Akastos 104–105 Alastor 98 Alba Fucens 283–286, 290, 345 Albani (Cardinal) 66 Albani collection 90, 497 n. 19, 518, 518 n. 39, 521, 524 Albèri Auber, Paolo 245 Aldrovandi, Ulisse 464–465, 468 Alexander the Great 3, 36, 233 n. 43, 345–346, 354–355, 407–409, 412, 421, 463 Alexander IV of Macedonia 354 Alexander of Seleucia 82–83 Alexandria 73 n. 48, 107–108, 121, 127, 172, 234, 313, 343, 345–346, 354, 435–436, 468 Alexandros 500 Alkamenes 215–217 Allianoi 379, 379 n. 3 Allucius 472–474 Altar of the Vicus Aesculeti 516, 520, 520 n. 60 Althaia 98 n. 5, 99, 101, 101 n. 12 Amasis 97, 103 Amazons X, 153–166, 405, 434–435, 491–494, 496–501, 503–504, 506 – Amazonomachy 494, 500–504, 522 n. 75–76 amber X, 31–38 Amphipolis 139 n. 26, 211–212, 344 amphitheater 169–170, 171 n. 8, 181, 184, 265, 409 Anacreon 470, 476 Anatolia X, 189–190, 202–205, 343, 360–361, 371, 405, 408 Andriskos 211–212 Andromeda 292 animal combat motif see Tierkampf Antonia, daughter of Mark Antony 67 Antoninus Pius, emperor 82–86, 311 n. 61, 312 Aphrodisias 65 n. 19 – Sebasteion 270 Aphrodite see also Venus X, 100–101, 111 n. 1, 112–123, 125–128, 162, 182–183, 215–216, 323, 427, 516 – of Aspendos 189 n. 3 of Knidos 117, 125–126, 427

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Index

Apollo 103, 111, 135, 142 n. 35, 145 n. 45, 146–147, 149 n. 66, 150, 192, 215, 215 n. 15, 238–239, 295, 340, 515, 517 n. 34, 520, 524 – Mantua type 517 Apollonios 160–161, 166 Apostolic Visitation 441–443, 447–448, 450, 455 n. 64 apotheosis 224, 234, 309, 313 Apoxyomenos 163, 430–431 Appuleius of Aezani 74–75 Apuleius 84 Archaeophilus 471, 474 archaizing (sculptural style) 81, 124, 154, 300, 302–303 arch, commemorative/triumphal see Rome, fornices archiprytaneos 69 archon 112, 112 n. 5, 215 n. 17, 218 n. 20, 219, 300–304 Archon Basileus 149, 149 n. 68 Ardea Cinerea see Gray Heron, Eurasian Ares see Mars Areopagus 131, 135, 136 n. 18, 137, 141 n. 33, 144, 144 n. 42, 148 Areopagitae 131, 145 Argolid 219 Argos 137, 148 n. 64, 403 n. 17 Ariadne 174–176 Arimasps 406 Aristogeiton 162 Aristotle 80, 91 Arkadia 219 Armenia 48, 164 n. 19 Arretine ware 138, 140, 147, 147 n. 56, 409, 409 n. 47 Artaxerxes I 406 Artaxerxes II 407 Artemis 111, 136 n. 18, 146–147, 154–155, 158, 189, 189 n. 3, 196, 340, 354 n. 39, 515, 518 – Artemis Pergaia (Artemis of Perge) 190–195 – Artemis of Ephesos 67, 153–156, 190 n. 4 Ascanius 269, 271 Aspendos 189 n. 3, 193 Aspertini, Amico 401 n. 6, 414–415 asylia 137 Ateius, Cnaeus 138, 147, 147 n. 56 Atellan farces (fabulae Atellanae) 171, 171 n. 13 Athena see Minerva Athenaios 214

Athens 1, 64, 71, 79–81, 91, 102, 107, 113, 131, 136–137, 141, 143, 154, 162, 165–166, 211, 215, 217, 219–220, 300–304, 307, 313, 319, 326, 330, 332, 345, 351, 403, 406 n. 30, 501 – Acropolis 106, 215, 217, 219, 300, 326, – Agora excavations 64, 216, 218 – Theater of Dionysus 161 n. 10, 300 – Parthenon 300, 300 n. 10 – Parthenon frieze 514, 516, 520–522, 524 atrium 169, 174 n. 32, 350 Attalos II 211, 214 Attic red-figure painting 319, 324, 328, 405, 407 Attica 215, 219–220, 360, 402 Attila (the Hun) 381 Aubrey, Jack 73 auctoritas 49–50, 50 n. 36 Augusta Emerita (Mérida) XI, 263–264, 266, 268, 271–275 – Augusteum 266, 275 – Forum of Augustus 269–270, 273–274 Augustus, emperor X–XI, 1 n. 3, 2–4, 31–38, 42, 44–46, 48–50, 52–55, 162, 169, 172, 172 n. 16, 173 n. 28, 174, 180, 181 n. 57, 215–217, 219, 223–229, 231–232, 234–235, 237–240, 243, 246, 255, 263, 265, 275, 291, 310, 359, 362–365, 369–371, 374, 421, 463–464, 468 n. 13, 517–519, 521 Aurelia, mother of Caesar 463 aureus 310–312, 364 aurichalcum (brass) 359, 363, 374 Baalbek 294 Bacchylides 99, 101 Bacchus see Dionysos Baetica 263 Baia 153, 162–164 Banditaccia necropolis (Cerveteri, Italy) 229, 325 Barbo, Pietro (Pope Paul II) 433, 444 Baronio, Cesare 443, 445 n. 11, 451–454, 456, 458 Bathyllus, pantomime dancer 172, 182 Beazley, John 333, 421 Beger, Lorenz 471, 474–475 Belisarius 469 Bellini, Jacopo 401 n. 6, 414–415 Belvedere Altar 517, 520 Bennu 305, 310 Bernardi, Giovanni 416, 474 n. 27 Bernoulli, Johann Jacob 476 Berytus (Beirut, Lebanon) 128, 148, 289, 293

Index

Bescapé, Ruggiero 401–402, 414–416 Biliotti, Alfred 57 n. 1, 68, 68 n. 33 Bithynia 31 n. 1, 361 Blundell, Henry 417 bone 145 n. 44 and 45, 205 n. 50, 382–383, 388–389, 393, 427, 445 – lever 382–383, 388–389 – elevator 382 – drill 383–384, 388 booty 13, 16, 16 n. 18, 18, 23, 24 n. 49, 25, 25 n. 54, 339, 343–344, 348–349, 351, 412 Boscoreale 348–351, 354–355, 523 – Augustus cup 517 – treasure 523 – Villa of Publius Fannius Synistor 348–352, 355 Bosio, Antonio 444, 446, 446 n. 23, 456–457 Bostra 296 Bovino (ancient Vibinum) 286 Bracci, Domenico Agostino 425–426, 428–429 Brahman (bull breed) 199, 201–204 brass 359–363, 372, 374 – leaded 359, 362–363 bronze 1, 4, 13, 154–155, 158–163, 165–166, 238, 243, 255, 294, 348, 353, 362, 366, 368, 374, 382 n. 17, 384, 393, 408, 416–417, 427, 475, 517, 517 n. 33 – breast plate 344 – couch 343, 519 n. 48 – candelabra 349–351 – dinos 348 – greaves 344 – helmet 344 – herm 160–161, 163, 166 – horse 34–35 – hydria 353–354 – kline 343 – mirror 322–323 – pestle 388 – portrait 32, 160–161, 163, 166, 217, 228 – shield 34, 38, 344, 350 – statue 13, 16, 19–21, 23, 23 n. 44, 27 n. 65, 64, 152, 154, 156, 158–159, 162, 164–165, 217, 283–285, 407 n. 37, 430, 481 n. 8, 520 – statuette 13–14, 107–108, 138, 143–144, 416–417 – tableware 146, 324, 339 – vessel 146, 342–343, 345, 349–350 – weaponry 15, 344 Broomhall (estate) 70–72 Brown, Elizabeth 71

535

Bruce, Robert Preston 72 Brueghel II, Jan 416 Brygos – painter XI, 319, 320, 323, 325–327, 330–334 – tomb 333 bucchero 324 Buchner, Edmund 234, 243–247, 249–251, 253, 255 Caesar, C. Julius 2–3, 144, 215, 224–225, 234, 309, 359, 361, 364, 369, 374, 423, 463–464 Caesar, Gaius, adopted son of Augustus 2–4, 48–49, 216–217, 364 Caesar, Lucius, adopted son of Augustus 2–4, 48–49, 364 Caesarea ad Libanum 293 Caesarion 463 calamine 360 Calandrelli, Giovanni 425, 425 n. 13 Caligula, emperor 3, 51 n. 45, 55, 173, 173 n. 24, 433, 481 calyx 146, 309, 352–355, 484 n. 17 cameo gem, Roman 137, 140–141, 148, 150, 425, 433–434, 435 n. 35 Campania 50, 165, 169–171, 180, 183–184 Canessa, Cesare and Ercole 511, 521, 523–525 capite velato 42 Capito, C. Ateius 237 Capitoline Amazon 156 n. 2, 157 Capitoline Group see Lion Attacking a Horse Capitoline Wolf 413 Capponi, Alessandro Gregorio, Marchese 426 Caracalla, emperor 121, 464 Carisius, P. 274 Carrara marble see marble Carthage, temple of Juno mosaics 411 Carthago Nova 472 Caruso, Enrico 523 Carvilius, Spurius 15 caryatid 267, 273 Casale Marittimo (Italy) 230 Casinum (modern Cassino) 181 Cassius Dio 26, 173, 231–232, 234 n. 50, 468, 468 n. 14, 475–476 Çatalhöyük 193 n. 21 Cato the Younger 465 catopter see speculum, rectal Cavalieri, Giovanni Battista 448–449 cementation (process for brass production) 360–361, 365

536

Index

Cerbara, Giuseppe 425, 425 n. 13 Ceres sarcophagus (Hearst Castle) 511–513, 522–523 Cerveteri see Banditaccia necropolis Chacón, Alonso 464 Chapin, Henry H. 490 Charax of Pergamon 292–293 Chianina (bull breed) 199, 199 n. 34 and 35, 200, 202–204 chiton 138, 142, 149, 162, 303, 431, 479, 481, 491–492, 514 chitoniskos 492 Chiurazzi 163, 163 n. 16 chlamys 135, 271 Chryse 147, 147 n. 54 and 55 Chryseis 147 Chrysippus 80, 468 Chrysler, Walter P., Jr. 479 Cicero, M. Tullius 15 n. 15, 20 n. 35, 27 n. 68, 144–145, 223 n. 4, 309, 370, 465–466, 468 Cicero, Quintus 144 Cilicia 172, 189 n. 3, 306, 308 circus see also venationes 29, 409, 412 Claudius, emperor 3–4, 54, 173, 238, 519 Clement XI (Pope) 506 Clement XII (Pope) 66 Clement XIV (Pope) 486 Cleopatra Selene 426–427, 434–436 Cleopatra VII 48, 234, 369, 426, 463, 465–466, 468, 468 n. 13, 434–435 clipeus 235, 267, 273 Clytemnestra 136–137 coin portraits 44, 47, 310, 312, 364, 463–464, 466 colonialism 319 n. 1 Commodus, emperor 85, 416, 471 Conon 294 Constantine, emperor 380, 454 – portrait head of 399, 413 Constantine II, emperor 380 Constantinople 74, 381 n. 6 Corduba 273 coring 244–245, 247, 249–251, 253–255, 253 n. 40, 256–258 Corinth 347, 367, 369, 406 n. 30 – theater of 64 Corinthian alloy 359, 367–371, 373–375 Corinthiarii 370 Corinthium aes 366, 368–369, 373–374 Coriolanus 471, 475

Cornelius Balbus, Lucius, theater of 180 Cornelius Bocchus, Lucius 264 corona civica 50 n. 40, 51 Cos 57 n. 1, 68–70, 75 – agora 68 – odeion 62–63 Costanti, Emilio 427 Crassus, Marcus Licinius 48 Cretan War 214 Crete 101 crown, victory 34, 38, 65–67, 214 n. 12, 363 Ctesias 406 cubiculum 350–352, 354 cuirass 162, 270, 273, 307, 309, 494 Culross (village in England) 70–73, 75 – Abbey 71 – Abbey House 71–73 Curtianus, Aelius Pius 390–391 Cybele 190 n. 5, 521, 521 n. 70 Cyprus 107, 126, 284, 294–296 Dal Pozzo collection 497, 504 Daugny, Alexandre-Marc-René Estienne 430 decursio 232, 311 Della Bella, Stefano 416 Delos X, 111–115, 119–121, 125–128, 211, 343, 343 n. 11, 368 – Terrace of the Foreign Gods 111, 113 Delphi 18 n. 25, 103 n. 26, 134 n. 11, 135 n. 14, 147 n. 57, 172 n. 15, 210, 408 – Krateros Monument 408 Demosthenes 80, 107 n. 37, 427 n. 19, 469–471, 476 Devnya (ancient Marcianopolis) see Marcianopolis Dexamenos 436 diadem 291, 464, 481, 483–484, 487 n. 24 Didyma 69, 75 Dike 142, 142 n. 35, 149–150 Dio Cassius see Cassius Dio Dio Chrysostom 81 Diocletian, emperor 190 n. 7, 263, 380, 453 n. 51, 521 Diodorus Siculus 209–211 Diogenes 86, 471 Diogenes Laertius 471 Diomedes 428, 435 Dionysios, son of Zenon X, 113–114, 122–126, 128–129 Dionysius of Halicarnassus 19, 219 n. 21, 230–231 Dionysopolis 146

Index

Dionysos/Dionysus 103, 121, 123, 138, 154, 174–176, 182, 182 n. 66, 290, 292, 295, 300, 303, 333, 361, 407, 494, 517 n. 35, 518, 519 n. 49, 522 n. 76 Dioskourides 421, 422 n. 4, 427 n. 19, 429, 435 n. 35, 436 divus 3, 50, 50 n. 41, 224 n. 10, 307–308, 310, 312 n. 64, 313 dominus 174–175, 184, 450 n. 41 Domitian, emperor 62, 172 n. 22, 197, 243, 246 domus 379, 381, 389, 411 n. 51 Domus del Chirurgo 379, 390 n. 40 Doria Pamphili Amazon 156 n. 2, 158 Doryphoros 159–163, 166 drill 402, 432, 514 – bone 383–384, 388 – cranial 383 Drusus, grandson of Tiberius 216, 219, 219 n. 23, 232 Dulodorus 471, 474 Dundonald, 7th Earl of (William Cochrane) 71 Dundonald, 10th Earl of (Thomas Cochrane) 73 dupondius 362–364, 374 Eckhout, Albert 417 eikon 31–32, 35–38 eirenarch 69 Elagabalus, emperor 289, 293 n. 48 El Djem 411 Electra 136, 148 n. 64 Eleusis 219 Elgin, 7th Lord of (Thomas Bruce) 70–72, 75 Elgin, 10th Lord of (Edward James Bruce) 72 Elgin, Katherine (Dowager Countess, née Cochrane) 72 Elis 217 elogium 235 n. 58, 269, 273, 466 emporium 111 n. 1 engraved gems, Roman 137, 139 n. 26, 143, 282, 435, 474 Enyalios 218–219 Enyo 216, 218–219, 220 n. 28 Ephesos/Ephesus 35, 47, 49, 66–67, 69, 70 n. 39, 74–75, 153–156, 158–159, 164, 189, 190 n. 4, 191, 192 n. 14, 197, 198 n. 30, 386 n. 28, 430 Epicurus 80, 91 Epidauros 307, 307 n. 41 Epimenes 422

537

Eretria, House of the Mosaics 405 n. 29, 406 Erigone 131 n. 2, 136–137, 140, 148, 148 n. 64 Eros X, 100–101, 111 n. 1, 113–114, 116–117, 119–122, 125–128, 182, 292, 323, 515–516, 518 eschata 299 Établissement des Poséidoniastes (Establishment of the Poseidoniastai) 111 n. 1, 113–114, 127–128 Etrusca Disciplina 223, 236 Etruscan 13–14, 19, 21, 34, 36 n. 22, 183, 223–225, 229–230, 233–234, 236–238, 240, 320–324, 326, 329–332, 522, 522 n. 80, 525 – mirrors 322–323, 334 – women 321, 332, 332 n. 40 Eumenes II 209–211, 214 Euripides 80, 98, 99 n. 5, 101, 104, 136, 145–147, 198 n. 29, 466, 466 n. 11 Eutyches, son of Dioskourides 436 exomis 492–493 Faber, Johann 423, 432, 475 Fabius Maximus Allobrogicus, Q. 26, 26 n. 61 Fabri de Peiresc, Nicolas-Claude 469 Faustina Maior, wife of Antoninus Pius 84–85, 312, 312 n. 65 Faustina Minor, wife of Marcus Aurelius 84–85, 471 fetters see shackles Fife Coal Company 73 Fjódorovna Barjátinskaja, Maria 486 n. 23 Flavius, Titus Eucarpus 62 Floris, Stefano 244–245, 247–251, 255–256 Florus 26 n. 61, 340 n. 4, 366, 464 forceps 382–383, 389–390 Forester, C.S. 73 forgery 422, 427 n. 16, 505, 507, 507 n. 59, 511, 514–515, 522–525 fornices see Rome forum XI, 13–16, 18–21, 24–27, 46, 223–225, 264–276, 281–286, 288–291, 293–296 Fouquier, Jacques 66 Fourth Macedonian War 211 Fronto 83 Fulcinius Trio, Lucius 264 Fulvio, Andrea 463–466 funus publicum 225 Furies 103, 131, 134–137, 139–143, 148–149 Furtwängler, Adolf 431, 433, 524

538

Index

Gaius see Caesar, Gaius Gallonio, Antonio 441, 441 n. 3, 443, 445 n. 16, 446–447, 450 n. 39, 454–456, 458 gems 137, 139 n. 26, 270, 328, 345–346, 353, 405 n. 28, 417, 421–424, 427–429, 433–436, 466, 474 gem-engraving 137, 139 n. 26, 432, 435, 474 gens Claudia 48 gens Iulia 275 Geta 464 Getty kouros 489 Girometti, Giuseppe 425 gladiator 411 n. 51, 471, 475 Gnaeus Gellius 291 Gnaios, gem-engraver XI, 422–425, 428, 431, 433–436 gold 31 n. 1, 83–84, 107, 214 n. 11 and 12, 235, 310, 322, 324, 339–346, 348–354, 359–368, 371, 374–375, 384–385, 405–406, 423–424, 426, 428–429, 432 Golden Legend 448–450 Goltzius, Hubert 401 Gorgoneion 133–134, 138–139, 143, 492, 494, 501, 503, 503 n. 43 Gori, Antonio Francesco 424 granite 235, 264 Gray Heron, Eurasian 305, 310–311 Gregory the Great, Throne of 302, 304 griffin 299–300, 304, 304 n. 22, 307–309, 313, 405–406, 522 n. 76 Hadrian, emperor 34, 38, 60, 79–83, 90, 236, 288, 299–302, 304, 306–309, 311–313, 409 Hadrumentum 410 Halicarnassus, Mausoleum 407, 407 n. 33 Harpokrates 306 Hearst, William Randolph 511, 523–524 Heios, gem engraver 436 heirloom 343 Helios 32, 305 Hellespont 214 hepatizon 368, 373 Hephaistion 83 Herakles see Hercules Herculaneum 38, 38 n. 32, 146 n. 51, 153–154, 163–166, 169–170, 172, 175 n. 34, 179–183, 350, 379 n. 3, 394 – Basilica 153, 164

– Villa dei Papiri 153–154, 160–161, 163–165, 180, 180 n. 53, 350 Hercules 103, 154, 162, 170, 174, 182, 182 n. 66, 307, 309, 313, 333, 423–426, 433–436, 468, 494, 519 n. 50 herm 88, 90–91, 103, 154, 160–161, 163, 166, 183, 183 n. 70, 466, 469–471 Hermione 219 Herodes Atticus 83 Herodian 311, 313 Herodotus 97, 306, 463 Hersilia 464 Hesiod 97, 205 n. 50, 476 n. 32 Heslin, Peter 245–251, 253, 255 Hesychius of Alexandria 191 n. 13 Hetairoi, companions of Alexander the Great 407–408 Hildesheim Treasure 351–352 himation 62, 85–86, 88–89, 91, 327, 479–481, 484, 516 Hippolyta 154, 494 Hispania 263, 267, 272–273 Historia Augusta 81–83 histrio see actor Hobhouse, J.C. 73 Holconius Celer, Marcus 180 Holconius Rufus, Marcus 180 Hölscher, Tonio 80, 144–145 Homer 32, 80–81, 99 hook 382–383 – retractor 383 Horace 179, 237–238, 289 Hornblower, Horatio 73 Horologium/Solarium Augusti see Rome horse 4, 15 n. 12, 25, 34–35, 48, 106, 136, 344, 359, 362–363, 374, 399–409, 412–418, 455, 491–492, 495, 496 n. 18, 498, 500–501, 505–506 – horse fittings 359, 362, 374 Huns, invasion 381–382 hunting 100, 104, 400, 404, 407–409, 412 hydria 352–354, 405, 405 n. 24, 429, 518, 521 Hyginus 147 Hylas 177 Iakchos 103 Iberian peninsula 263, 273, 276, 365 Iliad 97, 100 n. 6, 104, 106, 500

Index

imperial cult, Roman 65 n. 18, 173, 265–266, 275, 304 – priestess of 310 imperium 24, 50, 50 n. 35, 212, 238 Indicopleustes, Cosmas 414 instrumentarium 379–382, 383 n. 19, 385, 388, 390, 390 n. 40, 392–393, 395 internationalism X, 111, 113, 129 Italica, city in Hispania 273 ivory 31 n. 1, 32, 34–38, 343, 425 Jackson, William 74 Janus 463 Juba II, King of Mauretania 435, 435 n. 39, 436 n. 40 Julia the Elder (Julia Augusti/Julia Caesaris) 48–49, 225, 239, 239 n. 79, 240, 291 Julio-Claudian Dynasty 1–3, 44, 50, 55 Juno Lanuvina 428 Jupiter 2, 13, 13 n. 6, 15, 15 n. 15, 20, 20 n. 35, 25, 25, n. 56, 139, 143 n. 37 and 40, 233, 468 – Jupiter Ammon 267 Justinian 469 Juvenal 18 n. 28, 171, 172 n. 22, 178 n. 43, 389, 389 n. 38 Kallimachos 154, 219 kantharos 106, 351–352 Kephisodotos 216, 219 Kerngruppe 46, 51 Koponios Maximos, Titos 218–220 kosmetai 79, 82 krateriskos from Taranto 340–341, 354 Kremna 190 Kresilas 155–156, 162 Kroisos 97 Kydon 155–156 kylix 320–322, 326–330, 332–333, 335, 344 Kyzikos 214 lamp, Roman 107, 134 n. 7, 138, 139 n. 26, 143, 148, 179, 281–282, 284, 287, 289–296, 409–410 Lanuvium 85 La Torre, Magda 251 Le Brun, Charles 416 Leochares 408 Leonhardt, Günther 251, 251 n. 34 and 38, 253 Liber Pater 290 libertas 281, 293, 296

539

Licinia 301 n. 15, 302, 304 Limyra 407 Lion Attacking a Horse 399, 399 n. 1, 402–403, 409–410, 412–414, 416–418 Lipsius, Justus 471, 475 lithotomy 382–383 – extractor 382, 384 Livia, wife of Augustus 481, 516 Livy 15, 19, 20 n. 31 and 35, 22, 24–25, 210–211, 212 n. 5, 214 n. 11, 225 n. 15 and 17, 320–321, 339–347, 354 n. 38, 359 n. 3, 463, 471 Lokros of Paros 215–216, 218 loot 13, 18, 323, 333, 339, 339 n. 2 Lorrain, Claude 416 Louis, Duc de Blacas d’Aulps 423 Lucan, pantomime libretti written by 178, 178 n. 43 Lucian 98, 122 n. 32, 159, 162, 172 n. 16 and 20, 173 n. 27, 175, 177–178, 183 n. 68, 471 Lucilius 81 Lucilla 85 Lucius Verus, emperor 80, 82–83, 84 n. 29, 85, 466 Lucretia 321, 466 Lucretius 179 ludi 237, 237 n. 66 – Apollinares 173 – Augustales 173, 173 n. 28 – Saeculares (Secular Games) 174, 237 Lugdunum (modern Lyon, France) 364–365 Lusieri, Giovanni Battista 71 Lusitania (province) 263–264, 274–275 Lydia 291 Lykaonia 219 Lykomedes 102 Lysippos 163, 408, 430 Macedonian kingdom (Macedonian monarchy 343) Maderno, Stefano (Saint Cecilia sculpture) 445 Maecenas 236–237 Magna Graecia 285, 405 n. 26 Magnesia on the Meander 196 Marble X, 1, 25, 25 n. 55, 26 n. 63, 27 n. 65, 32, 34, 36, 38, 41–44, 57, 59–60, 63–64, 69, 75, 84, 88, 111, 113, 138, 141, 142–143, 148 n. 60, 149, 153–156, 158–166, 179 n. 51, 215, 217, 220 n. 29, 228, 235, 237, 250–251, 253, 257, 264, 266, 275–276, 287, 300–304, 348–354, 402–403, 407, 409, 412–413, 417–418, 424,

540

Index

427, 430, 434, 445, 447, 476, 481, 484, 487, 491, 511, 514, 518, 522–523 – Carrara (Luna) 43, 59, 160 n. 8, 228, 237–238, 481 – Parian 26 n. 63, 34, 42–43, 57, 59 n. 3, 63–64, 84, 160 n. 8, 402 n. 15, 409 – Pentelic 160 n. 8, 162, 164–165, 215, 217, 302, 402, 409, 412 – Thasian 64 Marcellus, Marcus Claudius (270–208 BCE) 339, 339 n. 2, 354, 354 n. 38, 463 Marcellus, Marcus Claudius (42–23 BCE) 48, 234 n. 50, 239 Marcia, grandmother of Caesar 463 Marcianopolis (modern Devnya, Bulgaria) 379–386, 388–394 – House of Antiope 381–382 Marcius Censorinus, Gaius 282–283 Marcus Aurelius, emperor 80, 83, 85, 89–90, 399, 413, 413 n. 57, 463, 466, 471 – equestrian portrait of 413, 413 n. 57 Marius 20, 463, 465 Mark Antony 48, 67, 426, 435, 436 n. 40 Maroneia 211–212 Mars – 174–177, 178 n. 47, 215, 219–220, 344, 515 – Ares 149–150, 183 n. 68, 215–220 Marsyas 281, 283–286, 288–296 – Forum Marsyas XI, 281–284, 286, 288–291, 293–296 – Hanging Marsyas 281 Martial 143, 170, 370 Mattei Amazon 156 n. 2, 157, 162 medica taberna 391 Medici, Lorenzo de’ 429 Medicine XI, 379, 388, 389 n. 37, 393 – Bottle 388 – Box 138, 253–255, 257–258, 388 medicus 383, 388–390, 393–394 Medusa 81, 267, 492 Megabyzus 406 Megales 291 Megalopolis 137 melanosis (“putrefaction” of metals) 372–373 Meleager 98 n. 5, 99, 101, 101 n. 13, 103, 104 n. 28 Melpomene (muse) 431, 483 n. 14 Menander 80 Menelaos 500 Meridian X, 239 n. 78, 243–244, 245 n. 13, 250, 253, 255–256, 259 Messene 137

Metalworking 339, 345, 385 Metrodoros 80 Michelangelo 401, 413–414 Michaelis, Adolf 71, 520 Middle Ages 109, 225, 463, 507 Mime 171, 171 n. 10, 172 n. 15, 175 n. 37, 178 n. 44, 184 Minerva 144, 282, 295, 344 – Athena 131–140, 141 n. 33, 142–143, 145–146, 148, 148 n. 61, 165–166, 215–216, 218, 220, 295, 326–327, 428 Mistress of Perge 189–190, 191 n. 9 Mithridates VI, king of Pontus 347–348, 361 mnemosuna 147 Mnester, pantomime dancer 173 Modius Asiaticus, Marcus 60 n. 4, 62 Moesia Secunda 380 Mogalli, Niccolo 426 Moirai 99 Mold 52, 54, 159, 284 Montfaucon, Bernard de 474 Morgan, J.P. 523 Mosaics 169, 179, 248–250, 381, 381 n. 9, 405 n. 29, 406, 406 n. 30, 411 n. 51 Mt. Gerezim 294 Muse sarcophagus (Hearst Castle) 523 Mysia 211 mythological wall painting 169, 174–175 Natter, Lorenz 492 n. 23, 433 Nea Paphos 294 Needle 382–385, 388, 390 – Handle 383, 385 – Ophthalmic 384–385, 390 Nennig, Roman villa 411 n. 51 Nero, emperor 3–4, 32 n. 6, 34, 46 n. 14, 80, 139, 159, 166, 171 n. 9, 173–175, 183 n. 68, 275, 475–476, 519 Nero, Tiberius Claudius, father of the emperor 48–49 Nerva, emperor 62 Newton, Charles 68 Nicomedes I, king of Bithynia 31 n. 1, 34, 34 n. 16, 35–38 Nicomedes IV, king of Bithynia 361 niello 359, 369–375 Nilotic scene 410 Norbanus Sorex, C., actor 183, 183 n. 70, 237 nucleus (layer of Roman pavement) 248, 249–250, 399

Index

O’Brien, Patrick 73 Octavian 48, 144–145, 223–225, 227–228, 231, 233–237, 238 n. 75, 239, 369, 466, 468 Octavius, Gaius, father of Augustus 464–465 Odessos (modern Varna, Bulgaria) see Varna officinae 265, 270 Olympia 31, 33–34, 36–38, 139 n. 26 – Temple of Zeus 31, 36, 38 Onager 403–404, 410–411 Oplontis, Villa A 349–352, 355 Orchomenos 219 oreichalkos (brass) 359–360 Orestes X, 131, 134–137, 139, 139 n. 26, 140, 141 n. 33, 145–150, 354 n. 39 Orsini, Fulvio 423, 423 n. 9, 466, 469, 474–476 Osiris 304–305, 311 Ostia, building with opus sectile 1, 411 n. 51 Otho, emperor 264 Oudna, Villa of the Laberii 411 n. 51 Ovid 107, 175 n. 38, 178–179, 306, 309 Pacuvius, Marcus 145, 145 n. 48, 147 Paestum 283–286, 290–292 paideia 79, 81, 83, 85 paint, in-painting 68, 159, 164, 321, 390, 448 Paionios 209 Palace of the Conde de los Corbos 266 Palaeography 69, 122, 125 Palatine Anthology 81 Palermo, House B Mosaic 408 Palladion 140, 150, 282, 428 Pallene 215, 215 n. 15, 220 paludamentum 272 Pamphylia 189, 189 n. 3, 190 n. 7, 198, 203, 205, 308 panegyrarch 69 Pan/Pans X, 111, 111 n. 1, 113–122, 123 n. 35, 125–128, 182 Pannini, Giovanni Paolo 414 pantomime 169, 171–175 – saltatores (pantomime dancers) 173 n. 23 Panzerstatue 272 Paris, pantomime dancer 175 Paros 57, 112 n. 5, 215–216 Parthia 48, 310 Parthian War 306–307 Pasiteles 131 patera 511, 513, 517 n. 35, 519, 519 n. 45 Patronus coloniae 275 Paul II (Pope) see Barbo, Pietro

541

Paullus 27 n. 68, 210–213, 343–347 Pausanias 31–38, 103 n. 26, 136 n. 18, 137, 141, 154, 209, 215–216, 218–220, 367 pavers, travertine 243, 246–248, 250, 253, 253 n. 40 Pax Augusti 374–375 Peitho 126, 142 Peleus 97–98, 100–101, 103–106, 323 Pella, House of Dionysos 343, 345, 355, 407 Peplophoros 164–165 Pergamon 18 n. 25, 209, 211, 214, 292, 346 n. 17, 347, 402–403, 519 n. 45 – altar 3, 14 n. 8, 11 n. 1, 113, 126, 126 n. 43, 140 n. 30, 142 n. 35, 145, 192, 195 n. 25, 196–197, 199, 205, 215, 215 n. 14, 220, 231–232, 239, 266, 275, 299 n. 3, 306, 332, 350, 403, 405 n. 26 and 29, 413, 413 n. 55, 428, 445–447, 451, 451 n. 43, 516–521 Perge 189–199, 201–202, 205, 307–309 – Temple of Artemis 153, 155–156, 190–192 – other possible temples 192, 192 n. 15 – theater 161 n. 10, 169–172, 174, 179–181, 183–184, 189–190, 192–195, 214, 226, 239, 263, 265, 275–276, 300, 308–309, 469 Peacham, Henry 467–468 Penthesileia 494, 498, 500–501, 506 Peregrinus 91, 471 Peristyle 114, 161, 174, 174 n. 31, 180 n. 53, 300 n. 10, 348 n. 23 Perithoös 103, 103 n. 26 Perrier, François 471 Persephone 102–103, 121, 127, 518, 521 Perseus, king of Macedon 209–211, 213, 214 n. 12, 343–346, 355 Persian Empire 403, 406 Petronius 179, 179 n. 48, 366 phalerae 362 Pharos 311 Pheidias 155–156, 159, 215 Phiale 143 n. 37, 333, 344–345, 405–406 Philip I, king of Macedon 283 Philip II, king of Macedon 354 Philip II, tomb of 346 Philip V, king of Macedon 209–210, 341–343, 345 Philippi 65 Philostratus 82, 83 n. 21, 299 phoenix XI, 100 n. 6, 299, 299 n. 1 and 3, 304–306, 310–313, 522 n. 76 Phonos 98 Phradmon 156

542

Index

Phrygian cap 271, 497 n. 19 Phthonos X, 98, 98 n. 3, 100–101, 103, 106–109 physician 60 n. 4, 380–386, 388–393, 395 Picart, Bernard 424–425 Pichler, Antonio 417, 428 Pichler, Giovanni 425, 425 n. 13, 428, 428 n. 20 Pichler, Luigi 425, 425 n. 13, 428, 428 n. 20 pietas 271 pileus 291, 291 n. 35 Pindar 90, 97–98, 104–105, 154 pirate 211, 214, 348 Pisidia 190 Piso, Lucius Calpurnius 165–166 Plantzos, Dimitris 435 plaster cast 153, 162, 164 platinum group elements 365 Plato 79–81, 91 Pliny the Elder 11, 16, 19, 28, 32, 42, 131, 143, 145, 153–156, 159, 163, 164 n. 19, 166, 174, 238, 243–244, 255, 286, 291, 306, 342–343, 346, 360, 366–371, 373 Pliny the Younger 179, 179 n. 49, 213, 215 n. 15, 366 Plutarch 178, 224, 232, 344–346, 354–355, 366–367, 423, 463, 469, 471 Polemon of Laodicea 191 Polybius 20, 339, 345, 407, 471 Polykleitan Amazon 153, 157, 160–162, 164, 166 Polykleitos 153, 155–156, 159–161, 166 Polykrates 97, 103, 421 polos 190, 190 n. 6, 195 n. 24, 303 Pomarancio (Niccolò Circignani) 448, 448 n. 28 Pompeii 15 n. 12, 101 n. 7, 135, 135 n. 16, 146 n. 51, 169–175, 176–177, 179–183, 304, 311, 354 n. 39, 379 n. 3, 386, 386 n. 30, 387 n. 32, 394, 410 n. 49, 481 n. 8, 517, 517 n. 33, 518 n. 39, 520 – Casa degli Amorini Dorati 174 – Casa dei Dioscuri 175, 177, 180 n. 52, 213, 417 – Casa dei Quadretti Teatrali 180 n. 52 – Casa dei Quattro Stili 182 n. 63 – Casa del Centenario 180 n. 52, 410, 410 n. 48 – Casa del Fauno 174 n. 31 – Casa del Poeta Tragico 180 n. 52 – Casa di Apollo 182 n. 63 – Casa di Giulio Polibio 180 n. 53 – Casa di M. Lucretius Fronto 175–176 – Casa di Octavius Quartio 410, 410 n. 48 – Casa di Trebius Valens 180 n. 53 – caupona of Euxinos 304 n. 25 – club of Anicetiani 172

– club of Paridiani 172 – Eumachia, Building of 183, 183 n. 70 – Isis, Temple of 111 n. 3, 113, 183, 183 n. 70, 304, 304 n. 25, 311 – Large Theater 172 n. 18, 180, 180 n. 56, 181 n. 60, 263 – Small Theater (Theatrum Tectum) 172 n. 18 Pompey the Great (Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus) 131, 347, 423 Poniatowski, Stanislas (prince) 422, 422 n. 6, 435 Pontchartrain, M. le Chancelier de 62 Pontifex Maximus 32, 42, 239 n. 79 Posi, Paolo 417 Post, Frans 417 potestas 50, 50 n. 36 pottery vessel, Arretine 138, 140, 147, 147 n. 56, 409, 409 n. 47 Poussin, Nicolas 474 Praxiteles 216, 219, 427, 517 – Leaning Satyr 517, 520, 523 Preston, Robert 71–75 probe 382, 390 – spatula 382, 390 processions 15, 135, 176, 190 n. 5, 191–192, 195, 195 n. 25, 198, 239, 339, 342, 344–345, 347–348, 411 n. 51, 468, 513–516, 518, 520–521, 523 Prometheus 148, 148 n. 61, 205 n. 50, 292 Propertius 175, 175 n. 37 Propontis 211, 214 Prousias II, king of Bithynia 211, 214 pseudo-Akron 289 pseudo-Scylax 191, 191 n. 9 Psychopomp 305, 309, 309 n. 46 pudicitia (statue type) 480–486 Pydna 209–210, 343, 355, 408 – funerary monument 67, 137, 148, 232–233, 525 Pylades, pantomime dancer 136, 139, 146–147, 148 n. 64, 172–174, 177, 182–183, 354 n. 39 Pyrgoteles 421 Pyrrhus 19, 340 n. 4, 465 pyrricha 171, 171 n. 9 Pythagoras 84 Pythodoris/Pythodoros 57 n. 1, 61, 64–67, 69, 74 Python 511, 517 Quadratilla, Ummidia 181, 181 n. 58 Quintilian 182 n. 65, 366

Index

Quinto di Sesto Fiorentino 230 Quintus, gem-engraver 436 Rakob, Friedrich 245 n. 13, 246–249, 259 Rasinius, Marcus, potter 147 Raspe, Rudolf Erich 247 n. 16, 426 Ray, Charles, Mountain Lion Attacking a Dog 418 Reaves, Gibson 490 Reaves, Mary K. 490 Reindorp, Joachim 428, 430 relics of saints 413, 413 n. 55 and 56, 444–447, 449, 458 n. 76, 459 Renaissance 255, 266, 373, 399, 401–404, 414, 489, 505–506 Rhodes 49, 49 n. 29, 53, 63, 68, 210–211 – Palace of the Grand Master 63 Rhyton 322 Richter, Gisela M.A. 301, 427 Ridgway, Brunilde 113 n. 11, 115, 117, 121 n. 31, 122 n. 32, 153, 156 n. 2, 159, 489, 489 n. 2 Rimini 379, 379 n. 3, 390, 390 n. 40, 394 – Domus del Chirurgo 379, 390 n. 40 Rockox, Nicolaas 469–470 Roma (goddess) 518 Roman house see atrium, cubiculum, peristyle, tablinum, triclinium Rome – Anaglypha Traiani 282–284, 287, 290–294 – Ara Pacis 2–3, 234, 239, 245 n. 13, 246, 250 n. 30, 270, 516, 517 n. 36, 519–521, 524 – Basilica of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere 445, 448 n. 28 – Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore 445 – Basilica of Santa Sabina 442 n. 6, 450 – Campus Martius 21 n. 40, 22, 24, 225, 232–235, 239–240, 243, 245 n. 13, 259, 311 – Horologium/Solarium Augusti X, 234, 239, 239 n. 79, 243–244, 245 n. 13, 246, 258 – Capitoline Hill 13 n. 6, 15, 18–19, 25 n. 55 and 58, 399 – Basilica of Santa Maria in Aracoeli 416 – Campidoglio 414, 416–417 – Palazzo dei Conservatori 413, 416 – Palazzo Senatorio 413, 416 – Casal Rotondo 231 – Catacombs 444, 447, 456, 456 n. 69, 458 – Church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin 441–442, 455 n. 65, 458, 458 n. 76

543

– Church of Sant’Apollinare 447–448, 450, 455, 455 n. 64 – Church of Santi Vincenzo e Anastasio alle Tre Fontane 450, 450 n. 34, 455, 455 n. 64 – Circus Flaminius 225, 239 – Circus Maximus 16 n. 20, 19, 24, 24 n. 51, 412, 412 n. 54 – Column of Trajan 307, 311, 475 – Festa della Chinea 417 – Fornices Stertinii 23–25 – fornix 11, 11 n. 1, 13, 16 n. 18, 21 n. 40, 23–27 – Fornix Calpurnianus 25, 26 n. 59 – Fornix Fabianus 26–27 – Fornix Scipionis 27 – Forum Augustum 264, 267–268, 271 – Forum Boarium 14, 18, 24, 26, 26 n. 59 – Forum Romanum 15, 16 n. 18, 18–21, 26, 26 n. 64, 281, 285, 294 – Column of C. Duilius 16 n. 20 – Column of C. Maenius (Columna Maenia) 16, 282 – Lateran Palace 463 – Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus (Capitolium) 13 n. 6, 25 Romulus XI, 224, 233–234, 263, 272–275, 294, 464 rostra 16, 16 n. 18 and 22, 19, 20 n. 35 Rothschild, Edmond de (baron) 340–341, 523 Rubens, Peter Paul 414, 469, 471 rudus 248–250, 249 n. 26 Rufus, gem-engraver 436 Russel, James 417 Sabazios 300, 303–304, 307, 309 sacrifice, Greco-Roman 19, 42, 98, 145–146, 154, 192–198, 200, 202, 204, 205, 219, 219 n. 22 and 26, 238–239, 270, 275, 333 saecula 223–225, 237–239 saltatores see pantomime salutatio 174–175 Samothrace 70, 165, 209–214 – Nike of 209–210, 212–214 – Sanctuary of the Great Gods 209, 211–213 – Theoi Megaloi 70 Sandrart, Joachim von 468–469 Santarelli, Giovanni Antonio 425 Santini, Giovanni Angelo (called Toccafondo) 444, 444 n. 9 sarcophagus XI, 91, 134 n. 7, 8 and 13, 135 n. 17, 139–140, 146–150, 236, 354, 405, 405 n. 29,

544

Index

407, 413, 413 n. 55, 445 n. 15, 489–506, 511–525 – Alexander Sarcophagus 407 – Endymion Sarcophagus (Hearst Castle) 523 – Hecatomnus sarcophagus 407 Saturninus 436 satyr 138, 179–180, 182, 283, 290, 292, 323, 333, 517, 520, 520 n. 60, 523 satyr play 180, 180 n. 52, 182, 333 Savatra 219 scaenae frons 170 n. 4, 182 n. 63, 193, 193 n. 22 scalpel 382–383, 384 n. 27, 388, 390, 390 n. 41 Sciarra Amazon 155, 157–158, 162 Scipio Africanus 17, 19, 20 n. 35, 25, 25 n. 53 and 56, 342, 465, 471–472 – continentia of 473–474 – ‘shield of’ 471, 473–475, 503 n. 43 Scipio Nasica 465 scissors 382 Scott, Walter 71, 73 Scythia 405–406, 500 – “animal style” art 405 – Graeco-Scythian art 405 Sebasta Games 173, 173 n. 28 Second Sophistic X, 79–80, 84, 91, 93 Second Style frescoes 348–350, 354–355 Selinus in Cilicia 306, 311 senate, Roman 3, 11, 15–16, 20, 20 n. 35, 24–25, 49–50, 53, 180 n. 57, 209–211, 212 n. 5, 213–214, 225, 234–235, 306–307, 309, 311, 313, 344, 364 Seneca 28, 80, 178, 291, 368, 475–476 Sens 146 Septimius Severus, emperor 311, 463 sepulchral sculpture 483 n. 13, 485 Servius 145 n. 45, 223–224, 289, 296 Servius Danielus 289 Sessa Aurunca 309 sestertius 311 n. 61, 364 Settis, Salvatore 148, 399 n. 1 shackles, “fetters” 284, 291–293, 454 Side 192 n. 15, 307–309 Sidon 293, 407 – royal necropolis 407 sidus Iulium 224–225, 239 Silenus (silen) see also satyrs 281–282, 289 silver 24, 31 n. 1, 32, 35, 131, 214 n. 11, 339–355, 360–361, 363–364, 366–368, 371, 384–385, 418, 430, 471, 480, 486 n. 21

silver vessels, Roman XI, 131–133, 139–143, 145–146, 147 n. 57, 148, 341–355, 473–474 silverware 348 Sinope, tomb monument 164 n. 19 Sirano, Francesco 164 Sminthe 147, 147 n. 54 and 55 Smith, R.R.R. (Bert) 57, 57 n. 1, 60 n. 5, 75, 79, 91, 127 smithsonite (zinc carbonate) 360 Smyrna 62, 66, 70, 74, 74 n. 52 Socrates 79–80, 91 Solinus, Gaius Iulius 291 Sol, Sol Sanctissimus 32, 238, 299 n. 3 Solokha Kurgan (Ukraine) 405 – gold phiale from 405–406 Solon 97, 219 n. 22 Sophocles 80, 98, 136 n. 18, 147, 325 – Ajax 98, 104, 320–321, 325 Sorrento Base 514–515, 517–521, 523–524 Sosikles Amazon 157, 162 Speculum 382, 382 n. 17, 384 n. 27, 385–389, 390 n. 41, 394 – bivalve 387 n. 33 – rectal 386–388 – trivalve 385–386 – vaginal 385–386, 388 Sperlonga Group 53 sphalerite (zinc blende) 360 spoils (of war) 214 n. 12, 235, 339, 343, 365, 472 Spon, Jacob 66, 471–475 Statius 178, 178 n. 43 statumen 248–250 Stertinius, Lucius 23–25 Stesilaos 112, 112 n. 5, 125 Stesileia 112 Stettiner, Pietro 524–525 Stewart, Andrew X, 156, 209, 399 n. 1, 403 n. 18, 421, 532 storm 19, 23 n. 44 Strabo 191, 211, 213 n. 7, 228, 236, 360 Strongylion 159, 165–166 Strozzi, Leone 139 n. 26, 423 Suetonius 45–46, 49 n. 29, 50, 171 n. 9, 224, 232, 234–235, 369, 371, 463 Sulla 20, 171, 171 n. 11, 225, 286, 364, 465 summi viri 367 Susini, Antonio and Giovanni Francesco 416 swan 511, 516, 519, 520 n. 59 symposium 320, 323, 330–331, 339, 352 n. 32

Index

Tableware 339, 342, 345–346, 348 tablinum 165, 169–170, 174–177, 180 n. 52 and 53, 182 n. 63 Tacitus 48 n. 26, 475 taenia 59, 64–65, 68–69 talisman 304–305 tamias 69 Tarchon the Tyrrhenian 291 Tarentum (Taranto, Italy) 15 n. 14, 19, 339, 341 – Piazza Maria Immacolata Domus 411 n. 51 Tarraconensis 263 Taurians 139–140, 146–147 Tekmessa 320–321, 325, 327–328, 334 Thanatos 98 Thasos 57, 196, 198, 402 theater/theatre 46, 91, 161 n. 10, 169–172, 174, 179–181, 183–184, 189–190, 192–195, 214, 226, 239, 263, 265, 275–276, 300, 308–309, 394, 409, 469 Theodoros of Samos 421 Theon 66 Theseus 100–103, 154, 174, 428 n. 20, 433 Thetis 104–105, 323 Third Macedonian War 209–210, 343 Thoas 146–147 Thorwaldsen, Bertel 486 n. 23 Thucydides 463 Thysdrus, House of the Dionysiac Procession 411 n. 51 Tiberius, emperor X, 41–55, 142 n. 35, 172, 216, 464 Tierkampf 400, 405, 409, 412 Tigranes III 48 Timanthes 145 Timarchos 216, 219 tinning (process) 363 Titus, emperor 75, 341 Tivoli 250 n. 32 – Villa of Hadrian, Centaur mosaic 403 n. 19 toga 42, 238, 271 togate statue 43, 86, 89, 267, 274, 479 tombs – Tomba “de Carri” (Populonia) 229 – Tomb of Aelius Pius Curtianus 390–391 – Tomb of Aeneas (Lavinium) 230–231 – Tomb of Caecilia Metella (Via Appia, Rome) 231 n. 32 – Tomb of the Curiatii (Via Appia, Rome) 231

545

– Tomb of the Horatii (Via Appia, Rome) 231 – Tomb of Maria Catherina di Sabello 522, 522 n. 80 – Tomb of the Servilii (Via Appia, Rome) 232, 309 n. 46 – Tomb at Vigna Pepoli 231 Toulouse 51 Trajan, emperor 34, 38, 64, 213, 215 n. 15, 219, 306–308, 310–313, 380 Tralleis 67, 74–75 travertine 26, 226–228, 232, 246–251, 253–255, 257–258, 416, 479, 481, 483–484 trepanation 383–384, 388 trephine bow 384–385 tresviri monetales 364 triclinium 180 n. 53, 349–351, 411 n. 51 tripod 34, 38, 302 n. 16, 340, 349, 351, 511, 515, 517, 517 n. 34, 519, 519 n. 45 Troad 214 Trojan War 177, 328, 500 trompe l’oeil painting 349–350 tropaeum 493, 493 n. 10 Troy 106, 271 Trysa, Heroön 407 Tyche 194–195, 199 Tyche-Astarte 294 Tydeus 99 Tyrannicides 162 Tyre 164 n. 19, 293 Ugonio, Pompeo 446, 450 n. 41, 456 n. 69 Ulpius Appuleianus Flavianus, M. 69 Ulpius Appuleius Eurykles, M. 69 Urbild 46, 53–54 Urquhart, David 74–75 Valens, emperor 64, 380 Valerius Maximus 473 Valerius Publicola 465 Valleyfield Estate (Scotland) 71–73, 75 van den Kieboom, Willem 417 van Heemskerck, Maarten 414 van Kessel II, Jan 416 van Ussel, Frans 417 Varna (ancient Odessos) 146, 146 n. 50, 379, 381, 383, 383 n. 19, 392 n. 43 Varro 143, 223, 223 n. 5, 224, 232 Vasi, Giuseppe 417

546

Index

venationes 170 n. 6, 411–412 Venerable Bede 453 Venus 174–177, 178 n. 47, 215, 416, 518 Vergina see Aigai Verres 19, 19 n. 30, 23 n. 46 Via Militaris 380 Victory (Victoria) 2–3, 282, 410, 518 villa urbana 381 Vipsania Agrippina, wife of Tiberius 48 Virgil 178, 289, 296, 432 – Aeneid 178 n. 43, 289–290 virtus 502 Visconti, Ennio Quirino 475 Vitruvius 174, 248–249 Vittorio Emanuele III 523 Vollenweider, Marie-Louise 434–435 Volusian 283 (Volusianus) von Hees-Landwehr, Christa 162 von Stosch, Philippe 424–426, 428–429, 433 Vorstermann, Lucas 469–471 Vulci 322–325, 327 n. 28, 330–332, 334

Walters, Henry 282 Warren, Edward Perry 434 Weenix, Jan Baptiste 414 Winckelmann, Johann Joachim 131, 428, 481 n. 5, 486 wineskin (askos) 282–284, 289–290 wreath, laurel 57–59, 62–70, 64 n. 12, 65 n. 18, 68 n. 29, 74–75, 102–103, 310, 346, 350, 354, 363, 428 Xerxes I 97 Zeitgesichte 85 Zeno 80, 84 Zeno, Apostolo 429 Zeus 31–36, 38, 80, 97–98, 105, 113, 150, 162, 189 n. 3, 205 n. 50, 218, 340, 516 Zeuxis 403 Zopyrus 131, 143, 145, 150 Zwierlein-Diehl, Erika 430, 436