The Fragility of Solace: Pothos and Memory in Late Roman Gold-Glass Portraiture

Abstract

: Using a rarely-explored format of Roman portraiture, the gold-glass medallion, I argue that the yearning desire for someone absent can illuminate the force of intimacy behind such small-scale private images. Known as pothos in ancient Greek, this longing both catalyzed portraiture’s invention anecdotally and grounded the artistic genre conceptually in a web of absence, memory, and surrogacy. Employing visual, literary, and epigraphic evidence alongside gold-glass medallions, I advance pothos as an interpretive tool to demonstrate the rich emotional tenderness afforded by some Roman portraits, expanding our notion of the genre beyond its more common political and honorific associations.