En romarstaty från republikens tid

Abstract

Summary A Roman male statue from the time of the Republic. In the course of excavations organized by La Società delle Cartiere Tiburtine in the founda‐tions of the so‐called Temple of Hercules at Tivoli, there was discovered some years ago, in a parti‐ally fragmentary condition, a Roman male statue, which now stands in the Museo Nazionale in Rome (fig. 1). To judge from the support (in the form of armour), the mantle, and the heroic style in which the statue is presented, it would appear to be the portrait of a Roman commander, manifestly con‐nected in some way or other with the procincial town of Tibur. So far the statue has not been very closely studied, but a brief account of it has been published, inter alia, by L. Curtius (Die Antike VII, 1931), who dates it about 100 B. C.; moreover, J. Sieveking has included it in Winckelmann's Pro‐gramm der arch. Gesellschaft zu Berlin, 1931, p. 30, amongst a group of portraits from the time of Tra‐jan. The design of the armour, however (Figs. 2 & 3), which is Hellenistic, would indicate rather the time of the Republic, and a careful study of the style of the features, the hair, and the treatment of the body, lends support to the dating of the statue within that period. We find the closest parallel to the face in the Delos statue (Hekler, Bildniskunst 127) — note particularly the strong accentuation in the modelling of chin and cheek, achieved by furrows in the cheeks, a decidedly artistic means of expression practised during the late Hellenistic pe‐riod — and in Rome itself we find kindred portraits in a head in the Vatican (fig. 12) and on a relief preserved in the Museo Mussolini (fig. 10), which however is more recent. A similar method of trea‐ting the hair is seen in the Arringatore, which the author agrees with Goethert (Zur Kunst der rö‐mischen Republic, p. 22 et seq.) in dating at the beginning of the 1st cent. (fig. 5). The Tivoli statue belongs to the “Hellenistic” group of the early Roman portraits, and must have been exe‐cuted before Hellenism was merged into the Roman elements and formed a Roman style of art. Its gentle, flowing lines show that it belongs to the art of the Sullan period (in regard to Sullan Art cf. H. P. L'Orange in R. M. 1929, p. 167 and Goethert id. cit. p. 28) and that it was probably done by a Greek sculptor. The author dates the statue in the eighties and compares it with the portraits of the Consul Aulus Postumius Albinus (fig. 14 a, b, c) on coins. He was Consul in 99 and in 89 was Sulla's legate in the Social War, during which he was killed by his own soldiers (Val. Max. 9, 8, 3, Plut. Sulla 6). The coins were minted by his adopted son Decimus Postumius Albinus. On an inscription found at Tivoli and containing a resolution of the Roman Senate concerning Tibur (C. I. L. 14 No. 3627) there appears a Postumius as attestor of the records, and that fact may possibly indicate that the family had some connection with Tibur. In any case the likeness is so convincing that we may venture to assume that the designer of the coins used as his model either the statue itself or a replica of it, and that consequently our statue re‐presents the Consul Aulus Postumius Albinus.