Since the first widespread indications that extensive remains of a ca. 50 m length of monumental painted marble frieze from a 3rd-c. state monument had come to light in the Çukurbaǧ neighborhood of Izmit, Turkey (ancient Nicomedia),Footnote 1 the Late Antique and Roman art communities have eagerly awaited the publication of the present volume. Written by the director of the TÜBİTAK Çukurbaǧ Archaeological Project, the book is the first full publication of the impressive frieze, which is the only extant imperial monument to preserve extensive remains of applied polychromy. As the foundational synthesizing publication for a monument that will undoubtedly become one of the touchstones in discussions of Roman art, the book's plentiful high-quality color photographs and expert architectural and iconographic contextualization do not disappoint. But beyond its utility as a reference volume, it also provides an important exemplar for how other fragmentary monuments with similarly visually rich sculptural content could be productively reconsidered with the integration of evidence in multiple media and close attention to sculptural elements beyond iconography.
Tuna Şare Ağtürk's (Ş.A.) book is organized into five thematic chapters, followed by a conclusion (with a summary in Turkish), and a catalog with extensive discussion of each of the 66 large sections of relief recovered during excavations. Admirably, and in contrast to the traditional tendency to publish only the fragments of monuments that can be at least provisionally identified and substantively discussed, with the inclusion of an appendix of the 115 small fragments that have not yet been rejoined with larger relief panels, Ş.A. also provides transparency and intellectual access to the frieze's complete dataset.
As the title suggests, the focus of the volume is undoubtedly the painted reliefs, but despite a decidedly art-centric topic, Ş.A.'s handling of the analysis blends the best that the disciplines of art history and archaeology have to offer. The introductory chapter provides the background for understanding the architectural and historical context of the frieze and its modern rediscovery. Ş.A. usefully summarizes the history of Nicomedia from antiquity to the modern era (5–8) and synthesizes the limited archaeological work carried out in the city prior to the Çukurbaǧ excavations (8–10), before detailing the archaeological and law-enforcement work that led to the corpus of reliefs and fragments cataloged in the book (11–18). As in the case of other modern cities known to have prominent ancient phases (e.g., Milan), Izmit's dense urban fabric overlays the ancient city, thus largely limiting archaeological exploration to rescue excavations. It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that the first reliefs recovered in Çukurbaǧ came to light by way of salvage operations in 2001 and 2009. The rushed circumstances of the latter rescue expedition not only resulted in the less-than-ideal archaeological documentation practices that Ş.A. and her team would have to contend with in their later work, but also made possible the theft and smuggling of at least two reliefs that were later recovered through the efforts of law enforcement.
Spurred by the discovery of numerous reliefs, colossal statues, and architectural fragments during the rescue excavations, renewed investigation of the Çukurbaǧ site began in 2013 and was funded by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) between 2015 and 2018. In the course of these systematic excavations under Ş.A.'s direction, the reliefs’ architectural context was clarified as far as possible given the constraints of the modern urban fabric. Opus sectile floors that were first uncovered during the 2009 rescue efforts were documented and analyzed for the first time under these renewed investigations, and in the 2016 season, a monumental staircase belonging to the complex was discovered (12). Ş.A. musters the comparability of the Çukurbaǧ pavements to opus sectile floors from Rome's curia, Thessaloniki's Octagon Hall, and Trier's Aula Regia/Basilica, all securely dated to the tetrarchic period, as the first of a few chronological anchors used to justify her attribution of the monument to Diocletian's reign (19).Footnote 2
Examination of the full range of architectural elements found in Çukurbaǧ (20) provides the basis for Ş.A.'s reconstruction of the reliefs as belonging to two interior friezes, situated one above the other, with each providing the bottom-most element of an architectural unit composed of columns and alternating flat and projecting architraves (fig. 1.19). Based on the Çukurbaǧ building's width (comparable to the audience halls at Trier and Thessaloniki) and the similarity of its décor to tetrarchic interventions at the Roman curia, Thessaloniki, and Luxor, Ş.A. asserts that this building “might have functioned as a space for imperial justice and imperial cult,” and in the emperor's absence, a “gathering space for the civic governing body” (23). With only three years between the final phase of excavations in 2018 and the appearance of this analysis and catalog, Ş.A. and Brepols should be commended for the speedy publication of the reliefs and associated fragments, especially given the context of the global pandemic that has inevitably impacted the pace of research and publication in recent years.
With the contextualizing background established, Ş.A. moves into the core of her close investigation of the reliefs over the next four chapters. Preceding a succession of three iconographic chapters, the book's second chapter describes the deductive and scientifically aided methods used to analyze the reliefs’ technical and stylistic features (25–43). It details elements that speak to the design, commission, and execution of the building and its decoration. Given that the Nicomedia frieze is the only Roman state monument of any period to come down to us with extensive remains of its original paint, the chapter's observations on patterns of color usage for iconographic and visibility purposes are crucial as an archaeologically grounded reference from which to imagine the coloration on imperially sponsored reliefs more broadly (35–43).
Apart from her observations on polychromy, among the most interesting products of Ş.A.'s close analysis of the individual relief blocks is her insight into their manufacture and final assembly within their architectural contexts, based on the observation of non-figural details and find spots. Indications that the imperial complex was still in use at the time the relief was dislodged from its place of display suggest that a powerful earthquake destroyed the building (Ş.A. proposes this was the earthquake of 358 CE [15, 43]). Segments of the monumental frieze with discernable find spots had mostly fallen onto the eastern and western perimeters of the complex's opus sectile pavements (fig. 2.1). Methodologically, Ş.A. relies upon the relative positions into which the reliefs fell (some reconstructed from photographs [12, 18]), and the presence and position of lewis holes used for hoisting blocks aloft (32–35), to deduce something of the original display layout. Even though a complete understanding of the relief sequence will not be possible until a more thorough study of the site's complete set of architectural elements is ready (25), A. extrapolates from find spots to suggest that imperially themed reliefs adorned the northwestern part of the building (cat. nos. 5, 9, 11, 19, 20), while agonistically themed reliefs decorated the southeastern part (cat. nos. 28, 32, 33). Ş.A.'s close attention to the lewis holes and other tool marks, along with paint drip patterns, also allows her to conclude that many of the reliefs were carved on the ground and then hoisted into place, with adjustments, finishing work, and painting performed once the reliefs were secured in their architectural setting (36).
Taking a cue from the apparent thematic clustering of the frieze's iconography, the volume's three iconographic chapters provide detailed consideration of the Çukurbaǧ reliefs’ imperial, mythological, and agonistic imagery. Chapter 3, focused on imperial iconography, is critical to Ş.A.'s assessment that the frieze was carved most likely during Diocletian and Maximian's dyarchic reign, between 286 and 293 (43, 70). Ş.A. bases this proposed chronology on the compounding evidence of the frieze's repeated references to Jupiter and Hercules (the divinities from which Diocletian and his colleagues took the names Jovius and Herculius), a lack of clear reference to the Caesars on the portions of the frieze recovered so far, and most importantly, the discovery of a relief featuring only two emperors engaged in an embrace. Of the reliefs classed as imperial, at least eight blocks feature one or more emperors, while scenes featuring barbarians are read as manifestations of imperial triumph. Ş.A. contextualizes the imperial group in terms of both the period's art and the longue durée traditions in state monumental imagery, arguing that many of the imperial scenes, including references to battle, triumph, adventus, clementia, and liberalitas, are variations on long-established tropes that serve to visually panegyrize the celebrated rulers.
Special consideration is given to the extraordinary imagery of the embracing co-emperors, which Ş.A. reconstructs as the juncture between two imperial adventuses, one proceeding toward the center from each side (54–60). Importantly, based upon her chronological evaluation of the frieze, this section of relief provides the first indication that the well-known imperial embrace familiar from porphyry monuments of the tetrarchic era was already part of the visual language used to communicate the stability of shared dyarchic governance.Footnote 3 Analysis of the pigmentation on the heads of the two rulers turned up traces of iron, lead, and copper, but in different proportions on each, leading Ş.A. and her team to conclude that the emperors were portrayed with differing hair colors: Diocletian's in grey-brown, and Maximian's in a reddish hue (40).
While this detail and the observation that each embracing ruler was once accompanied by a victory flying behind him (higher on the left, and slightly lower on the right) are of much interest, Ş.A.'s insistence that the “emperors are clearly differentiated, suggesting their hierarchy” (54) and that “Tetrarchic imagery at the beginning of Diocletian's rule did not intend to establish physical similarity between the rulers” (55) overstates the evidence a bit. In particular, the display context and comparison across the various imperial heads represented on the frieze temper Ş.A.'s claims about portrait individuation. It is unlikely that the negligible difference in height between the embracing figures and differentiating portrait features (55) would be perceptible to a viewer on the ground if the section was displayed, as she suggests, above a central door or niche. Given the biased historiography of Late Roman portraiture as a supposed marker of decline, even despite the survival of rather naturalizing numismatic likenesses from the era, Ş.A. is undoubtedly correct that more allowance for individuating details should be made in the examination of the period's imperial portraits. However, the features she identifies as differentiating the embracing figures of Maximian (a retrousse nose) and Diocletian (larger eyes and prominent cheekbones) are not only hard to recognize even with the assistance of detailed photographs but also not consistently and unambiguously integrated into emperors’ portraits on other fragments of the same frieze (compare cat. nos. 10, 14, 15, 16, and 20).
This reviewer only takes issue with one other interpretation among the imperial group. In her reading of a section of frieze featuring a seated depiction of the goddess Roma, Ş.A. suggests that “the crowning of one of the togate adults by the small Victory makes it more likely that these togate figures in a processional scene are imperial family rather than some members of the Roman Senate,” and in the associated footnote (n. 88), she further tentatively suggests that the two bearded adults preserved in the scene could be identified with Galerius and Constantius I and the child with a young Constantine. The arm of the Victory is placed far too low to support its reading as engaged in the act of crowning the adjacent togate figure, and further, there is no iconographic evidence to support the identification. The arrangement of processing togate adults and child at Nicomedia is in fact directly comparable to the processing figures carved in relief on the side of the remaining base of Rome's so-called Five Column monument, erected in celebration of the Vicennalia of the Augusti and Decennalia of the Caesari in 303 CE.Footnote 4 In contrast to earlier interpretations that read dynastic foreshadowing into that monument's comparable imagery of processing togate figures, the scene is now widely understood as a symbolic reference to Senatorial support for the ruling college rather than a depiction of specific historical personages.Footnote 5 On analogy, and in the absence of compelling iconographic evidence to suggest otherwise, the Nicomedia imagery is better read in a similar vein.
Chapter 4 examines two panels featuring mythological subject matter related to eponymous heroes of Nicomedia. One of the reliefs, a panel Ş.A. interprets as a reference to Nicomedia's refoundation by Nicomedes I (cat. no. 26), was not found in the course of the rescue or systematic excavations at Çukurbaǧ, but it is convincingly assigned to Nicomedia's monumental relief based on Ş.A.'s careful stylistic, technical, and archival detective work. The second scene, reconstructed from two related fragments, depicts Medea in the act of murdering her children while chased by a Fury (cat. no. 25). Ş.A. posits that the city of Nicomedia likely tied its foundation and etymology to the famous figure of Medea, and accounts for the Nicomedian frieze's unique iconographic inclusion of an explicitly depicted Fury as a civic attempt to contextualize and thereby mitigate the tragic actions of an illustrious forebearer (78). Ş.A. convincingly connects the presence of these scenes in the monument's visual program as part of a well-attested culture of competitive posturing and mythmaking among the Roman cities of Asia Minor as a way of angling for civic titles, status, and privileges conferred by Roman authorities (74).
Ş.A.'s fifth chapter interprets and contextualizes the 11 reliefs classed as related to agonistic festivals and games, including charioteers, boxers, prize tables, prize crowns, money bags, a trumpeter and herald, and tragic actors (79–87). The only formal inscription discovered on any section of the relief appears on a slab featuring prize crowns and money bags, two of the traditional prizes associated with competitions in Asia Minor. The text of the inscription references three “major agonistic festivals, imitations of which were held in major cities with the permission of the emperor” (79). Nicomedia's evident right to host these exclusive games and festivals implies imperial favor and fits neatly with the context of intercity competition that Ş.A. laid out in the preceding chapter. Her connection of imperially granted hosting privileges with imperial cult and other elements of propagandistic display neatly ties together the frieze's overall pictorial program and makes evident the relevance of all three thematic groups to a state-sponsored building in an imperial administrative capital.
The threads of the architectural context and thematic iconographic discussions are further woven together in the book's concluding chapter. Ş.A. interprets the complex excavated in Çukurbaǧ as “an audience hall built for and functioning in service to the imperial cult and justice,” and she notes that the themes in the Çukurbaǧ building's iconographic program match the topoi for the praise of a Greek city during the Imperial period. From this, she offers a compelling integrated reading of the relief program as simultaneously celebrating Nicomedia, the new seat of imperial power, and the co-emperors’ imperial cult (90).
The minor intellectual quibbles cited here are in no way meant to detract from the merit of this excellent volume. Rather, they stand as examples of the type of specialist debates that well-reasoned and responsible scholarship is meant to stoke. It almost goes without saying that the book will find readers among anyone interested in Roman imperial portraiture and ideology, and it will be a must-read for those especially interested in ancient paint and polychromy. Its unexpected nuggets on building and manufacturing practices in antiquity and the entwined phenomena of imperial cult and the celebration of agones in Asia Minor will be of value to an even broader research community. In fact, Ş.A.'s excellent example of what is possible with the mining of imperfect documentation from legacy excavations and careful analysis of both iconographies and technical details should stand as a model for the reconsideration of analogous sites – as, for instance, the sculpted program from the east gate of Galerius’ palace at Romuliana (Gamzigrad, Serbia) – that have yet to receive similar treatment.
