This study brings together, for the first time, all the available evidence for statues of the female members of the Imperial family set up in Greece from the late Hellenistic/late Republican period to the late 5th century AD. The material collected and analyzed here includes both the sculptural remains and—most importantly—the inscribed statue bases. Although most of the sculpture is well-known and has previously been published, the comprehensive collection of the statue bases represents an important and original contribution to the subject of Roman dynastic representation in the Greek East. And while previous studies have tended to focus on discrete time periods and dynasties, or on individual empresses, or to have a broad, empire-wide geographical span,[1] Panagiotis Konstantinidis’ study has a broad chronological scope but with a focus on the material evidence found within the geographical boundaries of the modern Greek state.
The book is divided into three parts. The first part comprises the introduction; three chapters that deal in turn with the main components of the portrait monuments—the head, the body, and the inscribed base; a chapter that surveys the geographical locations of the monuments; one on local sculpture workshops; and a 6-page English language summary conclusion. The second part is a 217-page catalogue of the material evidence presented in chronological order by named individual, with sculpture first followed by statue bases, each entry with an extensive bibliography.[2] The third part contains a series of comprehensive appendices, including a 100-page bibliography, an index of the material evidence by geographic location and by dynasty, a museum index, and an epigraphic index. There are 789 illustrations. The book is available in hard copy, with the illustrations on a separate CD Rom, and a pdf version that includes the illustrations at the end.
The Introduction sets out the parameters traditionally used by scholars for identifying the portraits of the Imperial family and for distinguishing them from the mass of portraits of private individuals that adopted their styles (the concept of Zeitgesicht). This method, developed primarily by German scholars for identifying portraits of the Roman emperors, takes as a fundamental principle the close relationship between the portrait model created in Rome and the provincial “copy” of that model. While Konstantinidis acknowledges that variations and simplifications of the central model are sometimes observable in these provincial versions, he argues that in general they reproduce the metropolitan prototypes without significant changes to their fundamental structure. In addition to hairstyle and physiognomy, find context, quality, iconography, and scale can also be helpful in distinguishing an Imperial portrait statue from that of a private individual. A multi-pronged approach that considers a range of factors is particularly critical when dealing with the portrait statues of female members of the Imperial family, as their portrait recognizability seems to have been of less importance than that of the male members. That is, images of women of the Imperial house tended to stand in much closer visual proximity to their elite contemporaries, complicating identification, than the portraits of the emperors, which were more clearly and sharply defined.[3]
Chapter Α deals primarily with portrait heads, although the inscribed bases are also mentioned when sculptural evidence is completely lacking. When the heads are preserved, their main iconographic features—hairstyle and physiognomy—are described in detail, as are any deviations from the central model. The material is presented chronologically by dynasty. While some may disagree with a number of Konstantinidis’ portrait identifications, they do represent prevailing scholarly opinion.[4] The Julio-Claudian women are best represented sculpturally, with 18 portrait heads; seven are identified as Agrippina the Elder and five as Agrippina the Younger. The women of the Flavian emperors and the female members of the families of Trajan and Hadrian are only represented by inscribed statue bases. Antonine women are slightly better represented in sculpture, with eight portrait heads, five of which are identified as Faustina the Younger. The Severans are represented by only three. In total, there are 29 portrait heads spanning a period of nearly five centuries that have been identified as Imperial women.
The evidence for the bodies of these portrait statues, the focus of Chapter Β, is rarer still. A total of 11 marble examples and one bronze statue are preserved. Eight different statue types or formats are represented by these 12 statues, including one example each of the Large and Small Herculaneum type.[5] Of these 12 statues, only five still have their portrait heads. The single bronze portrait statue, variously identified as Julia Mamaea, Plautilla, and Julia Aquilia Severa, comes from Sparta, while all four of the marble statues come from Olympia: one from the Metroon that represents Agrippina the Younger, and three from the Nymphaeum of Regilla and Herodes Atticus, which represent Faustina the Elder, and two young girls of the Imperial family, either Lucilla or Domitia Faustina. The statues identified as Imperial women but that lack portrait heads present more interpretive difficulties, as the same statue types could also be used for portraits of elite “private” women.[6] As Konstantinidis points out, this contrasts with the portraits of the emperors, where a small number of statue costumes were deployed to express the emperor’s clearly defined public roles (togate, cuirass, heroic nudity). For the portraits of Imperial women, on the other hand, there was a much wider variety of statue format possibilities. The context in which the statue was found, however, can be a helpful clue. For example, the headless statue body found within the cella of the Metroon at Olympia (Γ32) is likely to represent an Imperial female, given the other Imperial statues that were set up there, as are the two headless female statues found in Building D of the Sanctuary of Poseidon and Amphitrite on the island of Tinos (Γ36–37), as they were part of a larger family group set up in honor of the emperor Claudius.[7] In fact, most of the statues of women of the Imperial family seem to have been set up within the context of such dynastic groups, where they were honored primarily for their roles as mother, wife, or daughter. One can see a similar pattern in the few statues of local elite women set up in the Athenian Agora in the Roman period: women tend to be honored by virtue of their familial ties to powerful men.[8]
Chapter Γ deals with the inscribed bases that once supported the statues of women of the Imperial family. The collection of 180 statue bases represents an important and original contribution to our understanding of the history of female dynastic honors in Roman-period Greece. While the inscriptions themselves have previously been published in various epigraphic corpora, this is, at least to my knowledge, the first time that they have been systematically collected and presented as a group. The inscribed bases not only expand our understanding of the surviving portrait images but also provide crucial historical evidence for honorific activity during periods in which sculptural evidence is completely absent. Konstantinidis surveys the various base formats and the methods used to mount the statues. More than half of the bases, 98 in total, preserve evidence for the material from which the statue was made: 34 of bronze and 64 of marble. The bases themselves tend to be made from locally sourced stone. Most illuminating is his analysis of the inscriptions themselves and the information they provide. The vast majority of the statues were “state” dedications, that is, they were set up by collective civic entities, such as the city (polis) and the people (dе̄mos); notably fewer were set up by private individuals. Most of the inscriptions are in Greek; the few Latin examples typically come from Roman colonies or provincial capitals, such as Corinth, Philippi, and Gortyn. The women are usually identified in the base inscriptions by reference to their familial relationship to the male members of their household (grandmother, mother, wife, sister, daughter), which was the source of their prestige, power, and influence.
Chapter Δ is a topographical survey of all the locations where either sculptural evidence for the statues of Imperial women and/or their statue bases has been found. Most of the monuments come from Attica, the Peloponnese, and the islands of the northeastern Aegean, the Dodecanese, and Crete. The cities with the most dedications are Athens and Lyktos in Crete, and the sanctuaries at Olympia, Eleusis, Epidauros, and Delphi. When display location can be determined, nearly all come from public spaces, such as agorai or theaters, or from temples and shrines for the Imperial cult. Regarding the chronological distribution, most of the evidence dates to the Julio-Claudian period, the numbers of both sculpture and bases peaking during the reign of Claudius. The Antonine and Severan periods are second and third respectively in the number of monuments preserved.
The final Chapter Ε is somewhat misleadingly entitled “Local Workshops” (Τοπικά εργαστήρια). The chapter is not, as one might think from the title, a survey of the material remains of actual sculptors’ workshops, which are in any case few and far between. Rather it focuses on what we might call regional schools and considers the styles, genres, and dates of the sculpture found at various sites and locations within the geographic area of the modern Greek state. The material gathered here extends, therefore, well beyond the portrait statues of Imperial women to include funerary monuments, architectural sculpture, votive reliefs, altars, and small and larger scale ideal works. The availability of local stone is noted, as is the widespread use of imported marble, particularly in areas that lack good statuary marble quarries. From this geographic-based examination of artistic activity in Greece during the Roman period, Konstantinidis identifies several patterns. For example, to reduce production costs, local stone was used primarily for architecture and for the sculpture that served the immediate needs of the local population, such as tombstones and sarcophagi. The use of imported, high-quality marble was mainly reserved for elite commissions, which signified the economic status of the patrons. Compared, however, to earlier periods, the expansion and intensification of the marble trade with stone sourced from five main quarries (Prokonnesos, Thasos, Dokimion, Paros, and Penteli) make it difficult to identify specific local workshops, a difficulty compounded by the lack of sculptors’ signatures. On the other hand, in more remote areas, where the transportation of marble would have been prohibitively costly, bronze was the preferred medium for statuary. For example, bases from Dodona, a sanctuary in the interior of Epirus, indicate that nearly all supported bronze statues. While this chapter is less directly connected to the subject of the book, it brings together a great deal of interesting information for future research on sculptural production in Roman Greece.
In sum, in addition to the presentation and analysis of a broad range of material, the comprehensive catalogue, the collection of inscribed statue bases, the extensive bibliography, and the almost 800 images make this book essential for anyone interested in Imperial-period portrait sculpture and the images of the female members of the Imperial family.
Notes
[1] E.g., Klaus Fittschen, Die Bildnistypen der Faustina minor und die Fecunditas Augustae (Göttingen 1982); Charles Brian Rose, Dynastic Commemoration and Imperial Portraiture in the Julio-Claudian Period (Cambridge and New York 1997); Susan Wood, Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images 40 BC–AD 68 (Leiden and Boston 1999); Elizabeth Bartman, Portraits of Livia: Imaging the Imperial Woman in Augustan Rome (Cambridge and New York 1999); Annetta Alexandridis, Die Frauen des römischen Kaiserhauses: Eine Untersuchung ihrer bildlichen Darstellung von Livia bis Iulia Domna (Mainz am Rhein 2004); Christian Niederhuber, Roman Imperial Portrait Practice in the Second Century A.D.: Marcus Aurelius and Faustina the Younger (Oxford and New York 2022).
[2] The manuscript was submitted for publication in 2018; the bibliography was updated through early 2020.
[3] R.R.R. Smith, “Roman Portraits: Honours, Empresses, and Late Emperors,” JRS 75 (1985) 214.
[4] E.g., four heads in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens (Γ22–Γ25, 404–410) have traditionally been identified as portraits of Faustina Minor. However, Christian Niederhuber (Roman Imperial Portrait Practice in the Second Century AD: Marcus Aurelius and Faustina the Younger, Oxford 2022) has recently argued that they diverge too greatly from other images of the empress to sustain such an identification. Konstantinidis himself reclassifies several portraits at times identified as Imperial women as private in Appendix Α, 243–251.
[5] Catalogue numbers Γ20 and Γ34 respectively, both from the Nymphaeum of Regilla and Herodes Atticus at Olympia.
[6] Catalogue numbers Γ30, Γ32–37, all listed in a section of the catalogue entitled “Female Members of the Imperial House without Secure Identification.”
[7] Charles Brian Rose, Dynastic Commemoration and Imperial Portraiture in the Julio-Claudian Period (Cambridge and New York 1997) 158, cat.no. 94.
[8] Sheila Dillon, “Female Portrait Statuary in Roman-period Athens: the epigraphic and sculptural evidence,” Eugesta 13 (2023) 9–11. This pattern of using female portrait statues to advertise the power and influence of elite families goes back at least to the Hellenistic period in the Greek East: see Riet van Bremen, The Limits of Participation: Women and Civic Life in the Greek East in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods (Amsterdam 1996) 297–302.