SCULPTURE
The dispute over the question " Is there such a thing as a Roman style?"
has centered largely on the field of sculpture, and for quite
understandable reasons. Even if we discount the wholesale importing and
copying of Greek originals, the reputation of the Romans as imitators
seems borne out by large quantities of works that are probably
adaptations and variants of Greek models of every period. While the
Roman demand for sculpture was tremendous, much of it mav be attributed
to anti-
quarianism, both the learned and the fashionable variety, and to a taste
for sumptuous interior decoration. There are thus whole categories of
sculpture produced under Roman auspices that deserve to be classified as
"deactivated" echoes of Greek creations, emptied of their former meaning
and reduced to the status of highly refined works of craftsmanship. At
times this attitude extended to Egyptian sculpture as well, creating a
vogue for pseudo-Egyptian statuary. On the other hand, there can be no
doubt that some kinds of sculpture had serious and important functions
in ancient Rome. They represent the living sculptural tradition, in
contradistinction to the antiquarian-decorative trend. We shall concern
ourselves here mainly with those aspects of Roman sculpture that are
most conspicuously rooted in Roman society: portraiture and narrative
relief.
Republican
We know from literary accounts that from early Republican times on,
meritorious political or military leaders were honored by having their
statues put on public display. The habit was to continue until the end
of the Empire a thousand years later. Its beginnings may well have
derived from the Greek custom of placing votive statues of athletic
victors and other important individuals in the precincts of such
sanctuaries as Delphi and Olympia (see fig. 189). Unfortunately,
the first 400 years of this Roman tradition are a closed book to us. Not
a single Roman portrait has yet come to light that can be dated before
the first century B.C. with any degree of confidence. How were those
early statues related to Etruscan or Greek sculpture? Did they ever
achieve any specifically Roman qualities? Were they individual
likenesses in any sense, or were their subjects identified only by pose,
costume, attributes, and inscriptions?
L'ARRINGATORE.

265. Aulus
Mietellus (L'Arringatore). Early
1st century B.C. Bronze, height
71" (280 cm).
Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Florence
Our sole clue in answer to these questions is the lifesize bronze statue
of an orator called L'Arringatore (fig. 265), once assigned to
the second century B.C. but now generally placed in the early years of
the first. It comes from southern Etruscan territory and bears an
Etruscan inscription that includes the name Aule Metele (Aulus Metellus
in Latin), presumably the name of the official represented. He must have
been a Roman, or at least a Roman-appointed official. The workmanship is
evidently Etruscan, as indicated by the inscription. But the gesture,
which denotes both address and salutation, recurs in hundreds of Roman
statues of the same sort. The costume, an early kind of toga, is Roman
as well. One suspects, therefore, that our sculptor tried to conform to
an established Roman type of portrait statue, not only in these
externals but in style as well. We find very little here of the
Hellenistic flavor characteristic of the later Etruscan tradition. What
makes the figure remarkable is its serious, prosaically factual quality,
down to the neatly tied shoelaces. The term "uninspired" suggests
itself, not as a criticism but as a way to describe the basic attitude
of the artist in contrast to the attitude of Greek or Etruscan
portraitists.

266. Portrait of a
Roman, ñ. 80
B.C., Marble, lifesize.
Palazzo Torlonia, Rome
PORTRAITS.
That seriousness was consciously intended as a positive value becomes
clear when we familiarize ourselves with Roman portrait heads of the
years around 15 B.C., which show it in its most pronounced form.
Apparently the creation of a monumental, unmistakably Roman portrait
style was achieved only in the time of Sulla, when Roman architecture,
too, came of age. We see it at its most impressive perhaps in the
features of the unknown Roman of figure 266, contemporary with
the fine Hellenistic portrait from Delos in figure 218. A more
telling contrast could hardly be imagined. Both are extremely persuasive
likenesses, yet they seem worlds apart. Whereas the Hellenistic head
impresses us with its subtle grasp of the sitter's psychology, the Roman
may strike us at first glance as nothing but a detailed record of facial
topography. The sitter's character emerges only incidentally, as it
were. Yet this is not really the case. The wrinkles are true to life, no
doubt, but the carver has nevertheless treated them with a selective
emphasis designed to bring out a specifically Roman personality—stern,
rugged, iron-willed in its devotion to duty. It is a "father image" of
frightening authority, and the minutely observed facial details are like
individual biographical data that differentiate this father image from
others.
Its peculiar flavor reflects a patriarchal Roman custom of considerable
antiquity. At the death of the head of the family, a waxen image was
made of his face, which was then preserved in a special shrine, or
family altar. At funerals, these ancestral images were carried in the
procession. The patrician families of Rome clung to this custom well
into Imperial times. The images were, of course, records rather than
works of art, and because of the perishability of wax they probably did
not last more than a few decades. Thus the desire to have them
duplicated in marble seems natural enough, but the demand did not arise
until the early first century B.C. Perhaps the patricians, feeling their
leadership endangered, wanted to make a greater public display of their
ancestors, as a way of emphasizing their ancient lineage.
Such display certainly is the purpose of the statue in figure 267,
carved about half a century later than our previous example. It shows an
unknown man holding two busts of his ancestors, presumably his father
and grandfather. The work has little distinction, though the somber face
of our dutiful Roman is strangely affecting. Yet the "father-image"
spirit can be felt even here. Needless to say, this quality was not
present in the wax images themselves. It came to the fore when they were
translated into marble, a process that not only made the ancestral
images permanent but monumentalized them in the spiritual sense as well.
Nevertheless, the marble heads retained the character of records, of
visual documents, which means that they could be freely duplicated. What
mattered was only the facial "text," not the "handwriting" of the artist
who recorded it. The impressive head in figure 266 is itself a
copy, made some 50 years later than the lost original, and so are the
two ancestors in figure 267. (Differences in style and in the
shape of the bust indicate that the original of the head on the left in
fig. 267 is about 30 years older than that of its companion.)
Perhaps this Roman lack of feeling for the uniqueness of the original,
understandable enough in the context of their ancestor cult, also helps
to explain why they developed so voracious an appetite for copies of
famous Greek statues.

267.
A Roman Patrician with Busts of His Ancestors.
Late
1st century B.C. Marble,
lifesize.
Museo Capitolino, Rome
Imperial
PORTRAITS.
As we approach the reign of the emperor Augustus (27 B.C.-14 A.D.), we
find a new trend in Roman portraiture that reaches its climax in the
images of Augustus himself. In his splendid statue from Primaporta (fig.
268), we may be uncertain at first glance whether it represents a
god or a human being. This doubt is entirely appropriate, for the figure
is meant to be both. Here, on Roman soil, we meet a concept familiar to
us from Egypt and the ancient Near East: the divine ruler. It had
entered the Greek world in the fourth century B.C. (see fig. 205).
Alexander the Great then made it his own, as did his successors, who
modeled themselves after him. The latter, in turn, transmitted it to
Julius Caesar and the Roman emperors, who at first encouraged the
worship of themselves only in the eastern provinces, where belief in a
divine ruler was a long-established tradition.
The idea of attributing superhuman stature to the emperor, thereby
enhancing his authority, soon became official policy, and while Augustus
did not carry it as far as later emperors, the Primaporta statue clearly
shows him enveloped in an air of divinity. The heroic, idealized body is
obviously derived from the Doryphorus of Polyclitus (fig. 186).
However, the statue has an unmistakably Roman flavor. The emperor's
gesture is familiar from Aulus Metellus (fig. 265). The head is
idealized, or, better perhaps, "Hellenized," Small physiognomic details
are suppressed, and the focusing of attention on the eyes gives it
something of the "inspired" look we find in portraits of Alexander the
Great (compare fig. 224). Nevertheless, the face is a definite
likeness, elevated but clearly individual, as we know by comparison with
the numerous other portraits of Augustus. All Romans would have
recognized it immediately, for they knew it from coins and countless
other representations. In fact, the emperor's image soon came to acquire
the symbolic significance of a national flag.
Although it was found in the villa of Augustus' wife, Livia, the
Primaporta statue is probably a later copy of a lost original: the bare
feet indicate that he has been deified, so that the sculpture was made
after his death. Myth and reality are compounded to glorify the emperor.
The little Cupid on a dolphin at his bare feet serves both to support
the heavy marble figure and as a reminder of the claim that the Julian
family was descended from Venus; he has also been seen as a
representation of Gaius Caesar, Augustus' nephew. The costume has a
concreteness of surface texture that conveys the actual touch of cloth,
metal, and leather. The breastplate (fig. 269) illustrates
Augustus' victory over the Parthians in 39-38 B.C., which avenged a
Roman defeat at their hands nearly fifteen years earlier.
Characteristically enough, however, the event is shown as an allegory:
the presence of gods and goddesses raises it to cosmic significance,
while the rich symbolic program proclaims that this triumph, which
Augustus regarded as pivotal, inaugurated an era of peace and plenty.
Representing their respective armies, a Parthian returns the captured
military standard to a Roman. Are they merely personifications, as seems
likely, or historical figures—Phraates IV and either Augustus himself or
his step-son and successor, Tiberius, who, according to Suetonius, was
his intermediary? The issue may never be resolved.

268. Augustus of
Primaporta. Roman copy ñ. 20
A.D. of a Roman original of ñ.
15 B.C. Marble, height 6'8"
(2 m). Vatican Museums,
Rome.
269.
Augustus of Primaporta. Detail of breastplate
NARRATIVE RELIEF.
Imperial art, however, was not confined to portraiture. The emperors
also commemorated their outstanding achievements in narrative reliefs on
monumental altars, triumphal arches, and columns. Similar scenes are
familiar to us from the ancient Near East (see figs. 96,104,
and 114) but not from Greece. Historical events—that is, events
which occurred only once, at a specific time and in a particular
place—had not been dealt with in Classical Greek sculpture. If a victory
over the Persians was to be commemorated, it would be represented
indirectly as a mythical event outside any space-time context: a combat
of Lapiths and Centaurs or Greeks and Amazons (see figs. 198 and
204). Even in Hellenistic times, this attitude persisted,
although not quite as absolutely. When the kings of Pergamum celebrated
their victories over the Celts, the latter were represented faithfully
(see fig. 211) but in typical poses of defeat rather than in the
framework of a particular battle.
Greek painters, on the other hand, had depicted historical subjects such
as the Battle of Salamis as early as the mid-fifth century, although we
do not know how specific these pictures were in detail. As we have seen,
the mosaic from Pompeii showing The Battle of Issus (fig. 220)
probably reflects a famous Greek painting of about 315 B.C. depicting
the defeat of the Persian king Darius by Alexander the Great. In Rome,
too, historic events had been depicted from the third century B.C. on. A
victorious military leader would have his exploits painted on panels
that were carried in his triumphal procession, or he would show such
panels in public places. These pictures seem to have had the fleeting
nature of posters advertising the hero's achievements. None has
survived. Sometime during the late years of the Republic, the temporary
representations of such events began to assume more monumental and
permanent form. They were no longer painted, but carved and attached to
structures intended to last indefinitely. They were thus a ready tool
for the glorification of Imperial rule, and the emperors did not
hesitate to use them on a large scale.

270. The Ara Pacis.
ñ 13-9 B.C. Marble, width
of altar ñ. 35' (10.7
m).
Museum of the Ara Pacis, Rome
ARA PACIS.
Since the leitmotif of his reign was peace, Augustus preferred to appear
in his monuments as the "Prince of Peace" rather than as the
all-conquering military hero. The most important of these monuments was
the Ara Pacis (the Altar of Peace), voted by the Roman Senate in 13 B.C.
and completed four years later. It is probably identical with the richly
carved Augustan altar that bears this name today. The entire structure (fig.
270) recalls the Pergamum Altar, though on a much smaller scale
(compare figs. 213 and 215). On the wall that screens the
altar proper, a monumental frieze depicts allegorical and legendary
scenes, as well as a solemn procession led by the emperor himself.

271. Imperial
Procession, a portion of the frieze of the Ara Pads. Marble, height
63" (160 cm)
Here the "Hellenic," classicizing style we noted in the Augustus of
Primaporta reaches its fullest expression. Nevertheless, a comparison of
the Ara Pacis frieze (fig. 271) with that of the Parthenon
(figs. 173 and 272) shows how different they really are,
despite all surface similarities. The Parthenon frieze belongs to an
ideal, timeless world. It represents a procession that took place in the
remote, mythic past, beyond living memory. What holds it together is the
great formal rhythm of the ritual itself, not its variable particulars.

272.
Procession, a portion of the east frieze, Parthenon,
ñ. 440
B.C.
Marble, height 43" (109.3
cm). Musee du Louvre, Paris
On the Ara Pacis, in contrast, we see a procession in celebration of one
particular recent event—probably the founding of the altar in 13 B.C.—
idealized to evoke something of the solemn air that surrounds the
Parthenon procession, yet filled with concrete details of a remembered
event. The participants, at least so far as they belong to the Imperial
family, are meant to be identifiable as portraits, including those of
children dressed in miniature togas but who are too young to grasp the
significance of the occasion. (Note how the little boy in the center of
our group is tugging at the mantle of the young man in front of him
while the somewhat older child to his left smilingly seems to be telling
him to behave.) The Roman artist also shows a greater concern with
spatial depth than his Classical Greek predecessor. The softening of the
relief background, which we first observed in the much earlier Grave
Stele of Hegeso (see fig. 200), has been carried so far that the
figures farthest removed from us seem partly immersed in the stone, such
as the woman on the left whose face emerges behind the shoulder of the
young mother in front of her.
The same interest in space appears even more strongly in the allegorical
panel in figure 273, showing Mother Earth as the embodiment of
human, animal, and plant fertility, flanked by two personifications of
winds. Here the figures are placed in a real landscape setting of rocks,
water, and vegetation, and the blank background clearly stands for the
empty sky. Whether this pictorial treatment of space is a Hellenistic or
Roman invention remains a matter of dispute. There can be no question,
however, about the Hellenistic look of the three personifications, which
represent not only a different level of reality but also a different,
and less distinctly Roman, style from the Imperial procession. The
acanthus ornament on the pilasters and the lower part of the wall, on
the other hand, has no counterpart in Greek art, although the acanthus
motif as such derives from Greece. The plant forms are wonderfully
graceful and alive. Yet the design as a whole, with its emphasis on
bilateral symmetry, never violates the discipline of surface decoration
and thus serves as an effective foil for the spatially conceived reliefs
above.

273. Allegorical and
ornamental panels of the Ara Pacis. Relief from the eastern facade: the
panel of Tellus

Relief of Aeneas sacrificing to the Penates

Ara Pacis: Imperial Procession

Ara Pacis: Imperial Procession

Ara Pacis: Imperial Procession

Ara Pacis: Agrippa and family group

Ara Pacis: Imperial Procession

Ara Pacis: Detail of the processional frieze showing members of the
Senate (north face)

The north procession
STUCCO DECORATION.
Much the same contrast of flatness and depth occurs in the stucco
decoration of a Roman house, a casual but enchanting product of the
Augustan era (fig. 274). The modeling, as suits the light
material, is delicate and sketchy throughout, but the content varies a
great deal. On the bottom strip of our illustration are two winged genii
with plant ornament. Here depth is carefully avoided, since this zone
belongs to the framework. Above it, we see what can only be described as
a "picture painted in relief." an idyllic landscape of great charm and
full of atmospheric depth, despite the fact that its space is merely
suggested rather than clearly defined. The whole effect echoes that of
painted room decorations (see fig. 288).

274. Stucco decoration
from the vault of a Roman house.
Late 1st century
B.C. Museo delle Terme, Rome