From a Phrygian Quarry: The Provenance of the Statues of the Dacian Prisoners in Trajan's Forum at Rome

Abstract

A nearly completed colossal statue in pavonazzetto marble, discovered in 1926 by Sir Christopher Cox in one of the quarries of the Upper Tembris Valley (Phrygia), can be identified as one of the many Dacian prisoners made to decorate Trajan's Forum at Rome. Epigraphical evidence shows that, at the time of the construction of the Forum, the quarry where the statue was found was imperially owned and worked as part of the Phrygian quarry system administered from Synnada. discovery of the statue shows that the imperial administration of the Phrygian quarries also had specialized sculptors at its disposal, who produced statuary for architectural purposes. sculptors were probably based at Docimium, where there is other evidence for the existence of an imperial workshop for sculpture. Similar workshops may have existed near other imperial quarries. A list of all presently known statues of Dacian prisoners which can be connected with the Forum is provided, as well as a discussion of their original setting. In his magnificent work Emperor in the Roman World, Fergus Millar summarizes our actual knowledge-or rather our ignorance-of the patterns of ownership and exploitation of land, mines, quarries and manufacturing establishments which were in some sense in the possession of the emperor.' Although mines and quarries were probably more clearly distinguished as the emperor's property than other imperial possessions such as estates, we are still surprisingly ignorant about many aspects of their commercial operation, about the role of private entrepreneurs to whom, in some cases, part of the exploitation might have been contracted, thus producing a direct cash revenue,2 and about the process by which part of the production became available for purchase by interested individuals or workshops. A recent study by J. Ward-Perkins sheds some light on these questions, but stirs up more new problems than the old ones which it solves.3 At least it is clear that there must have been a considerable measure of direct imperial control, if not of actual intervention in some instances; epigraphical and literary evidence clearly shows that at least some imperial quarries, such as Docimium (Iscehisar) in Phrygia4 and Chemtou (which yielded giallo antico) in Numidia,5 were handled by direct labor, and that their products were available for use or disposal by the emperor in his building programs.6 continuous popularity of Numidian and Phrygian marble was not only the result of the delight which the Romans took in the rich display of assorted colored marbles.' As Ward-Perkins rightly stressed, it was also a result of the knowledge that individual orders to these imperially exploited quarries which could not be supplied from stocks would be met with a minimum of delay, without interrupting the whole * This paper was written during a term at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. I thank the Institute, its faculty and staff for having given me the opportunity to work there. I also wish to thank L. Vandenbulcke, who checked some of the statues in Rome and provided me with photographs of them, and P. Rockwell, who measured the Dacians on the Arch of Constantine for me. I am particularly grateful to S. Mitchell, who corrected the English text, and to J. Packer, who gave much valuable advice and information. In addition to the abbreviations listed in AJA 82 (1978) 3-10 and 84 (1980) 3-4, the following is used: Zanker P. Zanker, Das Trajansforum in Rom, AA 1970, 499-544. ' F. Millar, Emperor in the Roman World (31 BC-AD 337) (Ithaca 1977) 175-89. 2 See, for instance, the leasing to private entrepreneurs of stateowned copper and silver mines at Vipasa in Lusitania: S. Riccobono ed., Fontes luris Romani Antejustiniani2 1 (Florence 1968) 105 ( ILS 6891 = CIL II, Suppl. 5181); 104. Cf. Millar (supra n. 1) 181. 3 J.B. Ward-Perkins, and the Marble Trade, BSR 48 (1980) 23-68. His conclusion that Nicomedia served as the center of the Proconnesian and even of the Docimian marble trade goes bey nd the evidence. 4 For a recent discussion of the evidence, see M. Waelkens, Carriires de marbre en Phrygie (Turquie), BMusArt 53.2 (1982) 35-38. 5 See Millar (supra n. 1) 184, n. 65; Waelkens (supra n. 4) 52, n. 109. 6 Cf. Millar (supra n. 1) 185; Ward-Perkins (supra n. 3) 38. 7 On this matter, see Strabo 9.5.16. Cf. L. Robert, Les kordakia de Nic6e, le combustible de Synnada et les poissons-scies. Sur des lettres d'un m6tropolite de Phrygie au Xe sidcle. Philologie et r6alit6s, JSav 1962, 14; J.B. Ward-Perkins and P. Throckmorton, The Sa Pietro Wreck, Archaeology 18 (1965) 201; R. Gnoli, Marmora Romana (Rome 1971) 25.