No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2012
The three fragments of Imperial statues which I propose to discuss are all of bronze, and they have this in common that all of them were found in Britain. The first, which has long been familiar to frequenters of the British Museum, has been published on various occasions. It has indeed been described and illustrated in an earlier issue of the Journal of Roman Studies. I refer to the fine head of Hadrian (plate I), found in the Thames near London Bridge in 1834. The story of its discovery, as told in a contemporary issue of the Gentleman's Magazine, contains nothing that would help to explain how or when it found its way into its strange resting-place. That it had originally been part of a colossal statue is hardly open to question. And it is almost equally certain that the statue must once have stood in some public place in Roman London. Mr. Roach Smith was disposed to think that it had formerly adorned the poop of a Roman ship. But his suggestion, though he appeals to Virgil to support it, appears to be exceedingly improbable. In bulk and shape it is ill adapted for such a position, and other noteworthy artistic objects of bronze, which cannot possibly have served a purpose of the kind, were dredged from the river at or near the same spot in 1837. We may be sure that all alike were thrown into the water as the readiest means of getting rid of what was regarded as worthless rubbish. We cannot tell whether it was ignorance or malevolence that was responsible. The most we can safely affirm is that a statue of Hadrian is not likely to have suffered violence at the hands of loyal subjects of Rome. Whatever his idiosyncrasies, this Emperor left no evil memory behind him. The head itself, if not very good as a portrait, has considerable artistic merits. From these points of view, I have nothing to add to what has been already so well said of it by others. Nevertheless it may be permissible to draw attention to it again, partly for the sake of completeness and partly because it supplies an excuse for recalling a very apposite passage, which I do not remember to have seen quoted in connexion with it before.
page 1 note 1 i, p. 161, plate xx.
page 1 note 2 ‘This head was found near the third arch from the London side of the New London Bridge, opposite Fresh and Botolph wharfs, and in a line with the remains of some baths of tessellated marble, which I had occasion to notice in your pages as existing at the back of the Monument’ (K[empe], A. J. in Gent. Mag. 1835, i, P. 493Google Scholar).
page 1 note 3 Archaeologia, xxviii, p. 45.
page 1 note 4 Archaeologia, xxviii, pp. 38 ff.
page 1 note 5 To the references given in Vict. Hist. London (i, p. 110) add J.R.S. i, p. 161.
page 2 note 1 οἷα δὴ ὑπὸ βαρβάρων γραϕέν. Arrian was, of course, a Greek. The βάρβαροι were probably Roman officials on the staff of his predecessor.
page 2 note 2 Essays on Roman History, p. 221.
page 2 note 3 Xen., Anab. iv, 7, 25Google Scholar.
page 3 note 1 For list of references see Vict. Hist. London, i, p. 128.
page 3 note 2 Athenaeum, Dec. 12, 1908, p. 766.
page 4 note 1 Mr. Hollond tells me that he himself has never been able to see any traces of silver in the eyes or mouth.
page 4 note 2 2nd ser. xxii, pp. 343 f.
page 4 note 3 Op. cit. xiii, pp. 225 f. and 367 f.
page 4 note 4 Miss Taylor believes that photographs may have been shown him about 1913–14.
page 5 note 1 Class. Rev. xxviii, p. 43.
page 5 note 2 Op. cit. p. 68.
page 5 note 3 Bernoulli, Römische Ikonographie T. 11, Abschn. p. 345.
page 6 note 1 ‘Templum divo Claudio constitutum quasi arx aetemae dominationis aspiciebatur,’ Ann. xiv, 31Google Scholar.
page 6 note 2 Mr. H. M. Last suggests to me that the general character of what may be called ‘official art’ under the Julio-Claudians might lead us to expect in a statue of an emperor from a temple connected with the imperial cult a more highly idealised work than we have here, and also that the dimensions of the temple at Colchester would perhaps agree better with a statue of something more than life size—that we might look, in fact, for a head more like the Augustus of Meroe or the Vatican bronze. I admit the difficulty, but I do not regard it as insuperable. In particular, it is only by assuming a very considerable degree of idealisation that one can reconcile the youthful appearance of the head with the age of Claudius at the time when the temple was built. He was probably over sixty then.
page 7 note 1 Apocolocyntosis, 8, 3.
page 7 note 2 I have to make an interesting qualification here. A friend tells me that he has a distinct recollection of seeing an allusion to the discovery in a note to one of Sir Walter Scott's prose works. Unfortunately he had made no record of the reference, and I have failed to find it.
page 7 note 3 I have to thank Mr. A. J. H. Edwards, Assistant-Keeper of the Museum, for valuable help in examining both objects, while at more than one point I have benefited by the advice and co-operation of Mr. A. O. Curle.
page 7 note 4 See Pauly-Wissowa, iii, 1340 ff. and Daremberg et Saglio 1,815 ff., both s.v. ‘ Calceus.’
page 7 note 5 Origines xix, 34. ‘Patricios calceos Romulus repperit quattuor corrigiarum., adsut que luna. Hos soli patricii utebantur. Luna autem ineis non sideris formam, sed notam centenarii numeri significabat quod initio patricii senatores centum fuerint.… Mullei similes sunt coturnorum solo alto, superiori autem parte cum osseis sunt vel aeneis malleolis ad quos lora deligabantur. Dicti autem sunt a colore rubro qualis est mulli piscis.’ Mayor on Juvenal, vii, 192, prints a useful collection of testimonia.
page 8 note 1 Dio, xliii, 43, καὶ τῇ ὑπολέσει καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα ἐνίοτε καὶ ὑψηλῇ καὶ ἐρυθροχρόῳ κατὰ τοὺς βασιλέας τοὺς ἐν τῇ Ἄλβῃ ποτὲ γεν ομένους, ὡς καὶ προσήκων σφίσι διὰ τὸν Ἲουλον, ἐχρῆτο.
page 8 note 2 Some inches of the end on the outer side of the foot are broken away, but the point remains in situ.
page 8 note 3 A statue of Caligula in the Louvre shows the Emperor with calcei and the paludamentum. M, Étienne Michon has kindly sent me photographs for comparison. The main difference is that, in the case of Caligula, each calceus has four straps or corrigiae, instead of two, with a consequent doubling of the length of the puttee and an increase in the number of knots from one to two. The gaiter also comes further forward on the foot, being clearly visible on the instep, below the crossing of the straps. The calceus on a bronze leg from Provence (of which M. Michon has likewise sent me a photograph) has a double knot and bears otherwise only a general resemblance to the Milsington example.
page 9 note 1 See J.R.S. xv, p. 193.
page 9 note 2 Watkin, Roman Lancashire, p. 212, gives the date of discovery as 1801, but this was the year of its publication by Whitaker, not of its being first found.
page 10 note 1 Op. cit., pp. 27 f.
page 10 note 2 Reproduced in Baumeister's Denkmäler, p. 1020.
page 11 note 1 See Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Römer, p. 141, and von Domaszewski, Religion des römischen Heeres, pp. 37 ff.
page 11 note 2 C.I.L. i2, p. 333. For a Victoria Mariana see infra p. 15, footnote 4.
page 11 note 3 Cicero, , Ad Fam. xi, 28, 6Google Scholar.
page 11 note 4 Roman Wall in Scotland, p. 347; C.I.L. vii, 1092.
page 12 note 1 The iron is extraordnarily well preserved, being rusted only at one point. This suggest that globle and leg had been buried in pest, an inference that is confirmed by the vegetable remains that were lurking in the calceus. No doubt the object were found in draining.
page 12 note 2 The tombstone of a centurion of the Second Cohort of Tungrians, erected by his wife, Flavia Baetica (proc.Soc. Soct. xxx (1896), p. 146Google Scholar). The correspondence is extraordinary close. There is a projection behind at the top and a spur at the heel, while the horizantal bar below is slightly curved—
.
page 13 note 1 In the illustration it is not unlike a weight. But the resemblance disappears in the presence of the object itself.
page 13 note 2 Studniczka, Die Siegesgöttin, p. 14 f. (reprinted from Jahrbücher für das classische Altertum, 1898, p. 390 f.). Taf. iv, fig. 23. That the upper side of the globe is in this case round, not flat, is to be explained by the fact that the top was not detachable as it was in the Milsington example; see infra.
page 14 note 1 ibid. Taf. iv, fig. 27.
page 14 note 2 Amores, iii, 2, 45.
page 14 note 3 Divus Augustus, 100.
page 14 note 4 Brutus, xxxix.
page 14 note 5 παῖς τε ἐν πομηῇ τινι, οἵας οἱ στρατιῶται ἄγουσι, Νίκην φέρων ἔπεσε (Dio, xlvii, 40).
page 14 note 6 Kinch, , L'arc de triomphe de Salonique (Paris, 1890)Google Scholar, plate v; cf. Reinach, Répertoire de Reliefs, i, p. 389.
page 15 note 1 The interpretation here given is, so far as I am aware, new. Kinch (op. cit. p. 37) says that Victory stands ‘debout sur un piédestal bas.’ But the proportion which the diameter of the shaft bears to the breadth of the platform is quite inconsistent with the idea of a pedestal or pillar. For a pole it is exactly right.
page 15 note 2 Ann. xiv, 32.
page 15 note 3 lvi, 24.
page 15 note 4 Julius Obsequens (De prodigiis, 130) has a similar story about the behaviour of the Victory of Marius (Victoriae Marianae signum) in 42 B.C. A trick of the same kind may have been the foundation of the much more sweeping statement made by Valerius Maximus in recounting the signs that presaged the defeat of Pompey at Pharsalia: ‘constat in delubris deum sua sponte signa conversa’ (De prodigiis, i, 6, 12).
page 16 note 1 E.g. Dessau. Inscr. Sel. 2044 and 2232.
page 16 note 2 J.R.S. xv, pp. 1726 ff.