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APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
APOTHEOSIS
AND AFTER LIFE
Three Lectures on Certain Phases of
Art and Religion in the Roman Empire
BY
MRS. ARTHUR STRONG, LITT.D., LL.D.
FORMER student of THE BRITISH SCHOOL AT ATHENS;
LIFE FELLOW OF GIRTON COLLEGE, camBRIDGE; HONORARY
member of the archaeological society of athens and
OF THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE OF AMERICA;
AND
ASSISTANt director of the british SCHOOL AT ROME
LONDON
CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LTD
1915
Printed in Great Britain
ERRATA
P. vi, 1. 10.-The reliquary of Ugolino di Maestro Vieri at Orvieto
holds not the fragments of the True Cross, but an even more unique
relic, the Sanctissimo Corporale.
P. 73.-By some inadvertence Dryden's translation of Virgil,
Aeneid, vi. 851-852 has been substituted for that of Lord Bowen,
originally chosen by me as laying stress on the quality of mercy
referred to in the text:
These be thine arts, thy glories, the ways of peace to proclaim,
Mercy to show to the fallen,
P. 242, 1. 2.—For temples read temper.
•
•
4. allez mno
ENVOI
À CHRISTIAN MALLET
Maréchal des Logis au XXIème Régiment de Dragons, IVème Escadron
aux Armées, en campagne
MY DEAR CHRISTIAN,-I always like to remember how we
smuggled you, a French subject, into our British School in the
guise of honorary assistant secretary. But from the first I pre-
ferred to call you my adopted son, as by a premonition that we
should be united always in a common love of Rome, and this con-
fidence of mine was never betrayed, for Rome in her every aspect
found you responsive. . . . Those were fruitful hours that we
spent together in the Villa Giulia, trying to reconstruct some
picture of the vanished civilisation of the Latin race; or in the
Vatican, where the masterpieces of Greek sculpture revealed to us
the spell by which Greece held her grim conqueror captive; or in
the Baths of Diocletian, where we traced on the stelae of her
Provinces the religious beliefs that helped Rome to establish her
Imperial sway, and the soldiers of her legions to live and die
faithful to her service. And always, whether among the ruins
and relics of classics or of Mediaeval Rome, or in the churches and
palaces of the Rome of Sixtus and Bernini, I was glad to balance
the impetuous judgments of your youth against the measured con-
clusions of scholarship.
Other moods would take us to the Campagna, or to the city's
'enchanted gardens. Do you remember that Easter Eve on the
Via Appia when a great red moon lay in a hollow of the Alban
hills? Or that sombre garden on the Esquiline, under whose
301121
↓
vi
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
desolate paths lie the ruins of the Golden House built by the rest-
less genius who was Nero? Or the groves of the Villa Mattei
and the seat under the old sarcophagus where S. Philip discorreva
delle cose dell' anima with his disciples?
At times we went further afield-to Arezzo, where the master-
piece of Piero della Francesca, transfigured in the evening light,
made us forget the humbler Arretine ware we had come to study;
to Orvieto, where by a special grace we saw high above the altar,
like a vision of the Holy Grail vouchsafed to the Knights of old,
the enamelled reliquary that holds the fragments of the True
Cross.
Do you ever think of the little flat on the Monte Tarpeo, and
of the view, perhaps the noblest in the world, which would at
times be lifted by music beyond the conditions of time and space?
How poignantly these memories and impressions crowded upon us
as we left Rome that June morning of last year; yet how swiftly
regrets yielded to the magic of the hour, as we were borne through
the sunlit Campagna and the hill towns of Latium to the noonday
rest at Benedictine Monte Cassino, whence you had written to me
a year before 'one could do great things here.' The beauty of the
Italian afternoon mellowed as we passed from Latin to Greek
lands, and reached the gracious hospitality of the villa embowered
in the ilex groves of Posilippo. A few days more and white sails
were bearing us over a summer sea from Sicilian to Ionian waters,
to your first glimpse of Greece.
It was thus in memory of our Roman friendship that I first
wished to dedicate to you this little book, and also because while
I was endeavouring to convey to my audiences in America some-
thing of what I conceived the spirit of Rome to mean to our modern
world, you were putting into practice the Roman virtues of dis-
cipline and endurance during the first months of your military
service. Little did either of us guess that when I revised the
lectures for publication it would be during weeks of alternating
hopes and fears, relieved by trust in the alliance of your country
ENVOI
vii
and of mine in the cause of liberty, lit up by the brave confidence
of your letters which confirmed what we already knew in our
hearts of the valour of yourself and your Dragoons. On that
fateful night of July 31st you had ridden out of Reims with
France's vanguard, a simple Cavalier (paene miles!); since then
you have twice won your promotion. It is with affectionate pride,
therefore, that I inscribe beneath your name the grade you have
just won by an act of great bravery on the battlefield. Once again
have you proved yourself worthy to serve in one of the proudest
regiments of France,
Dragons que Rome eût pris pour des légionnaires.
*
*
*
*
The news of your fresh promotion to the grade of Lieutenant,
and of your decision to pass into the Infantry for the sake of more
continuous work in the trenches, comes as I correct this proof.
But I like to think that you would wish me to retain the original
superscription in remembrance of a sharply defined phase of your
life.
Feb. 27, 1915.
E. S.
PREFACE
DURING the fall of 1913 it was my high privilege, as
lecturer on the Charles Eliot Norton foundation of
the Archaeological Institute of America, to speak on
the subject of the Roman Empire and of Roman art
and religion before about twenty-five centres of the
Institute, before the Universities of Wisconsin and
Princeton, the Colleges of Brynmawr, Wellesley and
Vassar, and in the Lecture Hall of the Metropolitan
Museum of New York. These Lectures form the
basis of the present book. To my audiences I would
like to record my thanks for their cordial and en-
couraging reception, and in a more personal manner
I would thank the President of the Archaeological
Institute, Professor Shipley of the Washington Uni-
versity, St. Louis, and its indefatigable Secretary, Dr.
Mitchell Carroll of Washington. I may add that my
choice of subject was determined in the first instance
by the belief that any discussion, however modest
and restricted in compass, concerned with doctrines
of Apotheosis and of the Soul's ultramundane destiny,
would be welcomed by audiences, many of whom
had listened the previous year to M. Cumont's
lectures on Astrology and Religion, now embodied in
the brilliant book that we all know.
The lecture on the Apotheosis has developed by
ix
X
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
slow degrees out of a lecture on the influence of the
Imperial figure on later decorative art, given before
the Architectural Society of Oxford as far back as
1908. In the same way, the lectures on the After
Life are the expansion of some three pages on the tomb-
stones of the Roman Provinces of Central Europe
which appeared in the first number of the Journal of
Roman Studies in connection with the Exhibition of
the art of the Roman Provinces at the Baths of Dio-
cletian in 1911. In both cases the long prelude on
the similar problems of Greek art seemed necessary
in order to determine more closely than is usually
the case in lecture-rooms and handbooks, the precise
debt of Rome to Greece and the originality of her own
contribution. In their present expanded form the
lectures were repeated at Rome in the spring of this
year before the students of our British School, which
in part accounts for the delay in the publication of
the book.
The subjects of the two lectures, though akin, are
approached from a somewhat different standpoint.
In the first lecture I have tried to account for the
centralised formula that appears in late Imperial
reliefs by showing the rôle played by the cult of the
Emperor in the formation of what appears to be a new
type of composition. Primarily, therefore, this is a
study of certain phases of antique design. The two
lectures on the 'Symbolism of the After Life,' on the
other hand, represent the attempt to disentangle the
various strains of thought and belief, whether native
or foreign, that went to the shaping of the magni-
PREFACE
xi
ficent sepulchral imagery of the Empire. The lectures,
which, as the Introductory Address shows, are speci-
ally intended for students, are put forward much in
the form in which they were delivered, so that I trust
that their many deficiencies may be ascribed not to
ignorance only, but to the want of space and oppor-
tunity for a fuller treatment. In the notes, at least,
I hope I have made up for certain unavoidable
omissions from the text, and should like to add that
the present book is only preparatory to another
in which I project to exhibit on a more extended
canvas the complicated and intercrossing influences
which flowed into the art of Rome.
Of the books dealing with Roman subjects which
have appeared since the lectures were delivered in
America, I should like to mention with special grati-
tude Mr. Warde-Fowler's Roman Ideas of Deity. To
it I owe, with much else, a clearer understanding of
that monotheistic current in Roman religion which is,
I believe, responsible for certain fundamental charac-
teristics of Roman art which the cult of the Emperor
later helped to bring to mature expression.
Without the full complement of illustrations made
possible in the lecture-room by the use of the lantern,
the lectures may appear inconclusive, but I have done
my best, with the liberal help of the publishers, to
illustrate the monuments most essential to my
theme; for the rest I have endeavoured to give refer-
ences to publications easily accessible, such as M. S.
Reinach's Répertoire de Reliefs, which should be at
every student's elbow.
xii
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
I am only too well aware that I court publication
at a moment when all our thoughts are diverted
by present anxiety from studies of an academic
nature, and not least from everything that touches
antiquity. Yet a time of probation which has called
forth Roman ideals of national life and personal
conduct is, after all, one when an attempt to gauge
some of the causes that moulded the aspirations of
Rome may not prove useless or out of place.
My thanks are due to His Excellency Don Ramon
Piña y Millet, Spanish Ambassador to the Quirinal,
for permission to photograph and reproduce here the
large sarcophagus in the Palazzo Barberini repre-
senting a scene of apotheosis; to Mr. A. H. Smith
for leave to illustrate several monuments in his
Department, including the fine Flavian medallion-
portrait recently acquired by the British Museum
and still unpublished; to the Commandant Emile
Espérandieu, to Mr. O. M. Dalton and to Dr. E.
Krueger for the loan of valuable photographs.
I recall with gratitude the generous help given
me by Mrs. Arundell Esdaile in getting the lectures
into book shape; by Miss C. Amy Hutton, who, on
my departure from England to Rome, relieved me of
all anxiety with regard to the illustrations; and by
Dr. Ashby, Director of the British School at Rome,
in the correction of the proofs.
ROME, March 1915.
EUGÉNIE STRONG.
ENVOI .
PREFACE
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
CONTENTS
ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS: ROME AND THE
PRESENT STATE OF ROMAN STUDIES
•
LECTURE I: THE APOTHEOSIS OF THE IM-
PERIAL FIGURE AND ITS INFLUENCE ON
DESIGN
NOTES.
LECTURE II: SYMBOLISM OF THE AFTER LIFE
ON THE GRAVESTONES OF THE LATER
ROMAN EMPIRE
LECTURE III: THE AFTER LIFE (continued)
ADDENDA
INDEX.
xiii
PAGE
V
ix
XV
xvii
I
30
112
181
233
280
285
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
I. THE EMPEROR JUSTINIAN 1. Silver Disc in
Petrograd. 2. Gold Medallion formerly in Paris Frontispiece
II. AN IMPERIAL LADY AND HER CHILDREN (Glass
Medallion)-Brescia
To face page I
III. AN IMPERIAL PROCLAMATION AND AN IMPERIAL
LARGESSE-Arch of Constantine.
DIOCLETIAN-Spalato
PORTRAIT OF
IV. MAIESTAS CHRISTI-Chartres
V. 1. SELENE (Greek Vase in Berlin). 2. SOL (Greek
Phalera in the British Museum)
VI. 1. GORGON FROM TEMPLE IN CORFU. 2. Sug-
gested Reconstruction of Pediment of Temple
VII. APOTHEOSIS OF JULIUS CAESAR (Altar in the
Vatican)
VIII. Two RELIEFS FROM ALTAR IN THE VATICAN
IX. I. THE GRAND CAMÉE DE FRANCE.
2. COINS
WITH APOTHEOSIS OF SABINA AND OF FAUSTINA
X. THE ABDICATION OF JUPITER-Benevento
XI. APOTHEOSIS OF MARCUS AURELIUS-Vienna (from
Ephesus)
XII. I. THE EMPEROR HONORIUS-Aosta.
2. THE
CHRIST BETWEEN ROMANUS AND EUDOCIA—
Paris.
XIII. I. VALENS AND VALENTINIAN-Vienna.
ENTINIAN WITH HIS TROOPS-Geneva
XIV. 1. AN IMPERIAL TRIAD (THEODOSIUS AND HIS
SONS), Silver Disc in Madrid. 2. THE MARRIAGE
OF DAVID, Silver Disc, Nikosia
2. VAL-
XV
,,
""
""
""
""
""
""
در
""
ر,
34
""
36
38
40
64
66
70
86
90
102
» 104
106
xvi
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
1
XV. 1. SARCOPHAGUS OF HAGHIA TRIADA (Detail)
-Museum of Candia. 2. Two SCENES OF
APOTHEOSIS :-(a) From the Chariot of
Monteleone. (b) From the Sarcophagus of
Haghia Triada .
To face page 113
2. GREEK
XVI. 1. STELE FROM CHRYSAPHA-Berlin.
STELE-Grottaferrata
•
•
XVII. 1. STELE OF LYSEAS-Athens. 2. STELE OF
ARCHIPPOS-Cook Coll., Richmond
XVIII. SCENE AT A TOMB (Attic Lekythos)-Boston
·
XIX. SARCOPHAGUS FROM CLAZOMENAE (Detail)—
British Museum.
XX. SCENE AT A TOMB (Stele from Xanthos)-British
Museum.
XXI. THE BANQUET OF THE APOTHEOSIS--Con-
stantinople
XXII. RECUMBENT SEPULCHRAL STATUE OF A BOY
-Rome (Terme)
XXIII. FUNERAL OF A ROMAN MILITARY OFFICIAL-
Amiternum
XXIV. 1. TOMBSTONE OF A CENTURION-Graz.
TOMBSTONE OF FLAVIAN PERIOD-British
Museum.
2.
XXV. A FAMILY GROUP-Museum of Arlon
XXVI. SATYR AND MAENAD-Museum of Arlon
XXVII. Two FAMILY REPASTS-Museum of Arlon
XXVIII. 1. SELENE (Relief from Argos)-British Museum.
2. SEPULCHRAL URN(Detail)—British Museum
XXIX. THE IGEL MONUMENT NEAR TRÈVES .
XXX. APOTHEOSIS OF HERACLES—Igel
XXXI. APOTHEOSIS OF A ROMAN EMPEROR-British
Museum.
XXXII. APOTHEOSIS ON A SARCOPHAGUS IN THE
PALAZZO BARBERINI
", 130
", 132
134
""
""
", 150
", 156
" 172
" 175
184
" 196
در
144
در
در
" 218
""
""
200
""
220
", 224
222
226
228
ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS
ROME AND THE PRESENT STATE OF ROMAN STUDIES
1. Modern Views and Controversies touching Roman
Art. The Pan-Orientalists
II. Criticism of the Pan-Oriental Theory. Attempted
Estimate of Rome's Relation to the East.
III. Character of Roman Art-
(a) In Pre-Augustan Times
(b) The Art of the Empire
IV. Proposed Treatment of Subjects chosen to illus-
trate Roman Imperial Art.
v. Necessity for keeping in View the 'Contributing
Factors' of Roman Art
VI. Spirit in which our Studies should be approached.
Some Pitfalls
VII. The Present and the Future of Roman Studies
LECTURE I
1. The Problem
II. Centralised Composition in Roman, Mediaeval and
Christian Art contrasted
•
III. Centralisation of Design in Greek Art-
(a) From the earliest Period to the Pediments
of Olympia
(b) The Pediments of the Parthenon. Pedi-
mental Composition in the Fourth Century
b
PAGE
xvii
2
5
DIVVS AVGVSTVS: THE INFLUENCE OF THE IMPERIAL
APOTHEOSIS ON ANTIQUE DESIGN
10
13
14
17
19
26
30
33
39
47
xviii
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
(c) Character of Greek Religion responsible for
the Character of Greek Art. Influence of
a Pantheon
(d) Weakness and Strength of Greek Design
further illustrated from Panel Compositions
and Friezes
Iv. Tendencies of Greek Design in the Hellenistic
Period
v. Hellenistic Art in Rome
vi. The Imperial Apotheosis and Deification as a Theme
of Art
VII. The Monuments of the Apotheosis and kindred
Works from Augustus to the End of the Julio-
Claudian Dynasty-
i
(a) The Imperial Idea in Augustan Art.
(b) The influence of Augustan Art upon Popular
Imagination
(c) Characteristics of Roman Art favourable to
Expression of the Imperial Idea
(d) Principles of Roman Design in the Service of
the Imperial Idea .
VIII. Centralisation of Design from the Flavians to the
Close of the Dynasty of the Severi
IX. The Principate of Hadrian to the Severi
x. The Period of Diocletian and Constantine. The
Christ gradually usurps the Place of the Emperor
as the Central Theme of Design
XI. From Constantine to Justinian.
Persistence of
Imperial Figure as the Central Motive of Design.
Summary
•
LECTURE II
THE SYMBOLISM OF THE AFTER LIFE ON
LATE ROMAN TOMBSTONES
"
1. The Subject
II. The Origin of the Gravestone traced to Fear of the
Ghost
PAGE
49
53
56
58
60
65
75
77
79
83
88
94
103
II2
114
!
ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS
xix
III. Origin of Sepulchral Imagery
IV. Conceptions of the After Life on Mycenaean and
Peloponnesian Stelae
v. The Attic Reaction. Character of Attic Sepulchral
Imagery-
(a) Traces of Beliefs in an After Life in certain
Attic Stelae
(b) After Life Beliefs in Attic Vase Pictures
(c) General Trend of Attic Thought with regard
to Death
•
vi. The Sepulchral Imagery of Asia Minor-
(a) General Character
(b) Scenes of Apotheosis and After Life on
Sarcophagi from Cyprus and from Clazo-
menae. The Chariot of Monteleone
(c) Sepulchral Imagery of Lycia.
(d) Chios. The Sarcophagi of Sidon. Character
of Ionian Art
VII. Graeco-Asiatic Stelae of the Hellenistic Period
VIII. Figured Tombstones in Greek Lands outside Asia
Minor and Attica.
Ix. The Sepulchral Art of the Romans from Primitive
Times to the Augustan Era-
(a) Prehistoric Rome and Latium
(b) From the early Fifth Century to the End of
the Republic
(c) From the End of the Republic to Augustus.
LECTURE III
THE AFTER LIFE (continued)
1. Symbolism of the Apotheosis of the Soul. The Eagle
and the Wreath
11. Influence of Mithraism on Sepulchral Imagery-
(a) The Mithraic Legend
(6) Mithraic Symbols on Roman Tombstones
III. Orphic and Dionysiac Symbolism
PAGE
121
128
134
137
138
142
144
148
153
157
159
162
166
170
181
187
191
197
N
XX
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
IV. The Dioscuri, Heracles and Aeneas, as Emblems of
the Wanderings and Triumph of the Soul. Death
conceived as a Sacred Marriage. Retrospect
v. Excursus on the Imagery of Tombs in Rome
VI. Minor Symbolism of the Stelae. Scenes from Daily
Life
VII. The Monument at Igel. Summary and Conclusion
PAGE
201
205
214
222
PLATE II.

BOYNNEPI
KEPAMI
AN IMPERIAL LADY AND HER CHILDREN.
Glass Medallion. Brescia.


INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS TO
STUDENTS
ROME AND THE PRESENT STATE OF ROMAN
STUDIES
O Roma nobilis
Orbis et domina
Cunctarum urbium
Excellentissima.
Mediaeval Hymn.
I WELCOME the opportunity of offering a few general
remarks on the present state of Roman studies all the
more gladly that when I come to the special subjects
of the lectures I shall be able to unfold them, so to
speak, against a prepared background, and you will
be able to realise more easily perhaps than might
otherwise be the case, the range of phenomena to
which they belong.
No modern development of Classical studies is, I
think, more striking than the new sympathetic ap-
preciation of the art of the Roman Empire, though
the value placed upon this art varies, and its origi-
nality has been most violently impugned. This
newly awakened interest flows no doubt from a larger
Imperialistic movement which turns to Rome once
more as to the forerunner of its own aspirations.
A
2
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
What has happened is not so much a revival as a
quickening of interest in ideals which never entirely
died out. Though bereft of political power, Rome,
as our mediaeval hymn reminds us, remained Orbis
domina to the imagination of the Middle Ages. The
Renaissance is heralded by Dante's vision of a re-
formed Imperialism which should revive the old
Roman and Stoic ideal of a city of men, with the
Emperor to direct the human race to 'temporal
felicity in accordance with the teaching of philosophy,'
and Imperialism in one form or other has continued
to fire the imagination of mankind and dominates our
era with a new prestige. Year by year we see an in-
crease in the number of books and lectures dealing
with Roman ideas and their application to the pro-
blem of Empire to-day. Archaeology and the history
of art have naturally come in for their share of this
revival, and while the scholar gains a fresh conception
of ancient Rome from the monuments on which her
history is hewn in imperishable shapes, the artist
feels inspired by those same monuments to seek for
new and enduring formulas, wherewith he may
clothe the ideals of a modern world.
I. MODERN VIEWS AND CONTROVERSIES TOUCHING
ROMAN ART. THE PAN-ORIENTALISTS
To-day I propose first to attempt a brief survey of
the stage reached by the burning controversy as to
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 3
the origins of the art of Imperial Rome, and to follow
up these remarks by touching, though perforce more
briefly still, on the value which her past bestows upon
modern Rome as a centre of study. I must begin by
trying to define what is meant by Roman art. The
task is not an easy one. In spite of the fact that the
importance of the subject is now fully recognised, the
difficulties which attend its study seem to increase
rather than to lessen with every new discovery and
every fresh point of view. Scholars now concede that
the art produced under the Roman rule has a place
in the long evolution of artistic form; and that, in
the centuries which followed the establishment of the
Empire, accepted formulas were revivified by adap-
tation to new political and religious ideals, and
finally quickened into new and vigorous life by the
spread of Christianity. Nevertheless deep-rooted
superstition dies hard:
The old dragon underground
Swinges the scaly horror of his folded tail.
The prejudice against Roman art as inferior still lives,
and, lurking even under the latest speculation, rears
its head in a new and subtle form. The art of the
Roman Empire is no longer dismissed as a last un-
important chapter in the history of the decadent
antique; the endeavour is now to prove that this art
was not Roman at all. If, to quote a sentence which
4
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
has become proverbial, there was not only decadence
in the 'three first centuries of the Empire but also
progress along an ascending line,' a militant school
led by Josef Strzygowski¹ claims this progress as
the effect of foreign influences and allows to Rome
only the heritage of decadence. These look upon
Greece as outworn in the time of the Empire, and
upon Rome as sterile; and trace back the new artistic
forms corresponding to new spiritual needs to the
Graeco-Oriental cities of Asia Minor or of Egypt, to
Syria, to that Asiatic hinterland which looms so large
in modern archaeological speculation. Moreover, the
controversy has now assumed a double aspect. For
the celebrated war-cry, 'Orient or Rome,' with which
Strzygowski opened his campaign against the Roman
school, he soon instituted that of 'Orient or Byzan-
tium' in the attack which now extends to Rome's
successor, Byzantium, whose position as a long ac-
knowledged centre of artistic inspiration is likewise
threatened. The Pan-Orientalists will not admit that
any new ideas flowed from the New any more than
from the Old Rome, or, as their leader puts it, 'the
accession of fresh ideals seems insignificant in com-
parison with the fund of ideas received.' 2 These
views receive the warm support of many important
modern writers on the subject of Oriental religions.
In the first chapter of his Religions Orientales dans
le Paganisme Romain, Cumont, whose introductory
ARA
An
Graph

INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 5
remarks I shall venture to paraphrase, asserts that
the Western peoples who have hitherto gloried in
being the direct heirs of Imperial Rome must abandon
their aristocratic pretensions, and learn to bow their
heads before the once despised East, from which they
derive so pre-eminent a share of their intellectual
and artistic patrimony; and he proceeds to picture
the Orient as penetrating the West, not indeed, as
used to be thought, through the fascination which an
old and corrupt civilisation necessarily exerts over
one less mature, but, on the contrary, in virtue of a
renewed vigour which enabled the East to endow the
failing Graeco-Roman peoples with new technical
resources, with artistic skill and intelligence, and
with the crowning gift of science.
II. CRITICISM OF THE PAN-ORIENTAL THEORY. AT-
TEMPTED ESTIMATE OF ROME'S RELATION TO
THE EAST
While a leading part is thus assigned to the East
in the formation of later Classical and early Christian
art, Rome as a contributing factor is thrown back into
the shade and sometimes left altogether out of count.
In addition to this, a small minority-unimportant
perhaps save for their violence-have tried of late to
return to the old point of attack, by representing
Rome as a brutalising influence in the development
6
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
of the antique. Let us try to arrive at some saner
view of our own.
Old-fashioned archaeologists have been not unjustly
reproached with adopting too easy a solution when
they represented the growth of the antique by the
direct line-Greek-Roman-Christian, yet it seems
an equally artificial formula that represents Greece,
with Rome tacked on to her as a negligible aftermath,
as a concrete and self-contained episode slowly sub-
merged by the vast wave of Oriental influence. Such
phrases as 'Greece and Rome die smothered in the
Orient's embrace' are admirable catchwords, but
they do not represent the infinitely complex factors
that went to build up the art which flourished under
the Roman Empire. On the other hand, the claim
that an Imperial art originated at Rome under
Augustus which spread its influence to the utmost
confines of the antique world was equally exaggerated.3
We now see that the vast culture of the Roman
Empire, emanating from nations in the most diverse
stages of civilisation and of intellectual development,
could not have radiated from one point only. It is
more in keeping with the facts to say that Rome
encouraged national development by her Imperial
policy and then gathered into her service the diverse
phases of art fostered by her régime. At the same
time, in discussing Rome as distinct from the Empire
we may still reasonably assert that she ranked from
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 7
Augustus onwards as a centre of artistic activity by
the side of Alexandria, of Antioch, of Seleucia herself;
that it is no more incorrect to speak of Roman than of
Pergamene, Alexandrian, Antiochene or Seleucid art,
though Rome was by no means the only centre of
Roman Imperial art. It is true that when we have
established a legitimate claim to speak of Roman art
we have to acknowledge on historical evidence alone
that the East must have played a major part in its
formation. Artists and architects, craftsmen and
workmen of every description flowed into the great
capital from the Eastern provinces of the Empire,
sometimes attracted by the building operations of
successive Emperors, at others returning in the train
of the conquerors. We hear that after the Mithri-
datic wars and the reduction of Syria, Pompey brought
gangs of Syrian workmen to carry out his building
plans; Augustus himself wished, it is said, to remodel
Rome upon Alexandria; Trajan entrusted his vast
engineering and architectural operations to the Syrian
Apollodorus. Long before Trajan's reign, numerous
Syrians must have drifted to Rome in consequence of
the Flavian conquest of Palestine; it is not yet
known what influence went to shape the profoundly
original genius of Rabirius, the architect of the Flavian
Emperors, but it seems probable that Vespasian
and Titus were inspired by some kingly residence
seen in the East to plan the famous Domus Flavia of
8
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
4.
the Palatine. This Syrianising process recalls what
happened in Europe at the time of the Crusades.
Richard Coeur de Lion, for instance, found the model
for his great fortress of Château Gaillard in the forti-
fied strongholds of Syria, and the Crusades had an
effect on the marvellous art of the thirteenth century
analogous to that exerted by the East on the art of
the Empire. Rome assimilated what she borrowed,
and in spite of her debt to both Oriental and Hellenic
models, her art, whether Imperial or Republican,
developed on lines of its own, and is without exact
parallel or counterpart in either Greece or the East.
However mixed the parentage, the offspring grew up
in a way of its own, and even rendered back with
interest the forms taken over from older peoples.
Miss Gertrude Bell, for instance, in the admirable
chapter on the 'Genesis of the Early Mohammedan
Palace' in her book on Ukhaidir, writes as follows of
the origin of vaulted construction :
In the second half of the third century, vaults with
similar characteristics appear under Hellenistic influence
in central Italy, where, after the middle of the second
century, they underwent a development to which the
Hellenistic East can offer no parallel. At the end of the
second century, while Latin builders threw their stone
vaults securely over a span of 14'50 metres, as in the
Ponte di Cecco on the Via Salaria, and even of 18.50
metres, as in the Pons Milvius, the Greeks of Asia Minor
did not venture to use a span wider than 7·10 metres, and
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 9
confined themselves as a rule to vaults under 4 metres in
span. It was now the part of the East to learn from Im-
perial Rome.* Western Asia took back its own creation
from the hands of Roman builders in the vast proportions
which the proficiency of the latter had given to it, and
over the whole of the Roman Empire the monumental
vault sprang into being. The earliest extant examples
on Mesopotamian soil are the great vaults of the palace
at Hatra.5
This intelligent and lucid statement, contributed,
moreover, by one who is an ardent disciple of Strzy-
gowski, should go far to restore the lost equipoise
between East and West as contributing factors in the
formation of the architecture of the Empire. It is
in striking contrast to the violent language in which
a recent writer condemns the architectural effort of
Rome. Every one is welcome to his own opinion
expressed in his own way, even if it lead him to ridicule
the daring concrete vaulting of the Empire by com-
paring it to the lid of a saucepan'; but to do this
while ignoring the sober and solid vaulting systems
of the Republican period, which may still be seen in
the arches of the Pons Milvius or the beautiful Ponte
di Nona, is at once bad history and bad criticism,
much as if we were to take the Pergamene marbles as
the supreme and final expression of the Greek genius
in art, without so much as a reference to the art of the
Parthenon and of the age of Pericles. Again, is it
*The italics are mine.
6
10
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
necessary to exalt the undeniable perfection of Santa
Sophia-as much, be it said in passing, a building
of the Empire and of a Roman Emperor as any
Augustan temple by the Tiber-by decrying the less
mature architecture of the Roman Thermae? Yet
since Rivoira's researches few will deny that the
masterly suspension of the dome of Santa Sophia
above its pendentives was only rendered possible by
the attempts made in this direction by Roman archi-
tects in the Baths of Caracalla and of Diocletian.
'Jamais le génie de Rome et celui de l'Orient ne
s'associèrent dans un plus surprenant et plus har-
monieux ensemble,' says the illustrious French archi-
tect, Choisy, of Santa Sophia, and at that, I think,
we can leave it (Histoire de l'Architecture, ii. 51).
III. CHARACTER OF ROMAN ART
(a) In Pre-Augustan Times
In point of fact, Roman Imperial art is neither so
individual nor yet so Graeco-Oriental in character as
the extremists of either party would have us believe ;
nor, again, is it merely Greek of the decadence, as the
archaeologists of a generation now rapidly passing
away were wont to teach; but different strata meet
and mingle in it, and to learn to distinguish between
these is the true task of criticism. The term 'An-
tique' embracing Greece and Rome as the main
factors of one mighty artistic movement, was after all
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS TO STUDENTS II
exact. The old error lay not in linking Rome to
Greece, but in representing the Greek or Hellenistic
element in Roman art as an accession of the Augustan,
or of the late Republican period. On the contrary,
Hellenistic art transplanted to Rome flourished anew
in a soil long prepared to receive it, a fact which has
been overlooked in all our histories, where, until
lately, Augustan art followed directly upon Hellen-
istic, with rarely so much as a glance at that of Re-
publican Rome or ancient Latium which we are only
beginning to understand and appreciate.
This early Italic art, as it is convenient to call it,
to a great extent derives from Greek, and more
especially Ionian art, but it lacks many of the fasci-
nating qualities of its models. At times it clings to
tradition with an obstinacy almost Egyptian, at others
it adopts Greek ideas with headlong enthusiasm.
Beside the more finished and measured achievements
of Greece, early art in Rome appears somewhat
prosaic and pedestrian. It sinks on occasion to the
provincial level; it has the heavy earnestness, the
sturdy conservatism of a community remote from the
centres of intellectual activity and production, which
the art of the Empire itself did not wholly shake off;
but it has also the sterling qualities of the provincial
spirit, solidity, and that prudent reliance on tradition
which by preserving primitive forms by the side of
the innovations introduced from Greece, evolved in
12
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
time such architectural masterpieces as the round
temples-the temple of Vesta in the Forum, the temple
of the Sibyl at Tivoli, the Pantheon itself-noble
structures which, as has so often been indicated,
can be traced back step by step through the cen-
turies to the round huts of the Neolithic peoples of
Italy.
The art forms of Latium and Etruria gave way in
part to those of Greece, and these in their turn to
influences imported from the South or East, which
Rome passed on again with her advancing legions to
every nation that came within her Empire. But the
old was never wholly swallowed up by the new; it
was the peculiar quality of Roman art as of Roman
religion to be at the same time conservative and hos-
pitable. Primitive customs and the most primitive
of magical ceremonies were so strong even in the
Rome of Ovid's day that they permeate his Graecised
conceptions of religion and literature. We shall
therefore not be surprised to find that the conservative
Roman, when faced with the necessity of expressing
the relation of the deified Emperor to his people-
if I may illustrate my meaning from the subject of
my first lecture-recurs for the central figure of the
State to the primitive 'frontality' which had never
been altogether lost to Roman art even at its most
Hellenising period.
-
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 13
(b) The Art of the Empire
The fate of Hellenism itself might have been very
different had Roman surroundings, like those of
Egypt, for instance, been uncongenial to its develop-
ment. In discussing the relatively trivial achieve-
ments of Ptolemaic art, Mr. Hogarth has admirably
said: 'Greek art came to Egypt to vivify, and stayed
to die.'" Precisely the reverse took place in Rome.
Here Greek art neither decayed nor died, but stayed
to live, and was itself vivified by contact with Roman
ideals on the one hand, and on the other with the
fresh influences which Rome herself, as we have seen,
derived from the East. The chief phases of the new
activity were the ages of Augustus and the Flavians,
of Trajan and the Antonines. A period of com-
parative sterility followed, due in great measure to
political reasons and the absence of that incentive to
production which comes with conquest and military
glory. But a reaction for the better set in once more
under Aurelian and Diocletian, induced by the vic-
torious campaigns of these Emperors in the East.
In this period the East began to play the leading
part which in earlier days had been that of Greece;
the result was a first great outburst of activity under
Diocletian, and its eventual outcome the splendid
massive art of the fourth century, of which I shall have
much to say to you in the lectures. From the begin-
14
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
ning Rome stood to Greece, to Ionia, and the Nearer
East as these in turn stood to Persia and Meso-
potamia, until Rome became a World-Empire and
could draw her own inspiration direct from the Orient.
But that is no reason for denying that the various
influences were refashioned in the service of Rome
till they emerged, both in the city itself and in the
provinces, as what may still be justly called Roman
Imperial Art.
IV. PROPOSED TREATMENT OF SUBJECTS CHOSEN TO
ILLUSTRATE ROMAN IMPERIAL ART
In what follows, my endeavour is to show in two
concrete instances how Greek and Oriental influences
combined with certain Roman strains to express new
ideals. One typical example is afforded, I think, by
the slow transformation of the traditional schemes
of antique design brought about by the necessity of
giving prominence to the deified or quasi-deified figure
of the Emperor, who had by slow degrees become the
central theme of the religious art of the Empire.
In the two lectures on the symbolism of the After
Life on Greek and Roman tombstones I shall try to
show how the religious ideas of Greece and Rome,
quickened by the strong current of the Oriental
religions which spread over the Empire, left in the
carved stelae of the Roman provinces the vivid record
of a new Faith. Western artistic formulas that seemed
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 15
exhausted were revivified by the magic touch of the
East; and in the Western world a sepulchral imagery
developed which in the purity of its ideals and in
the strenuous expression of its faith in immortality
surpasses everything that the earlier antique had
attempted, and comes near to Christian icono-
graphy. In both cases I shall devote considerable
space to the Greek ideas involved, as inseparable
from the later purely Roman phase into which
they merged.
My hope as a teacher of the subject of Classical
Archaeology is that studies of this character may
help to heal that schism between Greece and Rome
which is instilled in their school-days even into those
brought up in modern methods, and which does more
than anything else to retard the progress of Classical
studies by weakening and falsifying our scientific
outlook on the past. At no time do we show ourselves
less Greek in spirit than when we repudiate as un-
wholesome that intellectual curiosity which
which was
among the rarest and most distinctive qualities of
the Greek mind, and shut ourselves up in satisfied
contemplation of the formulas which we have erected
into shibboleths. Greek studies have suffered no
less than Roman from this attitude of mind. By
setting up artificial barriers between what we imagine
to be Greek on the one side and Roman on the other,
we debar ourselves from observation of the infinitely
16
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
complex processes of development which unite the
two.
If I may permit myself a direct personal allusion,
it is to beg of you, should you ever think of me or
these lectures again, not to bring it up against me
that I pleaded for Roman at the expense of Greek
art. On the contrary, I have tried everywhere and
always, in what teaching I have been privileged to
give, to substitute for barren rhetorical contrasts.
between Greece and Rome, evidence-based on facts
arranged as well as I knew how-of what Rome
owed to Greece, for so far this debt seems to me
very imperfectly ascertained or understood. In-
deed at the present moment I am compiling a
book-small in bulk, but covering a wide historical
area-in which the debt of Rome to Greece is traced
step by step. Do you suppose, that after long years
spent in study among the incomparable collection
of Greek masterpieces in our British Museum, I am
blind to Rome's and the world's debt to Greece?
Above all, I realise Greece's infinitely clearer vision
of beauty, though I cannot help thinking that this
vision was attained by the sacrifice of certain things
pertaining to the spiritual world, which the Romans,
in spite of their more mediocre endowment as artists,
as poets, as thinkers, yet came to realise and to
express, partly in forms inherited from the Hellenic
Orient, partly also in others surviving from a primitive
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 17
stratum of religious art and religious belief. I like-
wise claim that in the process the Romans touched
at times the great heights of inspiration and achieve-
ment, though they left it to Christianity to bring to
a victorious issue in its mediaeval sculpture much for
which Rome could only pave the way.
V. NECESSITY FOR KEEPING IN VIEW THE CONTRI-
BUTING FACTORS' OF ROMAN ART
8.
One more point. From what I have said it might
be thought that I propose to consider Rome as the
unique centre of the artistic impulse of the Empire.
Far from it; I merely claim the right to call Roman
any art form which seems to have been inspired or
transformed or invested with new meaning by the
ideas imposed by Rome-whether the subjects under
discussion be the superb type of the Defensor Fidei,
or of the Christian Maiestas-both of which are, I
admit, of Egyptian origin —or the Apotheosis with
its mixed Oriental and Hellenistic character. We
can see clearly in art as elsewhere how much Rome
gained by substituting for a narrow national ideal the
higher ideal of Empire. Let me repeat here a little
more fully what I have already indicated, namely,
that Rome never showed a greater or more intelligent
sense of her Imperial mission than in her encourage-
ment of the national characteristics of the conquered
races. It is here that the opponents of Roman art
B
18
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
come unwittingly to our assistance with theories that
are mutually destructive, for it is evident that if, as
one school asserts, the art of Rome is entirely non-
Roman, then Rome cannot have stamped out all
artistic impulse in the people she governed in order
brutally to impose her own formulas, as writers of
another school would have us believe. Instead of
crushing the different nationalities that came within
the pale of her Empire by the artificial imposition
of a Roman super-nationality, Rome encouraged
and developed their national life, and thus bestowed
upon them more permanent prosperity than could
have otherwise been theirs.9 Her Imperial reward,
as I hope I may be able to show you in the lectures,
was that the artistic formulas of diverse peoples
became devoted to the expression of the new Imperial
idea. More than six years ago, I said of the much
discussed Barberini ivory, that if this beautiful object
really was of Egyptian origin,' it only illustrated once
more the compelling force of the Roman genius that
could gather up into its service the art-forms of the
different countries under its sway' (Roman Sculpture,
p. 346). I am more than ever convinced that this is
the right point of view for looking at the artistic
achievement of the Roman Empire, and that in this
way the envenomed question 'Orient or Rome,'
instead of running to acrid controversy, may lead to
illuminating results.
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 19
VI. SPIRIT IN WHICH OUR STUDIES SHOULD BE
APPROACHED. SOME PITFALLS
Students of Rome certainly have nothing to gain
by obscuring the truth as to the origins of her art
or of the manifold forms which it could command.
At this point you will perhaps allow me to say a few
words as to the spirit in which I conceive our studies
should be approached, and to warn you of certain
pitfalls against which young students, especially,
should ever be on their guard. First a word as to
the fashion still prevalent in our Classical teaching of
using the Romans as a foil to the Greeks. Perhaps
in America you have never fallen a prey to this bad
habit: it is certainly on the decrease on the Continent,
but we English cling to it stoutly. Let me take an
example from a book of great literary beauty which
has done a great deal towards restoring to us a saner
and juster appreciation of the Greek Genius. The
author cannot rid himself of the habit of heightening
the value of Greek endeavour by depreciating Roman
effort in parallel directions; his estimate of Greek
literature is as admirable as everything which he says
of the Greeks, but listen to what, by way of comparing
the two literatures, he has to tell us of Rome's poetic
achievements:
The Romans took kindly to the literary pastoral and
the literary epic, and the sham didactic poem; they
20
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
revelled in the undigested mythology of another race.
They are imitative and second-hand, content to dispense
with a direct experience of life and transmit into their
own language the emotions and thoughts of others; for
the most part their fingers do not touch the pulse of life.
Vergil's Pastorals and Georgics are charming; his shep-
herds are sham ones and keep no sheep, nor are any
genuine labourers at work in his fields. Only Lucretius
among Latin poets will show us the hard struggle of man
with the earth. And if we only keep Vergil in selections,
we shall have some difficulty in keeping Ovid at all.10
I confess that this airy way of treating Vergil
pierces me to the heart, for though I have little time in
which to improve classical attainments which were
always meagre, I yet try to read through Vergil once
every year, not only for the pure beauty of his poetry,
best appreciated if we read it in his own country face
to face with the landscapes that he loved, but because
it is the poetry of one who also understood certain
things of the spirit as none had quite done before,
and only one or two have done since.11 I also know
all that Vergil means for the true understanding of
Augustan art and of the whole Latin civilisation; 12
and as it is not often that archaeology comes to us in
poetic garb,13 the idea of keeping Vergil only in
selections does not commend itself to me. You will
see in the sequel that I am myself not over tender
towards the 'undigested Greek mythology' which
went to spoil so much of the artistic endeavour of
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 21
Rome, whether plastic or literary, by diverting it
into paths alien to its spirit. But however much we
may deplore the sinister effect which wholesale and
uncritical imitation of Greece and adoption of Greek
standards had upon the development of Roman art,
and I admit more especially upon Latin poetry, at
certain periods, that is again no reason for hurling an
indiscriminating thunderbolt at all her poets, and
including them in one catastrophic condemnation.
The futility of contrasts was long ago brought out
by Mr. J. W. Mackail in a fine sentence on the poetry
of Homer and Vergil, which I often like to quote to
students, it is so good a text to keep in view:
No great work of art can be usefully judged by com-
parison with any other great work of art.
It may indeed
be interesting and fertile to compare one with another, in
order to seize more sharply and appreciate more vividly
the special beauty of each. But to press comparison
further, and to depreciate one because it has not what
is a special quality of the other, is to lose sight of the
function of criticism.14
In spite of all efforts to combat it, the determination
to praise the Greek at the expense of the Roman
persists. At the close of one of his American lectures,
a distinguished Oxford scholar drew a comparison of
the civilisation and character of Greece and Rome
in which not only were the Greeks endowed with
all the amiable virtues, but what is more important
22
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
in the bid for popularity, with the endearing and
sympathetic faults as well, while the Romans were
presented as 'severe, strong, well-disciplined, trust-
worthy, self-confident, self-righteous, unimaginative
and harsh,' 15 not all of them agreeable qualities making
for pleasant intercourse, or again such as we fancied
specially characteristic of the Scipios, or of Cicero,
or of Augustus and Vergil and Catullus, but fairly
true perhaps of the race as a whole. So far so good,
but lest we should be left with one shred of sympathy
for the poor Roman, we are further told that he was
a 'heavy feeder.' At what Roman is this shaft of
ridicule levelled? If the feasts of Lucullus have
remained proverbial, what shall we say of Marcus
Aurelius' praise of abstinence? Or not to trespass
beyond my own subject, do the harsh spare features
of the portraits of Republican date or the intellectual
and ascetic face of the Augustus from the Via Labi-
cana suggest 'heavy feeding'? The Roman Em-
perors are fairly well charged by now with every
vice of which humanity is capable, but even with
the help of the illuminating elogia affixed to their
busts in our British Museum, I have failed to find
the unromantic sin of gluttony attributed to any
Emperor save Claudius, that perpetual butt of
the irony of the historian, whether ancient or
modern.
They knew,' we are further told of the Greeks by
"
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 23
A
the same authority, 'what Rome as a whole did not
know, the inward meaning and the reverse side of
glory. They knew the bitterness of lost battles, the
sting of the master's lash; they knew self-judgment
and self-contempt, amazement and despair.' I speak
always with diffidence as a mere student of the monu-
ments, but what of the Roman conception of defeat,
as we see it depicted on the column of Trajan?
Where in earlier art do we find the pathos of failure
and the psychology of despair drawn with such un-
erring mastery, or the tenderness of the conqueror
towards the conquered more nobly delineated?
I need only remind you of the incomparable scene
where Trajan, courteous and merciful like the great
commander that he was, receives the submission of
the Dacians at the close of the first war; or that other
scene where he turns away with a noble gesture of
aversion from the soldiers who present to him the
heads of enemies as spoils; or again, of the episode
within the walls of Sarmizegetusa, when the conquered
chiefs prefer poison to surrender. These 'harsh'
Romans understood the quality of mercy, and re-
membered the precept of their own poet whom a new
generation can only tolerate in selections:
haec tibi erunt artes .
Ma
•
parcere subiectis.
Indeed it always seems to me that the artists who
carved the Trajanic reliefs were inspired by that same
24
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
sense of pity which Mr. J. W. Mackail justly observes
is the 'central charm of Vergil,' and that, like the
Augustan poet, they too could 'sound the depths
of beauty and sorrow, of patience and magnanimity,
of honour in life and hope beyond death.' As further
examples let me also recall to you the old Dacian
chief who turns away to hide his tears as he receives
the body of his dead son, and those many scenes
towards the close of the second war in which the
prowess and the endurance of Decebalus are held up
to admiration and respect. As much and sometimes
more imaginative sympathy is needed to realise
another's woe as to express one's own.
Remember also the pathos of the later Roman
portraiture, with its psychological insight, its tender
handling of moral or physical defects. Look at
certain Flavian and Antonine portraits; at the
'Aesop' of the Villa Albani, or at the bust of the
young Marcus Aurelius in the Capitol; at the por-
traits of the women of the Emesene dynasty; at the
wonderful head of an old and wrinkled woman in
the Louvre, surmised to be the aged Helena, ‘mother
and grandmother of Emperors,' and then tell me if
our hard and practical Romans had no sense of the
lacrimae rerum.
One more warning as to the habit of trotting out
certain conventional epithets, resembling set leit
Motivs, whenever the Romans or their achievements
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 25
are discussed. Roman art and architecture, for in-
stance, invariably call forth the adjectives' practical'
or 'unimaginative' even from writers who otherwise
are ardent apologists of Rome.16 Yet I maintain
that no people whose formative instinct failed to rise
beyond the 'practical' could have created Roman
architecture or imparted even to works of utility
such as aqueducts, viaducts, bridges-the Pont du
Gard and the bridge of Alcantara-the inspired
character which brings them within the region of
great art. We are told that 'in the works of their
hands and their brains they were not an imaginative
people.' But the Pantheon with its astonishing
dome, the Thermae of Caracalla and of Diocletian
where vast halls are spanned in a manner that has
moved to admiration every architect who knows
his business from Michael Angelo to our own times,
the Basilica Nova with its harmony of spaces and
its aerial cofferings reflected as it were in the
patterned marble of the pavement—are any of these,
I ask you, conceivable as the work of a people who
lacked the imaginative quality? In archaeological
studies as elsewhere, traditional tricks of thought
and speech may result in warping the sanest judg-
ment; as students you should ever bear in mind the
words of the Wisdom of Solomon, that crooked thoughts
separate from God.
26
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
VII. THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE of
ROMAN STUDIES
I am well aware that the views I have ventured to
criticise survive only as traditional formulas bereft
of all driving force, and are therefore bound to pass
away. Already our histories of art give every year
a larger share to Rome's contribution to the world,
and our periodicals welcome articles on Roman sub-
jects as eagerly as on Greek. The great publications
on the art of the Roman provinces now undertaken
by almost every modern country settled by the
Roman legions; the archaeological expeditions to
various Roman sites such as the Romanised cities of
Asia and the Syrian cities of the Antonine period;
the now recognised importance of the art of the
Empire and its bearing on Christian art-all are signs
of a great revival of interest in the Roman Empire
and in Roman studies. Nor should we forget that
for many years the nations of modern Europe, all of
whom were more or less affected by the civilisation
diffused by Rome and her armies, have been repre-
sented in Rome as in a mother-city by Institutes of
art and archaeology. After a period when their
activity was for a time eclipsed by the attraction of
archaeological discovery in Greek lands, these Insti-
tutes have been strengthened and reorganised and,
best omen of all, have attracted a fresh influx of
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 27
students, whose presence shows that Rome is once
more looked upon as the natural centre of these
studies. If we are no longer to be allowed to call
ourselves solely the heirs of Rome, it is, after all,
because history and archaeology have shown us to
be something greater still-the heirs, namely, of all
the civilisations, whether Western or Eastern, that
once came under her sway. And as a proof of the
acknowledged vitality of the conceptions that ema-
nated from Imperial Rome as factors in modern art,
we should rejoice that two of the Institutes, the
American and the British, have decided to amal-
gamate with the bodies either existing or in process
of formation, of practising members of the living arts.
In this new alliance of art and archaeology, under the
auspices of our British School and of the American
Academy, I see the happiest presage for the future
of the constructive and the plastic arts. You in
America, with architectural triumphs such as the
Pennsylvania and the Grand Central Railway Stations
of New York, the Station of Chicago, the exquisitely
planned Hall of all the Americas' at Washington,
the mighty 'sky-scrapers' which have restored to
modern cities the soaring dignity of the vertical line,
do not need to be reminded of what the modern world
can learn, and learn, too, in the way of application
to modern life, from Roman architecture. Your
architects have learnt to build round a central space,
C
28
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
to construct piers that support aerial systems of
roofing, to clothe walls in multi-coloured marble
revetments, in a manner that would astonish Domi-
tian's Rabirius and Trajan's Apollodorus, and that
excellent architect, the Emperor Hadrian himself,
and which would delight the unknown genius who
planned the Basilica Nova. I am not here to speak
to you of the Mistress Art,' nor, indeed, am I com-
petent to do so, though I ask you to bear in mind
what I have said of the imaginative quality of Roman
architecture. There emanates from it that vital
impulse of which Americans have not been slow to
avail themselves. In this respect we English lag far
behind, but if anything can help us to shake off the
parochial character which is apt to mar our best
modern efforts, we shall owe it, I think, to a renewed
belief in the efficacy of study in Rome. The very
fact that the art of the Roman Empire has a com-
posite character, and that in order to understand it
we must first grapple with the far-reaching problem
of its origins, redoubles its interest and value, since
we can learn from the manifold forms that went to its
making as well as from the finished product. Our
aesthetic outlook broadens with the archaeological.
The long neglected art of the centuries which pre-
ceded the great period of Justinian is slowly coming
to its own. Already we do justice not to its
architecture only but to the grand originality of its
G
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 29
portraiture. The Tetrarchy of San Marco and the
Valentinian of Barletta; the Constantine of the
Basilica Nova and the 'Theodora' of Milan; the
Imperial group on a glass medallion at Brescia
(plate ii.)* and the 'Serena' of Monza, are only a
few of the masterpieces which have been rescued
from oblivion or the handbooks of specialists for the
delight of all lovers of art.
You will not, I know, take it amiss if in conclusion
I urge those of you who are artists to shake off once
and for all the perverse notion that knowledge of the
conditions under which works of art were produced
in the past is harmful to the production of works of
art in the present, or if I implore the archaeologists
among you to abandon the methods of antiquarianism
and to let their studies flow once more with the stream
of life. Only so can artist and archaeologist alike
draw from the past strength and inspiration for
present effort and future achievement, and by their
combined efforts raise art to greater heights than
those attained even in Imperial Rome.
* See note on p. 284.
LECTURE I
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
THE INFLUENCE OF THE IMPERIAL APOTHEOSIS
ON ANTIQUE DESIGN
Human art does not impose problems of form through
caprice or excess of virtuosity, it imposes them only when
they are questions of life and death for the subjects to be
treated: here also in the centre of all progress in art is the
force of religious inspiration.-DELLA SETA.
I. THE PROBLEM
It is my purpose in this lecture to treat of the Im-
perial Apotheosis as a factor in those highly cen-
tralised compositions which differentiate the art of
the Roman Empire in the fourth and succeeding
centuries from anything that precedes it. None of
the current formulas of Greek or Hellenistic art
proved adequate to express the ideas attaching to
the Apotheosis. The doctrine accordingly called
forth a new artistic scheme in which the central
motive of the deified Emperor was combined with the
narrative element supplied by the representation of
the Imperial deeds, the res gestae. The formula
adopted for this central figure was simply a return
to the old frontal principles of primitive art which
30
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
31
had been discarded in the great age of Greece; the
narrative element was that which, developed origi-
nally by Greece, had become the common property
of the Graeco-Roman world.
, 1
Of recent years there has been much use and also
much abuse of the terms' frontal' and' frontality.'
In the present instance I shall restrict the words to
their simplest meaning, and leave out of consideration,
as foreign to my present purpose, any discussion of
the aesthetic laws which attach to the frontal position.
Thus I shall say of an image or statue that it is
frontal, when it is placed squarely to the front, face
to face with the spectator.2 This full-face pose, for
which we have no entirely adequate English word,.
expresses the simplest relation that can be established
between the image of the god and the suppliant, since
this inaction effectually isolates the image for con-
templation. In a stimulating essay on the effect of
religious belief upon plastic form, Alessandro Della
Seta has recently shown that races content to consider
the deity under the magical aspect of a power from
whom they ask protection only, are apt to retain the
primitive full-face, the frontal pose, as I shall call it,
for their gods; while the reflective and intellectual
Greeks soon abandoned this isolated pose in order to
link figures together in a common action and so
created the mythological and narrative art which
enabled them to illustrate the nature of the gods by
32
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
}
3
representing their dealings with one another and
with men, thus at the same time setting their cultus
images free from the hieratic stiffness of the primitive
frontality. Della Seta's book is at last before the
English-speaking public, and it is needless further to
summarise his views. In both this lecture and the
next I shall have ample opportunity of indicating the
greatness of my debt to what is certainly the most
important work on the evolution and the function of
art that has appeared of recent years. At the same
time I continue to differ from Della Seta as to the
barren destinies of later Imperial art. He admits
that Rome had put the Emperor in the place of the
gods, and near the image of the Emperor were reliefs
commemorating his deeds' (Religion and Art, p. 286),
but he does not link this phenomenon with any subse-
quent progress or with the art of early Christianity.
I hold, on the contrary, that as the Maiestas of the
deified Emperor gathered force it brought with it a
centralisation of design that paved the way for the
Maiestas of Christian art, and that the representation
of the Imperial res gestae lead up to those of Christ
and His Saints and the deeds of the chosen people.
Frontality, the full-face pose, reintroduced into art
that monolatric element which brings all the parts
of a composition into the service of a central idea,
and without which there can, I conceive, be no great
religious compositions. Thus the subject of the
¿
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
33
Imperial Apotheosis can throw light not only on the
later art of the Empire, but also on the perplexing
period of the transition from Pagan to Christian art.
The Emperor, the man exalted to the rank of god, comes
by degrees to claim for himself the central place in
design, to the exclusion of the gods who had been the
constant theme of Graeco-Roman art. Then in his
turn the Emperor is called upon to abdicate in favour
of one greater than himself, and by the same slow
degrees that he himself obtained it, he yields his place
to the God made man.
II. CENTRALISED COMPOSITION IN ROMAN, MEDI-
AEVAL AND CHRISTIAN ART CONTRASTED
The problem which we have to examine will at
once be clear if we illustrate it by concrete examples.
First I would draw your attention to certain reliefs
of early fourth century date on the arch of Constan-
tine at Rome. According to investigations lately.
undertaken by Professor Frothingham, the arch may
date as far back as the period of Domitian, after
whose death it was doubtless desecrated and fell into
neglect. It seems to have been taken in hand by
a succession of Emperors, and to have been repeatedly
altered and redecorated, till under Constantine it
assumed the shape under which we know it and was
dedicated afresh. Owing to its association with
the name of the first Christian Emperor, it has always
C
4
34
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
exerted a special fascination, and its architecture and
sculptures are very familiar.5
In the centre of the attic is the proud inscription
which records that Constantine liberated the State
from its tyrant instinctu divinitatis, two words gener-
ally accepted as containing a covert allusion to the
introduction of Christianity. To either side are
arranged eight oblong panels taken from an arch
set up to commemorate the campaigns of Marcus
Aurelius against the Germans and the Sarmatians
(R.R., i. 241-8). Beneath again are eight medallions
with hunting scenes, which, from their Flavian char-
acter, may have belonged to the original decoration
of the arch (R.R., i. 250-1). Below runs a little
frieze which, from the style of the carving, cannot
well be earlier than the beginning of the fourth
century (R.R., i. 254-7). It commemorates on all
four sides the res gestae of an Emperor, and probably
refers to the Persian campaigns of Diocletian of the
year 303, and the procession and other ceremonies
of the Triumph. On the west side are depicted the
siege of a city and a great battle scene, once supposed
to be that of the Milvian Bridge; on either side are
scenes from the triumphal pomp; while on the Eastern
face, looking towards the Coliseum, run the two
friezes that form the text of this lecture. On the
one the Emperor is making to the assembled people
a proclamation from the Rostra; on the other he is
6
I. AN IMPERIAL PROCLAMATION AND AN IMPERIAL LARGESSE.
Arch of Constantine.
2. PORTRAIT OF DIOCLETIAN. Spalato.
PLATE III.




Um
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
35
seen enthroned while officials distribute to eager
crowds the congiarium or largesse customary after a
triumph (plate iii., 1 and 2).
In almost every handbook and history of art these
friezes, when mentioned at all, are dismissed as late
and decadent work showing the complete debasement
of art in the fourth century. This judgment has
been repeated in one book after another, since, like
Anatole France's shrewd professor, we all find it
notoriously easier and more popular to repeat old
ideas than to search for new ones. Yet I can imagine
an unprejudiced observer looking at these reliefs, and
failing to see why they should be dismissed as decadent
antique. Surely the first thing that would strike him
would be that their spirit is not antique at all. Where,
in Greek or in Graeco-Roman art, do we find so highly
centralised a composition, figures so consistently
placed in a frontal position, or a similar principle of
lighting, or flat planes thus combined with deep
undercutting? The deliberate optic effects aimed
at by the Constantinian sculptor have been fully
discussed by others, and I do not propose to touch
upon the question here. I want rather to draw your
attention to the accent laid on the central figure of
the Emperor, to the manner in which all the lines of
the composition flow towards him, so concentrating
the interest upon him that he becomes the centre of
homage to the figures on each side, and is also offered
36
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
in full frontal view to the homage of the spectator
from without. It is this union of centrality or con-
vergence, with frontality which distinguishes Roman
from Greek composition in relief.
The same principle makes itself felt, alongside of
the older methods, in early Christian and mediaeval
ivories, and finds supreme expression in the sculptures
of our cathedrals-in the tympanum of Saint Trophime
at Arles, for instance, or in the magnificent Royal
porch at Chartres, to take two examples from the
Romanesque and Gothic sculptures of the twelfth
century. Let us examine for a moment the con-
struction of the design in the Chartres tympanum
(plate iv.). The subject, Christ worshipped by the
symbols of the four Evangelists, is one familiarly
employed in thirteenth century sculpture within
the almond-shaped nimbus or mandorla sits the
Christ according to the scheme known as the Maiestas.
On His left knee He holds the book of the Evangels,
and He raises His right hand in the act of benediction.
The figure faces the spectator in the hieratic frontal
attitude, with no inclination to either side. The
Evangelists adore Him, but the central figure is uncon-
scious of the act which heightens and emphasises His
own majesty; for the Christ is thought of not in
relation to the other figures within the tympanum,
but is presented as God to the worshipper who looks
up at the image. Consider for one moment what
9
S
深
​Er
V
MAIESTAS CHRISTI.
Chartres.
PLATE IV.

1
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
37
would happen were the Christ drawn into the action
of the surrounding scene. He would at once become
an historical personage participating in a definite
action; whereas the artist's intention has been to
remove Him, by means of the frontal pose, outside all
conditions of time and space, and to present Him to
us as the pre-existent Christ, the Son of God and of
Man.10
This method of emphasising the central by the
frontal principle was not unknown, as we shall see,
to the earliest periods of Greek art; but from the
first the Greeks exhibit a tendency to work away
from the frontal pose, so that centralisation with
them becomes rather a matter of arrangement of
lines, untouched by higher spiritual considerations.
Take, for instance, the masterly design of the
Nativity of Aphrodite' represented on the principal
face of the so-called Ludovisi Throne (Terme Museum ·
R.R., iii. 326, 1-4=Helbig, 1286). Here, too, you
have a strongly centralised composition: the straight
slim young figure occupies the exact centre of the
panel, and is raised by the two stooping attendant
nymphs, who, for all their bending grace and tender-
ness of movement, hold up the young goddess with
the precision of heraldic supporters. So far as the
body is concerned, the Aphrodite is placed in a
purely frontal pose, which enhances the central note;
but look at the head. This is shown in profile, to a
C
38
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
↓
certain extent perhaps for technical reasons, since it
is easier to draw the head in profile than en face,
but the technical reasons are assuredly influenced by
the Greek desire of arranging figures into self-con-
tained and closely-knit groups. Observe the result;
instead of the central figure being, like the Christ on
the tympanum of Chartres, removed by the frontal
position beyond the conditions of time and space that
govern the rest of the design, the profile turn of the
head and its upward tilt in the direction of the nymph
on the right connect the Aphrodite directly with the
ministering figures on either side, and make her, from
the passive object of their ministrations, into the
active participant of their action and their emotion.
There could be no greater contrast to the effect
obtained by the frontal formula of late Roman and
early Christian art, with its definite withdrawal of
the central figure from the surrounding action.
One more comparison, and this time between two
objects of Greek art. One is the lovely cylix of early
fifth century date in Berlin, representing Selene sink-
ing with her horses into the ocean; the other the
bronze phalera from Elis in the British Museum,
representing the rising Helios (plate v.). On the first
of these the interlacing of the horses, the turn of their
heads towards each other, the head of the goddess
seen in profile above her body which is placed front-
ally, all set this work in the class of narrative art,
W
७७
1. SELENE.
2. SOL.
6C
GGGGGG
CCS
20
GGGGG
Greek Vase in Berlin.
Greek Phalera in the British Museum.
PLATE V.


Um
}
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
39
in spite of the fact that the design as a whole is seen
from the front by the spectator. The phalera, on
the other hand, with its great Helios facing straight
to the spectator, the horses galloping to either side
that nothing may stand between the god and his
worshipper, exhibits a purely frontal centralised
design. The prophylactic virtue of the phalera
doubtless kept the figure of the god in this primitive
position, while the cylix, being purely decorative,
retained the accidents, but not the essentials of
primitive religious art.
III. CENTRALISATION OF DESIGN IN GREEK ART
(a) From the Earliest Period to the Pediments of
Olympia
But in order to seize the different principles that
govern composition in Greek and in later Roman
art, it is not sufficient to compare monuments which
might appear specially selected to support my own
personal theory. To make the point clear it will be
necessary further to prelude our subject by consider-
ing a representative range of examples from archaic
times down to the period when Greek artistic activity
passed into the service of Rome. I shall draw my
illustrations as far as possible from pedimental sculp-
tures, since the triangular shape of the pediment calls
for a highly centralised composition as clearly as
does the tympanum of a church door. By the degree
40
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
of the Greek sculptor's obedience to this demand
shall we be able to gauge his sense of the problem
involved. In the very earliest period the Greek
obeys the frontal law as closely as other primitive
peoples. You can at once appreciate this fact from
the earliest Greek pedimental sculptures known, those,
namely, which were discovered at Corfu in 1910
(plate vi.).11 They belong to a very archaic temple of
which certain architectural fragments have likewise
been recovered. The centre of the pediment is occu-
pied by the powerful group of the Gorgon, flanked
by her monstrous offspring, Pegasus and Chrysaor.
All three are placed in full frontal view in their double
capacity as protectors of the temple and averters of
evil. This apotropaic function is heightened by the
flanking lions whose heads are likewise turned vigo-
rously to the front.12 There could be no more direct
illustration of the magical function of early art; the
power of the divinity is made visible, and through its
concrete form becomes permanently effective. It is
interesting to note that wherever a figure or group
has a prophylactic function-is conceived, that is, as
powerful to avert evil influences-it will be placed
in a frontal pose even if in relief. It is thus that
we can explain the strange and awe-inspiring frontal
figures of the oldest temple at Selinos in Sicily,¹³ or
the awkward combination of frontal head and torso
with running legs placed in profile in the Nike of
20
GUESS
STEGNE
Mal
S
5555555
PLATE VI.

S5515E

1. SUGGESTED RECONSTRUCTION OF PEDIMENT OF TEMPLE IN CORFU
2. GORGON FROM TEMPLE IN CORFU.
yan
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
41
•
Archermos; 14 again, when it is desired to mark the
divinity of one figure within a group, it will be
emphasised by means of the frontal pose, as is the
deified ancestor on the famous Laconian stele from
Chrysapha in Berlin, which we shall have much to
say about in another lecture. Let me point out that
the design of the group from Corfu is centripetal, that
is to say, the figures of the sides contribute to the
support of the central image. This monolatric quality,
which, under the influence of Athens and Athenian
thought, was lost in what we call the great period of
Greek art, is at the base of all centralised design.
When the Greeks abandoned the centripetal construc-
tion as on the pediments of Aegina and Olympia, we
get that barrenness of design for which the most
ardent admirers of Greek art have not been able to
find an entirely satisfactory apology, and we shall see
that the gradual disappearance of a monolatric prin-
ciple deprived Greek sculpture of the factor essential
to religious art, where everything should minister to
a figure of supreme and central importance.
We have so far only spoken of the central part of
the pediment at Corfu. The figures of the wings,
however, illustrate the tendency, prevalent from the
first in Greek art, to throw off the tyranny of fron-
tality. The subject is the struggle of the gods against
the giants, and here an attempt is made to get rid
of frontal poses and parallel lines so as to obtain
42
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
¡
{
groups in which the figures are interrelated in a
common action.
Frontality was never entirely abandoned at any
period, but it was thrown into the background as a
secondary motive in Greek art from the end of the
sixth century onward, when the whole attention was
directed to expressing relation in terms of mythology.
But the principle was always there, as the minor arts
attest. The frontal figure and pose were beloved not
only in gold-work and in embroideries and textiles,
but in much minor sculpture, a fact of which we can
easily convince ourselves by looking through Reinach's
Répertoire de Reliefs. In the major sculpture, how-
ever, it was suppressed; but it was beginning to
emerge again in Hellenistic days, and it reasserted
itself in the art of the Empire, strengthened and puri-
fied by its obstinate though often obscure resistance
to more fashionable methods. In this persistence
and re-emergence lay the proof of its vital significance
as a principle of artistic expression.
A long interval separates the pedimental sculptures
found at Corfu from those which come next in date.15
In the early poros pediments from the archaic temples
on the Acropolis of Athens there is little attempt at
centralisation (R.R., i. 42, 1-4). In the 'Heracles
and the Hydra' or 'Heracles struggling with Triton,'
while other serpent-bodied monsters are introduced
as spectators of the conflict,16 the artist, in order to
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
43
satisfy the exigencies of the central space, is content
to make the monster rear his head and fore-parts at
this point, or else places here the attacking figure of
Heracles. In these instances, at least, the centralised
composition is abandoned in favour of the narrative
method, and there is no such harmonious subordi-
nation of the figures of the sides to a central motive
as in the Corfu pediment. Equally unsatisfactory
as meeting the requirements of a centralised com-
position is the design from the small pediment of the
Cnidians at Delphi (R.R., i. 135, 1).17 The subject
selected is appropriately enough the contest of Apollo
and Heracles for the sacred tripod. Apollo, on the
left, assisted by a goddess (Leto or Artemis ?) who
stands immediately behind him, pulls at one of the
legs of the tripod to which Heracles, on the right,
clings stoutly, while Athena, in the centre, is present
to aid her favourite hero. The scene is conceived as
a pursuit rather than a contest, the movement run-
ning in a straight line from left to right. Furtwängler,
in commenting upon the composition, rightly remarked
that it resembled a piece cut out of a frieze rather
than a pedimental group. The backward turn of
the head of Heracles towards his pursuing enemy,
and the heightening of the figure of Athena to fill
the pediment at the apex, are the sole concessions to
the demand for a central note. The pose of Athena
tends to be frontal, without providing a true centre ;
44
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
}
for the sculptor, with a more genuine feeling for
narrative than for decorative art, avoids giving to the
figure the definite aspect which should tend to isolate
it from the rest of the personages of the action.
These early sculptors were satisfied with making
the figures increase in size towards the middle, but
as time went on the childish device was abandoned
for a definite central figure, as on our next example
from the pediments of the temple of Aphaia at Aegina.
Let us consider their composition as revealed by the
recent examination of the figures and of the traces
for their attachment on the floor of the pediments.¹
18
The subject of both pediments is a combat between
Greeks and Trojans, the combatants being arranged
in two groups of three at either side, with the solitary
figure of Athena in the centre. In the western pedi-
ment her attitude is rigid, almost frontal, her feet
alone being placed in profile to the right, but the
movement of her body does not follow that of the
action within the pediment; on the contrary, she
appears to move forward towards the spectator. At
first sight one might think, ' If this is not centralisa-
tion, what is ?' But if you look closely at the struc-
ture of the design you will find that it breaks up on
each side into isolated groups which, in spite of the
balanced symmetry of their parts, are without organic
relation either to one another or to the figure of the
goddess. The old idea, based on our modern point
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
45
of view, that Athena is controlling the action, that
she is present to favour the Greeks as against the
Trojans, and that the battle is waged, so to speak, in
her honour, was well enough so long as archaeologists
could shuffle the Munich figures about to suit their
preconceived notions of the composition, but it must
be abandoned in the light of recent investigations
which have definitely shown that the action moves
away from the centre and has no relation to the
goddess. Athena here is not present as god of hosts,
she is at most an impassive symbol of battle, and her
image, while marking the central architectonic space,
is so little required by the meaning of the composition
that it might be left out and replaced by some other
figure or object without injury to the sense of the
groups as a whole. Although Athena has the frontal
pose of a cultus image, the fact that the actors are
unaffected by her presence leaves the spectator in
doubt as to the meaning she is intended to convey,
and the centrifugal design of the wings effectively
neutralises the monolatric formula which the central
image seems to claim. On the east pediment, the
sculptor, whether the same or another, dissatisfied
with the cold mechanical effect of the central western
group, attempts to make the goddess participate in
the general movement of the fray by stretching out
her aegis; but as her gesture is without effect on the
action, it remains unconvincing and a little trivial.
i
46
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
Although Greek sculptors for a time recognised that
the centre of the pediment required a dominant.
motive, they were powerless, in spite of their mastery
of line, to invest this central figure with an emotional
idea, a spiritual meaning, that should flow from it
through the whole composition, knitting the various
groups and figures to one another and to itself; and
so it is that in spite of the great beauty and the noble
movement of figures and groups, the composition as
a whole is not only poor and ineffective, but violates
the main laws of pedimental decoration. The same
defects and the same attempts at compromise which
we note at Aegina recur in the pedimental sculpture
from a temple of Apollo at Eretria (in the Museum of
Chalcis), where Theseus, as he ravishes his Amazon,
runs rapidly away from the centre and from his pro-
tectress Athena.19 In both pediments of the temple
of Zeus at Olympia, the central figures, Zeus on the
eastern, Apollo on the western pediment, are no
integral part of the composition; they neither join
in the action with the other personages of the scene,
nor are they isolated as objects of reverence and
worship. There is, however, a marked difference in
the two pediments at Olympia. The Eastern, with
its dull mechanical arrangement of the figures on
the principle of a clock on the mantlepiece between
two candlesticks, falls short even of the Aeginetan
compositions; on the other hand, the solidly con-
h
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
47
structed groups so splendidly massed on either side
of the Apollo, in spite of their centrifugal movement,
bring the Western pediment, to my mind, nearer to
the great compositions of early Christian art than
anything else accomplished by Greek sculpture.20
(b) The Pediments of the Parthenon. Pedimental
Composition in the Fourth Century
So slight was the intellectual hold of the central
figure upon the artistic imagination of the Greeks
that the scheme was abandoned by the sculptors of
the great period. When we come to the pediments of
the Parthenon, we find that the supreme genius who
carved their figures, whether Pheidias or another,
when brought face to face with the pedimental
problem, solved it, at any rate on the west side, of
which alone we can speak with certainty, by abandon-
ing the central scheme altogether, and by imparting
to the composition a centrifugal rather than a centri-
petal principle. No figure marks the dividing vertical
line; its place is taken by the group of the two com-
batants, each of whom starts back from the centre in
a diagonal line. The subject is the contest of Athena
and Poseidon for the land of Attica, and we know
that Athena was destined to be the victor; but there
is nothing to indicate this in the design, in which the
artist accepts the scene of the contest as a whole,
and substitutes for a dominant central motive the
48
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
moment when the divinities move asunder to disclose
their gifts. In other words, we might say that
Pheidias took as basis of his composition the same
centrifugal scheme that appears at Aegina or Olympia,
but omitted the disturbing central figure, for which
he substitutes, in order to fill up the space, the minor
motive of the olive tree. By what we may call the
principle of the divided centre the Pheidian school
attains to that unity of composition which preceding
artists, in their effort to combine opposite motives, had
altogether missed. Carrey's drawing has preserved
for us the main lines of the Western pedimental
scheme, and since the torsos of Athena and Poseidon
have been placed in position in the British Museum we
can form a very good idea of the effect of the design.
On the Eastern side, where the Nativity of Athena
was represented, the attempt was also made, to
judge from the marks on the floor of the pediment,
to establish the principle of the divided centre. But
the nature of the subject, which imposed an inert or
inactive position for the Zeus, must have resulted in
a less pleasing and well-balanced arrangement.21
After the Parthenon, and in the hands of lesser
men than Pheidias, pedimental composition, which
his genius had momentarily raised to a higher
power, seems again to have declined. The state-
ment must, however, be made with caution, since
the pediments attributed to Scopas, Praxiteles,
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
49
and other great masters of the fourth century are
unknown. But there are a sufficient number of lesser
pedimental sculptures preserved from stelae and
sarcophagi to show that the demand for a dominant
central motive was once more satisfied by devices akin
to those of archaic art. This appears from the pedi-
ments of later sepulchral stelae or from those of the
sarcophagus of Alexander' at Constantinople, where
in the battle episode of the one side a Greek is made
to tower high above his fallen foe in order to fill the
space, while on the other side the figure of a horseman
on his rearing horse fills the pediment up to its apex.
In this case again we might say, as of the Cnidian
group, that this is a piece cut out of a frieze rather
than a pedimental composition.
(c) Character of Greek Religion responsible for the
Character of Greek Art. Influence of a Pantheon
If we stop for a moment to consider this lack of
true centralisation in Greek design, remembering at
the same time that Pheidias gave the problem a
solution which was quite the opposite of what the
space of a pediment seems to demand, we shall, I
think, find the reason in the character of Greek
religion. The highest ideals of every national art
have always gathered round the national conception
of the Deity; if Greek art never discovered a strong
central formula, it was because such a formula was
D
50
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
not called forth by some dominating conception such
as that which inspired the strongly centralised com-
positions of Christian art. The feeling had been
there in the magical art of primitive Greece in the
pediment at Corfu, the metope of Selinus, but
instead of being purified and developed by some
central religious ideal, it was stifled by the claims of
the Olympian religion. Had any one of the Olympian
gods made a supreme claim to the adoration and
devotion of man, his figure would have imposed upon
art a type expressive of that claim, and all art, even
when not directly in the service of religion, would
have been inspired by that type. But Greek art was
without a central theme to unify and concentrate
the artistic impulse; it was in the service of many
masters, dedicated to a religion with many gods,
with an anthropomorphic Pantheon where none
reigned supreme, and it therefore lacks the theurgic
quality that is so vital an element both in Mediaeval
Art and in the art of the early Renaissance.
Much has been said of late years in scorn of the
Olympians, and concerning the spiritual aridity of a
system represented as already decadent and outworn
when it makes its appearance in Homer. Yet the
enduring strength of the system is nowhere so mani-
fest as in the successful resistance which the Olympians
offered to any serious or sustained expression of the
monotheism which was after all latent in Greek
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
51
religion. Monotheism was the central doctrine of
the powerful Orphic sects, and was proclaimed by
one school of philosophy after the other; in the sixth
and fifth centuries, as Professor Gilbert Murray has
reminded us, it nearly gained the day; 22 it was
inherent in Zeus himself as supreme lord of the skies;
yet Zeus, for all his leadership of the other Olympians,
was never strong enough to impose himself upon art
as a dominant religious type. The Olympians held
their ground triumphantly and penetrated with
Hellenism into Rome, where they nearly suffocated
the monotheistic tendencies of Roman religion. But
the figure of the Emperor arose in good time to expel
these foreign gods from the scene; and in art at
least brought to fruition much that they had sought
to destroy.
It may be that once, in the Zeus of Olympia—and
unfortunately we only have literary criticisms and
indifferent copies or distant imitations to guide us
in our judgment-Greek art attained through the
genius of Pheidias to the expression of a great mono-
theistic ideal, and made visible the Divine Fatherhood.
But as a rule, and judging not only from extant
copies, but from a certain number of originals, the
Hermes of Olympia, the Demeter of Cnidus, etc.,
Greek artists, I venture to assert, failed to create
religious figures that make the same direct appeal to
the devotional sense as the Beau Dieu of Rheims or
23
52
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
the Holy Face of Albert Dürer's Sudarium, or
Raphael's 'Madonna di San Sisto,' that unsurpassed
example of a composition in which a central group
is enframed within a monolatric design. I do not
say that Greek art was inferior on this account; I,
at any rate, believe that, where the rendering of the
human figure is concerned, its sculpture is the greatest
in the world; but its aim was not primarily religious.
In the end, and in spite of much that has been said
to the contrary, it is the subject that informs the art,
not directly perhaps, but by creating in connection
I
i
with itself a spiritual temper, an atmosphere which
emanates from the subject and reacts upon it, and
which colours, directly or indirectly, the whole art
of the period. In simpler language it might simply
be called the way of looking at things. Now, because
in Greece this way of looking at things tended to
distribute the interest through the parts of a com-
position rather than to concentrate it on one central
figure, Greek artists enjoyed a freedom of action and
of discovery which could never have been theirs had
they been fettered by hieratic formulas requiring the
interest to be focused on one point. They were able
to apply themselves to the rendering of every aspect
of the human form, which they interpreted in a manner
probably destined to remain unsurpassed, though
their compositions lack the depth of emotion which
turns the decoration of Gothic Cathedrals into what
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
53
has been so well defined as 'one great act of adoration
in stone.'
Professor Gardner in his Principles of Greek Art
has doubtless made out a better case for Greek
pedimental construction than I am able to do, but
even he can only say of the principles which govern it
they are defined and rigid,' 24 two qualities which
scarcely suggest the glow and play of artistic in-
spiration.
เ
(d) Weakness and Strength of Greek Design further
illustrated from Panel Compositions and Friezes
In panel composition and in those parts of a frieze
that demand a central note, Greek composition
betrays the same weakness as in the temple pediment.
The more I think of the suave lines of Greek sculpture,
its voluptuous modelling and fluid contours, its studied
avoidance of all angularity and harshness, the less do
I feel that its greatness could ever have lain in the
direction of monumental composition. It lacked the
necessary solemnity and massiveness that can only be
imparted by subordination to a central religious idea.
For one moment, towards the close of the archaic
period, there was a flash of inspiration which resulted
in the uniquely beautiful design-so strong, so tense,
so vivid of the Nativity of Aphrodite' on the
Ludovisi Throne; with this we may compare, as being
already one degree less powerful, the exquisite relief
$
54
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
from Eleusis with Triptolemos between his patronesses
Demeter and Persephone (R.R., ii. 339, 3) ;
25 here,
too, as in the Ludovisi relief, we have the dip at the
centre intended to draw towards this point the lines
of the design; but the aesthetic conception is weak-
ened, to my mind, by placing the figure of Triptolemos
in profile instead of frontally. The motive continues
to lose strength and effectiveness-at least so it seems
to me when I compare with earlier works the ' Medea
and the Daughters of Pelias' of the Lateran (R.R.,
iii. 277, 1); or the 'Theseus, Heracles and Peirithoos
of the Torlonia collection (R. R., iii. 340, 4). After
all, the central slab of the Parthenon frieze, with its
humble subordinate motive, is as good an example
as any of the weak spot in much Greek design-its
failure, namely, to discover an arresting motive where
this is most needed. In the same way sepulchral art
in Attica ignored, as we shall see in another lecture,
the definite central note which a cult of the heroised
dead seemed to demand; nor, as a consequence, did
the deification of the living a commoner event
even in the pre-Alexandrine period than is generally
supposed-affect, so far as we can tell, the principles
of design. It is true that now and again we catch
in the designs of Greek vases the central note which
was suppressed in the major arts. The beautiful
ritual scene in honour of Dionysus, on a vase in
Naples, exhibits a centralised composition which does
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
55
not fall short of a mediaeval altar-piece.26 Every move-
ment of the ministering Maenads, even when directed
from the centre, is subordinated to the expressive
sweep of the lines that flow towards the frontal image
of the god in the middle of the picture. We perceive
here what masters of this type of religious design the
Greeks might have proved had not the atmosphere
emanating from the gods of the State been hostile to
its development.
Greek artists, accordingly, were weakest in pedi-
mental and other compositions, where, as in the tym-
panum of a church, an impressive central note is de-
manded. On the other hand, they showed themselves
incomparable masters of design where the space to
be decorated could be filled, as in their friezes, by
long processional groups in which the interest must be
distributed in order to be sustained, or by a series
of combat or hunting scenes linked in a continuous
chain. In this style of composition, indeed, where
the figures need only to be arranged in relation to
one another, the Greeks produced exquisitely cen-
tralised designs of a kind, as on the friezes of the so-
called sarcophagus of Alexander; the principle which
prevails in these reliefs, however, is not really cen-
tralisation so much as harmony or balance of corre-
sponding parts. A figure like the splendid horseman
formerly identified as Alexander, on one long side of
the Sidon sarcophagus (R.R., i. 415), may divide a
I
56
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
group or mark the meeting point of convergent move-
ments; but the centre itself is not given emphatic
weight and prominence. It is a mere resting-place
in a decorative scheme where in reality all parts have
equal value.
27
IV. TENDENCIES OF GREEK DESIGN IN THE
HELLENISTIC PERIOD
So little Hellenistic art has survived, and that little
is so imperfectly known, that it is difficult to realise
the stage reached by Greek sculptors in the develop-
ment of centralised composition when the antique
passed into the service of Rome and was called upon
to represent Roman subjects. Of especial interest
would it be to know what innovations, if any, were
introduced into art by the influence of the cult of the
deified Alexander, whether in life or after death.
Diodorus has left an elaborate if obscure description
of the panel pictures that decorated his funeral
chariot, and we find ourselves speculating as to
whether the scheme of the picture in which Alexander
was shown surrounded, like an Oriental despot, by
his bodyguard, 28 already heralded compositions such
as those of the narrow friezes on the principal face
of the arch of Constantine. In art, as elsewhere,
Alexander is certainly responsible for not a few of
the ideas which used to be fathered upon the Roman
Emperors, but there is little or nothing at present to
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
57
throw light on questions which are so vital for the
history of the antique. The Pergamene friezes show
a number of new elements: close grouping, landscape
setting, dramatic gesture, and so on, unknown to
earlier art, which will reappear in the art of Rome ;
but the action is still unfolded along a surface, with
little tendency towards grouping masses about a
central point (R.R., i. 207-19).
}
More striking are the system of grouping and
the arrangement of groups and figures on the frieze
from the temple of Hecate at Lagina (first century
B.C.), now in the Museum of Constantinople (R.R.,
i. 171-5): the figures, for instance, are to a great
extent shown in full face; overlapping of either figures
or groups is avoided, and there is an obvious attempt
to isolate them from one another. Moreover, and
this is above all important, there is apparent in various
of the groups an effort at concentrating interest on a
central motive which is far in excess of what had so
far been attempted by the Greek antique. I would
specially call your attention to two admirable com-
positions on the South frieze (R.R., i. 174, 25 and 28).
This frieze has been described as 'confused and
awkward,' a mere imitation of Pergamene work.
When it has been better studied it will be found to
contain many traits which seem to have passed
straight into the Hellenistic art of Rome. It is cer-
tainly in the sculpture of this period that we must
58
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
look for many of the innovations which imperfect
knowledge had attributed to Rome. At the same
time, in any Hellenistic sculpture so far known-
there is little enough indeed, and that little has been
neglected-we look in vain for the unifying touch
which can be imparted to composition by a figure
or a motive of commanding interest. This last and
all-important factor was to be contributed, as we
shall now see, by Rome and the ideas embodied in
the figure of her Emperor.
Malapp
V. HELLENISTIC ART IN ROME
In the last years of the Republic and the first of
the Empire, when the centre of artistic production
was gradually shifting to Rome, design shows certain
innovations which at once distinguish the Graeco-
Roman art of Rome from that of Greek countries.
The composition of the 'Sacrifice to Mars' in the
Louvre (R.R., i. 277), from a basis set up about
B.C. 42 by Gn. Domitius Ahenobarbus in the temple
of Neptune, is an instance in point. It exhibits the
same tendency to a full-face pose of the figures already
noted in the case of certain later Hellenistic sculptures,
but this is combined with a symmetry severer than
any observed in Greek schemes of decoration. The
altar occupies the centre; Domitius, in sacrificial
attire, is on the right; Mars, a stately figure in armour,
balances him on the left. The god is present at the
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
59
sacrifice in his own honour, and stands in a prominent
position, with one foot on the altar step, as if in token
of possession; at the same time the turn of head and
body so draw him into the scene of the relief that the
interest of the central group is about equally divided
between the god and Domitius, who in the spirit of
Greek art turns not towards the centre but towards
the advancing procession of the sacred animals.29
With regard to the general composition, I should like
for one instant to compare it with that of the two
groups from the south frieze of Lagina; you will be
struck, I think, by the contrast which the stiffer,
almost crystallised poses of the figures at the centre
of the Roman relief offer to the fluid lines of the
Hellenistic example. The composition of the sides,
on the other hand, is more frankly Hellenistic, and
if we had time to look at it in detail we should find it
to be closely inspired by Hellenistic prototypes.
Some thirty years later, in B.C. 12-9, the Ara
Pacis Augustae, set up by command of Augustus to
commemorate his successful settlement of Gaul
and Spain, was decorated with scenes intended to
represent the Emperor followed by a long cortège
(R.R., i. 232-7). The difficulty which archaeologists
have experienced in identifying the figure of Augustus
shows how slight an accent was laid upon the
leading personages of the pageant. At one time
the Emperor was seen in the stately aged man, with
60
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
veiled head, afterwards variously interpreted as
Agrippa, Caesar, and Lepidus (R.R., i. 235, 3); again,
he was thought to be the figure surrounded by lictors
and flamines on a slab which is now rejected from
the Ara Pacis (below, p. 79), while Augustus seems
now finally identified with a veiled figure (who has
also been taken for the Rex Sacrificulus) on a slab
discovered in 1902 (R. R., i. 236, 3). We cannot
imagine any such difficulties and uncertainties attend-
ing the identification of Christ on mediaeval or early
Renaissance monuments, or that of the Emperor on
the works of the late Empire. It is true that the
tendency to place figures in a full-face position makes
itself felt here as on the basis of Ahenobarbus, with
this difference, that in the earlier work the figures
are isolated in space, and in the later they are isolated
against a crowded background by means of the frontal
turn imparted to them.30 But without a dominant
central motive and without any monolatric scheme
of the attendant figures the invention is ineffective.
The main spirit of the composition of the Ara Pacis
remains Hellenic, still aiming at diffusion rather than
at concentration of interest.
VI. THE IMPERIAL APOTHEOSIS AND DEIFICATION
AS A THEME OF ART
This Hellenistic art transplanted to Roman soil
contained, it is true, many new and vital traits, such
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
61
31
as the crowding of the figures; the introduction of
children; the vivacity of the glance introduced by
hollowing the pupil of the eye, which imparted to it
a new vitality. Yet it might easily have degener-
ated into meaningless imitation of Greek formulas
and become purely academic, had it not been for the
intrusion of a fresh idea destined slowly to transform
all the laws of antique design. This was the doctrine
of the Imperial Apotheosis, of the deification of the
Emperor after death, upon the art-type of which
Cumont's researches have thrown so vivid a light.32
The doctrine is so familiar that I need hardly remind
you of the manner of its introduction by Augustus
in honour of his adopted father, the great Julius
Caesar, whose star, the Julium sidus of Horace, the
Caesaris astrum of Vergil, had been seen in the sky
heralding the new god.33 Caesar is said to have
received an altar and a column twenty feet high at
the spot where his body was burnt, and where after-
wards rose the temple of Divus Julius, the core of
which stands to this day.34 We may note inciden-
tally that column and altar should be borne in mind
by students of Roman art for the light which they
throw upon the later columns of Nero at Mayence, and
of Trajan and of Marcus Aurelius in Rome. The
deification of Augustus, already acknowledged in
his lifetime as Divi filius, followed as a matter of
course, and the Apotheosis of the Roman Emperor
62
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
}
soon became the rule.35 It was based largely on that
cult of the ruler which was so prominent a religious
and political feature under the Ptolemies of Egypt
and the Graeco-Syrian Seleucids: 36 the very wreath
worn by the Caesars was imitated from that of the
Hellenistic rulers; their eagle was borrowed from
Oriental solar symbols; yet from the first the art
form of the Imperial Apotheosis acquired a distinctly
Western and Roman character, and this because the
primary inspiring factors were already an integral
part of religious belief.
The religious conscience was better prepared for
the doctrine of the Imperial Deification than is often
supposed. Apotheosis, admission of the great dead
among the gods, was a not unfamiliar idea in pre-
Imperial Rome. Ennius (239-170 B.C.) had already
sung of the admission of the elder Scipio into the
courts of heaven.37 Not only had Cicero desired
Apotheosis for his daughter, 38 but he has left us in the
wonderful myth of the 'Dream of Scipio,' a noble
vision as to the ultimate fate of those who had de-
served well of the State. The picture he presents
of the elder Scipio appearing to his illustrious descen-
dant and pointing to Carthage de excelso et pleno
stellarum inlustri et claro quodam loco-implying the
ascent of the Soul to the Stars-must have belonged
to a widely current range of ideas. On a relief from
139
Amiternum, for instance, which we shall consider in
+
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
63
detail in the next lecture (p. 175), representing the
funeral procession of a military official of the close
of the late Republican or early Augustan period, the
idea of astral Apotheosis is conveyed by the star-
spangled canopy above the bier. Such conceptions,
as we shall see, were largely the fruit of the teaching
of Posidonius of Apamea and of the Orphic beliefs
which had filtered into Rome from Southern Italy.
The Stoic philosophy which attained to its fullest
expression in Rome from the end of the Republic
onwards, laid special stress on the reabsorption of the
soul into the fiery aether after its separation from
the body. All these ideas were part of a new religious
movement that set in before the Empire, though, as
we shall see in the lecture on the ' After Life,' the belief
in the immortality of the soul and in the soul's return
to the heavenly seats, was to gain fresh lustre from
the Apotheosis of the ruler.
It must also be remembered that the divine honours
so frequently rendered to Roman generals and
governors in Greece and the East, must have early
familiarised Romans with the idea of the deification
of a living man. According to Plutarch, Flamininus,
the 'Liberator' of Greece (B.C. 196), had been as-
sociated at Chalcis with the worship of both Heracles
and Apollo; 40 Pompey, it seems, had received
several temples; 41 Cicero records with pride that he
refused similar honours-among them shrines (fana)
64
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
-offered to him in B.C. 50 during his governorship
of Cilicia; 42 and it is probably present to all your
minds that Cicero twits Verres more than once in
the famous second Verrine Oration, for allowing
games (praeclara illa Verria) to be celebrated in his
honour.43 As to Julius Caesar, whatever his own per-
sonal beliefs and attitude of mind, there is no doubt
that he received and accepted unmistakable offers of
deification alike from the Greek cities and in Rome.44
Above all, this deification of the ruler could not
come as a new conception to a people who, like the
Romans, had from a period of high antiquity been
accustomed to see victorious generals, to whom the
honours of a triumph were accorded, arrayed in the
insignia of the chief god of the state, Jupiter Optimus
Maximus himself. It is not sufficient to say with
the classical dictionaries that the general wore for
the time being the attributes of Jupiter: during the
pageant the general was Jupiter,45 in token of which
his face, in early times at least, was painted blood-
red like the god's; he carried the thunderbolt and
ivory sceptre; he wore the toga picta-the great
embroidered mantle-as talisman of dominion and
of victory; and he rode in the four-horse chariot, the
quadriga, which is no other than the chariot of the Sun
god-of Sol,46 who, long before he figured as Apollo
in the Graeco-Roman Pantheon, was identified with
the great Jupiter of the Capitol. I venture to assert
APOTHEOSIS OF JULIUS CAESAR.
Altar in the Vatican.
PLATE VII.


DIVVS AVGVSTVS
65
that the growing belief in an after life of blessedness
reserved for those who had deserved well of the
State, combined with the temporary deification of
the Triumphator, were more powerful factors in Im-
perial Deification and Imperial Apotheosis than any
attempt on the part of the ruler to model an astute
piece of religious policy on that of Alexander and his
successors. Religious ideas, it has been well said,
"
are easily assimilated only when there already
exists an indigenous system of thought into which
they readily fit.' 47 Had not the soil been ready,
neither Imperial Apotheosis nor Imperial Deification
would have struck root so quickly and so firmly.
We now have to examine their influence upon art.
Here, too, I hope to show you that the way had been
prepared that Etrusco-Roman art had a predilection
for certain centralised formulas, the reflection perhaps
of monotheistic religious tendencies, which were to
mature in the service of the Imperial idea.
VII. THE MONUMENTS OF THE APOTHEOSIS AND KIN-
DRED WORKS FROM AUGUSTUS TO THE END OF
THE JULIO-CLAUDIAN DYNASTY
(a) The Imperial Idea in Augustan Art
In the age of Augustus we are a long way still from
the adoption of the old frontal pose into the official
art of the Empire. The earliest instance of Imperial
Apotheosis, except on coins, occurs on an altar which
E
66
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
Sub
stands in the Cortile del Belvedere of the Vatican
(Helbig, 155;=R. R., iii. 398).* The purely Augustan
style of the reliefs is of singular beauty (plates vii.,
viii.), yet the monument has attracted little attention.
The Victory on the principal face carries a shield in-
scribed with the dedication of the altar to Augustus by
the Senate and the People. As the Emperor is given the
title of Pontifex Maximus, the date of the dedication
must be subsequent to B.C. 12, in which year Augustus
assumed the high priesthood left vacant by the death
of Lepidus. The relief on the left evidently com-
memorates the restoration of the cult of the Lares
by Augustus between 14 and 7 B.C.; this composition
is centralised round the altar somewhat after the
manner of the scene of sacrifice on the back of the
basis of Domitius Ahenobarbus from the temple of
Neptune. On the one side, Augustus himself, accom-
panied by two attendants; facing him on the other
side is the priest capite velato, who stretches both hands
to the Emperor over the altar to receive from him the
statuettes of the two Lares. The relief of the opposite
face bears a direct relation to the ceremony we have
just witnessed; it represents the 'Prodigy of the
Laurentine Sow,' likewise depicted on the Ara Pacis,
* A vast literature has gathered round the Imperial Apotheosis and
Deification, but the numerous monuments have so far never been
grouped together or exhaustively discussed. The theme is one that
should prove attractive to students, and I heartily recommend it to
any one who is looking round for the subject of a thesis.
Two RELIEFS FROM ALTAR IN THE VATICAN.
PLATE VIII.


*****
T
***
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
67
by which Father Aeneas was to know that he had
reached the spiritual metropolis of Latium. And on
the rear of the altar occurs what is probably the
earliest representation of the Imperial Apotheosis :
the first Divus, the great Caesar himself, is seen borne
heavenward in the flaming chariot drawn by winged
horses in the presence of Augustus, here figuring as
the Divi filius of the inscription, and the princes of
his house. Above the Divus hovers the Eagle of the
Apotheosis, now much effaced; the Sun in his chariot,
and Coelus personified as Jupiter within the arching
folds of the cosmic mantle, come down to meet him
from the left and from the right respectively.
Cumont has aptly remarked that the intended corre-
spondence between the chariot that comes down from
heaven and the one which rises upward from the
earth shows without a doubt that in this first mani-
festation of the Imperial cult in plastic art, a relation
is already clearly established between the deified
personage and the Sun.48
The subject of the Apotheosis is common on gems.
We have no actual example showing the Apotheosis
of Augustus, but two cameos with the deification of
princes of his house will serve to recall the familiar
scheme to your minds. One, a fine cameo in the
Cabinet des Médailles, shows a young Julio-Claudian
Prince, possibly Germanicus, borne aloft by the eagle,
and bearing in his left hand the cornucopiae; in his
68
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
right is the lituus or augur's staff, while Victory hovers
over him with the crown (R.R., ii. 236, 4). The
second cameo is in the Library of Nancy; it repro-
duces the same scheme, but this time the Imperial
personage is Nero, and in his right hand he carries
in place of the augural staff the actual image of
Victory holding a crown as if to place it on his head.49
We shall see when we come to discuss ancient beliefs
as to the After Life and the Apotheosis of the soul that
the eagle, messenger of the sun, was from a period of
high antiquity a favourite vehicle of the soul in its
ascent to the celestial sphere. The first example
quoted shows that deification was early extended to
other members of the Imperial family besides the
Emperor. The doctrine soon affected the religious
status of the living ruler also. Since he was Divi filius
he was exalted spiritually above the rest of mankind.
The most splendid of all antique cameos, the Grand
Camée de France of the Cabinet des Médailles in
Paris, shows us in pictorial form the ideas that at-
tached as early as the time of Tiberius to the Emperor
and the Imperial family (plate ix. 1).50 Here in the
centre is Tiberius, enthroned, wearing the aegis and-
other attributes of Jupiter, and though as Trium-
phator the Emperor had a traditional right to these
insignia, yet the fixing of the Imperial image in art,
with all the attributes of the chief deity of the State,
must have gone far towards building up the con-
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
69
ception of a deified living ruler. Let me put this
rather more emphatically-my point is that as
Triumphator, the Emperor, like all generals to whom
triumph was accorded (see above, p. 64), was for the
time being the god, was in very truth Jupiter Optimus
Maximus, and that art contributes to give perman-
ence and fixity to the otherwise ephemeral notion of a
deified prince. By the side of Tiberius sits his mother
Livia, represented as Ceres, with ears of corn and
poppy flowers, since the security brought about by
the Imperial victories encourages the divinities of
fertility and increase to put forth their powers;
around the Imperial pair are grouped the younger
princes and princesses of their house. Such an image
as this central group seems conjured up by the de-
scription in ancient authors of the Triumphator sur-
rounded during the pageant by his sons and other
members of his family, and even by friends of high
standing. In the upper zone appears the majestic
figure of Augustus, partly supported on a figure which
from its Phrygian costume must be one of the mythic
ancestors of the Julian race-Anchises or Iulus. On
the left is a deified prince, thought to be the elder
Drusus; on the right, springing towards Augustus
on a magnificent winged steed, is another deified
prince, possibly Marcellus. The winged horse, like
the winged chariot on the Augustan altar in the
Vatican, is the vehicle of the soul's ascent,5¹ and
70
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
belongs to the same cycle of ideas as the winged
chariot in which the dead are rapt to the other world
on archaic Greek and Etruscan monuments, a sub-
ject about which I shall have much to say in the
next lecture. As we look at this wonderful pictorial
allegory of Augustus and the deified princes of his
house we are reminded of the lines:
quos inter Augustus recumbens
purpureo bibit ore nectar.
Hor., Od. iii. 3, 12.52
May not indeed the Horatian verses have been
directly inspired by some picture similar to the one
before us? The figures and groups both of the
Vienna cameo and of the Grand Camée represent,
I surmise, actual triumphal pictures or triumphal
statuary groups taken from real life.
The cult of the living Emperor, of the divi filius,
was the natural sequel to the deification of his pre-
decessor. We already hear of divine honours being
offered to Augustus, and, it is commonly alleged,
refused by him. Like Caesar he may have feared
lest the simple-minded Romans should look askance
at any attempt on his part to invest himself with the
religious attributes associated in their mind with the
idea of an Oriental despot. In Rome, it is generally
said, he was content to be worshipped in the guise of
his own Genius, a conception beautifully expressed
in the statue of the Vatican (Helbig, 304), though a
QUA AVGUS
D
VAISTINA
I. THE GRAND CAMÉE DE FRANCE.
2. COINS WITH APOTHEOSIS OF SABINA AND OF FAUSTINA.
PLATE IX.



Um
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
71
刪
​host of statues show that he willingly allowed the
images of the gods to bear his features. 53 At any
rate Augustus soon represented himself as compelled
to accept divine honours in the eastern provinces of
the Empire, where he wisely recognised that the figure
of the Roman military leader would not carry with
it the necessary prestige unless invested with a super-
natural character. But in order to soothe Roman
susceptibilities he made it a condition that his cult
should be associated with that of the goddess Roma,
as in the lovely temple at Ancyra, erected to Roma
and Augustus as early as 25 B.C. by the grateful
Galatians, who had that year received autonomy
from the Emperor. Other well-known instances of
the double cult are the temples at Pergamon and at
Nicomedia, while the great altars at Lugdunum and
Tarraco show that the cult soon spread to the West.54
Tiberius, a man of stiffer morality, perhaps, than
Augustus, but with less imagination, declined, accord-
ing to Tacitus (Annals, iv. 38), the divine honours
offered him in Spain,55 though the Grand Camée
shows him as not averse to being represented with
all the insignia of a god.
Augustus and Roma appear enthroned side by side
on a magnificent cameo of the Imperial Library of
Vienna (R.R., ii. 144).56 The cameo is specially
important for our purpose, owing to its strongly
centralised composition; Roma and Augustus form
72
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
a compact group, as the Dea looks round at her
paredros, who, wearing the insignia of Jupiter as
Triumphator, receives the crown of victory or of
empire from a figure symbolising the Oikoumene, the
inhabited earth. Below the throne is the Eagle, the
bird of Jupiter, symbol at once of Empire and of
Apotheosis; between Roma and Augustus appears
the natal sign of the Emperor, the constellation of
Capricorn.57 The other figures of the allegorical
group on the right of Augustus are, besides the
Oikoumene already mentioned, Neptune, the watery
element well placed here with the figures of the in-
habited world and of Terra Mater, the Nature
Mother, who is seen reclining below holding the horn
of plenty, and with children about her. In all these
Roman monuments which commemorate victory
and triumph we find incessant insistence on the fact
that the fertility of the earth, encouraged and pro-
tected by the Pax Augusta, is the grand result of the
Emperor's victorious campaigns. On the left is the
young victorious prince himself alighting from his
chariot; and to make his identity doubly sure the
natal constellation of Tiberius, the Scorpion, is
depicted on the shield that hangs from the tree
which Roman legionaries are setting up as a trophy
of victory in the lower frieze. These two cameos,
worthy to be placed in the Imperial collection, the
dactyliotheca of which Pliny has left us an account,
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
73
are almost certainly copies or adaptations of large
pictures set up in temples or public buildings, where
they would largely influence the popular conception
of the Imperial power.
The spiritual atmosphere now beginning to envelop
the Imperial person is everywhere manifest in the new
prominence given to his image in art. On one of
the cups from Boscoreale, in the Edmond de
Rothschild collection in Paris, the attitude of
Augustus is already made more emphatic than on
the Ara Pacis.58 On the one side Augustus receives
the submission of conquered barbarians. The noble
pose and gesture of the Emperor at once command
attention. The tendency, already apparent on the
Ara Pacis, of isolating the figure against a crowded
background is worked up here to a higher effective-
ness. A new pathetic quality, characteristic of Im-
perial art, is introduced, and that the central scene
should be one of a father recommending his little
child to the Imperial mercy inclines me to think that
Vergil had some real picture in his mind when he
wrote the celebrated
To tame the proud, the fettered slave to free;
These are imperial arts, and worthy thee.
(Dryden's transl.)
On the other side we see Augustus surrounded by
allegorical figures and divinities. In both scenes he
is placed not in profile but in three-quarter view, in
74
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
a first attempt to relate him not only to the attendant
personages in the picture, but also to the spectator.
Especially is this the case in the scene where the
Emperor, enthroned in solitary majesty, is approached
on the one side by figures allegorical of Empire, on the
other by a group of the conquered provinces, who
are brought into the Imperial presence by Mars; the
first instance, I believe, of his appearance in the
direct service of the Princeps. The old Latin war-
god was not merely killed, as has lately been said, by
literary convention,59 but, like the other gods, includ-
ing Jupiter Optimus Maximus, his godhead paled
and eventually disappeared before the rising numen
Augusti. Not Vergil, nor any Augustan poet, but
the Emperor himself, or, more correctly, the Imperial
idea, is responsible for taking the life out of Jupiter,
Mars and Apollo.' The gods had perforce to efface
themselves before the Imperial power emanating from
the Emperor, though the Emperor might for a time
encourage their worship and reinstate their cults with
a new splendour.
The Emperor's majestic pose on the Rothschild cup
is in complete harmony with the spirit of the epoch
which witnessed the birth of the Imperial cult and
of the religion of Augustus and Roma. To a great
extent these cults were evolved out of ideas familiar
to the Orient from the period of Alexander the Great
onwards; yet the Emperor as you see him here is
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
75
essentially a Western conception, and his image will
retain this character even when in time, by the con-
stant admixture of Oriental ideas, he himself can be
described as more of an Oriental despot than of a
military leader of the West.
(b) Influence of Augustan Art upon Popular
Imagination
The compositions before us help us to grasp man-
kind's belief that the Emperor was the promised
redeemer and saviour (σωτὴρ καὶ εὐεργέτης) who, ac-
cording to the prophecies of the Sibyl, was to close
the cycle of the ages and open a new era of salvation
and peace, who was to bid the gates of war be shut,
and the golden age of Saturn return.6⁰
To students of the Augustan period, it is clear that
Augustus called in the service of art to help his re-
ligious schemes to an extent as great, or even greater
than that of poetry. The assistance he received
from poetry has been fully recognised,61 but art with
its greater because more concrete influence is often
dismissed as almost irrelevant to the question.
English scholars especially have a tendency to under-
rate the rôle played in the formation of religious ideas
by the visible form given to deities and abstractions.
Yet the works we have just considered-whether repre-
senting the actual deification, or merely showing the
Emperor in the majestic pose which his exalted state
62
76
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
demanded-seen in every public place, at every street
corner, repeated, we may add, in miniature for the
sideboard and the dining-table, must have gone far
to fill the popular imagination with the Imperial
idea. We are apt to forget that art in antiquity has
the same didactic mission as in the Middle Ages before
the invention of printing. Its function was largely
utilitarian: one of its purposes was to impress upon
the people a definite attitude towards religion or
politics. For one man who had access to Vergil or
Horace, thousands would see on their daily rounds
the great monuments on which, to borrow Whistler's
phrase, the nation had learnt to hew its history in
marble.' The opening of the First Georgic, the Sixth
Aeneid, the Imperial lyrics of Horace were possibly
less potent factors in the establishment of the Empire
than the pictures of the Imperial' might, majesty and
dominion,' of which cameos and coins and silver cups
have preserved for us the copies; the lovely com-
position of the young Tiberius, who descends with
modest grace from the
from the triumphal chariot to do
homage to Roma and Imperator in the Vienna Cameo,
or the group of the deified young heroes of the Grand
Camée, would serve the same high purpose as the
famous Horatian odes (Book iv. 4 and 14) which
celebrate the military valour of the stepsons of
Augustus. Poet and artist alike contrived to endear
the Imperial dynasty to the people by fostering
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
77
admiration for the prowess of individual princes.
Not the Emperor alone but his house is exalted in
these scenes as
tutela praesens
Italiae dominaeque Romae.
(c) Characteristics of Roman Art favourable to
Expression of the Imperial Idea
Before resuming our examination of the monuments
which commemorate the Emperor, I should like to
point out that outside the official art of Hellenised
Rome factors survived which were to gain in import-
ance as suiting the growing Imperial idea. Beside
the new Hellenic manner the intrusion or persist-
ence of principles long rejected by classic art, such as
frontality and the isolation of the figure, may be ob-
served. Both principles make themselves distinctly
felt in the stiff portraiture of Roman sepulchral monu-
ments,63 and seem to govern such temple decoration
as survives. In pedimental composition the Greeks
had often been content with a frieze-like arrangement
of the figures, though the shape of the space demanded
a dominant central figure; but the Romans seem to
have sought from the first to place a well-centralised
group or a frontal figure beneath the apex of the
triangle. This principle is already obvious in the
terra-cotta decorations of the ancient Latin temples.64
The pediments from the temple of Apollo at Civita
Castellana (Faleri Veteres), to which belonged a fine
78
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
torso of the god, must have been centralised in com-
position, to judge from the pose of the torso, which is
turned nearly full to the front and moves, so to speak,
out of its architectural setting (Helbig, 1784).65 The
same remark applies to the two pediments from
Luni at Florence, where in the one a triad of divinities
with Apollo in the centre is placed facing the spec-
tator, while in the other, which represents the
slaughter of the Niobids, the desire to get a frontal
figure as central note is carried so far that a Niobid
on horseback is shown riding straight out of the
frame.66 Even the curiously involved battle scene
on the pediment from the temple of Telamon shows
a tendency towards frontal composition. The same
laws of design make themselves felt in the temple
sculptures of Augustan Rome. The pediment of the
temple of Mars Ultor, preserved on a monument of
Julio-Claudian date walled into the Villa Medici,
shows a god in the centre (R.R., iii. 313, 1). The
pediment of the temple of the Magna Mater from the
same series has the black stone from Pessinus placed
right in the centre of the pediment, with recumbent
figures at either side (R.R., iii. 313, 2),67 while the
pediment of the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus
in the Capitol, though known to us only in an Antonine
version, must always have exhibited a strongly cen-
tralised composition, with the emphatic accent laid
upon the figure of Jupiter in the centre (R.R., iii. 203).
G
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
79
The monotheistic element in Roman religion, so
eloquently brought forward by Mr Warde Fowler in
his latest book, seems to confront us in these com-
positions. As we look at them we reflect that had it
not been for the stifling influences of Greek Olympian-
ism the old Capitoline Jupiter, who came so near
embodying a monotheistic religion, might have called
forth a centralised art type to set beside the Imperial
and the Christian Maiestates. As it was the Em-
peror and not Jupiter Optimus Maximus was re-
sponsible for bringing out the specifically Roman
element in antique art.
We shall now see that the growing necessity for
giving prominence to the figure of the deified Emperor
brought back by degrees the old frontal method of
composition, never, as we see, entirely discarded by
Italic art, even at the period when Greek influence
was at its height.
(d) Principles of Roman Design in the Service of
the Imperial Idea
On a series of five reliefs, once allotted to the Ara
Pacis and now thought to belong to an altar erected
by a Julio-Claudian Emperor, perhaps Claudius him-
self, we have a processional scene and sacrificial
episode in the style of the Ara Pacis, but the figure
of the Emperor or leading Imperial personage is em-
phatically distinguished by its pose from his escort.
80
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
On the Ara Pacis all the figures, not excepting the one
now usually identified as Augustus,68 are either placed
in profile or else, as in the case of the so-called Livia
or Julia, though the body is given a frontal pose, the
profile idea is suggested or recaptured by the turn of
the head or the glance of the eye. On the later slab of
Julio-Claudian date the Princeps is placed in an
attitude which is almost frontal, the outward direc-
tion of which is emphasised by the searching outward
gaze (R.R., i. 235, 2).
On a charming altar to Augustus and the Lares in
the Uffizi, we see Augustus, flanked by Livia and one
of his grandsons, in a pose so far tending to the
frontal as to suggest that the Imperial figure is already
presented to the homage both of the personages at
either side of him and of the spectator (R.R., iii. 32).69
Augustus, who is represented as officiating augur,
clad in sacerdotal vestments, with the curved
augural rod in his right hand, the patera in his left,
and at his feet a bird picking at the sacred grain, is
here in the service of the gods; but the isolation of the
figure and its self-involved character, combined with
the monolatric element contributed by the two
attendant personages, impart to the composition
the same grave dignity that we shall discover at a
much later date in the group of Septimius Servius
and Iulia Domna sacrificing.
The great storied column found on the site of the
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
81
ancient Celtic Moguntiacum, and now in the Museum
at Mayence (R.R., i. 186, 187), shows even more
directly than any monument of Rome or Italy the
force of the religious beliefs that were beginning to
centre about the person of the Emperor by the middle
of the first century. It was dedicated about 66 A.D.
to Jupiter Optimus Maximus, for the safety of the
Emperor Nero. I have recently offered a new inter-
pretation of certain of the figures of this column and
of its general intention, which was the glorification
of the Empire as represented by the Emperor; and
it is unnecessary to resume the subject here.70 I will
only draw your attention to the position occupied by
the Emperor on the top drum but one, immediately
below the protecting figure of Juno Coelestis, who, in
her character of Queen of the Sky, is flanked by the
chariots of the Sun and Moon to show that the Orbis
Romanus is conterminous with the world. The
Emperor attended by the Imperial Lares stands in
simple frontal attitude, offering libation at an altar ;
his escort is formed by the ancient gods of Latium
and the allegorical figures of the Empire, who look
down at the sacrifice accomplished in their honour
at the altar in front of the column. The Emperor
is shown sacrificing to the gods, and is therefore not
as yet of their number; but his emphatic position,
in line with Pax, Tellus and Victory, and surrounded
by ancient Latin divinities of fertility and increase
F
82
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
marks him as dispenser of the blessings of peace."¹
Nero-the Emperor-is represented here, in accord-
ance with the legend on one of his coins, as
σwτηρ TŶs оiкоνμévns-Saviour of Mankind 72—and the
Empire as the source whence flow the blessings which
he guards and dispenses. The column is dedicated
to Jupiter, Best and Highest, the builder-up of the
Roman Empire, protector and arbiter of the des-
tinies of the Roman world (see below, p. 85). But
even the numen of Jupiter had in time to make way
for the numen of the Augustus. On the column of
Mayence we look at the prologue, so to speak, of a
great drama, the last scene of which is carved on the
attic of the front face of the arch of Trajan at Bene-
vento, where the gods abdicate in favour of the
Emperor, to whom the old Jupiter of the Capitol
hands over the thunderbolt as time-honoured symbol
of his power (p. 85). Similarly, on the columns
which symbolised in the provinces the might of
Rome, a group representing the numen Augusti
trampling over the foes of the Empire supplanted in
time the statue of Jupiter Optimus Maximus.
Subjects akin in spirit to the reliefs of the column
of Mayence are very frequent at this period. I may
recall to you the beautiful silver dish from Aquileia
at Vienna (R.R., ii. 146, 1), showing an Emperor
(Claudius?) sacrificing; Terra Mater reclines below
him; above is Jupiter, and all around are divinities
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
83
of fertility and increase. The evidence of the monu-
ments goes far to show that the Augustan age which
saw the gradual degradation of the divinities of the
old Graeco-Roman Pantheon first definitely sought for
some visible expression of the monotheistic principle
which is at the root of the highest religions as of the
greatest art. The central formula by which Roman
art gradually sought to isolate the Emperor viewed
almost as a monotheistic source of life and prosperity,
acquired in time so exalted a character that it could
afterwards clothe the God-man of Christianity.
VIII. CENTRALISATION OF DESIGN FROM THE FLAVIANS
TO THE CLOSE OF THE DYNASTY OF THE SEVERI
The reliefs of the arch of Titus, which date from
the latter end of the first century A.D., partake of
two distinct methods. The famous procession on
the panels of the archway reproduces a scheme
familiar to Greek art, but with the same emphasis
laid on the figure of the Emperor in the chariot that
we have already noticed in the figure of Augustus on
the cup from Boscoreale. The chariot with the
Imperial group is placed somewhere between a three-
quarter and a full view, and moves at a different
angle from the horses and from the rest of the pro-
cession (R.R., i. 274). Wickhoff, who first drew
attention to the artistic value of these reliefs, saw in
the position of the chariot a mere miscalculation of
84
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
perspective; I believe that we are here in presence of
an attempt to emphasise the Imperial personage by
bringing him full to the front. The relief on the
keystone of the vault, with the apotheosis of Titus,
leaves no doubt as to the artistic intention: here
the Emperor is no longer shown in profile, but is
twisted round somewhat uncomfortably on the eagle
that bears him upward to the heavenly spheres so
that both may be presented in full frontal aspect
(R.R., i. 276, 1).
As a proof of the strength and vitality of the more
purely Greek tradition, I should like to show you
immediately after these massive compositions from
the arch of Titus, a relief, likewise of the Flavian
period, which is in the Louvre; it represents the pro-
cession of the Suovetaurilia-of the sacred pig, bull
and ram-led by a personage who has lately been
recognised as Domitian.73 The sustained rhythm,
the evenly balanced composition and the studied
avoidance of over-emphasis at any point are obvious
Greek traits. Technically the work has considerable
merits the relief is pleasing; the modelling clear;
the feeling for the tactile qualities of surface true.
The two laurel trees, which by the way are possibly
those that stood on each side of the Domus Augustana
on the Palatine, betray a close observation of nature
in the rendering of the shimmering leaves, of their
stiff texture, and crinkled edges. For all its quiet
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
85
beauty this type of composition was doomed, though
it died slowly and now and again flared up in a work
of real inspiration.
It
The whole interest of Roman sculpture or of sculp-
ture in Rome, whichever way you may prefer to put
it, now gathers increasingly about the deeds of the
Roman people and the person of the Roman Emperor.
We have only to think of the emphatic reiteration
of the Imperial figure on the reliefs of the Trajan
Column and of the Trajanic battle scenes removed
to the arch of Constantine (R.R., i. 252, 253).
is, however, at Benevento, on the arch erected in
115 to glorify Trajan's home and foreign policy, that
we become definitely aware of certain changes of
political temper and religious thought which were to
invest representations of the Emperor with a pre-
dominating majesty. In each of the twelve episodes
represented on the arch the main stress is always on
the figure of Trajan; concentration, not diffusion of
interest, is the order of the day. On the reliefs of
the attic the great Olympians receive Trajan, and the
old Jupiter of the Capitol, with his paredroi Juno
and Minerva on either side of him, hands over to
Trajan the thunderbolt, no longer to be the ephemeral
attribute of the Triumphator, but to hold as his own.74
An eminent scholar has pointed out that Jupiter
marks by his act the intrusion of a new material and
spiritual order into the Empire.75 Let us dwell for a
86
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
moment longer on the extraordinary significance
of the scene.
Mr. Warde-Fowler has recently ex-
pounded afresh the meaning of the great Roman
Jupiter, the numen praestantissimae mentis of Cicero
protecting and controlling the destinies of the
Roman world'—the god who rose above the Graeco-
Roman Pantheon to an exalted position comparable
to that accorded to the god of monotheistic peoples.
This deity was not for small things and small people
but for great ones; there is a breadth and range about
his action which exceeds that of any Graeco-Roman god,
for he is indeed the reflection of the greatness of his
people, the religious interpretation of their amazing
strength.-Roman Ideas of Deity, p. 53.
Yet the great Jupiter, with something about him
of the Hebrew Jehovah, ruler, as Horace says (Odes,
i. 12, 17), of heaven and earth
unde nil maius generatur ipso
nec viget quidquam simile aut secundum,
had to yield before the numen Augusti. The reliefs of
the Benevento arch, like the allegorical group of the
Numen trampling over the foes of the Empire, sym-
bolised as a giant or other monster, which supplants
the image of Jupiter on the later 'Jupiter and Giant
columns,' tell us in the direct and lucid language
of art of the god's abdication before the Emperor.
But the capitulation of Jupiter entailed that of all
the Olympians whom the old god brings in his
សម
THE ABDICATION OF JUPITER.
Benevento.
PLATE X.

ខ្ញុំ ! ខ្ញុំន
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
87
train, though he had never shown himself quite
capable of overruling them. The influence on design
was immediate. The Pantheon of gods, each claim-
ing his place in the scheme of representation, so long
the leading theme of sculpture, definitely vanishes from
the scene, and from henceforth a single figure bestows
on plastic composition a clear and dominant motive.
For these Beneventan scenes Oriental influences
might also be claimed; something of the same idea
inspired the sculptor of those strange slabs that so
impressively crown the Nemrud Dagh between
Samosata and the Euphrates, and mark the sepulchre
of Antiochus I. of Commagene (R.R., i. 193-6). The
ruler and his ancestors are each grouped with a god :
in one instance the Oriental despot grasps the hand
of Zeus; on another that of Heracles; while a third
relief shows Antiochus and Apollo-Mithras standing
face to face on terms of equality (R.R., i. 195, 2, 3, 4).
It is the dawn of the idea, the fulfilment of which we
see on the Benevento arch. On the Syrian monu-
ment, erected about 40 B.C., the gods consent to admit
the monarch to equality with themselves; on the
Roman monument, some hundred and fifty years
later, they yield their place to him as their successor
before they vanish for ever from the scene (plate x.).
So true is it that the hybrid character which makes
much Roman art distasteful comes from the attempt
to adapt its indigenous inheritance of ideas to the
6
88
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
different conception of the civilisation which came
from Greece,' that we are not sorry to see the Graeco-
Roman gods become subordinate and disappear. And
Della Seta, from whom I quote, goes on to say
appositely:
Hence the peculiar characteristics of its literature and
its art, hence the diversity of its constituting elements,
a literature and an art non-original when they present
Greek myths, but original in form and content when they
give life to Roman ideas.-Religion and Art, p. 290.
~1
It is doubtful whether Greece the perennial en-
chantress has not wrought as much harm as good
upon those who fall under her spell.
IX. THE PRINCIPATE OF HADRIAN TO THE SEVERI
From the Principate of Hadrian and of Marcus
Aurelius respectively we have two important reliefs
representing the Imperial Apotheosis. The first is a
panel in the Museum of the Capitol with the Apothe-
osis of the Empress Sabina in presence of the Emperor
Hadrian. The Diva is borne in her ascension by a
winged female genius personifying Aeternitas, holding
in her hand the flaming torch that kindled the fire,
or else, as seems to me more likely, introduced here
as symbol of the eternal light (R.R., i. 375, 2=Helbig,
990).76 The character of the composition, however,
is historic rather than religious, the interest is focused
on the ceremony of the deification and not as yet on
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
89
the deified personage. The second, the principal
relief of the basis of the column of Antoninus and
Faustina, now in the Vatican (R.R., i. 291, 1=Helbig,
123)," offers the most grandiose representation of
the Imperial Apotheosis so far known. On the right
side appears Roma-note the shifting of the interest
from the goddess to the divi. She is now spectator,
and they protagonists. In order further to localise
the scene, the Campus Martius in person, holding his
own obelisk on his knees, reclines on the left. Above
them the Imperial pair, deified as Jupiter and Juno,
are borne to heaven on the soaring wings of the Aion
or Spirit of Eternity,78 who here, like Aeternitas on
the former relief, usurps the function of the eagle as
vehicle of the Imperial transit, though an eagle with
outspread wings appears on either side to guard the
Imperial ascension. The composition as a whole is
not as yet entirely unified round a central theme.
The Emperor and Empress turn towards one another,
but even so the pose tends to be more frontal and
rigid than on earlier monuments, so that a more
direct relation is established between the deified pair
and the spectator. You will, I think, appreciate this
point if you turn back for a moment to the Augustus
recumbens of the Grand Camée de France.
The sculpture of the period of the Antonines shows
an increasingly strong centralisation. On a slab of
the Aurelian column, for instance,79 we find a com-
90
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
position which might at first sight pass for a New
Testament scene by a mediaeval artist, the more so
that the Emperor raises his right hand in a gesture
afterwards borrowed for that of Christian benediction.
The highly centralised design flows from the group
of Marcus between two officers. They are standing
on an eminence or platform in the middle of a circular
camp, the walls of which frame and isolate the Im-
perial group. Through a gate in the foreground a
scout rushes into the camp to warn Marcus of ap-
proaching danger. Who, looking without prejudice
at this noble central group, resembling Christ between
two apostles in a fresco by Duccio, can fail to recog-
nise that new beliefs have invested art with a serious
emotion unknown to earlier periods, which marks
off this relief from the many weak contemporary
imitations of Greek models?
But the Greek manner was by no means dead. It,
too, could receive fresh life by being brought into the
service of the Emperor. We have an example of its
superb vitality in the reliefs found in recent years
in the Roman Library at Ephesus, and now at Vienna
(R.R., i. 142-5), which represent the Apotheosis of
Marcus Aurelius, and are well worth studying as a
Greek rendering of the theme. The scene spreads over
two slabs. On the first, Selene, the moon, appears
in her stag-drawn chariot accompanied by the even-
ing star and heralded by the figure of Night, and drives
APOTHEOSIS OF MARCUS AURELIUS.
Vienna (from Ephesus).
735
PLATE XI.

DIVVS AVGVSTVS
91
into the stream of Ocean, typified by a youth holding
a rudder. On the second (plate xi.), the chariot
of the Sun springs heavenward over the familiar
figure of Terra Mater, who reclines with the children
at her side. The composition is purely Greek, and
moves swiftly and equably from end to end without
any tendency to centralisation. But the new re-
ligious beliefs attaching to the Emperor pervade the
scene. He who rides in the solar chariot is not Sol
Sanctissimus but the Imperator, and Sol acting as
groom guides his own steeds in their course to the
starry spheres.80 Like Jupiter Optimus Maximus
on the arch of Benevento, the Sun has capitulated to
the Divus Augustus, and passed into his service.
Ideas are moving swiftly, and we have already got
beyond the conception of the Apotheosis revealed on
a papyrus at Giessen,81 where Apollo announces that
after taking Trajan up to Heaven in his chariot, he
now reappears to present Hadrian to the world as
Trajan's successor. But now the fiery chariot is
vacated by its own master and filled with the radiancy
of the new Monarch God. Somehow this visible
subordination of the Sun to the Emperor, at a period
when the solar cult was invading the Empire, is more
striking even than that of Jupiter. That the Imperial
idea should prove stronger than the moribund cults
of Graeco-Roman paganism was natural, but that it
should resist and dominate, as on these reliefs, the
92
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
victorious march of the Oriental creeds is a proof of
strength, the effects of which we shall again have
occasion to observe.
The portrait reliefs of the Imperial family on the
little Gate of the Silversmiths in the Velabrum, from
the principate of Septimius Severus (193-211), show the
new manner of presenting the Imperial personages
which was becoming current in Rome (R.R., i. 271-2).
Emperor and Empress no longer turn towards one
another as on the Antonine basis, here Septimius
and Julia Domna look straight out of the frame.
Placed side by side, almost like husband and wife
in Egyptian art, they seem unaware of each other's
presence, and are thereby brought into direct relation
to the spectator. It must not be supposed, however,
that this new method of treatment at once took the
place of the old. In a little known relief of the
Palazzo Sacchetti, which has been interpreted as the
presentation of Caracalla to the Senate in 197, we
see a curious combination of the old methods with the
new (R.R., iii. 319, 1). Septimius Severus, accom-
panied by his two sons, Caracalla and Geta, and
attended by two of the great officers of State, receives
a deputation of senators. The processional scheme
is still Greek, but the massive group of the Emperor
and his companions has the monumental quality of a
fresco by Masaccio and superbly expresses the religious
majesty with which the Emperor was by now invested.
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
93
The period between Septimius Severus and Dio-
cletian is comparatively barren of great sculptured
compositions, owing, doubtless, to political unrest,
to the frequent changes of emperors and the depres-
sion caused by repeated military failures. Nor did
religion just then prove a stimulating factor. The
great Oriental religions which were predominant in
Rome during this period found little expression in
art, partly because of their aniconic principle, partly
also because artistic effort had been exhausted in
creating the type of the Emperor. A notable excep-
tion occurs, however, in a relief in the Forum relating
to the cult of the black stone of Emesa, which throws
a curious light on what has already been said of the
effacement of Jupiter. On the arch of Benevento
we saw the Capitoline Jupiter despoil himself of his
insignia in favour of the Emperor; soon his paredroi
Juno and Minerva desert the old god who from the
Capitoline heights had so long protected Rome, and
on the relief in question we actually see them guarding
the recently imported black stone Elagabal brought
from Syria by the young Emperor Varius Avitus
Bassianus, better known to history under the name
which he took from the object of his devotion.82 The
composition is a good instance of the monolatric
scheme of design which so often corresponds to the
monotheistic idea in religion.
94
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
X. THE PERIOD OF DIOCLETIAN AND CONSTANTINE.
THE CHRIST GRADUALLY USURPS THE PLACE
OF THE EMPEROR AS THE CENTRAL THEME OF
DESIGN
We are once more struck by the powerlessness of the
new Oriental cults to mould or inspire new or striking
art schemes by a carved basis of the period of Dio-
cletian that lies in the Roman Forum not far from
the arch of Septimius Severus. It was one of a pair,
which once stood on either side of the Curia or Senate
House, and supported columns that respectively bore
portrait statues of the two Augusti, Diocletian and
Maxentius, and the two Caesares, Constantine and
Galerius, each pair grouped perhaps somewhat after
the fashion of the celebrated porphyry 'Tetrarchy'
on St. Mark's at Venice. The columns were pre-
sumably set up in the year 303, to commemorate, as
the inscription tells us, the anniversaries of the acces-
sion of Diocletian and his colleagues.83 One of the
bases has now disappeared. The second, in honour
of the Caesars, is now well-known. It was first pub-
lished by Riegl, who was interested in the technique
and the curious' black and white' effect of the relief.
The subject represented has lately been acutely recog-
nised by Professor Frothingham-to whom the debt
of all students of Rome and Roman art increases
daily as a sacrifice performed by Diocletian in
:
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
95
honour of Mithras who had been recently proclaimed
supreme god of the Empire. But see how little even
the emotion of a new cult could do for art at this
time. On the sides, priests and officials are deployed
in profile according to the time-honoured Hellenic
method, excepting that the movements are becoming
crystallised; on the front face the Emperor, who
pours a libation at an altar, is surrounded by various
high officials and faces Mars, no longer the proud god
who stood in domineering fashion with one foot on
the step of the altar receiving a sacrifice in his own
honour, on the basis of Ahenobarbus, but a Mars
degraded to the position of a mere spectator. For
the sacrifice is no longer to do honour to one of the
old Latin or Greek gods. On the right sits the goddess
Roma, and within the arch of her veil as within his
own cave nestles the bust of the new god who wears
the rayed solar nimbus. But instead of facing
towards him, as we might expect, all the principal
personages turn their back upon Mithras—and no
clumsier arrangement could have been devised for
his introduction into the scene than this of thrusting
his bust into the angle above the right shoulder of
the goddess; it is a direct and naïve way of expressing
the fact that Mithras is now the chief divinity of the
Empire, and therefore under the direct protection of
the State personified by Roma, but there the merits
of the design begin and end. We know, now that
96
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
Mr. Frothingham has told us so, that the sacrifice is
for Mithras, but there is nothing in the composition
to indicate it. In fact, this Diocletianic basis is an
interesting instance of the failure of the new religious
conceptions to manifest themselves by means of the
old traditional forms. It is true that the actual
scene of the Mithraic sacrifice of the bull was still
finding grandiose expression in certain of the Mithraic
altar-pieces, but the type had been created as far back
as in the Pergamene school; 84 moreover it was a scene,
an episode depicted by the means of narrative art.
To my mind, the solar cults, whether of Mithras or of
Sol Sanctissimus himself, failed to impress upon art
a new religious type because, as I have already in-
dicated, the creative effort was absorbed in giving
expression to the Imperial figure and his acts. When
we revert, in fact, to scenes where the Emperor is the
centre of interest, we are at once aware of a keener
grasp of the situations to be depicted, and a conse-
quent greater fulness of inspiration. Conflicting
schemes of decoration long subsisted side by side,
though narrative art was gradually subordinated to
central motives of design.
The scene on a lead medallion of the Cabinet des
Médailles, dating from the Principate of Diocletian,
shows how matters stood at the beginning of the fourth
century.85 The images of the two Emperors, Dio-
cletian and his colleague, who, with their solar
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
97
nimbi, resemble two enthroned apostles rather than
any figures familiar from the antique, are seated
facing the spectator; but their heads are turned
towards the advancing procession of captives, and by
this movement the Emperors are drawn, as on a
Greek frieze, within the action of the scene repre-
sented. I cannot refrain from describing somewhat
more at length the interesting scenes of the medallion.
The landscape on the lower half, treated very much
as on early illuminated manuscripts, indicates the
locality. The scene is laid at Mayence, the old
Celtic Moguntiacum; on the left is the splendid
old camp city with her great fortifications, and over
the gate is inscribed the city's name; the gate leads
to the famous bridge over the Rhine (inscribed Fl.
Rhenus) and reaches at the other end the gate of
another fortified city, the Castellum, the memory of
which survives in the modern Kastell; across the
bridge three Roman Victories escort a tiny captive;
in the background of Mayence rise the hills of the
Taunus, whose wooded slopes are somewhat sparsely
indicated by a single tree. On the upper tier the
captives are brought into the Imperial presence, as
on the Boscoreale cup, by the dethroned Latin Mars;
at the foot of the Emperor kneels the conquered pro-
vince; on the right is a group of a father with his
children. All these are traditional motives long
familiar, but a comparison with the designs of the
•
G
98
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
Boscoreale cup or with the groups on the arch of
Benevento, shows that the Imperial figure was now
invested with a hieratic dignity which tends to iso-
late it from the other personages of the scene, while
these, on the other hand, are brought by the lines
of the design into the direct service of the Imperial
figure. It is the reappearance of the monolatric
principle.
With Diocletian we have got back to the period.
of the friezes of the arch of Constantine, which I
took as the text of this lecture. If we now look at
these in detail we shall find more in them than mere
material centralisation. The gestures of the officials
have been compared to those of the Elders who in
early mosaics stand in monotonous rows and cast
down their crowns with the same fixed movements
before the Lamb of God.86 The comparison meant
to be disparaging is, in fact, admirably accurate ;
in the one case as in the other this monotony arises
from the deliberate attempt on the part of the artist
to avoid any movement or gesture that could distract
attention from the central Personage, and in our
friezes the very identity of the gestures of the atten-
dants emphasises the importance of the Emperor, and
restores to art that monolatric value which had almost
disappeared under the influence of the Greek spirit.
It is instructive to compare these friezes with the
reliefs executed two centuries earlier or more, which
+
་
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
99
adorn the two famous balustrades in the Forum
known as the Anaglypha Traiani. They date from
the period of Trajan or, as I believe, from that of
Domitian, and represent various Imperial bene-
factions.87 You at once perceive the different
aesthetic effect produced by the one and by the other.
On the earlier relief the various scenes are displayed
according to the Greek manner with equal distribution
of interest; on the later every detail is so massed
and marshalled as to heighten the importance of the
central figure.
From the resemblance of these Diocletianic friezes
to those on the arch of Galerius at Saloniki, which
was put up to commemorate the same Persian vic-
tories, it seems probable that Graeco-Oriental models
were powerful factors in fixing these centralised
types of composition; 88 but here or there the inspir-
ing ideas emanate from the Imperator and his res
gestae.
It is surprising that Riegl, who so clearly understood
the significance of the technical and optical laws
observed in these reliefs, should barely comment on
this new and perfected centralisation; especially as
he had recognised the same phenomena in the archi-
tecture of the period. In the course of time archi-
tecture had passed from the Hellenic stage, with its
feeling for the harmony of outward proportion, to
the Imperial phase, with its feeling for the harmonies
GUA
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5 sec
LOGO.J
100
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
of internal spaces.89 Even as pagan architecture
had, in the normal course of its development, evolved
forms which, under the stimulus of new Christian
ideas, were to enter upon a new phase of life, so
sculpture had been transformed into a scheme that
could be naturally adapted to the monotheistic beliefs
of the religion now triumphing over the Empire. I
have already pointed out that Greek religious art had
no place for a single figure of supreme interest,
claiming to subordinate to itself all the details of the
composition. Had Christianity, with much of the
old Judaic horror of images clinging to its monotheism,
come into direct contact with Greek anthropo-
morphism, the shock would have been even more
violent than it was, and the victory of Christianity
might have brought with it the total extinction of
the formative arts, or at least of those which represent
the human figure. As it was, the Imperial idea
smoothed over the transition; the place was ready
and by an almost unconscious change we find the
Christ enthroned or standing in the place of the
Imperator. On a beautiful sarcophagus at Verona,
the noble figures and harmonious composition are
arranged according to the same principle of design as
the Diocletianic Proclamation,' save that the Im-
perial platform is transformed into the rock whence
flow the four rivers of Paradise.90 The Gegenkaiser
conquered and ousted from its throne the central
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
101
figure of the Imperial cult against which the Chris-
tians had waged so fierce a war, and the legend
Christus imperat imposed itself upon art as forcibly
as elsewhere.
I do not suggest for one moment that the art-type
of the Christ is derived from that of the Emperor.
The evolution I am dwelling on is of place alone,
of position, that is, within a decorative scheme.91
Here again the change was gradual; the Emperor
himself yields his place only by slow degrees, and we
can watch the process of his gradual effacement
through many centuries. In the grand Barberini
ivory with the bust of the young Christ in the frieze
above the middle panel, rightly claimed, I think, for
the period of Constantine, the Emperor appears in a
new scheme. I have been derided for holding up this
ivory to admiration in my book on Roman Sculpture, 92
and no doubt our aesthetic sense, trained to the irre-
proachable contours of Hellenic art, is vexed by the
constrained and difficult attitude of the horseman ;
yet we are in the presence of a gallant effort to express
a new ideal. The world has done with the splendidly
silhouetted horsemen of the Parthenon, with con-
ceptions like that embodied in the graceful stele of
Dexileos in the Athenian Ceramicus; the aim of art
is now to restore communion between the worshipper
and the worshipped, between God and the suppliant
-to show the Emperor subordinate to the Christ,
•
-
102
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
f
but to bring both into direct relation to the spectator
by means of the frontal position.
A curious panel in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum
at Berlin exhibits on one side of the group Our
Lord between the apostles Peter and Paul; on the
other Our Lady crowning the young Emperor Leo VI.
(A.D. 886).93 The latter scene shows how the Im-
perial figure in its subordinate position long held its
own by the side of the God of the new religion and
his saints. The beautiful design on the leaf of a
diptych in the Cabinet des Médailles (plate xii., 2)
represents the central figure of Christian art standing
on a high platform between a Byzantine Emperor and
Empress of the eleventh century, upon whose head
he lays protecting hands.94 Romanus (1068-71) is
a Byzantine Emperor, but his name and the epithet
Basileus Romaion show how proudly the old con-
nection with the Western Empire was cherished; his
consort, on the other hand, bears the beautiful Greek
name of Eudocia, so that they appear almost sym-
bolic of the forces of East and West swept by now
into the service of the new religion. The Imperial
figures will soon vanish altogether, though the scheme
of the protecting figure and the dependent rulers will
in time be transformed in the service of new ideas, and
become the donors and protecting powers familiar
in pictures of the Renaissance.
INNOMINE
XPI-VINCAS
SEMPER
2482
DAYHONOR
SEMPAVE
PROBY'S FAMVIVSVC-CONS OR P
RIPIDURI
D
1. THE EMPEROR HONORIUS.
Aosta.
Te
PROMANOC
BACIASYC
PCOMAICON
D
X3
EVAOKIA
SACINIC
PCOMANON
C000
00000
2. THE CHRIST BETWEEN ROMANUS AND EUDOCIA,
Paris.
PLATE XII.


··
*140
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
103
XI. FROM CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
PERSIST-
ENCE OF IMPERIAL FIGURE AS THE CENTRAL
MOTIVE OF DESIGN. SUMMARY
With the introduction of Christian subjects a new
era had succeeded to the Antique. Art now gradu-
ally passes, as we have seen, from the service of the
Emperor and of the res gestae into that of the Christ
and of Christian subjects. But by the side of these
new themes the Imperial figure, in the frontal scheme
won for it by the doctrine of the Imperial Deifica-
tion, long retained its independence, and we must
follow its fortunes to the end.
-
It is on a monument once more wholly dedicated
to the glorification of the Emperor-the superb gold
medallion of Valentinian I. and his brother Valens
(plate xiii., 1)-that the frontal presentment finds
what seems its most perfect form in Roman Imperial
art.95 Were it not for the portrait of Valentinian on
the obverse with the inscription GLORIA ROMANORUM,
we might mistake the two majestic figures with the
nimbus and the orb and raised right hand for the
Peter and Paul of a pontifical seal. It is Valentinian
(364-75) again whom we see on the beautiful silver disc
preserved at Geneva (plate xiii., 2=R.R., iii. 524, 2),
with the Emperor standing in a central and frontal
position haranguing his troops.96 The large solar
aureole that encircles his head and the labarum in
104
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
his left hand bring the Imperial figure very near to
that of the Risen Christ in many works of the Middle
Ages and the Renaissance. I shall violate chrono-
logy in order to place before you here the fine ivory
diptych of Aosta, which shows the Emperor Honorius
repeated on each leaf, in a pose very similar to
that of the Valentinian on the Geneva disc. This,
the earliest consular diptych known, dates from the
year 406 (plate xii., 1).97
The basis of Theodosius on the Atmeidan at
Constantinople shows frontal composition adopted
for practically all the personages involved in the
principal scenes.98 On all four sides the Emperor,
his family and court, are shown en face within the
Imperial tribune, while the lower spaces are occupied
either by performances of dancers and musicians
arranged in animated groups, or else by groups of
barbarians bringing offerings (R.R., i. 112-13). The
composition of the main groups betrays the weak side
of this later Imperial art. The artist by placing all
the personages in a full-face position tends to cancel
the significance of the frontal figure in the centre,
which on the Diocletianic congiarium, for instance,
was heightened by the monolatric principle of the
attendant groups. Della Seta, arguing from his own
point of view, puts the matter somewhat differently,
and draws attention to the deteriorating quality of
the design :
CATRICIAL
ABONUT
PHOTOL
1. VALENS AND VALENTINIAN.
2. VALENTINIAN WITH HIS TROOPS. Geneva.
Vienna.
PLATE XIII.


Um
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
105
The path of decadence is shown . . . in the reliefs of
the base of the column of Theodosius at Constantinople.
In these last reliefs the action has completely disappeared
and the figures are only present in the scene. They are
of course presented completely facing the spectator, so
that in the scene a sort of inertia and immobility is
established.-Religion and Art, p. 279.
On the other hand, the frontal composition of Theo-
dosius and his two sons, shown enthroned like a triad
of gods on the grandiose silver disc at Madrid (R.R.,
ii. 195, 1), is superbly effective (plate xiv., 1).99 Let
us analyse it somewhat in detail. Under an arcuated
pediment Theodosius appears in a purely frontal pose ;
he wears the diadem and his head is illumined by the
solar aureole; he is flanked by his sons Honorius and
Arcadius, who sit, holding orb and sceptre; in the
spaces between the columns, to either side the Im-
perial guards stand on duty with their long spears
and huge shields; while immediately to the left of
the Emperor, a court prefect, whose inferior rank is
denoted by his small size, advances to do homage.
Classic tradition still triumphs in the subordinate
parts of the design. Within each angle of the pedi-
ment flits a love-god, and in the exergue the old
classic Terra Mater, turreted like Cybele the Great
Mother and holding a large cornucopiae, reclines amid
the flowers and plants, while children play around
her or bring her offerings of fruit. She represents
106
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
once more the power of the Imperial bounty to bestow
the gifts of peace and fruitfulness and wealth upon
the earth and her inhabitants. The idea is the same
as that which inspired the Augustan cameos or the
silver disc of Aquileia; but while in the earlier scene
the Emperor appears as Mediator, so to speak,
between Heaven and Earth, the very scheme which
now clothes the Imperial Majesty announces that
its power is equal to that of the gods whom it has
supplanted. The idea of the Imperial beneficence is
borne out by the design. By the prominent position
given to the Emperor under the arcuated pediment
which enframes his head, so to speak, like a second
aureole, he dominates the whole scene, for though
his sons-partners of their father's majesty-claim
homage as Imperial personages, their frontal pose,
owing to their subordinate place and lesser stature, in
no way detracts from the significance of the central
figure. The guards likewise, by their close grouping
and by the slight inward turn of the heads, introduce
the monolatric quality which enhances the spec-
tator's interest in the central part of the design.
Then observe how the solemn stillness of the Imperial
figure, removed like the Christ of Chartres (plate iv.)
from conditions of time and space, is further en-
hanced by the somewhat fussy action of the little
court prefect as he advances from the left with some
petition which leaves the Imperial personage undis-
подорож додадена да даде
3037
vea
I. AN IMPERIAL TRIAD.
2000
3000TWOR
GRIDO
NA
THEODOSIUS AND HIS SONS.
Silver Disc in Madrid.
2. THE MARRIAGE OF DAVID. Nicosia.
PLATE XIV.


Um
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
107
turbed. The Madrid disc, like the medal of Valens
and Valentinian, shows Roman art-the art inspired
by the Imperial idea—at a level which it is generally
supposed was only reached by Christian compositions.
A proof of the rapid interchange of ideas that took
place at this time between pagan and Christian art
is afforded by the subjects from the life of David,
embossed on a series of nine silver plates from near
Kyrenia in Cyprus, and partly distributed between
the Pierpont Morgan collection in New York and the
Museum of Nicosia. In three of these the background
is formed by an arcuated construction similar to that
in the disc of Theodosius, though with the omission
of the line of the gable; moreover in the 'David
before Saul,' Saul sits enthroned like Theodosius;
while the composition of the Marriage of David has
been well compared by Mr. Dalton to that of a coin
of Theodosius II., showing this Emperor between
Valentinian III. and Eudocia (plate xiv., 2).10
Under the double influence of the Christ and the
Emperor a central composition was becoming the rule.
A striking example is afforded by the group of the
consular chariot on the splendid opus sectile at Rome
from the Basilica of Junius Bassus, now in the Palazzo
del Drago.101 The scheme of the frontal chariot may
be traced through art till it becomes the beautiful
composition of the Ascension of Alexander in his
griffin-drawn car on a relief of the exterior of St. Mark's
108
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
at Venice.102 It is worth comparing with the kindred
compositions of the chariot Nyx-Selene on an Attic
cup and of the chariot of Helios on the phalera from
Elis which we considered earlier in this lecture
(p. 38). The design of the Alexander is really the
same in spirit and aim as that of the Helios. Just
as the Helios, in virtue of his apotropaic function, is
placed frontally in the design, so, too, Alexander,
because he is represented as deified, is given the fully
frontal pose which brings him into direct relation
to the spectator; and in each case horses or griffins
are arranged to each side in a scheme which not only
does not detract interest from the central figure, but
actually tends to enhance its importance by imparting
to the design a monolatric value. But there is this
difference, that what in Greek art from the fifth cen-
tury B.C. onwards, only made a sporadic appearance
with a special purpose in view has now come definitely
to the surface and become the rule, while the narrative
scheme and self-involved design of the Selene are
now the exception, or only survive as traditional
motives of decoration.
Another monument of the silversmith's art must
close what I have to say about the Emperor as central
figure in design. The group engraved on the grand
shield or disc found in a tomb in 1891 at Kertsch
in the Crimea, and preserved in the Hermitage at
Petrograd, shows an emperor of the sixth century—
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
109
almost certainly the great Justinian-in the scheme
known as the Adventus Augusti, the Advent of the
victorious Emperor.103 The Emperor, in splendid
panoply,104 is riding to the right, preceded by Victory
holding palm and wreath, and followed by an officer
of his bodyguard who carries the great round shield
with the monogram of Christ. The movement is
deployed in profile, as on a Greek frieze, but see how
the Emperor's head and shoulders are turned full to
the front towards the spectator, while the figures on
either side turn towards him and are interrelated
within the composition. There could be no finer
example than this exquisite composition of the weav-
ing of two opposite methods into a new and distin-
guished art scheme (plate i., 1). The artist brings
before us an episode, the adventus, and yet so con-
trives to emphasise the Emperor, by giving a frontal
turn to his head and bust that Justinian at once draws
to himself the attention and homage of the spectator.
With this superb conception before us of the great
Emperor who is responsible for the Codex Juris
Civilis, and the Church of the Holy Wisdom, we may
pause for one moment to sum up the debt of the
antique to the Imperial figure.
In the period of Constantine we saw the antique
accomplish under its influence the last stage of a slow
artistic evolution. The Imperial figure, by claiming
for itself the chief place in design, had imposed upon
IIO
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
art a frontal principle of centralised composition,
which, though not unfamiliar to preceding periods,
was not an integral factor of their decorative schemes.
Centralisation is thus the last gift of the declining
antique to the art that was to take its place, and it is
the peculiar gift of Rome. Only with the prestige
bestowed by Rome upon the central figure could a
mere decorative scheme become imbued with mean-
ing and emotion and take irrevocable hold upon
mankind as that best suited to clothe the Imperial
power, which after unifying the whole civilised world,
had given to it long centuries of peace and prosperity.
We have seen how the Olympian Pantheon checked
the development of a great religious art in Greece.
The same Pantheon when brought over to Rome
effectively stifled, through the conflicting claims of
each Olympian, the formation of a great religious
type that might have corresponded to the mono-
theism latent in the cult of the Capitoline Jupiter.
The whole weight of the Imperial Majesty, the fer-
vour of enthusiasm inspired by the Imperial Idea, the
belief that the Empire meant both protection and
prosperity, had to come into play before the Olympians
could be banished into the twilight that the Imperial
figure might reign in their stead. Only the image
of the Roman Emperor as the vivid embodiment of
the new centralised authority could have compelled
into his service alike the principle of frontality by
DIVVS AVGVSTVS
III
which primitive man sought to assure himself the
direct protection of his gods, and those schemes of
narrative composition by which the Greeks had striven
to illustrate the workings of the divine nature. Under
the influence of this dual conception, the artists
working for Rome succeeded in fusing into one har-
monious whole the res gestae of the Roman people
and the Maiestas of the Roman Emperor. The
primitive full-face pose of the god and the monolatric
distribution of the figures attendant upon him,
purified by the genius of Rome of the old magical
intention, passed into the service of Christianity,
and in its wake proved the paramount influence in
the art of both Middle Ages and Renaissance.
Della Seta has lately argued that in the Renaissance
from the time of Dante art was captured anew by
the Greek spirit, and again turned to exemplify the
dealings of God with man by means of the narra-
tive style (Religion and Art, p. 364). But the secret
of centralisation and of the monolatric schemes
which belong to art in the service of a monotheistic
idea was never lost; and if in his Paradiso Tinto-
retto could marshal figures innumerable into the ser-
vice of a central and dominant motive, this was
because centuries earlier, the necessity of unifying the
Emperor and the Imperial deeds in one compre-
hensive composition had called forth the centralised
scheme which we have been considering to-day.
-
LECTURE II
1
THE SYMBOLISM OF THE AFTER LIFE ON LATE
ROMAN TOMBSTONES
Animula vagula blandula
Hospes comesque corporis
Quae nunc abibis in loca
Pallidula rigida nudula
Nec ut soles dabis iocos.
The Emperor Hadrian to his Soul.
I. THE SUBJECT
WERE all other sources of evidence lacking, a study
of the monuments which man has set up from time
immemorial to mark the resting-place of the dead
would alone suffice to give us the measure of his
belief in a life beyond the grave. The subject in its
entirety has never yet been surveyed, though no
branch of archaeology is at once so fascinating and so
fertile. To-day it is only a small contribution to the
vast subject which I can hope to make. My purpose
is to discuss certain late Roman tombs which throw
light on the new beliefs in resurrection and immor-
tality which spread over the Empire in the first three
centuries of our era, in the wake of the Oriental
religions. If I read aright, I believe that Roman
112
PLATE XV.


SARCOPHAGUS OF HAGHIA TRIADA. (Detail.) Museum of Candia.
2. Two SCENES OF APOTHEOSIS. (a) From the Chariot of Monteleone. (6) From the Sarcophagus
of Haghia Triada.

Un
…………….
*
I
SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES
113
tombstones reveal a spiritual conception of death
and of the fate of the soul which is far in advance of
anything taught by any religious system before the
establishment of Christianity. Secondly, and as
the necessary corollary of my first proposition, I want
to make it clear that the symbolic imagery and
decoration taken over from the Greeks and the
Graeco-Oriental peoples by the Romans did not sink
among them, as is often argued, to the level of mere
ornament, but became on the contrary charged with
a new significance. Owing to the variety of the
phenomena represented, I shall limit myself to those
monuments which reveal more particularly the
influence of the beliefs underlying the doctrines of
the Apotheosis and of Mithraic, Orphic and cognate
cults. I take my examples, as a rule, from the pro-
vinces rather than from Rome, because the further
we get from the sophisticated and cosmopolitan art
of the capital, the more spontaneous is the expression
of popular belief; yet even the most elaborate and
patrician Roman tombs, as we shall have occasion
to see, betray at times the same spirit of faith and
hope. In the provinces I shall lay special stress
on the monuments of Gallia and the lands bordering
on the Rhine and the Danube, not only because the
high level of civilisation attained in these regions
under the Roman rule results in their stelae being
more artistic than those of the other provinces, but
H
114
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
because they seem to reveal a keener interest in
religious speculation. I have the more material
reason for the choice in that the funerary monuments
from the Rhine and Danube were admirably repre-
sented in the great Exhibition of the Provinces of
the Roman Empire held in 1911, where many must
have realised for the first time the importance of the
civil and religious art of the Empire in the second and
third centuries of our era. Again, M. Espérandieu's
great volumes on Roman Gaul form a Corpus of
monuments in which we can read as in an open book
the vast strength of the religious movement which
inspired the iconography of the Roman Empire.
But the movement represented by the imagery of
the later Roman gravestones can scarcely be ap-
preciated at its right value unless we first glance
back, however briefly, at its origin and history in
Greece and in pre-Imperial Rome. I think also that
this way of approaching our subject may incidentally
help students to appreciate more clearly the points
at which the Romans came into contact with the
Greek world.
II. THE ORIGIN OF THE GRAVESTONE TRACED
TO FEAR OF THE GHOST
Tous moderns-as, indeed, to the more cultured races
of antiquity-the tombstone has come to have little
more than a memorial significance. The dominant
SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES
115
motive of decoration or epitaph is regret for the
.departed life, coloured more or less vividly by the
hopes of a life beyond the grave; and we are apt to
consider the sepulchral monuments of the past as
expressive of the sentiments that inspire our own.
The dolmens of the neolithic period; the royal
pyramids of Egypt; the delicate carvings of Athenian
stelae; Etruscan canopi or Roman tombstones; the
mausoleum that enshrines the grief of Artemisia;
the column that marks the tomb of Trajan, and
carries up to the sky the imperishable record of the
Imperial campaigns; the square pillar tombs of the
Roman Rhineland; the sepulchral slabs of our
mediaeval cathedrals; the pseudo-classic tombs of
the eighteenth century, with their pompous epitaphs
-all the forms that the tombstone has assumed from
remotest antiquity to our own times represent to us
as we look back from our own point of vantage, the
desire to gain, in the face of ineluctable death, some
assurance of the life to come, or some consolation in
the retrospect of the life that has been. But these
ideas are only arrived at by slow degrees; they
presuppose an advanced state of culture of which
primitive man is wholly incapable. We think of the
tombstone as the last tribute of love and religion;
but fear, rather than any of the nobler emotions,
appears to be the motive for which it is set up by
primitive man.
116
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
In order to understand the primitive purpose of the
tombstone, we must bear in mind that every rite of
inhumation or incineration has its origin in the desire
to banish effectually a dreaded presence by placing
it deep under the earth or by reducing it to ashes.
In other words, it is inspired by fear of the Ghost, of
the revenant.¹ Even when the corpse is finally dis-
posed of man's fears are not over, for the breath,
which he identifies with the principle of life, may
work harm to the living if it is allowed to roam at
large. A desperate effort must be made to prevent
the breath from escaping. The custom of closing
the mouth of the dead, of placing the hand over
mouth and nostrils,2 and of closing his eyes-that
last pathetic service which it is the privilege of his
nearest and dearest to render-all arise from the
attempt to prevent the breath from escaping through
mouth or nostrils or eyes. Still the mischance might
happen; the breath or spiritus might give the sur-
vivors the slip; so it became necessary to catch this
detached spirit, and to prevent it from wandering at
will. Then, just as the mound above the tomb kept
the body safe in the grave where it had been laid to
rest, so the rough stone upon the mound was at first
intended as a trap for the wandering soul, a place it
might be induced to enter; in other words, primitive
man set up his first rough tombstones with a magical
intention, in order to provide the ghost of the
SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES
117
inhabitant of the tomb with a shrine or dwelling-
place. This has been so admirably said by Sir
Arthur Evans in the epoch-making paper on Tree
and Pillar Cult, that I cannot do better than quote
what he says: The rites by which the medicine men
of primitive races the world over are able to shut up
Gods or Spirits in a material object show how easily
the idea of attracting or compelling. spiritual
occupation must have arisen. A proof of this is
found in the ideas attaching to the rude stone monu-
ments placed over graves. These have not merely a
memorial significance, but are actually a place of in-
dwelling for the ghosts.'³ The sequel of the passage
we shall have occasion to return to.
"
The fear of the haunting dead, of the revenant,
which religion, philosophy, and even science have
been powerless to eradicate from uncivilised and
civilised races alike, is the natural counterpart of the
universal and persistent belief that death does not
and cannot mean the destruction of existence.4 It
is because mankind is firmly convinced that the dead
live somewhere and somehow in a life in which the
living have no part, and over which they have no
control, that primitive man at once believes in their
return and fears it; hence his idea that if the dead
are buried with due rites they will be appeased and
give up annoying or disturbing the living.5 The
ghost has been pictured by Pater as a dream that
}
1
118
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
lingers a moment . . . a flame in the doorway, a
feather in the wind,' but in its primitive phase it
wears no halo of romance; it is a grim and oppres-
sive fact that has to be disposed of by fair means
or foul. Among highly cultured peoples this fear
of the dead is not incompatible with the most
passionate sorrow for their loss, or with the most
exalted hopes for their welfare in an ultramundane
existence. Primitive man, likewise, when once he
has made sure that the dead will not disturb his own
peace, will do everything in his power to further
their interests; he will not only bring them offer-
ings in order to placate and keep them quiet, he
will also furnish their tombs with the counterparts
of the objects which he conceives to be necessary
to their welfare in another life, and as the concep-
tion of a world below the earth grows upon him, he
will provide the dead with the means of journeying
to its furthest ends.
A whimsical pathos attaches to much of the
elaborate equipment of the grave, so obviously is it
intended to keep the dead quiet and remote from
the seats of the living. When we lay aside sentiment
and face the truth we realise that the actual return
of the dead to this world has never been courted by
any religion, and that it is doubtful whether any one
ever seriously desired it. Primitive man's fear of
the dead becomes civilised man's recognition of the
SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES
119
fact that the great experience separates, and must
separate, us and them. 'I shall go to him, but he
shall not return to me.'
---Even when the dead beneath the earth become
associated with the divine fortes of Nature and are
held to exert an influence on the vegetation that
springs from the earth, we shall find that, though
man welcomes and courts the return of vegetation,
and tries to induce the dead man underground to co-
operate in the process, he does not court the return
of the dead himself. He welcomes in the growth of
vegetation the resurrection of a divine spirit; he
trembles before the reappearance on earth of the
actual dead whom he has known as human beings
like unto himself. This has been expressed with
poignant if unconscious irony in the scene of the
famous sarcophagus of Haghia Triada, interpreted
as the return of the dead in his aspect of spirit of
vegetation (plate xv. 1): the dead man-conceived of
as something akin to Dionysus or Osiris-stands out-
side his own tomb wrapped in a sheath-like garment
which resembles the swathings of a mummy; he has
come, it seems, in response to a thrilling and elaborate
ritual which is represented in great detail; but lo!
see how afraid they are lest he should be tempted
to tarry too long. Three men advance towards him:
one brings the boat in which he is to be invited to
return whence he came, and two men carry each a
120
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
calf as provision for the boat, since the journey to
the next world is a long one.?
In the same way it may be noted that the fulfilment
of any hopes of final rebirth and resurrection, how-
ever ardent, are ever relegated to a distant and in-
definite future. Once the dead are thought of as
living in their own distant world, their return to earth
may be admitted, but it must be within certain well-
defined limits of time and space, as Boni's discovery
of the Palatine Mundus has lately reminded us.8
Whether their return be invited for the benefit of the
living, or permitted in order to appease the supposed
desire of the dead to revisit their ancient haunts, the
times when the spirits were allowed to return were
days of fear and warning. At times, as in cases of
prophecy, the dead is officially recalled, so that, from his
larger experience, he may give counsel to the living ⁹;
but here also his coming is a defined and limited act,
fraught with fear to the living, who look upon him as
an object of awe and wonder and dismiss him gladly
to the other world when his mission is accomplished.
The return of the dead invariably takes place, as on
the Haghia Triada sarcophagus, to the accompani-
ment of mysterious rites. Examples present to
every one's mind are the calling up of the ghost of
Samuel by the witch of Endor at the bidding of Saul ;
the apparition of Darius in the Persae of Aeschylus
in answer to the incantations of Atossa and her
9
SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES
121
companions; the tremendous scene of the Odyssey
in which Ulysses after accomplishing the prescribed
sacrifices sits by the mouth of Hades awaiting the
spirit of Theban Teiresias.
We moderns have not rid ourselves of fear of the
ghost; but the modern ghost, unlike his primitive
prototype, neither desires to haunt the living nor seeks
to return among them. In some distant sphere he
dwells beyond recall, or craves for silence and oblivion
within the grave:
Call me not back, O Love, when I am dead:
Call me not back with witchcraft of thy will:
Far beyond thought my spirit will have fled:
Call it not back lest it obey thee still.
And when, at Fate's behest, I wake at last
To toil on earth, to laugh, to weep again—
Dense be the darkness that enshrouds the Past,
Deep be the draught of Lethe that I drain. 10
III. ORIGIN OF SEPULCHRAL IMAGERY
Like the gravestone or funeral monument itself,
the imagery of the gravestone has a magical function
which manifests itself in a great variety of forms.
Probably the one we first think of is that of the
funerary statue. Once endow a tombstone with
animistic vitality, and it becomes subject to endless
variations and modifications under the influence of
the beliefs that centre round the dead whose soul
122
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
the stone is supposed to hold. At first the boundary-
line between the survivor's conception of the actual
dead, and of the stone which holds his spirit, is thin
and elusive. The shrine or prison-house of the dead
man's ghost may by a very natural interchange of
ideas be identified with the dead man himself. The
aniconic grave-stele or pillar, like the aniconic pillar
of the god, may be subject to an anthropomorphising
process, and, since the dead, or his soul, is conceived
as resident within it, the stone may by an easy tran-
sition be made to assume the visible form of the in-
habitant of the tomb. At times the transformation
may be only partial, and, owing to the early associa-
tion of the dead beneath the earth with the fertilising
powers of Nature, it may be limited to expressing
what to the primitive mind were the vital parts of
the human body. A curious figure in Berlin from
Sardis represents the double process.11 On the one
side we see the sepulchral stone transformed into
the image of a man; on the other the organs of
generation alone are indicated. A curious group of
pillars at Tamuli in Sardinia is interesting in this
connection.12 Each is roughly carved at the top in
the semblance of female breasts, and though it is not
certain that the pillars were placed over graves, they
stood near one of the big Sardinian tombs known as
'Tombs of the Giants.' Possibly they were magical
stones set up to ensure fertility and increase.
•
SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES
123
As sculpture developed, the function of the stele
might be usurped by a complete statue of the dead,
at first of the type commonly known as 'Apollos,'
and by the middle of the sixth century these so-called
Apollos, now happily renamed Koûρo, were habitu-
ally set up over the graves of men, and the corre-
sponding Kópaι over those of women.13 Even the
funerary statue in its classic perfection, whether
treated as portrait or as idealised type, may, in a
sense, be regarded as preserving, besides its memorial
significance, a clear reminiscence of the time when
the dead was conceived of as dwelling within his own
stele. This, of course, was only one of the many
ways which account for the existence of the funerary
statue; 14 it is well not to dwell on this point too
insistently, or I might be accused of trying to revive
the old theory, now discarded, of the technical evolu-
tion of the statue from the pillar or the plank-like
stele.15 One observation, however, occurs
occurs to me
with regard to the difficulty so many have experienced
in admitting that a large proportion of these 'Apollos,'
who are invariably young, who are κoûрo in the
fullest sense of the word,16 were grave statues. Did
only the young die? were there no old men and no
gravestones of old men? The answer is that whether
the occupant of the tomb were old or young, he would
be figured as young, the state of Koûpos being that
coveted for him and by him in an after life. Eternal
124
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
youth has ever been one of the postulates of eternal
life, and to give to the funeral statue the lineaments
of youth was the best way, on the magical principle
of primitive peoples, of ensuring the perpetual youth
of the occupant of the tomb. To the Greek, moreover,
the body of the old was ever a thing of shame, and
the sight of it is rather quaintly given by Tyrtaeus
as a reason against old men going into battle :
Across the bleeding body lies clenched the wrinkled hand,
A sight to make men sick to see that by the dead shall
stand
And naked see the honoured forms. Though every-
thing in truth
Beseems the valiant man that wears the happy flower
of youth,
The lover meet for ladies' eyes, the wonder of all men,
Yet, fallen foremost in the fight, fair is he truly then.*
(Tyrtaeus, 8, transl. K. A. Esdaile.)
The gravestone might also assume the shape, or
be adorned with, the figure of one of the innumerable
objects conceived as the seats of the soul after it had
*
My
αἰσχρὸν γὰρ δὴ τοῦτο μετὰ προμάχοισι πεσόντα
κεῖσθαι πρόσθε νέων ἄνδρα παλαιότερον,
ἤδη λευκὸν ἔχοντα κάρη πολιόν τε γένειον,
θυμὸν ἀποπνείοντ᾽ ἄλκιμον ἐν κονίῃ,
αἱματόεντ᾽ αἰδοῖα φίλαις ἐν χερσὶν ἔχοντα----
αἰσχρὰ τάγ᾽ ὀφθαλμοῖς καὶ νεμεσητὸν ἰδεῖν-
καὶ χρόα γυμνωθέντα, νέοισι δὲ πάντ' ἐπέοικεν,
ὄφρ' ἐρατῆς ἥβης ἀγλαὸν ἄνθος ἔχη·
ἀνδράσι μὲν θηἡτὸς ἰδεῖν, ἐρατὸς δὲ γυναιξίν,
ζωὸς ἐών, καλὸς δ᾽ ἐν προμάχοισι πεσών.
SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES
125
departed from its human habitation; the snake and
the 'soul-bird,' which already appears on the Haghia
Triada sarcophagus,¹7 and which develops into the
siren of the Attic grave reliefs, are familiar instances.
Or again, the various apotropaic or prophylactic
figures-we might almost call them by the familiar
name of scarecrows-placed on tombs to ward off
the evil spirits might, as was indeed commonly the
case, be translated into stone in order to ensure their
permanent activity. Sepulchral art early betrays
two distinct points of view with regard to the after
life. The one remains concerned with the material
welfare of the dead in a sub-terrestrial existence;
the other, with a more exalted conception of the
supreme adventure, seeks to provide the dead with
a vehicle or an escort to an ultramundane abode of
bliss. Man's various conception of this abode,
whether he places the habitation of the dead under
the earth, or beyond its confines, or in some misty
cloud-world above, depends in the first instance upon
his method of disposing of the dead.18 Where in-
humation is prevalent, the dead are thought of as
below the earth; where incineration, fire is conceived
as purifying and releasing the immortal part, which
is then borne aloft to the rarer air of some region
above the world. The different ways in which it was
conceived the dead might voyage to these distant
regions were productive of an especially rich imagery.
126
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
192.1.
ง
Already on the sarcophagus of Haghia Triada-dating
from a pre- or proto-Hellenic civilisation-we beheld
the dead borne, like Elijah, on a winged chariot
through the flaming aether 19; chariots winged and
unwinged (ad superos and ad inferos), winged steeds,
boats, Harpies, Sirens, eagles, sea monsters of every
description, are only a few of the many vehicles of the
soul's transit.20 The conception is refined till it
attains to the exalted symbolism of the liberated soul
expressed in the group of Ganymede borne aloft by
the eagle on the monument of the Secundinii (p. 222).
Again, figures and scenes expressive of beliefs con-
cerning the future state of the dead when they had
reached their destination might be carved or painted
on the stele. Scenes of ultramundane bliss are of
specially frequent occurrence—always with the same
magical intention of perpetuating the state desired
for the dead by giving it a permanent and visible
form. The scenes of hunting, chariot-racing, and
revelling are familiar instances the 'Funeral Ban-
quet' which in one form or other is among the
commonest motives of ancient sepulchral imagery,
becoming in time the supreme expression of
Apotheosis.
21
The furniture of the tomb, it may be noted in
passing, partakes in its origin of the same magic
character. In the beginning, at any rate, the tomb
is not furnished, as is popularly supposed, with objects
SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES
127
known to the dead while yet alive or beloved by them
-a late and sentimental notion. The real function
of these objects, whether the doll of the child or the
armour of the warrior, is rather to obtain for the dead,
by a sort of sympathetic magic, the things which may
induce them to stay in another world.22
Thus while the grave monument-simple slab or
elaborate tomb-marks the barrier which separates
the dead from the living, its imagery and its furniture
have primarily the function of securing for the living
immunity from the dead by giving definite and per-
manent form to advantages and privileges which the
survivors conceive of as conducive to well-being in
another life. It cannot be too strongly impressed
upon students of the antique that this attitude
towards the dead lies at the root of much ancient
religion and ritual, and consequently inspires ancient
art from the earliest times. For the dead, from
being objects of terror to be scared away and placated
at any cost, passed as we have seen to being objects
of awe, and so acquired the character of beings of a
superior order endowed with superhuman and magical
powers. In fact, they were divine; and this concep-
tion of the dead as daemon or hero governs the for-
mation of all sepulchral art. The idea is presented to
us with crude and primitive directness on the early
Mycenaean and Spartan reliefs, which we shall now
consider. It is modified to vanishing point in the
128
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
art of the Attic stelae, through the supposed indiffer-
ence to a future life introduced, it is said, by the
Homeric poems. It persists in the lands least touched
by these influences, till in the Roman Empire, puri-
fied and modified by the influence of the Oriental
religions, it inspires the lofty symbolism of the soul's
destiny which appears on the stelae we are more
particularly to study here. The magic intention is
gradually suppressed, or relegated to a subordinate
rôle; with the progress of time, the imagery of the
tombstone tends to concentrate more and more on the
adventures of the soul in the other world and to omit
or minimise the relation of the dead to this. But it
was long before thought could be thus focussed on
the more spiritual aspects of the After Life.
IV. CONCEPTIONS OF THE AFTER LIFE ON
MYCENAEAN AND PELOPONNESIAN STELAE
An example of the desire to secure for the dead
joyful pastimes in the life beyond, by carving repre-
sentations of these on the gravestone, is afforded by
the much discussed scenes of hunting and chariot-
racing on the famous stelae from the circle of graves
on the Acropolis of Mycenae.23 These date at latest
from the tenth century B.C., and are the earliest
figured stelae found on Greek soil; they are described
as follows by Sir Arthur Evans in the passage from
which I have already quoted: "The stelae of the
SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES
129
graves at Mycenae must themselves be regarded as
baetylic forms of the departed spirits of members of
the royal house; and in the reliefs upon them
we may recognise a compromise between the idea of
supplying a spirit with an aniconic habitation, and
that of pictorially delineating it in human form.' 24
Who that looks at them, with this explanation in
mind, can help seeing that because it is the departed
spirit which is here delineated, the pastime in which
he is engaged refers to his life beyond the tomb?
We have here, in fact, an anticipation of Pindar's
picture of the joys of the Blessed, who 'in the space
before their city . . . take their delight in horses and
games' (see below, p. 140). More directly than any
others found on the soil of Hellas do these stelae
enunciate an order of beliefs as to a blessed future.
life, similar to that which inspires the sepulchral
imagery of the later Roman Empire more than a
thousand years after.
The scene in which the living bring offerings of
drink and food to the dead very early makes its
appearance on funerary stelae, with the magical
intention of making the scene doubly effective by
giving it the permanence of stone. A series of reliefs
from the neighbourhood of Sparta, for instance,
shows the dead man enthroned with his wife and
receiving offerings from the survivors, while he him-
self holds out the cup for the funerary libation
I
130
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
!
(R.R., ii. 39; 376, etc.).25 The idea that the dead
are alive within the tomb, or somewhere in the world
below it, whence they may be recalled, cannot be
more emphatically expressed than it is here. They
can emerge and meet the living who come to pro-
pitiate or placate them; they are shown as of heroic
size by comparison with the living who approach
them; they are majestically enthroned to indicate
the superior power with which they are now endowed.
Moreover, in the more famous and best preserved of
these reliefs (plate xvi. 1, in the museum of Berlin),
a further idea is introduced, inasmuch as the man is
represented not only participating in the scene carved
within the relief, but with head and shoulders facing
outwards in a stiff frontal attitude, as though the
sculptor had wished to establish between the dead
man and his survivors or descendants a relation
equivalent to that between god and suppliant (above,
p. 31).
The stelae are particularly interesting as
offering to the spectator a triple vision of the dead: as
spirits resident in the stele; as souls dwelling in the
...great snake which rears itself up behind the throne;
and as actual human presences whose more majestic
mien alone differentiates them from ordinary mortals.
The scene is clearly one of Apotheosis. The fact that
the dead are shown as participants in a solemn revel,
that the very cup they drink from has the shape of
the kantharos of Dionysus, shows that they have
26
I. STELE FROM CRYSAPHA.
Berlin.
2. GREEK STELE.
Grottaferrata.
M
PLATE XVI.


SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES
131
been made the equals of the gods and share their
special joys. The offerings brought by the survivors
are also worthy of attention. The man carries a
cock 27 and an egg ;
28 the woman the flower and the
fruit of the pomegranate,29 all of them symbolic of
those powers of fertility and rebirth with which, as
I have already pointed out, the dead were early as-
sociated. Students cannot be too earnestly recom-
mended to master the whole of this series of Spartan
reliefs, the type of which persists down to the Pheidian
age, as on one of the Chrysapha reliefs, now at
Athens (R.R., ii. 366, 2), on which a man, resembling
in type the magistrates of the Parthenon frieze, feeds
from a deep kantharos the soul-snake that rears itself -
in front of him.30 These Peloponnesian reliefs had
an influence which the art of the Attic stelae could
not entirely suppress.
CHARACTER OF ATTIC
SEPULCHRAL IMAGERY
The clear and material conception of an ultra-
mundane existence of the dead which inspires the
Mycenaean stelae and the Spartan hero-reliefs is held
to have vanished from the sepulchral art of historic
Greece, or more correctly of historic Attica, or to
survive only as an underground current of which we
see occasional glimpses in the humbler arts that
minister to the superstitions of the less educated
V. THE ATTIC REACTION.
132
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
classes; so rarely indeed does it exert any influence
on the major arts that the one or two examples of
its persistence are often neglected in a rapid survey
of the subject. A great deal has been written and
said of late to show that with the Homeric poems a
new conception of the after life was introduced, which
was to influence the funerary art of the Greek and
the Graeco-Roman world until the great reaction
brought about under the Empire by the intrusion
into the West of Oriental religions. In Homer the
dead lead a colourless existence as shadows in a dis-
tant Hades where their time is spent in futile regrets
for the past, and he knows of no influence which these
poor shades can exert over the living.31 Since these
shadows or eldwλa are banished to the further con-
fines of the world, whence there is no return, the
living need have no fear of the haunting ghost when
once the dead have been laid to rest, nor do the ghosts
need to be placated with offerings. If the dead are
to live for the living it is in the verse of the poet.
Henceforward, therefore, by the power of art, the
dead cease to be terror-inspiring spirits and become
ideals for the guidance of mankind.
In a sense,
therefore, Homer is the creator of the art-type which,
in Attica at least, after the official introduction of
Homer by Pisistratus, is to commemorate the dead.32
The sepulchral imagery of classical Athens is likewise
commemorative in character; the deceased survives
LYSEAINOANESE
MAPATEDSEMONE
PEOEKEN
1. STELE OF LYSEAS.
Athens.
APXIITTION ST SENOZ
PLATE XVII.

@
2. STELE OF ARCHIPPOS.
Cook Coll., Richmond.
…………
SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES
133
only as a memory in virtue of his past state, or of his
past actions. The long series of Athenian funerary
stelae usually exhibits an episode from the past life
of the deceased, or some scene illustrative of his con-
dition in this world. An archaic stele from Velani-
dezza, signed by Aristocles, represents the dead man
in full armour standing quietly in profile, with no sug-
gestion, therefore, of any heroisation (R.R., ii. 373, 2).
On another of more recent date, in the Vatican, a
young athlete looks down at his little servant (R.R.,
iii. 408, 4-Helbig, 246). On a stele at Athens a
youth with his pet rabbit in his hand, and his little
servant looking up into his master's face, is repre-
sented in the attitude which doubtless seemed char-
acteristic to those who survived him (Stele of Telesias,
R.R., ii. 387, 3). Hegeso likewise, who died in the
bloom of youth and beauty, is shown seated and
receiving from her maid a box of jewels (R.R., ii.
393, 1); or a young warrior is commemorated, as on
the stele of Dexileos, by the episode in which he lost
his life (R.R., ii. 420, 2). A number of these reliefs
likewise refer to the dead man's trade or profession,
such as that of the shoemaker Xanthippos (British
Museum; R.R., ii. 502, 1),33 or of Sosinos, who
appears to have been a worker in bronze (Louvre ;
R.R., ii. 290, 2),34 and those of various actors and
poets.35 Further, in studying the Attic stelae in their
historical sequence, a distinct change as regards the
134
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
relation of the dead to the living may be observed.
In the earlier examples the interest still completely
centres round the dead man, who is represented alone;
then we watch the gradual intrusion of the living till
in the stelae of the fourth century the interest is about
equally balanced between the dead and those who
survived him.36 We may even go so far as to say that
the spectator's sympathy is claimed rather for the
sorrow of the survivors than for the fate of the dead.
Thus by the influence which the Homeric poems
exerted upon the Attic genius the old magical purpose
had vanished from the stele and its imagery.
(a) Traces of Beliefs in an After Life in certain
Attic Stelae
All this is not so much my own theory as a fair
statement, I believe, of the views now currently held
of Attic sepulchral art.37 They require modifying in
not a few important particulars. Professor Gardner
had already pointed out in his Sculptured Tombs of
Hellas 38 that Attic stelae retain considerable traces
of beliefs identical with those which inspired the
Spartan tombstones. In the archaic period, indeed,
the Athenian funerary reliefs are permeated by that
primitive faith in an ultramundane existence which
continues in force in the sepulchral art of Hellenised
Asia Minor and its islands. Consider, for instance, the
beautiful painted stele of Lyseas in Athens (plate
M
調​回应
​米
​SCENE AT A TOMB.
Altic Lekythos. Boston.
in
地​回​厄
​טע
PLATE XVIII.

····❤
***
SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES
135
xvii. 1), where the dead man is seen holding a deep
drinking-cup, not in the least as some have supposed
because he had been a priest of Dionysus, but because
the Dionysiac kantharos is given him, as to the heroised
Spartan ancestors, for a sign that he has attained to
the status of god. Then again, the galloping horse-
man on the socle of this stele seems in the spirit of
the Mycenaean stelae, and refers to after-world joys
rather than to the man's racing triumphs in this life.39
Symbols such as we saw in the Spartan stelae, and shall
see again in Hellenistic and Roman times, are by no
means of rare occurrence on Attic grave imagery.
On the stele of a hoplite at Athens, for instance, which
must be earlier than 478 B.C., since it was found in
the wall of Themistocles, a running Gorgon is carved
on the socle with evident prophylactic intention
(R.R., ii. 373, 1).40 On another of the Pheidian
period from the Peiraeus, a man lays his hand on the
head of a tiny siren on his left, while on the socle
Tritons shouldering their oars and blowing their horns
are depicted, in clear allusion to the journey to the
Isles of the Blessed (R.R., ii. 388, 4). On the stele,
inscribed with the name Eutamia, likewise of the
fifth century, the dog which appears alone on the ledge
above the figures of Eutamia and her daughter or
attendant (R.R., ii. 389, 2) is plainly more than a
household pet; the place assigned to it is that given
to the horse on one of the Chrysapha reliefs, and the
136
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
1
dog here is certainly the underworld guardian.41
same may be said of the dog which not unfrequently
appears seated under the chair of the deceased, as
in a lovely relief in the museum of the monas-
tery of Grottaferrata (plate xvi. 2). The bird, very
commonly a dove, so frequently interpreted as a mere
gift to the dead, is in its origin quite certainly a seat
of the departed spirit, and to my mind probably
retains to the last an allusion to the soul-bird.42
The lion which appears as the guardian of tombs in
Phrygia from remote antiquity,43 and the bull who
later plays so significant a part in the sepulchral
imagery of the Empire, are all known to the art of
Attic tomb reliefs, though there is an undeniable
tendency to keep their symbolic value in the back-
ground of interest, and to assign to them a value which
as time goes on becomes more and more decorative.44
Finally, we must note a mingling of contradictory
ideas in Attic sepulchral imagery: on a stele of the
Dipylon (R.R., ii. 392, 3), for instance, Pamphile and
Demetria, for all the 'modern' everyday character
of their poses and draperies, are enshrined as solemn
presences within a naïskos or chapel, in a manner
reminiscent of those archaic stelae where the dead
are presented as objects of homage and worship.
Again, the stelae where the dead are seen surrounded
by survivors, recall that earlier conception of the
dead as a god, enthroned and reverently approached
The
SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES 137
!
by the survivors. But the magical value of the scene
has vanished, leaving us with what represents an
episode of daily life, in which, as I have already
pointed out, the interest often centres about the
anguish of the living rather than about the fate of
the dead now passed beyond recall.
(b) After Life Beliefs in Attic Vase Pictures
From the first the humble products of the potter's
art are more explicit than the gravestones. No
figured stelae adorned the early graves outside the
Dipylon Gate at Athens, but their place appears to
have been taken by the vases of geometric style
found above the tombs and richly decorated with
various scenes pertaining to death and burial.45
Among them the elaborate picture of a funeral 46
calls for special mention here, for we do not find
processions depicted on so extensive a scale or with
such a pomp of mourners and display of grief, until
we come to Roman times; and even then they are
restricted to few examples (p. 175). A funeral pro-
cession has no necessary reference to belief in an After
Life, but the vase shows on the part of the ancient
inhabitants of Athens a preoccupation with death
which was banished out of sight by their descendants.
The funeral is a comparatively rare subject on later
vases; but we find the laying out of the corpse, the
lowering of the coffin, the passage in Charon's boat,
138
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
書
​and, above all, the offerings by survivors at the tomb.
The subjects are specially common on the class of
vases with paintings on white ground, known as
lekythi, exclusively made for the service of the tomb,
and justly ranking among the most exquisite pictures
that Greek art has left us. One in the splendid
vase collection of the museum of Boston displays a
scene of appealing beauty: on the left a mourner
half kneels on the steps of the grave; the fully
draped figure of a man on the other side is probably
intended for the dead himself; from the figures of
athletes which decorate the stele, it has been thought
that the grave was that of a young athlete. It seems
to me quite as probable that the figures carry the
usual allusion to the joys and pastimes of an After
Life 47 (plate xviii.).
(c) General Trend of Attic Thought with regard to
Death
The sepulchral art of Attica was not, as we have
just seen, so devoid of all reference to a future exist-
ence as many archaeologists have represented. At the
same time it has to be admitted that when we survey
the gravestones of Athens as a whole and mark the
overwhelming number that contain no reference
whatsoever save only to the past life of the dead, we
may say of Attic grave reliefs as a whole, with Ales-
sandro della Seta, that they do not represent death,
SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES
139
but immortalise life. A human melancholy not un-
naturally pervades them, a tender regret for what
has been and is no more, but we look in vain for any
indication of the recompense that may await the dead
beyond the grave. So, too, the funeral speech over
those who fell in the first year of the Peloponnesian
War, put into the mouth of Pericles by Thucydides,
has no word about the reward in after life for bravery,
nor does the speaker attempt to console the survivors
by the suggestion of future reunion.48
In this art of the Attic stelae we find everywhere
the frank acceptance of the impenetrable mystery of
death; no effort is made to lift the veil that separates
the now from the hereafter. It seems worth calling
attention to the fact, not, I think, observed so far,
that the Platonic doctrine of the immortality of the
soul, promulgated in Athens in the fourth century,
has left no traces in the grave reliefs of the period.
It is stranger still that the Orphic doctrines, with
their theory of a future life, which had come into
vogue two centuries earlier, and which now, in its
purer Pythagorean form, gave a new turn to the
mysticism of Plato,49 practically found no expres-
sion on sepulchral reliefs before the days of the
Roman Empire.50 Yet the influence attributed to
the Homeric poems, if paramount in Athens, was not
universal, and Pindar—a mere Boeotian to be sure-
was possessed of a definite vision of the After Life
140
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
and its joys which he takes more than one occasion
to dwell upon. One remarkable passage-the noble
fragment already referred to, beginning τοῖσι λάμπει
μὲν σθένος ἀελίου 51—I cannot resist quoting here, in
Andrew Lang's beautiful translation :
Now the light of the Sun, in the night of the Earth, on
the souls of the True,
Shines, and their city is girt with the meadow where
reigneth the rose;
And deep is the shade of the woods, and the wind that
flits o'er them and through
Sings of the sea, and is sweet from the isles where the
frankincense blows:
Green is their garden and orchard, with rare fruits golden
it glows,
And the souls of the Blessed are glad in the pleasures
on Earth that they knew,
And in chariots these have delight, and in dice and in
minstrelsy those,
And the savour of sacrifice clings to the altars and rises
anew.*
(Rhymes à la Mode, ed. 2, p. 119.)
* τοῖσι λάμπει
μὲν σθένος ἀελίου τὰν
ἐνθάδε νύκτα κάτω, φοι-
νικορόδοις δ᾽ ἐνὶ λειμώ-
νεσσι προάστιον αὐτῶν
καὶ λιβάνῳ σκιαρὸν καὶ
χρυσέοις καρποῖς βεβριθός.
καὶ τοὶ μὲν ἱπποισί <τε> γυ-
μνασίαις <τε>, τοὶ δὲ πεσσοῖς,
τοὶ δὲ φορμίγγεσσι τέρπον-
ται, παρὰ δέ σφισιν εὐαν—
θὴς ἅπας τέθαλεν ὄλβος·
SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES
141
The vision endured, for we meet it again in Vergil five
centuries later-with this great difference, that the
Latin poet definitely makes Orpheus, the long-robed
priest, its central figure.
But the Orphism which inspired the eschatology
of Pindar and of Plato long failed to affect the attitude
of the educated Greek towards a future state. How-
ever expressed-whether in literature or art—this
attitude remains one of imperturbable resignation.
The influences emanating from Attica, clothed in the
matchless Attic form, permeated the whole ancient
world, moulded the scepticism fashionable in the
philhellene circles of Republican Rome, and every-
where opposed an obstinate resistance to the beliefs
in an ultramundane existence which were to conquer
in the end. Before we return to the monuments,
allow me, as a contrast to Pindar, one more quotation
in illustration of my meaning. It is from the elegy
on the death of Bion, long attributed to Moschus,
but now recognised as the work of an Italo-Greek
poet of the age of Sulla.52 The passage aiaî тaì µa-
μα-
Máxai, familiar from Leigh Hunt's charming version,
Alas, when mallows in the garden die,
Green parsley, or the crisp luxuriant dill,
They live again and flower another year;
ὀδμὰ δ᾽ ἐρατὸν κατὰ χῶρον κίδναται
αἰεὶ-θύα μειγνύν-
των πυρὶ τηλεφανεῖ παν-
τοῖα θεῶν ἐπὶ βωμοῖς.
142
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
But we, how great soe'er, or strong, or wise,
When once we die, sleep in the silent earth
A long, unending, unawakeable sleep, *
shows how completely the educated Graeco-Roman
world of the first century had lost-or affected to
have lost the very conception of a life beyond the
grave. While humble worshippers in Asia Minor
were drawing consolation from the rites of Adonis,
Cybele, and Attis, and perceiving in the yearly resur-
rection of the spring a parallel and a hope for their
own future life, the Greek saw in that same yearly
miracle only a contrast between the unchanging
and eternal processes of Nature and the inevitable
hour that awaits mankind at the last.
VI. THE SEPULCHRAL IMAGERY OF ASIA MINOR
(a) General Character
Fortunately for the greater happiness and consola-
tion of mankind there were other Greek countries
where belief as to an After Life was never so completely
obscured as in Attica, and where it continued to find
direct expression in art. The Attic stelae practically
came to an end between 317-307 B.C., as a consequence
* αἰαῖ, ταὶ μαλάχαι μέν, ἐπὰν κατὰ κᾶπον ὅλωνται,
ἠδὲ τὰ χλωρὰ σέλινα τό τ᾽ εὐθαλὲς οὖλον ἄνηθον
ὕστερον αὖ ζώοντι καὶ εἰς ἔτος ἄλλο φύοντι·
ἄμμες δ' οἱ μεγάλοι καὶ καρτεροί, οἱ σοφοὶ ἄνδρες,
ὁππότε πρᾶτα θάνωμες, ἀνάκοοι ἐν χθονὶ κοίλαι
εὔδομες εὖ μάλα μακρὸν ἀτέρμονα νήγρετον ὕπνον.
SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES
143
1
of the sumptuary laws passed by Demetrius of
Phaleron against the excessive luxury of sepulchral
monuments. After
After that period the use of any
elaborate tomb imagery seems to have been effectively
checked. For the most part the graves are now
marked by simple pillars or slabs; practically the only
subject which we find carved on these later Attic
gravestones being the funeral banquet, or rather, as
we should call it, the 'Banquet of the Apotheosis.'
The subject was of rare occurrence in the great period
of Attic art, and its new frequency betokens a revival
of faith in the glorified condition of the dead—a fact
which it may some day be possible to explain by
reference to the predominance at this time of Pytha-
gorean Orphism.
From the close of the fourth century we have to turn
to the stelae of Asia Minor for the later history of the
grave-relief. It is usually held that the Asiatic stelae
derive from the Attic. This is true of their archi-
tectural forms as a whole, but only very partially
so of the subjects represented. Rather does their
elaborate symbolism derive in an unbroken line from
those more primitive customs and beliefs which we
have seen rejected by Attica and Athens under the
influence of the Homeric poems. A glance at the
imagery of the earlier tombs and other sepulchral
monuments of Asia Minor and the neighbouring
islands soon makes this clear.
144
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
•
(b) Scenes of Apotheosis and After Life on Sarcophagi
from Cyprus and from Clazomenae. The Chariot
of Monteleone
First we will select from the Metropolitan Museum
of New York the sarcophagus from Golgoi in Cyprus,
recently published by Professor Myres of Oxford,
to whose catalogue of the Cypriote monuments in
New York we are all looking forward. The scenes
of hunting and of chariot-racing embody, as do the
reliefs of the Mycenaean tombs, the promise of noble
pastimes in a life to come; the spirit is that of the
Pindaric description of ultramundane bliss. The
banquet scene combines the sacramental expression
of the rewards and joys awaiting the Blest with the
notion of Apotheosis; while the figure of Perseus
running with the head of the Gorgon is quite certainly,
to my mind, figured here with apotropaic intention,
to ward off evil spirits from the occupants of tomb
and sarcophagus.54 We shall find the same prophy-
lactic character attaching to this image some eight
hundred years later on the tomb of the Secundinii at
Igel near Trèves (p. 222). Whether we can follow
an earlier interpreter of this sarcophagus in seeing in
the Perseus a portrait of the deceased,55 thought of
therefore as deified, I am not at present prepared to
say, though there is little doubt that in the Hellenised
East there was a tendency to regard the dead as a
53
DILO
RABA
SARCOPHAGUS FROM CLAZOMENAE.
British Museum.
PLATE XIX.

1.
Ve··
SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES
145
being of a superior order, which led soon to his Apothe-
osis in the form of various heroes and gods. This
is a further point which distinguishes the funerary
art of Asia Minor from that of Hellas.
The celebrated sarcophagi from Clazomenae in
Lydia, which come well within the circle of Ionian
influence,56 exhibit, in the paintings of the interior,
hunting and warlike scenes similar to those on the
example from Golgoi and a number of apotropaic
motives, the most striking of which is that of the
young man holding a cock in each hand and with two
dogs fawning upon him. Both cock and dogs render
here the service of warding off evil spirits from the
wayfarer to the underworld, while a degree of Apothe-
osis is implied by showing the young man as master
of the hounds.57 I wish we had time to discuss the
wonderful friezes which decorate the interior, upper
rims, and lid of the sarcophagus in the British Museum,
and seem like a pictorial commentary on Pindar's
visions of a Blessed After Life (plate xix.). Along the
rim and on the end panels are figured the exploits
which win for the dead man participation in the noble
pastimes which make up the rest of the figured decora-
tion. I must dwell one moment on the winged
figures-some bearing branches-which hover above
the chariots on the lid. They are the same Kĥpes 58
-Greek Angels of Death we may call them-who are
figured in battle-scenes on early red-figured Attic
K
146
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
vases, hovering above the dead and dying warriors,
as in an incomparably beautiful fragment now
at Palermo.59 The dread Κὴρ Θανάτοιο, the cruel
vampire who sucked the blood of the brave, has
another side to its nature; it can also close the eyes
of the hero in battle, and bear away his soul to the
radiant spaces. The Kýp is thus a conception akin
to one aspect of the Siren, with whom it appears
alternately above the reclining revellers on a lovely
kylix from Cyrene in the Louvre, justly interpreted
as a Banquet of the Blessed--a συμπόσιον τῶν ὁσίων 60
In the same way the scene on the sarcophagus is a
joust of the Blessed, and over them, as over the
revellers of the Cyrenean cup, hover the Kĥpes as
ministrant spirits.
The lion, likewise, continually appears on this class
of sarcophagi and on the tombs of Asia Minor, an
important fact for us, since the lion is one of the most
frequent of sepulchral emblems on the tombs and
gravestones of Rome, and, as we shall see, on those of
Roman Gaul, Britain, and the Roman provinces of
Central Europe. The presence of the lion on the
tombs of Asia Minor has been explained by his con-
nection with Cybele as protectress of graves, for
Cybele in her aspect of mother-goddess of the earth's
fertility is by an easy transition of thought connected
with the underworld whence vegetation springs, and
so with the dead, while the lion as the highest expres-
SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES
147
L
sion of the vital forces of Nature early appears as her
companion.61 Probably several conceptions unite in
the symbolism of the lion, and we shall also be able
to recognise in him the emblem of the solar forces that
destroy the flesh and so liberate the soul. The transit
of the dead to the upper spheres again is depicted
on the magnificent bronze chariot of Monteleone,
no doubt part of the furniture of a tomb, which like
the sarcophagus of Golgoi is now among the treasures
of the New York Metropolitan Museum. It may be
dated in the early part of the sixth century, and
though found in Umbria, is certainly Ionian work.62
On the front panel we see a gallant exploit of the dead
warrior, while the reward of his prowess appears on
the panel of one side, where we see him borne upwards
in the winged chariot over the recumbent figure of
Mother Earth (plate xv. 2(a)); the chariots in early
times were generally winged, being a usual vehicle
of the soul's transit to heaven.63 We have twice
met with this scheme before, once on the sarco-
phagus of Haghia Triada, to which, however, I made
only passing allusion (plate xv. 2(b)), and again on
the relief from Ephesus where the Emperor Marcus
Aurelius ascends heavenward in the chariot of the
Sun over the recumbent Earth (plate xi.); in all
three cases the scene is one of Apotheosis, and in all
three the soul is caught up, so to speak, in a mystic
chariot, like Heracles and Elijah.
{
148 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
(c) Sepulchral Imagery of Lycia
The tombs of Lycia, which very early betray in the
character of their art the influence of Ionia, are
specially instructive for the force of the belief in an
After Life which inspire their imagery. Let us run
rapidly through the splendid examples preserved in
the British Museum. The Harpy Tomb is, of course,
the classic example. It dates from the end of the
sixth or beginning of the fifth century, when in Athens
stelae of the type recording the everyday life of the
deceased (p. 133) were already in vogue; from its
manifold subjects it seems to have been the burial-
place of several generations of the same family. A
happy reaction has set in lately against the perverted
notion that saw in the carvings of its four sides mere
genre scenes from everyday life; they are obviously
in the same line of belief and of thought as the Spartan
gravestones.64 The friezes of all four sides reveal an
elaborate ritual of the grave, combined with scenes
of Apotheosis and of ultramundane existence (R.R., i.
470-1). The pictorial expression of the Soul's ad-
venture is as varied here as on the sarcophagus from
Haghia Triada: winged female figures, who partake
both of the nature of the Harpies, or body-snatchers,
and of a vehicle of Apotheosis, tenderly bear away the
souls; between them a warrior offers his armour to
a god of the underworld, who is doubtless a heroised
SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES
149
ancestor; another of these underworld divinities
receives the offering of a dove; while on the entrance
side two gracious women, mother and daughter per-
haps, seated outside their own tomb, receive the
offering of their living female descendants, who
approach with no less stately a mien than the Athenian
maidens on the frieze of the Parthenon. On the
corresponding relief at the back we see a third male
ancestor between two groups of women receiving,
like the Spartan heroised ancestors, the offering of an
egg and a cock. Outside Christian art it would be
difficult to match these moving and poetic scenes.
The rape of the soul by the Harpies has, in fact, a
remarkable parallel on a scene carved in the portal
of S. Trophime at Arles, where an angel advances
from the left with a soul in his hand into the presence
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who are seen seated
in Paradise, each already holding two souls in his
lap, in vivid illustration of the New Testament
phrase, 'Abraham's bosom.' The analogy may be
something more than a mere coincidence, since two
other reliefs from S. Trophime offer curious analogies
to two famous Greek works recently claimed as
Ionian the scene where the soul of a martyred saint
as it leaves his body is lifted by bending angels into
the presence of God, and that in which a great winged
angel, placed frontally, weighs the souls in the scales;
both recall the so-called 'Nativity of Aphrodite'
150
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
of the Ludovisi Throne, and the 'Weighing of the
Souls' of its supposed counterpart at Boston.65 It
would be strange indeed if the central Ludovisi scene,
so long associated with theories of physical birth,
should in fact be connected with the spiritual rebirth;
stranger still if the Christian subjects of a mediaeval
church should be the means of throwing light on the
mystery still attaching to the subjects of the thrones,'
but to discuss this interesting parallel further would
take us too far afield.66
This Lycian sepulchral art is a rich mine of infor-
mation which would repay working out in great
detail. I must be content here to give a few
indications. A beautiful and pathetic relief in the
British Museum shows a funerary column, on which
the apotropaic Siren stands with extended wings;
on either side sit the dead ancestors, who here, as on
the Spartan reliefs, are conceived both as spirits resi-
dent within the stele and also in their human shape."
The relief is, moreover, one of the most exquisite com-
positions left us by Greek art (plate xx.), and shows
what might have been accomplished by the Ionians
in the way of centralised monolatric design, had not
their inspiration been diverted into other channels by
the influence of the Attic schools with their Homeric
mythology. Funeral scenes, on the same grand scale
as on the sarcophagus from Golgoi, are also very
frequent (R.R., i. 469, 1, 2). The funeral procession,
SCENE AT A TOMB.
Stele from Xanthos.
British Museum.
PLATE XX

SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES
151
though not unknown to Attic art, remains character-
istic of Ionian, or more probably Graeco-Asiatic art,
whence it may have influenced that of early Latium
(below, p. 168). At a later date a splendid example
occurs on the long sides of the lid of the Sarcophagus
of the Mourners from Sidon (R.R., i. 406). The
Lycian tombs also frequently exhibit the motive of
the guardian lions. An impressive tomb in the British
Museum (R.R., i. 466-7), from the acropolis of Xanthos,
is cut in one block and adorned on the south side with
a lion holding the head of a bull between its paws, and
on the opposite by a lioness and her cub; while on
the west side to the right of the door a warrior appears
in contest with a lion which faces him erect 68 (Catalogue
of Sculpture, No. 80). I have already referred to the
probable meaning of the lion as guardian of the
tomb; the group of the lion devouring a bull or other
animal so common in Eastern and Graeco-Oriental art,
which afterwards acquires a definite mystical inten-
tion on the tombs of the Roman Empire, represents,
I believe, from the beginning the notion of a power
of light devouring the terrestrial body, since the lion
early appears as emblem of the sun. Other familiar
motives are the Sirens and lions placed heraldically
on the panels of the doors on the gable ends of a
certain type of Lycian tomb (R.R., i. 469, 4).
69
All the sepulchral art of Lycia is strongly influenced
by Ionia, and later came under the overwhelming
152
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
influence of Attica, but even then the forms in which
belief in the After Life has found expression were never
entirely obliterated. The superimposed friezes which
adorn in typical fashion the inner face of the walls
of the Heroon at Gjölbaschi-Trysa proclaim the belief
in a logical and sustained form (R.R., i. 443-64).
Probably the tomb was destined for various members
of one family whose exploits, thrown into a succession
of legendary forms, already point to a degree of
Apotheosis. There followed long banqueting scenes,
at which recline those who, released by death from
their earthly labours, have attained a blessed life,
while on the left of the entrance we see the act of
Apotheosis pictured, as it constantly is in Lycia, by
the ascension of the hero in a chariot.70 Such, of
course, is the meaning of the chariots, so far always
inadequately explained, carved on each side of the
roof of the Lycian tombs of Payava and Merehi, in
the British Museum (R.R., i. 487-8),71 wonderful
monuments which deserve closer study than has
yet been accorded to them. The same chariots of
Apotheosis occur on the tomb of Deirmis and Aes-
chylus at Vienna, which stood just outside the
Heroon at Gjölbaschi.72 Such also is the meaning of
the chariot, whether empty or containing the statues
of Mausolus and his consort, that crowned the
Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, where, moreover, the
chariot races on one frieze of the great podium
SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES
153
continue the tradition of the scenes on the sarcophagi
of Cyprus and of Clazomenae.
Lycian art recognised various other vehicles of
the soul's ultramundane journey. The Nereids, for
instance, of the slightly earlier monument from
Xanthos, what are they but souls borne to another
sphere by the marine monsters which we see beneath
the feet of the gracious maidens? These are the
same creatures of the deep that escort the soul on
countless Roman tombs. This so-called Nereid
monument is of especial interest as combining in the
manner of the later Roman tombs of the Rhineland
the commemoration of the deeds of the dead while
yet alive, with a representation of the funeral cere-
monies and the imagery symbolic of the destinies
of the soul-another example of the influence which
Hellenised Asia was constantly to exercise on Rome.
The arrangement of the figures in the pediment
(R.R., i. 486), it may be noted in passing, seems
directly derived from that of the ancestors who face
one another on each side of the pillar in the Siren
tomb from Xanthos 73 (plate xx.).
(d) Chios. The Sarcophagi of Sidon. Character
of Ionian Art
The whole of Graeco-Asiatic sepulchral art bears
witness to similar ideas of ascension or Apotheosis,
and of eternal bliss in later times also. At Chios, for
154
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
instance, in the fourth century, we find the motives
of the Clazomenae sarcophagi repeated on the marble
slab of one Metrodoros 78ª (now in Berlin), as well as a
number of tombs adorned with the figures of Sirens,
assuredly not, as the learned assert, because the dead
man had musical tastes, but as token of his soul's
survival, and also probably to guard his tomb from
evil influences. If we pass to Hellenised Syria we
meet with the same or similar beliefs and traditions.
On the sarcophagus of the Satrap from Sidon (R.R., i.
411, 2, 413), we have the banquet scene, in the sar-
cophagus aptly surnamed 'Lycian' (R.R., i. 409-11,
1) since though found in the royal necropolis of
Sidon it has all the characteristics noted above in
Lycian sepulchral art—we find the apotropaic Siren,
the griffins, vehicles of the soul's transit; the frontal
guardian lions on the sides of the lid and on the friezes
of the case, a weakened 'mythologised' version of
the triumphal chariot of the soul.74 On the sar-
cophagus of the 'Mourners' the scene of hunting
and the funeral pageant reappear, and on the pedi-
ments what is usually taken for a group of women in
Hades or Elysium (R.R., i. 404-8). In this context
I should like to call your attention to an exquisite
pedimental relief, to my mind undoubtedly Ionian,
formerly in a private collection at Munich, in which
its first interpreter saw the introduction of a dead
woman by Hermes to the Underworld where other
SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES
155
women are seen sitting and mourning in the Elysian
fields (R.R., i. 42).75 You must keep in mind the
persistence of these views of a blessed future exist-
ence among the races most strongly influenced by the
intellectual Ionians, that highly gifted people who,
as Mr. Hogarth has reminded us, were associated
with le printemps de la Grèce,76 the importance of
whose civilisation as superior and certainly anterior
to that of Greece proper is now universally recognised.
The rise of the Ionian civilisation,' says Professor
Gilbert Murray, ' is in many ways the most wonderful
phenomenon in Greek history. Every kind of in-
tellectual advance seems to have its origin in Ionia.
The greatest works of colonisation and commerce ;
the first bank, the first maps, and the first effective
Greek fleets come from there.'77 These wonderful
people are also those among whom the loftiest as-
pirations of mankind gained the mature expression
that helped their world-wide diffusion. Ionia was
the fatherland of Homer,' but it was likewise the
first centre of Orphism in its westward advance, and,
under the banner of Orphism, two of Ionia's illustrious
sons, Pythagoras of Samos and Xenophanes of
Colophon, were destined, each in his different way, to
be leaders of revolt against Homeric authority and
Homeric theology. We students of Rome must
never forget that it was to Pythagoras, who established
himself at Croton towards 530 B.C., and to the Pytha-
6
156
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
gorean school, that first Southern Italy and then
Rome and the Empire owed initiation into the exalted
mysticism which, as we shall see, permeates much of
the later Roman sepulchral imagery. I need hardly
remind you that at all times of her history Rome
received Greek ideas from Ionia-directly or through
Magna Graecia—rather than from Greece proper.
Scenes of Apotheosis, especially of the transit in
the chariot, are well known in Attic art also, but
here they are limited to the cycle of mythological
gods and heroes, as in the familiar case of Heracles
who often appears on black-figured vases, and vases
of the fine period, riding to Olympus with Athena
at his side, as in the fine red-figured pelike in
Munich, to quote one example out of many.* Man
is not pictured as entering the courts of heaven; if
the denizens of those courts wish to come in contact
with man they are brought down to him, as on the
frieze of the Parthenon. It is striking how few
representations in the Greek art of the fifth to the
third centuries are concerned to represent another
world-whether Heaven or Hell-how little the
artistic imagination allowed itself to play round
the unknown which by the Attic mind was simply
accepted as unknowable. Polygnotos, it is true,
painted a great Underworld pageant at Delphi,'
which has left many traces in contemporary and later
* Furtwängler-Reichold, plate 109, 2.
78
7
THE BANQUET OF THE APOTHEOSIS.
Relief from Thasos. Constantinople.
PLATE XXI.

SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES
157
art, but he was a native of Thasos, and the people
by whom he was commissioned to execute the picture
were Cnidians, i.e. Graeco-Asiatics. Thasos, it may
be noted, produced in an exquisite relief, now in the
museum of Constantinople (R.R., ii. 166, 1), one of
the great masterpieces of antique sculpture, and one
of the grandest conceptions of the dead in his glorified
existence (plate xxi.).79 Like the pediment of the
Mourning Women and the earlier Harpy Tomb, this
relief is a noble example of the sacramental function
of art in giving visible form to the Soul's Adventure.
VII. GRAECO-ASIATIC STELAE OF THE HELLENISTIC
PERIOD
We return, after this somewhat lengthy excursus
on the earlier sepulchral art of Ionia and Lycia, to
the Graeco-Asiatic stelae of the Hellenistic period.80
Their usual shape is that of a niche or little chapel
adorned with pictorial accessories, intended, it seems,
to reproduce the main features of an actual cemetery.
Within this sepulchral landscape the dead, who as
often as not is represented by his portrait statue, is
seen beside his own tomb. But since a statue is gener-
ally meant to be looked at from the front, the intro-
duction of the portrait figure brings back the frontal
pose of the dead, and tends to make the dead man,
whose effigy is sometimes raised on a pedestal, once
more the centre of interest. There is a corresponding
1
158
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
tendency to suppress the survivors, or to let them
appear only on a diminutive scale, so that by degrees.
we work back to a heroised representation of the dead.
A good example of these various characteristics may
be seen in the stele of Archippos in the Cook collection
at Richmond (plate xvii. 2; R.R., ii. 532, 1). What we
observe in the sculptured stelae is borne out by epi-
graphical evidence, such as the celebrated testament of
Epicteta of the second century B.C. in the museum of
Verona, found on the island of Thera, which gives all the
circumstances and regulations for the cult of a heroised
family (I.G., XII. iii. 330 (Inscrr. Insul. Maris Aegei)).81
In addition symbols are now abundantly introduced,
at times with their full significance, at others so repre-
sented as to impart to the scene the character of genre :
a child, for example, offers to his dog the Dionysiac
grapes, symbolic of resurrection; or, on another stele,
a cock, a common offering to the dead, greedily makes
for the fruit which a frightened little boy tries to hold
out of the bird's reach (R.R., ii. 294, 3). Both dog
and grapes contain a symbolic reference to the under-
world, but this is softened by the motive of the picture
as a whole. In Alexandria the stelae of the Hellen-
istic period exhibit a similar imagery.82 It need not
detain us here, as it offers no very striking variants,
and dies without leaving any traces, overwhelmed,
as was all Greek art in Egypt, by the persistence and
strength of Egyptian traditions.
SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES 159
VIII. FIGURED TOMBSTONES IN GREEK LANDS
OUTSIDE ASIA MINOR AND ATTICA
It would be a fascinating and a fruitful task to trace
the sepulchral imagery of other Greek lands outside
Hellas proper, and of those remoter parts of Greece
where Attic influence was not all-prevailing, but a few
examples must suffice. In Boeotia, rich from early
days in the 'graves of the worshipped dead,' the people
continued, as we learn from their rough but interesting
sepulchral imagery, to be preoccupied with the life
after death, and the same was the case in Macedonia.
In the celebrated stele from Orchomenos (R.R., ii.
373, 3), signed by the Naxian Alxenor, showing a man
and his dog springing up at him, we have not so much
the record that the man was a huntsman, as that the
deceased is pictured here in a scheme, modified by
Attic influence, which derives from that of the heroised
dead as Master of the Hounds. There is at Athens
another interesting Boeotian grave relief from Thebes
(R.R., ii. 403, 1) clearly, as far as style goes, a work
in the Attic manner, but, as we shall see, if we look
closely into the composition, strongly influenced by the
old scheme of the heroised ancestors and their descen-
dants. The former sit facing one another, much as on
the Harpy Tomb and on the pediment of the Nereid
monument in later Ionio-Lycian art (above, p. 153).
In Thessaly likewise we remain within a cycle of
160
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
beliefs suppressed in Attica, as on that curious stele
from Saloniki, now in Constantinople (R.R., ii. 169,
I), on which the heroised dead sit facing their own
tombstone round which twines the soul-snake. It
drinks from a cup held out by the woman, while the
man holds in his left hand a long burgeoning staff,
sure symbol of resurrection.
son.
Again in Macedonia we find subjects on late stelae
that remind us of Asia Minor rather than of Attica.
A good example of a Macedonian tombstone is in
the Devonshire collection at Chatsworth (R.R., ii.
444, 5), dedicated to one Herennia Syrisca and her
The lady, though wrapped in the graceful
draperies of the third century, is seated stiffly on
the left like a heroised ancestress of earlier date, on
a throne-like seat, with her feet on a high footstool;
towards her advances a smaller female figure with
offerings. On the opposite side, the standing figure
of the son is likewise approached by a male figure
much smaller than himself. A tree-symbol of re-
birth or resurrection-forms an arch over the whole,
and, most important of all, on either side a snake
twines itself round its branches. We evidently have
here, as on the Spartan reliefs, a duplication of the
dead in human and in snake form. In the empty
space between the heads of the personages appears
the head of the underworld horse, and on a ledge to
its left a tiny bird, which can scarcely be other than
SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES
161
the soul in bird form. It is in Macedonia, likewise,
that we find as late as the third century a remarkable
type of sarcophagus with reclining figures on the lid
unknown to classic Greece, though familiar in Etruria
and Latium, and among Phoenician peoples.83
In conclusion, one word must be said about the
sepulchral art of the Greek cities of Southern Italy.
In default of actual monuments, we can learn a great
deal for Tarentum and Nola and Capua from the
tombs and stelae represented on vase paintings.84
The kinship with the Asiatic examples is evident.
Simple gravestones and columns and the like are
indeed found, but the dominating form is that of the
naiskos, or chapel, within which stands or sits the
dead man-once more the heroised dead conceived
as a being of superior order.
This survey of the sepulchral imagery of Greek
lands, however incomplete, will serve to show that from
the Proto-Hellenic period onward beliefs as to a future
existence found expression in art, and that, although
suppressed or thrown into the background of interest
in Attica by the influence of the Homeric conception
of the dead, which ruled in Athens from the time of
the official introduction of Homer into Athens by
Pisistratus at the end of the sixth century, they yet
persisted in other parts of Greece. As frequently
happens, the lamp of faith was kept burning among
the humbler and less gifted peoples. Nor, as we
L
?
162
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
have seen, was it at any time as completely extin-
guished in philosophic and super-intellectual Athens
as certain scholars would have us believe, while out-
side Greece, in the Graeco-Asiatic countries open to
Ionian art and culture, we find from the earliest times
a rich sepulchral imagery, which, side by side with
the more primitive symbols of the ritual of the dead,
finds expression for the loftier beliefs in Apotheosis
and the definite joys of a future life. The considera-
tion of the Graeco-Asiatic stelae had already brought
us to the very threshold of our subject and the art of
the tombstones of the Roman Empire. But here
again, we shall first have to consider in a fresh section
what were the Roman conceptions of death in pre-
Augustan times, and how far these conceptions had
succeeded in finding plastic expression.
IX. THE SEPULCHRAL ART OF THE ROMANS, FROM
PRIMITIVE TIMES TO THE AUGUSTAN ERA
(a) Prehistoric Rome and Latium
It has been said that the primitive Romans had
no sense of life after death, and made little or no effort
to pierce the gloom that envelops the state beyond
the grave; their misty conception may be compared
to that of the Hebrew She'ol, the underworld where
dwell good and bad without distinction.85 To the
Romans likewise the dead were long a vague un-
SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES
163
individualised mass of spirits,' the manes who crowded
up periodically to the opening of the mundus, the
' gibbering ghosts' who at fixed intervals had to be
propitiated and banished from the homes that had
once been theirs.86 The Romans had in consequence
little or no native sepulchral art; and if we except
the patrician custom of keeping wax images of their
ancestors in their halls,87 it was not till the period of
Greek influence that they began to evolve anything
like a sepulchral imagery.
Let us turn at once to the evidence of the monu-
ments. In Rome itself from primitive times we have
little or nothing outside the famous Sepolcreto, or
burial-ground, discovered by Boni in 1902 in the
Roman Forum near the site of the temple of the
deified Faustina.88 The objects found in these early
tombs although, artistically speaking, mean and rough,
yet indicate a care for the future well-being of the
dead. At this early period they are in the nature of
amulets,89 and are placed on the dead with the inten-
tion of protecting them from malevolent influences.
The cabin urns, imitated from the capanne or round
huts of primitive Italy, show the desire to secure for
the dead a permanent habitation similar to that
which he enjoyed in life.
These burial customs of ancient Latium can best
be studied in the great museum of the Villa Giulia,
where the extensive finds from the numerous necro-
164
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
90
poleis in the immediate vicinity of Rome have lately
been rearranged with minute care and in chrono-
logical order.⁹0 It is not a subject which I can discuss
here except in so far as to point out to students who
are looking round for 'fresh woods and pastures new,'
that there is, I believe, no branch of archaeology so
little explored and so rich in promise as this of the
burial-grounds of ancient Latium and the adjacent
Faliscan territory. From Falerii itself you will find,
in the rooms on the first floor of the museum, an in-
comparable series of objects from the tombe a pozzo,
a fossa, and a camera, arranged in order of time. The
graves in the shape of pits are the oldest; they are
followed by those in the shape of a trench for the
reception of the coffin; here at Falerii follows a third
series, that of the chamber tombs, which lasted, it
seems, into the period of the Roman occupation.
These tombs were hollowed out as chambers in the
rock, and here the dead were placed either on couches,
or else within the superimposed recesses cut in the
walls much as in a Christian catacomb.
All these tombs, from the earliest to the latest,
reveal a variety of objects which clearly have in view
the protection and well-being of the dead in an ultra-
mundane existence: it is sufficient to point to the
amulet-jewellery and kindred objects, and to the
Greek vases which make their appearance from the
sixth century onward. The stupendous finds from
SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES
165
the Barberini and Bernardini tombs at Palestrina,
and from the Tomba Regolini-Galassi at Cervetri in
Southern Etruria, only a few miles from Rome,91
reveal on a much richer and grander scale the same
care for the dead that we noted among the humbler
finds of the primitive Sepolcreto in the Forum, and
the same desire to equip his last habitation, on the
magical principle so often noted, with every kind of
object the permanence of which is considered essential
to his well-being. It would seem, however, that these
desires and conceptions are as yet limited in scope.
There is no clear vision of a life beyond the grave, of
an ultramundane existence in the true sense of the
word. These tombs reveal nothing beyond the desire
of keeping the dead in a state closely modelled on
his earthly life; therefore we find no rich sepulchral
imagery to illustrate or symbolise the soul's supreme
adventure. Neither the closing slabs, nor the walls
of the tombs, nor again the urns or sarcophagi, are
painted or carved as are the sides of the Haghia Triada
larnax, for instance, with any scenes that definitely
formulate a belief in a life beyond and in a possible
intercourse between the living and the dead. The
ornament of the different objects of furniture or of
personal adornment found in these tombs has an
immense iconographic interest, but its character seems
to me mainly magical or apotropaic, though on this
point opinions are divergent. There are scholars
166
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
who maintain that the rich symbolism of the orna-
ments-sphinxes, griffins, lions, chimaeras, and their
like--are used merely with a decorative intention,
and thus afford a proof of a weakened religious belief
on the part of the Latins, who, on this theory, are
content to use as mere decoration imagery which,
among the Greek and Eastern peoples from whom
it appears to be borrowed, had a distinct religious
value. I, myself, on the contrary (and I think there
must be others of the same opinion, or would be,
were the early art of Latium not so much neglected),
believe that all this decoration is part of a carefully
thought out sepulchral imagery, mainly, if not entirely,
protective in character. The question is one which
it is beyond my present scope to consider in detail.
(b) From the early Fifth Century to the End of the
Republic
It is in Southern Etruria, at Veii, even nearer to
Rome than Cervetri, that we find from the beginning
or middle of the sixth century certain sepulchral
images which bring us back to the same cycle of beliefs
proclaimed on the paintings of the Cretan sarco-
phagus and the carvings of the Mycenaean royal
stelae. On the walls of the famous yet too rarely
visited Tomba Campana at Veii,92 the group of a
horseman escorted by figures on foot may be inter-
SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES
167
preted, I think, as the progress of the dead man to
the other world; he is preceded by a man armed
with an
axe presumably to cut down obstacles
in the path. It seems certain that scenes of
this character were introduced into Latium from
Etruria, which in turn had them from the Greeks of
Ionia. The journey of the dead to the underworld,
or the transit of his soul to the eternal spheres, are
especially common subjects in the Latin art of a later
date when Latium and Rome had themselves fallen
directly under the spell of Ionia. From about the
middle or end of the sixth century we begin to find
a type of funeral procession with chariots whose
steeds are sometimes winged like those of the Apothe-
osis chariots on the sarcophagus from Haghia Triada
and the chariot of Monteleone (plate xv. 2). It is by
no means certain that these processions, which have
survived in immense numbers,93 always have a fune-
rary import; but this can certainly be claimed for the
numerous pieces found in tombs. Here again, while
some argue that the return from the funeral games is
intended, and that wings are only given to distinguish
the horses of the victorious chariot, others maintain
that the scene actually represents the journey of the
dead to his home beyond this world. The analogy of
the Haghia Triada chariots seem to me to favour the
second interpretation. Here also the winged chariot
is the vehicle of Apotheosis, and the heroised or
168 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
quasi-deified dead is escorted by the members of his
family. My own impression is that these processions
partake of the mystic character of certain early
Oriental and Greek pompai connected with the rites.
for the renewal or resurrection of the yearly vege-
tation. Such was the famous vegetation-ritual in
ancient Babylonia, when the gods were solemnly
brought in summer from the temple of Marduk in
Babylon to that of Nebo in Borsippa, and taken back
again in winter from Borsippa to Babylon.94 There
are numerous parallels to this custom in Egypt and
Cyrene, in India, in China, and recent scholarship
goes so far as to identify the four-horse chariot of
the Roman triumphator with the vehicle of the sun-
god's progress through the skies.95 The funeral
pageantry of the Romans was from early days most
elaborate in character, but it does not seem to have
attained to any more striking expression in art than
these unpretending little friezes till we come to a
much later date.
ang
The fragment of a wall-painting from a tomb in the
neighbourhood of S. Eusebio on the Esquiline, now
in the Museo dei Conservatori, is the earliest example
on Roman soil of the decoration of a tomb (Helbig,
967). It dates from the third century B.C., and
represents an unknown episode from Roman history.
Rough as it is, it reveals Graeco-Ionian influence in
its superimposed bands of decoration, an influence that
SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES
169
may have filtered through Campania, since the
technique has various points in common with South
Italian vases. In the upper frieze is the remnant of
a battle-scene; in the lower two generals, unknown
to history, although their names, Quintus Fabius and
Marcus Fannius, are inscribed above their heads, are
seen engaged in parley. This Esquiline fresco is a
curious and instructive example of the early importa-
tion into Rome of a narrative method of composition
which developed into the famous 'continuous style'
of the Empire. The modest fragment announces
already what is to be the leading characteristic of
the great art of Rome-the commemoration of the
deeds both of the people and of individuals.
It is characteristic of Roman conservatism and of
Roman stubbornness in matters of art that sepulchral
imagery made its way so slowly into Rome. The
decoration of the peperino sarcophagus of L. Cor-
nelius Scipio Barbatus, consul in 298 B.C., which
was removed from the family vault of the Scipiones
on the left of the Via Appia, and is now in the
Vatican, is severely architectural (Helbig, 125);
it exhibits no imagery, unless indeed the rosettes
in the spaces between the triglyphs-presumably
conventionalised blossoms-have the prophylactic
significance which so often attaches to flowers and
plants, and accounts for their introduction into the
ritual and imagery of the tomb.
170
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
(c) From the End of the Republic to Augustus
Till we come to the last century of the Republic
there is little funerary art in Rome. The motive
which rises to most people's memory when they think
of Roman tombstones is that of the dead man or the
dead couple facing the spectator in a stiff frontal
attitude, with the frequent addition of one or more
children and other members of the family, arranged
stiffly side by side. All who have been to Rome will
remember the many examples still in situ on the Via
Appia. The type is doubtless influenced by the
stark wax imagines that stood in the hall of great
Roman houses, and, though we may not go so far as to
assert that the pose carries with it a reminiscence of
ancestor worship, yet it shows that the Roman was
primarily interested in presenting his dead to the
homage of the survivors. A good illustration of this
type of monument is furnished by the tombstone in
the shape of a niche holding the two portraits of a man
and his wife in the Capitoline Museum (Gall. 48ª).96
It is usual to neglect this class of monuments, or else
to criticise them severely after comparing them with
the accomplished workmanship of the Attic stelae of
the fifth and fourth centuries; but the comparison is
devoid of value, since the Roman craftsman, for we
need call him by no grander name, is trying to ex-
press quite another idea. What he desires is not,
:.
SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES
171
like the Greek, to represent beautiful scenes of part-
ing and reunion; his sterner purpose is to estab-
lish, by means of an almost hieratic pose, a direct
relation between the living and the dead.97 The
same principle governs the design of the Roman
military tombstones of the provinces, which often
resemble mediaeval rather than what is usually known
as classical sculpture, and predominates in the sculp-
tures of the monument at Adamklissi in the Dobrud-
sha, which is of course nothing but a memorial to the
soldiers who had fallen, probably in the campaign
of Crassus in 29 B.C.*98 At times the rigid pose is
slightly modified, and the figures are made to bend
towards one another and clasp hands; but the isolated
representation of the deceased remains characteristic
of Roman funerary portrait art as a whole. This
stiff frontal pose blended admirably with the art of the
Asia Minor stelae, one main characteristic of which,
as we have seen, was the introduction of the statue
of the deceased in a frontal attitude; from the
fusion of these two types derive the statuary groups
within niches of the Imperial period.
The funerary statue had an important develop-
ment practically unknown to great Greek art in the
recumbent figures placed upon the lids of sarcophagi,
* These tombstones, which exist in great numbers in Rome and
throughout Italy and the provinces, need collecting into a Corpus;
among them are to be found the best examples of the portraiture
of private individuals, as distinct from the Imperial and official portrait.
172
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
which went back to a high antiquity, and were pro-
bably introduced into Rome through the influence of
Etruscan art and custom. We have already seen.
that these figures, which are represented as reclining
at a banquet, derived ultimately from the banqueting
groups of Ionian art. From the archaic period we
have three well-known examples in terra-cotta from
Cervetri, two in the Louvre and British Museum
respectively, and the fine group at the Villa Giulia.
The art is distinctly Ionian, and the attitude is one
accepted as symbolic of the attainment of Apotheosis.99
Other reclining statues, of which there are numerous
examples, are shown simply lying down, and the
scheme is very popular in both Etruscan and Roman
funerary art. As an example I place before you the
recently discovered tombstone of a boy, now in the
Terme Museum (plate xxii.).100 The boy lies quietly on
his side, with eyes wide open; nothing save the poppies
on the couch and the egg of immortality in his hand
indicates that life has left the fair young body. The
highly bred lines of the face, the sweet curves of the
mouth, the curling tips of the hair which resembles
that of Augustus, recall the beautiful portraiture of
the children of the Julio-Claudian house. Nowhere
outside the Latin races do we find that strong, square
structure of the head which even in extreme youth
is apparent beneath the firm elastic flesh. The boy
might be the elder brother of the child whose portrait,
RECUMBENT SEPULCHRAL STATUE OF A BOY.
Rome. Terme.
PLATE XXII.

6409
RECUMBENT SEPULCHRAL STATUE OF A BOY.
Rome. Terme.
PLATE XXII.


SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES
173
found at the Imperial Villa of Prima Porta, is now
in the Museo Barracco, or of that other boy, who,
masquerading as Cupid, rides his dolphin so proudly
by the side of the great Augustus from the same Villa.
On the right side are traces of a small Eros, present as
the ministering Genius of death, intended perhaps for
the boy's own Genius now parting from him, or for a
later version of the winged Ker (p. 145). The delicate
technique reveals a Greek chisel; none of the in-
numerable reclining statues of Roman funerary art
again touched this height of pure loveliness:
'Lie still, and be
For ever more a child!
Not grudgingly
Whom life has not defiled
I render thee.'
From the close of the Republic onward we also find
a number of grave reliefs, which represent some
episode, generally connected with his trade, in the
life of the dead man. The classic example is the
frieze which adorns the monument of the baker
Eurysaces outside the Porta Maggiore, along the
friezes of which run reliefs representing the various
operations of the bakery (R.R., iii. 236). Again,
on a tombstone (in the Galleria Lapidaria of the
Vatican) put up to a cutler of the name of L. Cornelius
Atimetus, we see on the one side the workshop where
the cutler grinds his knives, on the other a scene in
174
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
the front shop where a dignified customer in the toga
and an obsequious assistant are seen one on each side
of the counter (R.R., iii. 404, I and 2). It has, how-
ever, been observed, not unjustly I think, that these
and similar scenes are not inspired so much by the
memory of the past as by the desire to impress the
future with the importance and success of the occu-
pants of the tomb. A recent writer has drawn up
an exhaustive list of the reliefs which represent trades,
and shows that the feeling which inspires them is
distinctly Roman.101 It has little or nothing to do
with the generalised view of the past life of the de-
ceased current on Attic stelae, but a wave of belief
from the Orient had to permeate this class of subject
before, as in the monument of Igel, effort and toil
could be conceived as the prelude to a higher and
more blessed state.
The doctrines of resurrection and of immortality
which began to occupy men's minds from the end of
the Republic onwards, as a result of the infiltration
into Rome of Oriental religions and of Pythagorean-
ism, both of which taught that the soul once released
from its corporeal bondage could rise into ethereal
realms, were soon to regenerate and transform all the
old sepulchral imagery. The new beliefs and the art
they inspired overspread every region of the Empire
with a rapidity which showed the greatness of the
need they came to satisfy.
Un
AREAL
CGACGMOsoCou
FUNERAL OF A ROMAN MILITARY OFFICIAL.
Amiternum.
PLATE XXIII.


SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES
175
In the last century of the Republic, when Rome
was falling under the spell of later Greek mystical
speculation, we begin to divine on the part of the
Romans, as Mr. Warde-Fowler has pointed out,
some mystical yearning to realise the condition of
the loved ones gone before, and the relation of their
life to that of the living.' 102 This quickening among
the Romans of a sense of the divinity of the soul has
been traced back, in measure at least, to the influence
of the famous Posidonius of Apamea,103 whose teach-
ing inspired, it is thought, Cicero's Dream of
Scipio,' written in 54 B.C., and ten years later may
have helped to soften his grief for the death of his
daughter. We can, I believe, detect a first reflex of
these new beliefs as to the destiny of the soul in a
curious funerary relief in the museum of Aquila
(plate xxiii.). It was found at Preturo in 1879,
near the Sabine Amiternum, and had, doubtless,
adorned one of the tombs which bordered the ancient
Via Caecilia. The relief may belong to the last years
of the Republic, or even be as late as the Augustan
period. It reproduces a great funeral procession,
with a love of pomp and detail which recalls the
similar displays on early Dipylon vases (p. 137). In
later Greek art the scene has scarcely a parallel, and
in Roman art it may be said to be unique.104 In the
centre of the procession, on a gorgeous catafalque
(lectus funebris), surmounted by a baldacchino em-
"
176
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
broidered with the crescent moon and the constella-
tions, lies the dead man ; at the head of the cata-
falque is placed what appears to be his helmet.
Eight bearers carry the bier, which is preceded by
groups of musicians followed by a long train of
mourners. Though this interesting relief has been
repeatedly published, little attention has been paid
to the stellated carpet of the canopy.105 The design
is probably looked upon as 'purely decorative,' yet
even a slight knowledge of the beliefs as to the soul's
astral destiny, which were spreading over Italy under
the influences referred to, suffices to show that this
canopy embroidered with the signs of the moon and
of the stars is simply the mantle of Heaven, the tent
of the sky, the great cosmic envelope of the universe,
the significance of which throughout the whole history
of religion and ritual has been brought forward of
late in a book as learned as it is inspiring.106 The idea
of the cosmic mantle is familiar to all of us from the
wonderful simile in Isaiah (xl. 22), that stretcheth out
the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a
tent to dwell in. Even more vivid is the simile in the
Psalms (civ. 2), Who coverest thyself with light as with
a garment; who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain.
The conception so beautifully expressed by Isaiah and
the Psalmist is common to all ancient Eastern re-
ligions, and early penetrated into Greece and thence
to Italy. According to an ancient Semitic legend
SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES 177
this' garment of light' calls into being by the magical
action of its astral signs the whole material universe.
It became an attribute of Zeus as of Jupiter Capito-
linus; it is worn on occasion by Sol, and by Solar
divinities like Mithras and Attis-Mên, by Apollo and
Dionysus, by Aphrodite as Urania, by the Ephesian
Artemis; as the stellated aegis of Athena it is familiar
from a number of monuments; finally it appears in
Christian art as the blue, star-embroidered mantle of
Our Lady and of Christ as Kosmokrator. Alexander
adopted a great starred talismanic mantle, doubtless
endowing the wearer with power over the universe.
The same idea attaches to the stellated mantle worn
by the Roman Emperors, from whom it passes to the
rulers of the Holy Roman Empire. The mantle, in
fact, is a talisman of victory, and as such acquires
high spiritual significance as clothing the soul in its
ascent to Heaven. It becomes, so to speak, a vehicle
of Apotheosis, a meaning possibly attaching to it in
the present instance.107
Thus the star-spangled canopy spread above the
dead on the relief from Amiternum has the same sym-
bolic value as the starry firmament painted on the
vault of Mithraic caves and churches. The absence
of the Sun among the heavenly bodies represented
on the canopy is a significant proof of that persistent
supremacy of the cult of the Moon to the exclusion
of the fiercer Star which is so characteristic of popular
M
178
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
astral religion in hot countries where, as Cumont has
pointed out, the moon with its gentler light was looked
upon as the more beneficent of the two luminaries.
We must likewise bear in mind that within this same
cycle of ideas the Moon was looked upon as the special
abode of spirits who, if exiled awhile to our sub-lunar
sphere, would return to their original seats after a com-
plicated ascent through the superimposed zones of
heaven, during which they gradually despoiled them-
selves of their earthly faculties and passions.108
This idea of a descent and reascent of the soul, so
common in the astral eschatology of the East, at once
puts one in mind of the noble passage in Cicero's
Somnium Scipionis, at the close of the Republic, now
generally thought, as previously stated (page 175),
to have been inspired by the mystical teaching of
Posidonius:
素
​omnibus qui patriam conservaverint, adiuverint, auxe-
rint, certum esse in coelo definitum locum, ubi beati aevo
sempiterno fruantur; nihil est enim illi principi deo, qui
omnem mundum regit, quod quidem in terris fiat, acceptius
quam concilia coetusque hominum iure sociati, quae
civitates appellantur; harum rectores et conservatores hinc
profecti huc revertuntur.-Cic., de Rep., vi. 13.
The personage on the Amiternum relief-whether
local magnate or known to a larger fame-is likewise
presented as deserving of the sempiternal beatitude;
as ranking with Scipio and those great men of the
SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES
179
State who return to the heavenly seats whence they
had descended for the benefit of humanity; as par-
ticipating in the astral honours accorded to Caesar in
his Apotheosis, and looking down on earth de excelso
et pleno stellarum inlustri et claro quodam loco. The
starred canopy under which the great man reclines is
thus of cardinal importance as the earliest expression
in Roman Western art of those beliefs in an astral
eschatology which received official sanction in the
myth of the sidus Julium, of the astrum Caesaris, of
which we have already spoken, which were to play
so preponderating a rôle in the religious develop-
ment of the Empire,109 and to leave such vivid traces
in its art. The picture of the transit of the soul to the
stars, brought into the service of the Imperial Apothe-
osis, continued to gain in power and vividness till it
assumes the form given it on the celebrated ivory in
the British Museum (plate xxxi.), where the Divus is
borne aloft to his eternal home by the winged figures
of Sleep and Death, in a scheme that might be used
for the Ascension of a Christian Saint.
The relief of Amiternum, with its pompous funeral
procession, smiled at by the commentators as the
expression of provincial vanity, marks the intrusion
into the Roman world of beliefs destined to revolu-
tionise man's outlook on his destiny in an After Life.
Henceforth it is not only Greece or Ionia that feeds
the spiritual imagination of ancient Italy; for an
180
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
explanation of the new creeds we must look beyond
Ionia to the Asiatic Hinterland, to those ancient
Oriental civilisations where Orphism itself had had its
birth, and where from the beginning of things the
astral bodies were thought to hold the secret of life
and death.
Tournons donc, comme la religieuse Chaldée, nos yeux
vers le ciel absolu où les astres, en un inextricable chiffre,
ont dressé notre acte de naissance, et tiennent greffe de
nos pactes et de nos serments.*
* Paul Claudel, La Connaissance du Temps, p. 46.
LECTURE III
THE AFTER LIFE (continued)
Δὴ τότε σε πρὸς Ολυμπον ἄγει πυριλαμπὲς ὄχημα,
ἀμφὶ θυελλείῃσι κυκώμενον ἐν στροφάλιγξι,
λυσάμενον βροτέων ῥεθέων πολύτλητον ἀνίην
ἤξεις δ᾽ αἰθερίου φάεος πατρώιον αὐλήν,
ἔνθεν ἀποπλαγχθεὶς μεροπήιον ἐς δέμας ἦλθες.
The Oracle to the Emperor Julian.
I. SYMBOLISM OF THE APOTHEOSIS OF THE SOUL.
THE EAGLE AND THE WREATH
We saw at the close of the last lecture that the belief
in the soul's return to the starry spheres was already
familiar to the Rome of the Late Republic, and we
discovered in the relief of Amiternum a striking
illustration of the doctrine. I propose now to pass™
from general considerations to the more detailed
examination of certain of the images and symbols
which now appear on the gravestones of the Empire.
The belief in the soul's immortality, sanctioned as it
was by the Apotheosis of the Ruler, had received fresh
lustre, and it is not surprising to find that the two
main symbols of the Imperial Deification-the eagle
and the wreath-are also among the most popular of
sepulchral images. We have seen that they were
181
182
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
R
borrowed from the East, and their origin and meaning
has been lately explained in the light of certain Syrian
monuments. In the epoch-making paper already
referred to, L'aigle funéraire des Syriens et l'apo-
théose des Empereurs,¹ Cumont, our leader here as in
everything pertaining to the history of the Oriental
religions, has traced back the Imperial eagle to the
Eastern belief according to which the eagle, as mes-
senger of the Sun, is entrusted by his master with
the mission of bearing back to the heavens the soul
that has thrown off the bondage of the body; while
the wreath, later a familiar emblem of victory, was
in the same circle of beliefs symbolic of the ultimate
triumph of the soul. The two emblems appear con-
joined on a number of sepulchral slabs found at
Hierapolis and other Syrian sites, on which the eagle
is shown with outspread wings, bearing a wreath in
his beak or in his talons (op. cit., figs. I ff.). A relief
carved on the face of the arch of a rock tomb at
Frîkyâ, near the Syrian Apamea, offers an illuminating
commentary on the meaning of this eagle and wreath
motive (ibid., fig. 16). Over the keystone is a bust
of the dead within a laurel-wreath, immediately above
which once hovered an eagle, now much broken. The
motive is repeated, so to speak, in another and major
key for at one side a Victory bearing a wreath
reaches out to offer it to the dead, while on the other
Sol Sanctissimus looks on and seems to protect the
THE AFTER LIFE
183
transit of the soul. We cannot doubt that the same
meaning attaches to a group of funerary monuments
found in the ancient Pannonia and Noricum, interest-
ing not only for their iconography but for the vigorous
quality of their art.2 The finest of the three is the
medallion of a centurion in the Museum of Graz,
(plate xxiv. 1; R.R., ii. 126, 3). The officer wears the
metal cuirass adorned on the breast with the Medusa
head to avert evil influences, and girt at the waist
with the cingulum; the end of the cloak or sagum is
visible on the left shoulder. In his left hand he holds
the sword with a pommel in the shape of an eagle's head;
in his right is the short vine staff that marks his office;
in the background to the left appears his shield (the
parmula). The figure, cut off below the waist, is
placed within a medallion formed by a laurel-wreath,
upon which stands a small eagle with outspread wings.
Here again we have the idea of the eagle bearing back
to the celestial spheres the soul whose victory is sym-
bolised by the wreath. It is possible, however, that
two conceptions meet and mingle in this symbolism
when found on a soldier's grave, for the wreath was
likewise the military corona triumphalis, and the eagle
was the sign of the legions; but the manner in which
the two emblems are combined is clearly influenced
by their Syrian prototypes. When the wreath adorns
the medallion of a civilian, especially if he is repre-
sented with his wife, then any military allusion is
184
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
out of the question, and the wreath can only be the
crown of immortality. At Graz and in the Museum
of Klagenfurt respectively are two fine instances of
medallions in the portraits of a bearded man wrapped
in the toga, and his wife, placed within a laurel wreath.
The symbolism of these stelae must not cause us
to overlook their artistic value. They are master-
pieces of portraiture which would long ago have
attracted admiration had they adorned mediaeval
Christian tombstones in a church. Being Roman
works of the second century, they have only been
discussed from an antiquarian standpoint, with
scarcely an allusion to their style; yet we are far
enough from the insipidity of Graeco-Roman art;
we already feel ourselves among men who in time
will contribute to the great sculptures of mediaeval
Europe. And in the drawing of the faces there is a
vigour of line that is worthy of Holbein. Each of
these medallions was once surmounted by a pine-
cone, now broken, the symbol, as we shall presently
see, of resurrection.
Examples of these wreathed medallions are common
throughout the Empire, though they rarely attain
such excellence. From Rome comes the beautiful
double medallion of Antistius, a Salian priest of Alba,
and his wife Antistia (now in the British Museum).
The character of the portraits and the fine lettering of
the inscription show that the date is Augustan. Each
WA
Graz.
I. TOMBSTONE OF A CENTURION.
2. TOMBSTONE OF FLAVIAN PERIOD.
British Museum.
PLATE XXIV.


Um
trikr
THE AFTER LIFE
185
medallion is wreathed in a heavy crown of laurel;
between them lies what appears to be the staff with
which the Salian priest struck his shield in the sacred
dance. It is now sheathed in laurel leaves and further
protected by an elaborate knot against the malign
attacks of evil spirits. In each of the spandrels is
a quatrefoil rosette.3 A striking example of Flavian
date, recently acquired by the British Museum and
published here for the first time, shows a fine portrait
of a middle-aged man within a deep circular recess
heavily wreathed with laurel (plate xxiv. 2).
4
The oak-wreaths which appear on a small group of
funerary altars are generally explained as a fashion
influenced by the oaken corona civica, which usually
adorns one face of altars dedicated to the Lares, and
which was bestowed as a reward for valour.5 Here
again, as in the medallion of the centurion described
above, there may be a contact of two ideas. When, for
instance, the altar was set up for a magistrate or high
official, the wreath may have been understood as
combining in itself a double allusion to the civic worth
of the dead and to his spiritual victory. On the other
hand, when the altar is dedicated to the Manes
(Altmann, 244), or is put up to a woman, the wreath
of oak-leaves can only stand, I think, for the corona
immortalis, though the use of the leaf of the oak may
be determined by the vogue which the corona civica
enjoyed in Augustan times, owing to its bestowal
186
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
"
on the Emperor himself. The trailing wreath sup-
porting an eagle with outspread wings, which so
frequently adorns Roman sepulchral altars, has, of
course, the same significance as the wreath and eagle.
At other times the space above or below the wreath
is filled by a Nereid or some fantastic escort of the soul
in its voyage to the Isles of the Blest. The history
of the wreath which adorns Roman monuments
admirably illustrates the power of religion in bending
to a high purpose symbols and emblems that have
their origin in the timid outlook and puerile fears of
primitive man. In the beginning it was a mere
amulet, a magic device worn to protect the head
against evil influences, and therefore especially needed
by personages so important to the welfare of the com-
munity as kings or priests. From these humble
beginnings it was destined to become in time the
6
sign of life eternal.
The wreath as emblem of immortality occurs on
the impressive frieze that runs round the interior of
the octagonal tomb of Diocletian in his palace of
Spalato, just below the dome.' The frieze represents
love-gods engaged in hunting-scenes and chariot-races,
to symbolise the conflict between the powers of dark-
ness and of light; heads within medallions and masks
break at intervals the continuity of the design; one, on
the central space on the left as one faces the window,
represents Hermes with wings, no doubt as psycho-
THE AFTER LIFE
187
pompos or escort of the soul; the second is the ideal-
ised portrait of Diocletian himself (plate i. 3), patron
and protector of the cults of Sol and of Mithras, who
is here imagined as borne aloft to the celestial sphere
within the crown of immortality that represents his
final Apotheosis; a similar portrait of the Empress
on the other side balances that of the Emperor.
Finally, I may note that the image of a boy carried
upward by an eagle as on a stele at Grado (R.R., ii.
126, 4), generally interpreted as Ganymede, is more
probably an image of the triumphant soul borne aloft
to heaven by the eagle symbol of the soul's victory.
II. INFLUENCE OF MITHRAISM ON SEPULCHRAL
IMAGERY
8
(a) The Mithraic Legend
The influence of Mithraism in the formation of the
funerary imagery of the Empire was all-powerful.
The legend of the Persian sun-god, besides offering in
the translation of Mithras to the heavens an archetype
of the Apotheosis, was also rich in episodes capable of
interpretation as mystic parallels of the sufferings and
trials which prelude a blessed immortality. The cult
of Mithras had spread with lightning rapidity from
the moment of its introduction into Italy by the
Orientals in the army of Pompey. Its monuments
have been found in every part of the Empire, though
188
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
nowhere in greater number than along the Danube
and in Germania. Both they and the Mithraic re-
ligion have become very familiar through the great
work of Franz Cumont, who has also popularised
his researches in a small volume which every student
should read. The majority of Mithraic reliefs are
large altar-pieces that were placed above the altar at
the end of the Mithraic church or chapel. The central
scene of the front face is invariably the Mithraic
sacrifice at the bidding of a higher Power Mithras
slays the Sacred Bull of Ormuzd, from whose body
spring the vine and corn-to be transmuted later
into the wine and the bread of the holy mysteries-
while his blood fertilises the earth that she may bring
forth plants and animals for the service of man. The
scene is watched by two torch-bearers, the one with
raised, the other with inverted, torch, emblems of heat
and life, of cold and death. The four elements also
are present in symbolic form: the fire that purifies
all things, and whose rôle in the Mithraic cult is pre-
eminent, is figured as a lion; water is indicated by
an over-turned jar; while the figures of the winds that
appear in the spandrels of the altar-slab at once
represent the element of air, and the cardinal points
of the sky. The scene thus acquires a cosmic signi-
ficance, which is further heightened by the signs of
the zodiac placed round the arch of the cave, while
the cave itself was painted to imitate the starry vault
9
Mat
THE AFTER LIFE
189
of heaven. It is in vain that loathly reptiles sent
by the Powers of Evil try to frustrate the divine pur-
pose of the sacrifice, and attack the vital organs of
the bull; the faithful dog of Mithras keeps watch,
and protects the soul of the dying beast in its ascent
to heaven.
The central scene is often surrounded by a number
of panels which represent various episodes of the
Mithraic legend: the miraculous nativity of Mithras,
for instance, in the presence of the astonished shep-
herds; his victorious encounter with the Sun; his
pursuit and capture of the Bull; and his ascension
into heaven in the Sun's fiery chariot. The back of
the altar-piece was likewise occasionally carved; on
the reverse of a Mithraic altar-piece at Wiesbaden,
for instance, Mithras and Sol contemplate the slain
victim,10 while that of a very roughly carved example
at Serajevo exhibits the rare and curious scene of the
Mithraic communion, celebrated by the Mithraic
adepts in memory of a Last Supper, of which, before
their common ascension, Mithras and Sol partook
in company with their disciples. I will not repeat
here what I have said in my book on Roman Sculp-
ture, of the artistic merits of many of these Mithraic
altar-pieces-of the exalted expression and noble
gesture of Mithras; of the contrast which his im-
passioned beauty offers to the pensive attitude of
his torch-bearers; of the observation of nature re-
190
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
vealed in the rendering of the bull's agony.11 The
type of Mithras was, it is thought, inspired by Per-
gamene models; in any case it represents the last effort
of Pagan art to create the type of a divinity out of
its own imaginings. The religion that was to make
the next appeal to formative art was to meet it half-
way by offering to it the reality of a god incarnate.
Mithraism spread in time to every rank of society,
and coalesced with cognate cults like that of the
Magna Mater. But as it was originally introduced
and propagated by the army, so it remained to the
last an essentially military cult, which left its traces
wherever the Roman legions penetrated. Its popu-
larity among the soldiery is easily accounted for by
its direct appeal to their naïve faith and piety. In
distant lands, on forced marches, and among the
privations and discomforts of camp life, the Northern
recruits under the parching heat of the Eastern sun,
the Southerners and Orientals amid the unfamiliar
frosts and fogs of the North, would be inspired with
fresh courage by the contemplation of the wanderings
and sufferings of Mithras, and gather strength from
the central scene of the legend for the soldier's
supreme sacrifice :
Mithras, God of the Midnight, here where the great bull dies,
Look on thy children in darkness. Oh, take our sacrifice!
Many roads Thou hast fashioned: all of them lead to the Light,
Mithras, also a soldier, teach us to die aright!
THE AFTER LIFE
191
(b) Mithraic Symbols on Roman Tombstones
12
We can watch the gradual infiltration of Mithraic
symbolism into Roman sepulchral imagery from the
time of Augustus onwards. It will repay us to
examine one or two examples in detail, and we shall
find these to be most instructive where different
strata of symbolism have run together. An excellent
instance of this process is afforded by the stele of one
Tiberius Julius and his daughter at Walbersdorf,¹
which shows a combination of at least three types
of funerary decoration. The design falls into two
halves: an aedicula between twisted columns rests
upon a carved base; this upper part is supported
upon the inscription slab, which is framed by Corin-
thian pilasters, and rests upon a second base with a
sunk panel likewise carved in relief. Within the
niche the portraits of Tiberius and his daughter
are seen side by side in the isolated frontal pose
characteristic of Roman sepulchral portraiture; the
relief immediately below represents an episode in the
dead man's career. He is shown in the uniform of
the mounted auxiliary, charging at an enemy who
awaits his attack crouching behind a large shield;
behind is a second fallen enemy; in the empty
space above this figure flies the eagle of victory,
significant in this case of earthly glory rather than of
spiritual triumph. On the sunk panel of the lower
192
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
socle two armed men thrust at one another with long
spears in front of a figure of Eris; the man on the
right, who is placed frontally and raises his right
hand, has been interpreted as a lanista or umpire.
It were straining our instrument to breaking-point to
read a mystic intention into either relief. At a later
period battle and combat scenes might be taken to
refer to the battles and perils of the soul; but both
portraiture and names show the stele to belong to the
Augustan period. At so early a date such scenes
are more likely to represent, in the Greek manner,
episodes of the dead man's career, though the choice of
subject may be influenced in a measure by the desire,
which seems to have animated every true Roman, of
handing down his deeds, his res gestae, to the admira-
tion of posterity.
It is otherwise with the carvings above the niche,
which have been admirably interpreted by Cumont.
The winds on the spandrels are the same that appear
on Mithraic monuments to mark their cosmic setting.
The tritons blowing their horns, and facing one another
on the frieze, are the mystic escort of the soul as it
voyages to the Isles of the Blest; the running lions,
placed heraldically within the pediment, represent
the element of fire, which, as we shall see more clearly
in the monument we shall consider next, purifies the
soul preparatory to its ascent.
On a small sepulchral shrine at Maros-Néméti in
THE AFTER LIFE
193
Hungary, are combined a number of scenes and sym-
bols which throw light on our subject: 13 on the inner
central wall the family of the deceased is carved in
relief; other personages appear on the external face
of the side walls. On each of the uprights of the
same aedicula, a snake gliding upwards figures, I
believe, the progress of the soul towards the celestial
regions, even as in the solar cults the snake sym-
bolises the sinuous course of the sun across the sky.
Thus the snake, already a familiar emblem of the soul
in Greek and Roman religion and ritual, is endowed
with a new meaning. On the roof, lions devour
the Mithraic bull, characterised by the sacrificial sash,
the while they guard the pine-cone of resurrection
which crowns the monument. The frequency with
which the lion appears on the later Roman tombs,
either alone, or devouring an animal, is not sufficiently
explained by calling the lion the protector of the tomb,
or (in the case of the graves of soldiers) an emblem of
valour. When in the solar cults the image became
associated with the igneous element, it was charged
with a mystic significance, which, as we have seen,
may already have been attached to it, in some degree,
in Lycian and Ionian sepulchral art. In my opinion,
the idea which it is designed to convey is that the
purifying fire expressed by the lion must consume the
earthly tenement, represented by the bull, giver of
earthly fertility, before the liberated soul can attain
N
194
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
immortality.14 At this period the motive of a lion
overpowering a bull or some other animals can scarcely
be otherwise explained. At times we even find a man
in place of the bull. This substitution of an actual
human figure for the symbolic animal makes the inter-
pretation I propose practically certain. We must
bear in mind that in the East, whence all these beliefs
and cults derive, not only was fire regarded as an all-
powerful purifying agent, but death by fire was looked
upon as an apotheosis which raised the victim to
the rank of the gods.' 15 I need not dwell further
here on the purificatory powers appertaining to fire in
Eastern belief, for the subject has been treated by
Sir J. G. Frazer in a masterly passage of Adonis.
You should consider more particularly the follow-
ing quotation from Iamblichus, translated by him,
since it appears to be the direct expression of the
idea expressed symbolically in the group of the lion
devouring or holding his prey on Roman sepulchral
monuments:
'Fire,' says Iamblichus, 'destroys the material part of
sacrifices, it purifies all things that are brought near it,
releasing them from the bonds of matter and, in virtue of
the purity of its nature, making them meet for communion
with the gods. So, too, it releases us from the bondage
of corruption, it likens us to the gods, it makes us meet.
for their friendship, and it converts our material nature
into an immaterial.'-De Mysteriis, v. 12.
THE AFTER LIFE
195
A kindred significance probably attached, as we
have seen, to the Graeco-Oriental prototypes of the
group.
The pine-cone appears almost as constantly or
these tombstones as the cross on Christian graves.
As an emblem of fertility the pine-cone was certain
to acquire, under the influence of the new beliefs in an
After Life, fresh value as an emblem of resurrection,
since it was the fruit of the tree specially sacred to
Attis,16 the youth who from a self-inflicted death
awoke to new life and to perfect union with the
divinity: 'Just as Attis died and came to life every
year .
believers were to be born to a new life after
death.' This cult of Attis, which came from the East
with that of the Great Mother, gathered fresh force
under the influence of Mithraism, and Attis-a young
man in Oriental costume leaning dejectedly upon a
knotted staff ¹-is not an uncommon figure on
gravestones. A good example occurs on a stele
from Klausenburg, now in Vienna 18: on the front
are portraits of the deceased surmounted by the
apotropaic gorgon; on the left is a figure of Attis;
to the right, above a dolphin, emblem of the soul or
of its transit, is a female figure, probably another
deceased member of the family; above her again
appears an eagle bearing a wreath; and the whole
is crowned by the pine-cone.
It has been suggested that the pine-cone is so
196
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
frequently used to adorn graves because of its likeness
to the grave conus, which is itself derived from the
omphalos-shaped tumulus or tholos.19 Further, it has
been argued that the conical stone placed over the
tumulus is simply the phallic emblem of life; such a
stone crowned the Tomb of Tantalus in Phrygia, and
appears times without number in Etruscan and
Graeco-Roman tumuli derived from Graeco-Asiatic
models. I imagine that this sepulchral conus was
never regarded as purely architectonic and ornamental,
but that it owed its popularity as a funerary emblem
to the fact that its original meaning, though modified,
was not entirely forgotten. Nothing would be more
natural than definitely to represent the emblem of
generation by means of the cognate shape of the
fruit which from time immemorial had itself been
regarded as an instrument of fertility. Then, again,
this primitive symbol becomes, by the purifying
influence of religion, the visible pledge of a spiritual
resurrection.
A curiously interesting and little heeded instance
of the use of the pine-cone in pre-Augustan times
occurs in a cemetery at Praeneste (Palestrina) first
excavated in 1855.20 It dates from a time anterior
to the Roman conquest of the town by Sulla in 82 B.C.
Each of its graves was surmounted by a square block
supporting a plinth upon which rose a cone. The
name of the dead, with no sort of addition, is simply
196
A FAMILY GROUP.
Museum of Arlon.
PLATE XXV.

Um
1
THE AFTER LIFE
197
inscribed on base or cone. These primitive tomb-
stones, degraded though they now are from their
function, and thrown together in a neglected heap
outside the little local museum of Palestrina, still
have the perfume of faith lingering about them;
they proclaim by means of the naïve emblem the
belief in resurrection held by the ancient race whose
last resting-place they mark.
III. ORPHIC AND DIONYSIAC SYMBOLISM
It is among the Roman provincial tombstones of
the Imperial period that the myth of Orpheus defi-
nitely makes its appearance as a sepulchral theme.
The origins of Orphism are still wrapped in mystery,
but there seems reason to believe that, like Mithraism,
it came from the East, though it had appeared in the
West and established itself firmly both in Greece
and Italy many centuries before the Persian Sun-
god-leaving Greece untouched-had been brought to
Italy by Pompey's Oriental soldiery. Apparently
Orphism had its rise in Persia, whence it spread to
Ionia and, in the sixth century, to Attica.21 I called
attention in the last lecture to the apparent absence of
Orphic influence on the sepulchral imagery of Attica
and Hellas in the fifth century, but in Southern Italy,
where Orphism, bringing with it the astral eschato-
logy of the East, had become the basis of Pytha-
gorean doctrines, we often find the myth itself, and
198
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
more especially the episode of the Descent into Hell,
figured on vases. Orphism, more vividly than any
other ancient creed, brings the consoling hope that the
passage from this world is to a happier state; psychic
immortality is the pledge of the high promise attaching
to Orphic initiation, for what else is death itself but
the supreme initiation? To die,' says the mystic
writer whose fragment on the immortality of the
Soul has been attributed to Plutarch, 'is to be
initiated into the Great Mysteries.' Orpheus became
the Great Mediator, the supreme witness that death
is not an irrevocable fact, and it is in this aspect that
his figure makes its appearance on the tombstones of
the Empire. Who better than the prophet-priest
who had taught the doctrine of immortality, and was
pictured in later legend as the lover who descended
to Hades to obtain the release of a beloved soul,
could express the hopes of an After Life? Nor can we
forget that Orpheus in his double aspect of priest and
lover was endeared to popular imagination by the
poetry of Vergil, who in the Fourth Georgic has told
in pathetic lines the quest of Orpheus for Eurydice
-dulcis coniux,-and in the Sixth Aeneid enthrones
Orpheus as impressive central figure-longa cum
veste sacerdos—in the Elysian fields.
The monument in the market-place at Pettau, with
scenes from the Orphic legend, is worth examining in
detail (R.R., ii. 130, 2).22 It is a tall stele six metres
THE AFTER LIFE
199
high, surmounted by a mask which, like the Medusa
face so often placed on graves, has the apotropaic
function of warding off evil spirits; the lion devour-
ing the head of an animal at each corner symbolises
the purifying fire which consumes the earthly dross
—an interpretation as much in harmony with Orphic
as with Mithraic belief. According to the former
6
the Soul,' to quote a recent writer, 'in its pure state
consists of fire like the divine stars from which it falls:
in the impure state throughout the period of re-incar-
nation, its substance is infected with the baser
elements and weighed down by the gross admixture
of the flesh.' 23 The flesh, therefore, must be con-
sumed by fire, as the bull is by the lion, before the
liberated soul can rise to the firmament of stars; the
notion is identical to that of baptism by fire, 'which
burns all sins.' 24
On the central frieze we see Orpheus playing to
the beasts; on the lower Orpheus has won to the
very courts of death, and plays before Pluto and
Proserpina. In the pediment a female figure reclines
by the side of a youth: it is Venus reunited to Adonis,
whose death and resurrection, followed by his mystic
reunion to the divinity, was to mark him out, like
Attis, as a popular symbol of resurrection. On the
side of the monument are represented Dionysiac
figures, Maenads with bunches of grapes, to symbolise
the joys that await the Blessed in their eternal dwell-
200
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
ing. Were these taken literally, it might be urged
that they represented a too purely material concep-
tion of the after-joys of the Blessed; but, by this time,
the whole cycle of Bacchic beings and attributes—
including the grape and its juice—had acquired a
purely mystic significance. Did not the vine, as
Cumont points out, spring from the back of the sacred
bull that it might afterwards give the fruit for the
wine of the mysteries? Dionysus himself ranks with
the most ancient and venerable nature-powers; he
is a ‘vegetation god with annual appearances and dis-
appearances,' in his earliest Thracian home ‘a great
nature god of the living earth, working especially in
its vitalising warmth and juices,' 25 who, as Sabazius,
is not unfrequently identified with the Phrygian
Attis. The story of Dionysus, like other nature
myths, became in the course of time a parable of that
more mystic resurrection which is the spiritual form
of the ancient waλıyyeveσía, already an article of faith
in primitive Thrace, where, from the earliest times,
Orpheus appears closely akin to Dionysus; it is
therefore only natural to find Dionysiac beings com-
bined with Orphic scenes, as on the monument at
Pettau. On the right side of the beautiful stele of
Albinius Asper and his wife Restituta in the museum
of Trèves (R.R., ii. 91, 4), we see a grandly drawn
Maenad holding up a bunch of grapes, and a similar
figure doubtless adorned the lost left side. A still
1
SATYR AND MAENAD.
Museum of Arlon.
PLATE XXVI.

...
THE AFTER LIFE
201
more striking instance is in the museum of Arlon
(Espérandieu, 4040): within a curtained recess stand
two men and two women, probably two brothers
and their respective wives; at the sides are a dancing
Bacchante clapping the castanets, and a Satyr holding
up a bunch of grapes (plates xxv., xxvi.). Smaller
Bacchic figures adorn the panels of the angle pilasters,
and may be compared to the putti on the uprights of
the Igel monument. At Trèves there is a good
example of the group of Dionysus leaning on a Satyr,
which not unfrequently crowns the tower-like monu-
ments of the Mosel and Rhine districts.26
IV. THE DIOSCURI, HERACLES AND AENEAS, AS Em-
BLEMS OF THE WANDERINGS AND TRIUMPH OF
THE SOUL. DEATH CONCEIVED AS A SACRED
RETROSPECT
MARRIAGE.
The Dioscuri, likewise, who alternately participate
in life and death, must be understood as emblems of
future life. They appear on one side of a little
funerary aedicula in the museum of Mayence, 27 for
instance, while on the other is represented one of
the Labours of Hercules, to remind the living of the
probation which precedes reward.28 The myth of
Hercules (vagus Hercules), whose labours and wander-
ings are frequently represented, has thus come to
symbolise the trials and victories of the soul; and the
same meaning must have been attached to the figure
202
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
of the wandering Aeneas, so frequently found on the
graves of the districts along the Danube and Rhine
(R.R., ii. 120, 1-2).29 In the selection of the episode
of the exiled Aeneas, bearing on his shoulders his aged
father and leading his little son by the hand, the
Roman provincial was, we may feel certain, proud
to link what seemed to him the heroic counterpart of
his own toilsome life in a distant land with the noblest
legends of the origin of Rome.
The same preoccupation with life after death may
be studied in a number of stelae whose decoration is
drawn from a restricted group of Graeco-Roman myths
reproduced as susceptible of spiritual interpretation
rather than for any interest in their art-forms, which
are clumsily imitated in a poor or rough technique.
The story of Rhea Silvia and of Mars, which occurs,
for instance, on the front face of a sarcophagus from
Aquincum, now in the museum of Buda-Pest (R.R.,
ii. 120, 4),30 and on the west pediment of the Igel
column, near Trèves, has a doubly symbolic force.
The Soul awakes to a vision of the divine, even as
Rhea awakes from her weary slumber to behold the
immortal lover swiftly descending to comfort her,
for death itself is but a sleep which leads to a
blessed awakening and consolation. At the same
time it seems to me certain that the story of Mars
and Rhea on these reliefs may be interpreted as a
Sacred Marriage, a hierogamy between the Soul
1
THE AFTER LIFE
203
and God. And the many incidents of rapes—those
of Proserpina, of Ganymede, of Hylas, and of the
daughters of Leucippus-and the myth of Cupid
and Psyche, forecast a wedded union with the Divine
Love.31
By the second century A.D. the sepulchral art of the
Roman Empire was everywhere in possession of a rich
imagery, but nowhere better than on the provincial
stelae can we follow the spiritual ideals that were
spreading from the East to the Western provinces of
the Empire. Like that of the Christian tombs of a
somewhat later date, their iconography is an illumi-
nating commentary on the beliefs of the time. How-
ever crude their symbolism, however naïve their
images or rude their art, these stelae consistently
offer to the living the supreme guarantee that death
is not irrevocable. Their distinctive note is the
defiance of death, the assertion of life beyond the
grave. We seem to read here the challenge of the
apostle, 'O death, where is thy sting? O grave,
where is thy victory?' They forcibly bring home
to us the change that had passed over the spiritual
temper of mankind since the Greeks of the fifth and
fourth centuries B.C., in their uncertain apprehension
of things future, had been content to sink the mystery
of death in the memory of life, and had adorned their
stelae with scenes of meeting or farewell. They are,
as it were, the visible pledge of that definite reaction.
204
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
1
from the cultured philosophy of the later Republic,
which was announced in clear tones by the poetry
of Vergil. The Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat
inchoare longam of Horace might still express in
pointed phrase the fashionable scepticism of his day,
and remain typical of a certain section of society far
down into the Empire, as countless inscriptions testify.
But the message conveyed by the humble imagery of
our provincial tombstones is quite other. Here the
same sense of the shortness of life bids us seek an
infinite hope and fix our gaze on the illimitable
stretches of the life beyond the grave. A higher
hope, a nobler faith soon began to stir in all classes.
Not long after the elder Pliny, at the beginning of
his second book, had repudiated all belief in immor-
tality (Nat. Hist., ii. § 18 ff.), Tacitus addressed the
shade of Agricola in words that seem like the distant
echo of the Dream of Scipio:
If there be a place for the shades of the good, if, as
those who know will have it, great souls are not extin-
guished with the body, rest in peace, and recall us thy
family from our unworthy longing and the lamentations.
of the women, to the contemplation of thy virtues, for
which it beseems us neither to mourn in private nor to
lament in public.*-Agricola, 46.
* Si quis piorum manibus locus, si, ut sapientibus placet, non cum
corpore extinguuntur magnae animae, placide quiescas, nosque, domum
tuam, ab infirmo desiderio et muliebribus lamentis ad contemplationem
virtutum tuarum voces, quas neque lugeri neque plangi fas est.
THE AFTER LIFE
205
A few years later a wistful note is struck in the
charming lines in which the Emperor Hadrian ad-
dresses his soul:
Soul, tiny sweet and wandering,
The body's guest and friend,
To what strange regions dost thou tend?
Poor shivering naked death-pale thing,
Now must thy wonted jestings end.32
But while the Imperial sage thus mused half-play-
fully on his soul's destiny, the soldiers of his legions
and the officials of his provinces had already lifted the
veil which separates the now from the hereafter. Like
the higher creed of Christianity, for which they un-
consciously prepared the way, the beliefs reflected on
our stelae first gathered force among the poorer and
humbler classes, and only penetrated by degrees to
the upper strata of society.
V. EXCURSUS ON THE IMAGERY OF TOMBS
IN ROME
I should like at this point to say something, in the
nature of a parenthesis, of a class of funerary decora-
tion, the symbolic meaning of which has been neg-
lected of late years, and which deserves to be studied
anew-the paintings, namely, and the stucco deco-
rations of the many tombs in Rome and its neigh-
bourhood. Besides being precious relics of ancient
decorative art, they are of paramount importance for
G
206
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
the study of the After Life beliefs of the Graeco-Roman
world. Numbers of them were copied and engraved
with more or less fidelity in the eighteenth century,
by Piranesi among others, but owing to the general
discredit attaching to Roman art during the second
half of the nineteenth century, when the attention
of archaeologists was concentrated on discovery in
Greece, the paintings were allowed to fade often
beyond recognition and the stuccoes to deteriorate.
Others, again, were looted for the benefit of foreign
museums and collectors, and whole tombs, which
must have been of great beauty and interest,
like one near the Via Flaminia and the Acqua
Acetosa,33 disappeared sine vestigiis. Lately, owing
to the recent revival of interest in Roman art and
architecture, what remains of these tombs has begun
to attract attention once more, though too much still
remains neglected and unrecorded.
The best known and preserved of these tombs are
the two on the Via Latina, dating from the second half
of the second century.34 Both their paintings and
stuccoes show the high level of excellence maintained
by art in the period of the Antonines. The walls and
the barrel-vault of the so-called Tomb of the Valerii,
on the right of the road as we come from Rome, are
entirely decorated with stucco, which was apparently
left white. The decoration of the ceiling is composed
of twenty-five circles, connected by a strip of mould-
THE AFTER LIFE
207
ing. Squares are placed free within each of the
spaces thus formed, and each of the circular panels is
adorned by some figure or group emblematic of the
After Life. In the central compartment a veiled
female figure rides a griffin, to symbolise the transit
of the soul. The others are filled alternately by
groups of Nereids riding sea-monsters, or by the rape
of a nymph by a satyr, a subject which signifies, as
we saw just now, the rape of the soul. The lunette
of the central wall facing the entrance is decorated
with an exquisite design: from a bunch of acanthus
leaves spring fantastic tendrils, held down on either
side by a caryatid-like figure, whose feet rest on the
acanthus leaves. On her head she supports a rect-
angular panel, within which dance the Seasons-the
fleet Seasons that indicate the swift coming and going
of all earthly life.
The so-called Tomb of the Pancratii on the opposite
side of the road offers a more elaborate example of
decoration in stucco and painting, and I can only
touch on the principal subjects of the complicated
design. On the rectangular stucco panels of the
ceiling are modelled the following scenes: above the
entrance, Priam before Achilles; to the right, Ad-
metus, Alcestis and Pelias. Opposite the door is
the Judgment of Paris; on the left, the admission of
Heracles to Olympus, where the hero celebrates his
final victory by playing the lyre in the presence of
S
208
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
---·
Dionysus, Athena and Artemis; while in the central
medallion the veiled figure borne aloft by the Eagle
symbolises the ascent of the Soul to its final Apotheosis.
Though the two episodes from the Trojan cycle can
scarcely be interpreted with reference to the other life,
it is probable that like the legendary scenes depicted
on the friezes of the Heroon at Gjölbaschi, they give
mythical expression to traits in the character or the
life of the deceased. If we knew more about the
family to whom the tomb belonged we might under-
stand why the Judgment scene that accords pre-
eminence to Venus, mythical ancestress of the Julian
race and tutelary goddess of Rome, was chosen to
decorate the panel facing the entrance, or why it was
balanced by the episode with the Ransom of Hector.
The choice of this latter scene was perhaps influenced
by the desire to recall in allegorical form the possession
by the occupants of the tomb of the quality of mercy,
which Vergil regarded as an Imperial virtue. It
may be also that in the mystic language of the second
century the Ransoming of Hector stands for the
Ransoming of the Soul, and that the Judgment of
Paris represents the choice which every mortal has
to make on his entry into life. But I should not like
to press the point.
I may note briefly the subjects found in a few other
tombs which refer to After Life beliefs. In the central
panel of the stuccoes that adorned the ceiling of the
4
THE AFTER LIFE
209
now vanished tomb near the Acqua Acetosa were
figures of the Dioscuri with their horses, whose mean-
ing in the sepulchral imagery of the period we have
already discussed. The funerary intention is here
emphasised by the two genii in the space above the
horses; as on Mithraic monuments, they carry, the
one an upright, the other an inverted torch, as symbols
respectively of life and death. The panel in a niche
of the left wall contained an allegory of purification
and resurrection or re-birth; a figure of a maiden
holding in her hand a winnowing-fan or vannus, a
well-known instrument and symbol of purification,
which she partly rests on a short rectangular pillar;
inside the vannus, closely wrapped and veiled, we
perceive the phallic emblem of generation and life.35
In the once famous Tomb of the Arruntii, in the region
between the Porta Maggiore and the 'Minerva
Medica, '36 which has now disappeared, were other
and no less interesting decorations; the vault was
covered with stuccoes representing in the centre the
Rape of the daughters of Leucippus-like other scenes
of rape in tombs of post-Imperial date, used to sym-
bolise the Rape of the Soul or Death as a Sacred
Marriage-while winged genii filled the diamond-
shaped panels on either side of the central medallion.
Within the panels of the border we find the griffins of
Apollo, which not only symbolise the god of light,
but are among the fantastic animals which bear away
O
210
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
the soul to the Empyrean. Again, the subjects that
adorn the stuccoed ceiling of the octagonal chamber
near Tor de' Schiavi * show, in my opinion, that Piranesi
was right in identifying this structure as a tomb,37
though Canina and others have taken it to be part
of some thermae. The design is formed by intersecting
circles; and in the interspaces float various winged
creatures, which we may interpret as usual either as
the escort of the soul, or as its means of transit to the
upper spheres; the winged bull is in the centre; above
him appears the winged sea-horse; below the dolphin ;
on the right a griffin and a winged lion; on the left
a winged boar and a winged horse.38
The tomb discovered under the pontificate of
Alexander VII. in a vigna belonging to S. Gregorio
on the Via Appia just outside the Servian wall, must
have offered a sort of compendium of sepulchral
decoration.39 In the centre was the medallion por-
trait of husband and wife; at the four corners similar
portraits of their children; in the spaces between the
central design and the wall a series of scenes which
are continued in the arch above the wall-niche, and
seem to refer to a ver sacrum; while scattered over
every available space is every kind of symbolic bird
and beast.
The Tomb of the Nasonii, on the left of the Via
Flaminia as we go north from Rome, was a perfect
* On the left of the Via Praenestina Antica.
THE AFTER LIFE
211
mine of sepulchral imagery; but its beautiful decora-
tion has been in part hacked away and taken to
foreign museums, though more remains in situ than
is usually supposed.40 Here, among the numerous
scenes emblematic of the adventures of the soul in
the Underworld and After Life, were the Rape of
Persephone (now in the British Museum); the Rape
of Hylas by the nymphs; and the so-called Judgment
of Solomon-really a Hades and Persephone enthroned
as judges. There are charming paintings of the
Augustan period, which retain their vivid colouring,
within the famous Pyramid of Cestius, set up towards
the close of the first century B.C. by one Caius Cestius
Epulo on the Via Ostiensis, near what is now the
Protestant cemetery; 41 the main themes represented
are winged figures carrying wreaths and garlands.
Among the too little known wall-paintings of the
Augustan columbarium in the Villa Pamphili 42 we
see a company of the Blessed feasting in the Elysian
fields-eight persons seated in a half-circle in a green
meadow; in the midst of them is a large dish with
eggs (as symbols of immortality), in the foreground
a jug and a cup.* The columbarium of Pomponius
Hylas, near the Porta Latina, is rich in expressive
imagery. On a frieze of the central niche we see an
episode from the legend of Orpheus (above, p. 197) ;
on another, carried out in coloured stucco, which
* Left of Via Aurelia Antica.
212
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
adorns a side-niche, the underworld story of Ocnus
and his ass.43 Finally, we may note as worthy of
careful study the fine stuccoes in a tomb in the Vigna
Nardi,44 a few minutes from the Porta S. Sebastiano,
on the right of the Via Appia; and further on, on the
same side of the road, within a vigna belonging to
the Trappists, a fine sepulchral chamber, which was
excavated, I believe, as recently as 1911. I have
visited it twice, but cannot find that it is published.
Among its painted decorations which are still vivid,
we find the peacock, one of the most popular symbols
of resurrection. By the church of S. Sebastiano
itself is a recently discovered tomb with fine archi-
tectural decoration.45 If we glance through a publi-
cation-like that of Engelmann-of ancient Roman
paintings recorded in illuminated manuscripts, we are
struck by the number which came from tombs that
have now entirely disappeared. Another similar
collection of copies of paintings has been preserved
in the Topham volumes in the Library of Eton, and
has just been described by the Director of the British
School at Rome.46 Here again some of the most
valuable have disappeared along with the monuments
which they adorned. The loss of so many tombs with
painted decoration is truly lamentable, for, besides
the undoubted beauty of much of their art, these
paintings are the key to the history of painting in the
Roman Empire, and offer, as we have seen, a com-
THE AFTER LIFE
213
mentary of the first order on the beliefs of the Romans
regarding the After Life. That there is a great awaken-
ing of interest is, however, plain from the attention
which was immediately bestowed on the curiously
interesting paintings of the Tomb of Trebius Justus,
discovered three years ago on the Via Latina, though
the learned seem scarcely yet agreed as to whether
the subjects represented are Pagan or Christian.
A fascinating theory connects the building scene of
one picture with the building of the walls of Rome
under Aurelian.47
Sepulchral monuments of stone, though less liable
to destruction, have likewise not been sufficiently
studied. Let me at least call your attention to the
Tomb of P. Vibius Marianus, popularly known as the
Tomba di Nerone, on the left of the Via Cassia as
we go north.48 On the relief facing the road the
Dioscuri are represented on each side of the inscrip-
tion. On either side a griffin indicates the transit of
the soul, and in the field below a bull's head repre-
sents the abandoned earthly tenement.
I have said enough, I think, to show what great
results might be obtained from a systematic publi-
cation of the Roman tombs, and what an irreparable
loss is inflicted upon science when they are allowed to
deteriorate or to disappear.49 After this excursus
among the tombs of the Eternal City we now return
to our northern gravestones.
J
G
214
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
VI. MINOR SYMBOLISM OF THE STELAE. SCENES
FROM DAILY Life
The minor ornament of our stelae, like their main
decoration, is more often than not a carefully thought-
out symbolism. We have seen how pine-cone, lion
and snake, already familiar on Greek tombs, acquire
fresh value on these Roman provincial stelae, under
the influence of Mithraism and cognate Oriental re-
ligions. The Medusa mask or Gorgoneion, perhaps
the commonest ornament of the grave, whether alone
or in conjunction with other symbols, retains its
ancient function of warding off evil spirits.50 The
cock also may often have been placed on tombs, as in
Greece, with an apotropaic intention. Ghosts are
as effectively scared by crowing cocks as by ringing
bells or baying hounds. The belief that evil spirits
fly at cock-crow is universal :
Ferunt vagantes daemones
laetos tenebris noctium
gallo canente exterritos
sparsim timere et cedere.-Prudentius, i. 37.
The idea is equally familiar in our own legends and
poetry. The dead sons of the wife of Usher's Well
must leave her at cock-crow :
Up then crew the red, red cock,
And up and crew the gray;
The eldest to the youngest said,
'Tis time we were away.51
THE AFTER LIFE
215
Two or more fighting cocks, as on the grave of
Nertus at Buda-Pest,52 are sometimes explained as
emblems of combative and watchful instincts, and
they may also be prophylactic, but a deeper mean-
ing than any of these attaches, as a rule, to their
presence on later gravestones. Just as the eagle
may originally have been looked upon as the habitat
chosen by the soul of a dead monarch, so it has been
pointed out that the cock might be appropriately
regarded as embodying the soul of a departed warrior.
It is doubtless in more than one aspect that the
cock, like the Siren or the Harpy, makes his entry
into sepulchral iconography. He becomes an emblem
of Hermes psychopompos, in token of which a cock
holding a caduceus in his beak is seen on the pedi-
ment of the gravestone of Mussius in Turin, on the
right of the portrait bust of the older boy.53 But the
great vogue of the cock on later Roman tombstones
is due, I think, to the fact that as herald of the sun
he becomes by an easy transition the herald of re-
birth and resurrection.
The dolphins and marine monsters, another fre-
quent decoration, form a mystic escort of the dead
to the Islands of the Blest, and at the same time carry
with them an allusion to the purifying power of water
and to the part assigned to the watery element in
Mithraic and solar cults. This type of sepulchral
decoration arises from the belief in a place of habi-
216
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
tation of the dead, which the Greeks placed across the
river Oceanus, beyond the confines of the world. The
dead man-or his soul-might be conveyed thither
either by boat, or on the back of a sea-monster, a
dolphin, sea-horse, or triton. The boat was one of
the earliest forms of transit; it occurs in Egypt, and
we saw it on the sarcophagus of Haghia Triada;
it remained emblematic of the last journey down to
late times, and was eventually taken over into
Christian iconography. Both boat and sea-monsters
are commonly found on provincial tombstones, not
unfrequently in combination; on a stele in the
museum of Arles, for instance, a two-oared boat,
adorned on the prow with the effigy of a swan, is seen
between two dolphins (C.I.L., xii. 800).54 Some-
times there may be a doubt as to whether the boat is
for the dead man's use in the other world, or merely
refers to his occupation in this. On a large rect-
angular monument at Trèves a compromise of the
two ideas is effected: the cornice of the socle is carved
to represent the stream of Oceanus, within which
swim the soul's fantastic escort; but at each side of
the socle and upon it is placed a boat full of wine-
casks (R.R., ii. 90, 5).55 These boats, which are
manned by six lusty oarsmen, certainly represent the
trade by which the occupants of the tomb had been
enriched. Every inhabitant of the district of the
Mosel seems, then as now, to have been engaged
THE AFTER LIFE
217
either in the wine or in the cloth trade. The sculp-
ture is by no means contemptible; the face of the
pilot of one boat, with its kindly, jovial expression,
usually explained, let me add, as the effect of liberal
draughts of excellent 'Moselle,' has long been justly
admired.
Far more delightful than this somewhat ornate
monument of a pious merchant are the simple stelae
that marked the tombs of ordinary boatmen. They
are of frequent occurrence in lands with great rivers,
where much of the traffic and commerce by water
depended upon the boatmen. An excellent example
is in the museum of Mayence, set up by a boatman of
the Rhine, named Blussus, for himself, his wife, and
a son (R.R., ii. 71, 1-2). The portraits of the three
appear on the front face of the monument; on the
back is carved a boat manned by two oarsmen; the
light river craft resembles that of the Nile so closely
that we must suppose it derived from an Egyptian
model. Below runs the inscription which records
the age of Blussus and the years of his service.56 A
singular charm attaches to another stele, put up, as
is recorded in the pathetic inscription, by one Marcus
Antonius Basilides, frumentarius of the Legio X.
Gemina, for the tomb of his wife and his infant son:
To the holy shade of Augustania Cassia Marcia, my
peerless wife, who lived thirty-four years eleven months
and thirteen days, and, while she fulfilled the suffering
218
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
appointed for her, met life's end in the hope of better
things and to my innocent child, Marcus Antonius
Augustanius Philetus, who lived three years eight months
and ten days, and whose little life a ruthless fate, not
heeding the prayers of his parents, took from him.*
In the same spirit that modern Italian boatmen
christen their craft La bella Italiana or La bella
Genovese, Basilides has named his boat the Felix
Itala in honour of Italy. In the Felix Itala he sits,
facing posterity bravely in characteristic frontal
attitude, flanked by his two mates,57 or, as Dr. Ashby
suggests to me, it would be quite consistent with the
spirit of the time to suppose that the three figures in
the boat stand symbolically for Basilides and the
wife and child he had lost. The line between reality
and allegory is at this time elusive, and it may well
be that the boats carved on these tombstones carry
with them an allusion to the ship in which, sooner or
later, all must sail to the far-away shore. Their simple
imagery, the naïve but manly language of the inscrip-
tions, anticipate the prayer of the English poet :
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me;
And may there be no moaning of the bar
When I put out to sea.
* Die Manibus Augustianae Cassiae Marciae coniugi incomparabili
quae vixit annos xxxiiii menses xi dies xiii, quae, dum explesset fati
sui laborem, meliora sibi sperans vitam functa est, et Marco Antonio
TWO FAMILY REPASTS.
Museum of Arlon.
PLATE XXVII.

......
6.
}
THE AFTER LIFE
219
Scenes from everyday life are also found on the
tombstones by the side of subjects which refer to the
After Life; they occur more especially as friezes on
the tall pyramidal monuments of the Rhineland, the
architecture of which is derived from that of Graeco-
Ionian prototypes, like the Mausoleum of Hali-
carnassus and the Nereid Monument. A number of
excellent examples may be seen in the rich museum
of Trèves. From one of them comes the well-known
relief with a scene in a schoolroom: a bearded Greek
pedagogue, got up to resemble the traditional philo-
sopher, sits with a pupil at each side, while a third
small boy enters, satchel in hand (R.R., ii. 91, 1).58
On another we see depicted a 'Rent-day Scene,'
where a number of sturdy farmers are paying in at a
counter the moneys due to the ground-landlord
(R.R., ii. 91, 2).59 The clerks who receive the money
are dressed in a short sagum, while the farmers have
in addition a warm hood attached to the sagum
to draw over the head; they carry their money-bags
hanging from a broad strap, and hold a stout stick.
On a third monument a frieze on the right shows the
familiar Greek subject of a lady's toilet. The lady,
no longer young, sits in a high wicker chair surrounded
by her tiring-maids, one of whom holds up the mirror
Augustanio Phileto filio innocentissimo qui vixit annos iii menses viii
dies x, cui dii, nefandi parvulo contra votum genitorum vita privave-
runt; Marcus Antonius Basilides frumentarius legionis x geminae
coniugi et filio pientissimis.
220
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
ļ
to her mistress. The uncompromising realism of the
wrinkled face, the introduction of individual details,
mark the work as distinctly Roman in spirit. Balanc-
ing the scene from the life of the mistress of the
house, we see on the other side the master going out
hunting. These familiar episodes are generally ex-
hibited—as here-on narrow friezes at the side of the
monument; the front is more often than not occupied
by life-size portraits of the man and his wife, and the
back of the tomb is often covered with patterns of
rosettes, once brilliantly coloured. Among other
subjects of everyday life we find the family repast,
treated at times with Teutonic naïveté (cf. R.R., ii.
90, 2).60
The scene on the relief at Mayence has
something of the solemn grandeur of Uhde's picture
of 'Saying Grace' ('Komm', Herr Jesu, sei unser
Gast'). A delightful Family Repast occurs in the
rich collection at Arlon (plate xxvii.-Espérandieu,
4097). On the upper half of one face we see the
older members of the family sitting round a table
upon which is a trussed fowl. On the lower is the
children's dinner three lusty infants eating out of a
soup tureen; to the left an elder sister seems to repri-
mand them for their manners; on the right an elder
boy plays the flute, and one of the small children
holds back a dog who has thrust his nose into the
soup. Sometimes the repast is treated purely as a
genre subject; at others it assumes the character of
:
1. SELENE.
Relief from Argos. British Museum.
2. SEPULCHRAL URN.
(Detail.) British Museum.
PLATE XXVIII.


……..♥*
Cr
'
19
THE AFTER LIFE
221
a sepulchral banquet, influenced, no doubt, on the
one hand by the Mithraic communion and the other
sacred repasts which were so characteristic a feature
of the Oriental religions; on the other by the After
Life Banquet which from early times had been the
highest expression of Apotheosis. In these later
reliefs the two ideas probably coalesce, and the ban-
quet partakes of the nature of a communion scene
uniting the living and the dead.
The mention of the ritual banquet leads me to say
a word concerning the vessels of various shapes which
often adorn the pediments of tombs, and which are
usually explained as conventional ornaments. The
chief of these are the patera or sacrificial platter, the
amphora, the krater or mixing-bowl, and the kan-
tharos or chalice. Most of these already appeared
with ritual significance on Greek tombs; and to
suppose that in centuries so charged with religious
emotion as those we have been studying, or among a
people so 'superstitious' as the Romans, they sud-
denly lost all meaning and became purely decorative,
as most modern scholars assert, seems utterly in-
admissible. Rather do I believe that they are the
record of the mysteries deemed most holy alike by
the occupants of the tomb and their survivors. The
pair of amphorae, like the twin cruets of the mass, the
kantharos, like the Christian chalice, were emblematic.
of the mystic sacrifice and communion; but at present
-
222 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
the various utensils of the pagan mysteries have not
been sufficiently studied. The kantharos was par-
ticularly beloved as a motive, and when foliage or
flowers grow out of it, it comes within the circle of
resurrection emblems. Birds often appear drinking
from the top of a vase, to indicate the soul's thirst
for the 'waters of life'; at other times the Apolline
griffin guards the sacred vase. Within the pediment
of the stele of the shepherd (pecuarius) Jucundus at
Mayence we see just such a vase, with long branches
growing out of it and spreading to either side.61
There are peculiarly good examples of this class of
decoration on several urns in the British Museum
(R.R., ii. 471, 5-7; 512, 4; 513, 8; 515, 4), one of
which is reproduced here (plate xxviii. 2).
VII. THE MONUMENT AT IGEL. SUMMARY AND
CONCLUSION
P
The splendid monument, still in situ, at Igel, near
Trèves, with all its sculptures intact, offers us in
visible form the synthesis of the beliefs which inspired
the hopes of an ultramundane existence lifted far
above this present world, combined with pictures of
the life on earth of the occupants of the tomb. This
grand family tomb was put up in the third century
A.D. by the Secundinii, wealthy cloth-merchants of
the country of the Treveri. From its size, and the
beauty both of its architecture and sculpture, it is
40m
THE IGEL MONUMENT NEAR TREVES.
PLATE XXIX.

Un
• · · *✰ t
………..t
*****
THE AFTER LIFE
223
one of the most important monuments of Roman
Germania; it now stands in solitary grandeur in the
charming village of Igel, beside the line of the Roman
road from Trèves to Rheims. In antiquity it was one
of many similar monuments, which may still be
studied in the fine drawings and reconstructions
attempted in the museum of Trèves. Their tower-
like structures with pyramidal roofs may, like the
tomb of S. Rémy in Provence, be traced back to
Graeco-Asiatic prototypes of the type of the Mauso-
leum of Halicarnassus and the Lycian tombs of
Merehi and Payava (above, p. 152). In the Gallo-
Roman tomb, likewise, every available surface is
covered with a profusion of carving (plate xxix.).
62
As far back as 1792 the Igel tomb excited the ad-
miration of Goethe, who saw it as he travelled from
Trèves to Luxemburg to join the allied armies; he
not only admired the column, but expressed a hope
that it might be drawn and measured. More than a
century has elapsed and Goethe's countrymen have
not as yet adequately fulfilled his wish." Both
iconography and art throw a vivid light on the
civilisation of this land of the Treveri with its mixed
Ionian, Roman and Celtic elements. The pleasant
everyday scenes of the friezes and podium reflect
the spirit in which the Romans of all lands and
periods loved to record their res gestae, whether public
or private; the principal façade brings before us the
7
" "
224
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
picture of a Gallo-Roman family; the rest is given up
to the religious symbolism of the age, of which it is
the splendid and convincing epitome. The inscrip-
tion declares the tomb to have been erected, in the
first instance, for the wife of one of the Secundinii
and the two children of the other. The survivors
are portrayed on the principal panel of the front face ;
above them are three medallions with busts of the
deceased. In the pediment, the rape of Hylas by the
water or wood nymphs-creatures of mystery and
terror like the noonday Pan-symbolises the rape
of the soul through the dread powers of death. Ah
dolor! ibat Hylas, ibat Enhydryasin. And the further
allusion to the Rape as prelude of the Sacred Mar-
riage is obvious. To the right, on the large panel of
the west face, we find two scenes from the legend of
Perseus. (a) The liberation of Andromeda, emblematic
of the release of the soul from its earthly chains
through divine intervention; it is interesting to note
the novel motive of the half-figure of Athena, seen
emerging from the clouds to protect the heroic deed.
The epiphany of the goddess is represented in like
manner on the panel with the Apotheosis of Heracles.
(b) The scene where Perseus shows to Andromeda
the Medusa's head reflected in the water, an allusion
to the apotropaic power of the Gorgoneion to ward
off evil spirits from the tomb. In the west pediment
the story of Mars and Rhea Silvia carries, as we have
arda
APOTHEOSIS OF HERACLES.
Igel.
PLATE XXX.

UM
• * ▼ ? ••
THE AFTER LIFE
225
seen, the promise of awakening from the sleep of death
to a life of blessedness, with the further assurance
of wedded union with the god. These scenes are
balanced on the large panel of the east face at the
top by the scene of Thetis dipping Achilles into the
waters of Styx to make him invulnerable. The
allusion to the purificatory rite of baptism, which
was among the ideas introduced by more than one
of the Oriental religions, is evident, yet the allusion
to baptism by water is so rare that I think it must
be interpreted in this case by reference to a practice
prevalent among Teutonic and Celtic races of plung-
ing infants into cold river water immediately after
birth, partly for the purpose of purification, and
partly also because water was looked upon among
certain northern peoples as the habitat of beneficent
powers, under whose influence it was desirable to place
the new-born child.63 The ritual words spoken by
the magician in the Hávamál, 'This I can make sure
when I suffuse a man-child with water he shall not
fall when he fights in the host, no sword shall bring
him low,' 64 come very near indeed to the belief that
Achilles was made invulnerable by being dipped in
the waters of Styx. If our Treveri were among the
Celtic tribes who used these rites to purify the new-
born child and also to assure his immortality, we can
see why this special scene of the Baptism of Achilles
was chosen to adorn one face of the Igel tomb. The
P
¿
226
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
lower half of this panel is unfortunately undecipher-
able. In the pediment Luna-in Mithraic and solar
monuments the inseparable companion of Sol Sanc-
tissimus-drives her chariot, while Sol himself in his
quadriga appears, as we shall immediately see, a
the pediment of the adjoining face. On the rear wall
of the tomb is a representation, rare at this period, of
the Apotheosis of Heracles, who is shown in his chariot,
mounting upwards along the path to Heaven, within
the circle of the zodiac (plate xxx.). Minerva no longer
rides by the hero's side, as in earlier Greek represen-
tations of the scene; she emerges from the clouds
to meet him and extends her hand to help his ascen-
sion, a motive that recalls the hand of the Biblical
God stretched out to the Christian emperor on later
Roman medallions of consecration. In the spandrels.
appear the heads of the wind-gods, emblematic of the
four cardinal points that divide the sky. The winds,
we must remember, were likewise looked upon as
fertilising and generative powers of Nature, and more-
over are peculiarly in place on a funerary monument,
since the souls of the departed might become wind-
spirits. The allusion in the images of this panel is
evidently to the triumphant progress of the soul after
it has, like Heracles, accomplished its cycle of earthly
labours. But we are no longer in presence of a Graeco-
Latin Heracles. He has acquired an Oriental char-
acter from being identified by the Greeks themselves
TeeTOR
GO
cap
KA
محمد
APOTHEOSIS OF A ROMAN EMPEROR.
British Museum.
PLATE XXXI.

Um

폰
​THE AFTER LIFE
227
with the Tyrian Melkarth, part of whose legend he
absorbed into his own. At Tyre, at one of the great
festivals, this Heracles-Melkarth was burned in effigy,
and Sir J. G. Frazer surmises that the festival was
identical with the awakening of Heracles' held in
January, acutely inferring that the ceremony con-
sisted in a dramatic representation of the death of the
god, followed by a semblance of his resurrection : 65
so we get back by yet another path into the same
cycle of resurrection emblems. The splendid com-
position of the chariot of the Apotheosis as it rushes
upward amid the winds through the aether to the stars,
recalls the promise of Apotheosis which that ardent
mystic, the Emperor Julian, received from the oracle:
W
Then when thou hast put off the grievous burden of
mortal limbs, the fiery car shall bear thee through the
midst of the eddying whirlwinds to Olympus; and thou
shalt come into that ancestral home of heavenly light,
whence thou didst wander to enter the body of man.-
Eunapius, Hist., fr. 26.
And even more vividly does it bring to mind the
chariot of fire and the horses of fire which parted
disciple and master asunder, and Elijah ascending
' by a whirlwind into heaven' (2 Kings ii. 11). The
chariot as vehicle of Apotheosis appears again in
the striking scene of an ivory leaf in the British
Museum with the deification of Constantius Chlorus,
the father of Constantine (plate xxxi.).66 The motive
228
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
has a long history, from the chariot borne through the
flaming aether on the sarcophagus of Haghia Triada
down to the time when it passes into Christian art in
scenes with the ascension of Elijah ; but nowhere does
it convey a more impressive sense of spiritual triumph
than here on the monument of Igel.
Two monuments have lately come to my notice
which offer interesting parallels to thesc notable scenes
of triumph and ascension through the cosmic universe
to the spheres. The first is a sarcophagus of late
second-century date long in the Palazzo Barberini
in Rome, but so far unpublished (plate xxxii.). In the
centre we have what at first sight seems an ordinary
Roman medallion group (imago clipeata), but the
medallion is itself merely a corona triumphalis decked
out with the signs of the zodiac, so that the transit
here again is through the celestial spheres. The
medallion is held by two of the four Seasons arranged
on either side of the medallion, to mark the swift
alternations of time, while below it is a busy vin-
taging scene with the love-gods piling up the luscious
grapes-emblem, as so often in Christian art, of the
vintaging of the souls.67
The next is a much humbler monument, a little
stele lately found at Carnuntum, which tells with
even more vivid force the same story as the more
lavish imagery of the Roman sarcophagus. On the
upper part of the stcle within the corona triumphalis is
G
OXAC
PORNE
CON
APOTHEOSIS ON A SARCOPHAGUS IN THE PALAZZO BARBERINI.
D
PLATE XXXII.

MARTA.
THE AFTER LIFE
229
an eagle with outspread wings; the winds occupy
the four spandrels; the image of Sol crowns the pedi-
ment, within which are two dolphins.68 So here again
we are confronted with the triumphant faith in the
attainment, after purificatory rites, of a life of blessed-
ness at harmony with the cosmic universe.
To return to the Igel monument: in the frieze above
the Apotheosis of Heracles a genius bridles two
griffins, sacred to Apollo and other solar gods, a sub-
ject peculiarly appropriate here, just below the pedi-
ment in which the 'Giver of Life,' Sol Sanctissimus
himself, appears in his quadriga in a time-honoured
scheme which recalls that of the Elean phalera (plate
v. 2). The crown of the monument is a capital adorned
with four heads framed by the intertwining coils of four
snake-footed figures; on the analogy of a fragment
at Trèves, I take it that these heads represent the
Seasons, the anguipedes being symbolic of the earth.
This capital supports four half-figures holding up the
terrestrial sphere which has the oviform shape given
to it in the Orphic cosmogony in these figures I in-
cline to recognise the same divisions of the day and
night that appear on the capitals of the 'giant
columns. Finally, above earth and the material
universe, the eagle soars upward to the stars bearing
with him Ganymede, symbol of the liberated soul.
The picturesque scenes from daily life that enliven
the rest of the surface need no comment here. Study,
230
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
however, the supper scene of the central face; no
Dutch master could have conceived it in a spirit
more naturalistic, and the same applies to the scenes
at either end. On the right we are introduced to the
kitchen where the servants are cooking or polishing
the dishes; on the left other servants are occupied in
the wine-cellar. A frieze of the podium shows big
wagons laden with goods. Evidently the commerce
of the Secundinii spread to distant parts, for on one
panel we see their wagons crossing a mighty range
of mountains, perhaps intended for the Alps. On
another frieze again is a river scene; the boats are
piled with bales of cloth, and are rowed by sturdy
oarsmen. The meaning of the dolphins and other
creatures of the deep on the upper and lower friezes
of the podium is clear from what has already been said
of other representations. Thus, the imagery is taken
from the same cycle as that of the sepulchral stelae,
but is treated with greater freedom and mastery of
expression. The beauty of the design comes, indeed,
as a surprise to those who think of Roman provincial
art as decadent or worse. The exquisite putti, for
instance, that adorn the uprights on all four sides.
would not be unworthy of a master of the Tuscan
Quattrocento.
I am aware that in stating this I am running
counter to general opinion. It is the fashion to con-
demn the art of the Igel monument. May the ex-
THE AFTER LIFE
231
planation attempted above of its iconography at least
dispel the charge of ignorant vulgarity brought against
the Secundinii by a recent writer.69 They may have
shown themselves a little over-emphatic and over-
elaborate, a little too anxious to surpass their neigh-
bours alike in the expression of their piety and in the
record of their commerce. But the eagle, which to
those who overlook the Ganymede represents only the
vulgar ambition of a négociant propriétaire to appro-
priate to himself 'the emblem of military force and
of armed victory,' shows at least that the Secundinii
believed in a world beyond, where they too might be
liberated from their earthly cares. In these reliefs
the wish for personal fame, perhaps also for individual
survival, seems satisfied by those simple scenes which
record the successful earthly career of the deceased.
The carved panels and the statuary that adorns the
more important parts of the edifice seem rather to
proclaim joy in the soul's release from the shackling
forces of the flesh and of personality. The oŵµa oñµa
doctrine seems here to have attained its apogee.
We are already within measurable distance of the
faith that inspires the New Mysticism :
Ici commence la pleine mer, ici commence l'admirable
aventure, la seule qui soit égale à la curiosité humaine, la
seule qui s'élève aussi haut que son plus haut désir.
We have travelled far from the primitive tomb-
stones set up with magical intention to entrap the
232
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
ghost. The dead man no longer lives in an obscure,
uncertain region, propitiated by acts of adoration
born of fear. Magic had sought to imprison the soul;
religion had effected her liberation and sent her soaring
above the earth into the radiant spaces of heaven.
A new era was to bring with it a still higher revelation
of the soul's exalted destiny, but we have reached the
goal of our present studies, and it is well to close
them upon the vision of what Rome, by holding to
spiritual ideals all but repudiated by classic Greece,
contributed towards the emancipation of mankind
from the haunting fear of death.
NOTES
A.J.A. American Journal of Archaeology.
Aphaia: Furtwängler, Aegina das Heiligthum der Aphaia.
Arch. Anz.: Archäologischer Anzeiger (appears at end of Jahrbuch).
Ath. Mitt. Athenische Mitteilungen.
:
PRINCIPAL ABBREVIATIONS
:
B.C.H. Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique.
B.S.R.: Papers of the British School at Rome.
B.Z.: Byzantinische Zeitschrift.
:
C.I.L.: Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum.
E.R.E. Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics.
Espérandieu E. Espérandieu, Bas-Reliefs de la Gaule Romaine.
:
Helbig W. Helbig, Führer durch die Oeffentlichen Sammlungen
Klassischer Altertümer in Rom, 3rd ed., 1912, 1913, 2 vols.
Jahrb.: Jahrbuch des K. Deutschen archäologischen Instituts.
J.H.S.: Journal of Hellenic Studies.
J.R.S.: Journal of Roman Studies.
R.A.: Revue Archéologique.
R.H.R.: Revue de l'Histoire des Religions.
R.M. Roemische Mitteilungen.
R.R. : Reinach, Répertoire des Reliefs Grecs et Romains, 3 vols.
NOTES
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS
1
¹ Strzygowski's theories up to the year 1907 are summed up in the
Introduction to my Roman Sculpture, pp. 12 ff. with references. In the
intervening seven years his activity has been unremitting. His most
important recent work is possibly Amida (Heidelberg, 1910), written in
collaboration with Professor von Berchem and Miss Gertrude Bell. In
it he discusses afresh the Oriental origin of all mediaeval European art.
The preface is of special importance, as affording the author's review
of his own work since 1885, in which he shows how his studies took
him from Italy to Constantinople and Asia Minor, and thence to
Persia and the further East. Strzygowski's recent attacks are mainly
directed against the school represented by Professor Heisenberg,
who look upon Byzantium as the direct heir of Greece, and more
especially of Athens. See Strzygowski's last article in Supplement
Band xix. (1913) of the Römische Quartalschrift, and his numerous
articles and notices in the Byzantinische Zeitschrift. His views
largely colour the important book of Oskar Wulff, Altchristliche und
Byzantinische Kunst (vol. i. 1913); cf. also L. Bréhier, 'Études sur
l'histoire de la Sculpture Byzantine,' in Nouvelles Missions Scienti-
fiques, 1911.
2 In the article 'Altchristliche Kunst,' contributed to vol. i. of the
handbook Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (1908).
3 This was the view of Wickhoff in the epoch-making monograph
translated into English under the title Roman Art (1901). In the text
of Roman Sculpture (1907) I showed reason for modifying this view,
though the opening lines of the preface might lead to the supposition
that I adhered to it.
4 The relation of Château Gaillard to Syrian models is well known,
but students will do well to read the inspiring article of M. Dieulafoy
235
236
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
in Mémoires de l'Institut de France, 1898 (vol. 36), pp. 325-86,
'Le Château Gaillard et l'architecture militaire au XIIIme Siècle,' a
masterly handling of the question of the debt of Western Europe to
Eastern art in the Middle Ages.
5 Palace and Mosque of Ukhaidir, by G. Lowthian Bell, 1914. See
also the following passages, pp. 72 ff., 110, 128, on the debt of Eastern
to Roman architecture.
6 E. March-Phillips, The Works of Man, pp. 131 ff.
This high-
handed abuse of Rome seems 'opportune and refreshing' to the
anonymous reviewer in Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1912 (xxii.), p. 202.
A similar alternately violent and 'saucy' style of writing spoils a far
more important book, Art, by Clive Bell (1914). Mr. Bell certainly
puts his finger on the weak spot of Greek art from the Parthenon
downward and in Hellenistic and Roman times, but he fails to see
that what he so justly and eloquently praises in Byzantinism (see Art,
pp. 121 ff.) begins in the early Empire; is, in fact, the 'ascending line'
which, as Riegl first perceived, makes its appearance in Rome by the
side of decadent Hellenism.
7 A Wandering Scholar in the Levant, 1896, p. 163.
9 W. R. Lethaby in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of
London, 1912 (xxiv.), p. 293; cf. Strzygowski in Byzantinische Zeit-
schrift, 1913 (xxii.), p. 624.
9 Cf. Professor Gilbert Murray, Four Stages of Greek Religion,
p. 108: 'Rome herself was a Polis as well as an Empire. And
Professor Haverfield has pointed out that a City has more chance of
taking in the whole world to its freedoms and privileges than a Nation
has of making men of alien birth its compatriots.' Cf. also the
brilliant appreciation of the Roman Empire and of its policy by
Professor Lake, The Stewardship of Faith, pp. 8 ff.
10 R. W. Livingstone, The Greek Genius and its Meaning to us,
1912, p. 101.
11 Cf. T. R. Glover, Conflict of Religions, pp. 28 ff.: 'No Roman poet
had a more gentle, sympathetic love of Nature; none ever entered so
deeply and so tenderly into the sorrows of men.' For Vergil's religious
feeling and its exalted character see also Ferdinand Postma, De
numine divino quid senserit Virgilius, Amsterdam, 1914.
12 See Wickhoff, Roman Art, p. 45.
NOTES
237
13 Mr. J. W. Mackail, in his article 'Virgil and Roman Studies' in
J.R.S., 1913 (iii.), pp. 1 ff., brings out with his usual vivid touch
this aspect of the poet. See especially p. 2: 'So, too, with Virgil.
Admiration of his poetical genius is only heightened by the fuller
knowledge we are gaining of him as the voice and interpreter of the
Latin civilisation in all its aspects. We no longer study him as mere
literature; or rather literature, with him, as with others, has grown
into a new meaning. It is not a picture drawn and coloured on the
flat, but an organic solid, attached everywhere to a three-dimensional
world. At every point Virgil's work throws light on Roman studies,
and has light thrown on it by them. The beautiful pattern, with
which we have long been familiar, becomes stereoscopic; the polished
reflecting surface becomes translucent. We see deep into its structure,
and have always the hope of seeing deeper; we can trace layers of
growth; here and there we can watch the poetry coming into
existence. And as we do so, point after point in the poetry kindles
into new meaning, because it is seen in organic relation to an actual
world.'
14 J. W. Mackail, Latin Literature, p. 99.
15 Gilbert Murray, Rise of the Greek Epic, 2nd ed., pp. 113 ff.
16 See, for instance, Mr. Warde-Fowler, Rome, p. 7; and even
Professor Haverfield, Romanization of Roman Britain, 2nd ed., p. 9.
LECTURE I
1 The so-called 'law of frontality' was first put forward by the
Danish sculptor Julius Lange in his epoch-making book, Darstellung
des Menschen in der älteren griechischen Kunst (German ed. with a
preface by A. Furtwängler, and a summary of the views in French,
Strassburg, 1899). But what Lange christens 'frontality' involves a
great deal beside the frontal pose. Accordingly E. Loewy, in his
Rendering of Nature in Early Greck Art (English tr. by J. S.
Fothergill, London, 1908), substituted the term unifaciality for
frontality. For a useful résumé of Lange's and Loewy's views see
P. Gardner, Principles of Greek Art (ed. 1914), ch. vii.
2 Strictly speaking, the frontal pose of primitive art is restricted to
statues in the round, while in relief the difficulty of drawing or carving
figures and, above all, faces on a background, led to the adoption of
the profile view. But the profile poses are stiff, and the figures in
238
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
relief are subject to the law of parallelism which flows from that of
frontality, and deprives them of any real mobility.
3 Alessandro della Seta, Art and Religion, London, 1914. His
earlier monograph, La Genesi dello Scorcio nell arte Graeca, 1907,
should be read by those interested in the technical processes by which
the Greeks liberated themselves from the yoke of frontality (for which
della Seta substitutes the expression parallelism) by the discovery of
foreshortening, which enabled them to interrelate the various actions
in a scene.
A. L. Frothingham in American Journal of Archacology, 1912
(xvi.), pp. 368 ff.; 1913 (xvii.), pp. 487 ff. ('Who built the Arch of
Constantine?').
E. Strong, Roman Sculpture, pp. 328 ff. A good description of the
reliefs of the arch, and of their relation to those in the contemporary
arch of Galerius at Saloniki, by O. Wulff, Altchristliche Kunst,
pp. 160 ff.
6 A. J. B. Wace in B.S.R., iv. pp. 270 ff., pls. xxxv., xxxvi. (plate iii.
by permission after his pl. xxvi.). But I see no reason for thinking
that the figures of the north and south sides do not belong to the
same period. The differences of technique are not greater than can be
accounted for by the employment of more than one sculptor.
7 Alois Riegl, Die Spätrömische Kunstindustrie in Oesterreich-
Ungarn, Vienna, 1901.
8 For both S. Trophime and Chartres see P. de Lasteyrie's mono-
graph in Monuments Piot, 1902 (viii.), 'Étude sur la Sculpture
Française au Moyen Age'; plate iv. is after his plate iii., 'Tympan
de la Porte Centrale de la Façade Royale.'
9 Maiestas Christi-the name given to the scheme which shows
the Christ as here enthroned within the mandorla. According to
Strzygowski and Lethaby the type of the Maiestas Christi is of
Egyptian origin. The mandorla 'encloses the figure of the infant
Christ in his mother's arms in the Gospels of Etchmiadzin and in
frescoes at Bawît' (Dalton, Byzantine Art and Archaeology, 1911,
p. 683 and references).
10 I find myself paraphrasing here a sentence from Winston
Churchill's novel, Inside the Cup, p. 62. The passage in which the
American writer describes what the effect would be upon the
Christian conception of the Christ were a natural instead of a
NOTES
239
supernatural birth attributed to Him, almost exactly expresses what
happens when the image of the divinity, instead of being shown
independent of any relation to other figures or objects, is made to
participate in a common action: 'If we attribute to our Lord a
natural birth, we come at once to the dilemma of having to admit
that He was merely an individual human person-in an unsurpassed
relationship with God, it is true, but still a human person. That
doctrine makes Christ historical, some one to go back to, instead of
the independent pre-existent Son of God and mankind.'
11 The sculptures were discovered in the spring of 1910, south of the
town of Corfu, near the convent of Garitza, during excavations begun
by the Archaeological Society of Athens and continued by the
German Emperor. The relief is very flat; the style is non-Attic and
recalls Sicilian (Selinos) rather than Greek sculpture. Published
Praktika, 1911; cf. Arch. Anz., 1911, p. 135; 1912, p. 247; 1913,
p. 106; P. Gardner, Principles of Greek Art (1914), p. 122.
Several architectural fragments of the temple were also found, as
well as a long altar adorned with a frieze of metopes and triglyphs
that stood in front of the temple. The pedimental fragments are now
in the local museum at Corfu. For the reconstruction of the pediment
see Sir Arthur Evans in J.H.S., 1912, p. 286, fig. 2 (Addenda).
12 On the apotropaic character of the Gorgon, and on the probable
derivation of the whole group with its flanking lions from a Hittite
model, see Ed. Meyer, Reich und Kultur der Chetiter, 1914, p. 113,
with note and fig. 83. Sir Arthur Evans (loc. cit.), on the other hand,
inclines to derive the type from Cretan art.
13 Della Seta, figs. 67, 68.
¹¹ Loewy, Rendering of Nature, fig. 19.
15 The most important discussion of Greek pedimental construction
is Furtwängler's in Aegina das Heiligtum der Aphaia, pp. 316-41.
Cf. my paper in Journal of the Brit. and Amer. Society of Rome, 1910,
iv. p. 395.
16 A. B. Cook, Zeus, 1914, pp. 293 ff. and notes, explains the partiality
of early Greek sculpture for fish-tailed and snaky monsters to fill up the
angles of pediments, by supposing that they were originally used to
guard the apotropaic solar symbol which was so frequently placed
in the centre of pediments, or above the gable as acroterion. See the
examples given by Mr. Cook, figs. 212-18. For the Acropolis pedi-
ments see G. Dickins, Catalogue of the Acropolis Museum, 1912,
Nos. 35 ff.
240
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
17 Furtwängler, Aphaia, fig. 254.
18 Furtwängler, Aphaia, plates 104, 105 (for the general effect of
the two compositions).
19 Furtwängler, Aphaia, figs. 259-61.
20 It is important to study the correct reconstruction which brings
the Peirithoos and the Theseus close to the Apollo. Although both
figures move away from the centre and from the god, the lines are so
arranged as to link centre and lateral groups together. For the two
Olympia pediments, see Aphaia, figs. 262-3.
21 Furtwängler, Aphaia, figs. 265-7.
22 Four Stages of Greck Religion, p. 90.
23 Both are self-involved compositions. The Hermes is lost in
sensuous dreams, and the Demeter in her grief. Neither statue is
conceived in relation to the spectator.
24 Principles, p. 118.
20 To Greek archaeologists, and indeed to many others, those
statements will appear pure heresies. Dr. Deissmann, for instance,
who shows a deep feeling for art, says of the Eleusis relief that it is
'the most deeply religious work of ancient sculpture' which he has
ever seen (Light from the Ancient East, p. 286).
26 Furtwängler-Reichold, Griechische Vasenmalerei, i. pl. 36.
27 We might judge differently of the principles which govern
Greek composition if we knew more of the art of Asia Minor. For
instance, the pedimental sculptures of the so-called Monument of
the Nereids from Xanthos (Brit. Mus.), clumsy though they are in
certain respects, show a finer sense of centripetal construction than
most of the pediments found in Greece. The reason for this is the
nature of the subject. The dead of the central group-a man and
his wife with their children-are still imagined as beings of a
superior order, as enjoying a state something between the human
and the divine. Hence the tendency, not altogether neutralised by
the obvious Attic influences, of placing the images of the dead in an
attitude suggestive of them as recipients of homage. The poses are
not frontal, it is true, but the lines flow towards the centre, focus
the attention at that point, and lead one to look there for the
dominant motive of the composition.
28 Diodorus Siculus, xviii. 26, 27.
NOTES
241
According to a recent theory the lustratio exercitus represented
is presumably that performed in B.C. 115 by an ancestor of Domitius
(see Sieveking in the Austrian Archaeological Jahreshefte, 1910, xiii.
pp. 95 ff.; 'das sogenannte Altar des Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus ').
If that is the case, the instance is almost unique, for the Romans
had no historical art in our modern sense, i.e., as I have already
pointed out in Roman Sculpture, p. 38, they hand down their present
deeds, their res gestae, for the admiration of the future, but rarely
search the past for those of their ancestors.
29
30 I had discussed the problem of the introduction of the crowd
into Roman relief, Roman Sculpture, pp. 46 ff. Della Seta (op. cit., p.
278) says further: 'The problem had not yet been propounded in the
case of the altar of Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus, for the figures, though
placed singly facing the spectator, do not form a compact mass, but
are distinctly separated from one another against the background.
This had already been indicated . . on the Ara Pacis . . . for some
of the figures of the cortège, who, instead of moving like the rest,
seem to have stopped, as if to be better in view of the spectator.'
31 See my Roman Sculpture, p. 57, and the remark quoted from
Riegl.
32 'L'aigle funéraire des Syriens et l'Apothéose des Empereurs,' in
Revue de l'histoire des Religions, 1910 (lxii.), pp. 119-64.
33 For the Imperial Apotheosis and cognate cults see art. 'Apothéose'
by Gaston Boissier in Saglio's Dict., and also the chapter in his
Religion Romaine d'Auguste aux Antonins (pp. 122-208); W. Drex-
ler's art. 'Kaiserkultus' in Roscher; arts. 'Apotheose' by H. von
Gaertringen, and 'Consecratio' by G. Wissowa, both in Pauly-
Wissowa; art. 'Deification' by E. Bevan, in Hastings' Encyclopaedia
of Religion and Ethics; Kornemann, Zur Geschichte der Antiken
Herrscherkulte, in Klio, 1901 (i.), pp. 51-146 (§ 3, 'Die römische
Staatskulte der Kaiserzeit,' etc.); L. Purser's art. in Smith's Dict.
of Ant. (a competent résumé of facts and theories); Marquardt,
Staatsverwaltung, iii. pp. 91 ff.; pp. 463 ff., pp. 275 ff. (consecratio);
V. Gardthausen, Augustus und seine Zeit, i. pp. 466 ff.; J. Toutain, ch.
iii. of Les Cultes païens dans l'Empire Romain; C. Pascal, Credenze
d'Oltretombe, ch. xxv. E. Beurlier's Le Culte Impérial (1881) is still
the most complete work on the subject. The entire documentary
evidence for the Imperial Deification between the years 48 B.C. and
14 A.D. has lately been brought together in chronological order by
Hubert Heinen in Klio, 1911 (xi.), pp. 129 ff. ('Zur Begründung des
römischen Kaiserkultes'). Paul Wendland's Hellenistische-römische
Q
242
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
Kultur, 1912 (sections 'Kaiserkult,' 'Sinn der Apotheose,' and the
preceding sections on the temples of the Augustan age), contains the
most illuminating pages that have yet been written on the Augustan
period, its aspirations and cults. See also Warde-Fowler, Roman
Ideas of Deity (Lecture v., 'Deification of Caesar'-the preceding
chapter on the 'Idea of the Man-God'); and O. Gruppe, Griechische
Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte, ii. pp. 1503 ff. Professor Ad.
Deissmann's estimate of the antagonism of the early Christians to the
Deification of the Caesars should likewise be read (Light from the
Ancient East, 1910, pp. 344 ff.).
3+ For Caesar's policy and desires in the direction of Apotheosis see
Kornemann, op. cit., p. 95 ; Teney Frank, Roman Imperialism, p. 342.
Mr. Warde-Fowler, Roman Ideas of Deity, p. 113, seems to consider
Caesar to have been indifferent to the idea of his own Deification.
35 The idea of the King-God developing as it did out of that of the
Man-God, long proved equally repugnant to writers of the most diver-
gent opinions—all of them apt, till lately, to stigmatise the cult of the
ruler as gross idolatry or degrading servility, or else to sneer at it in
the spirit of Seneca's spiteful satire on the Deification of Claudius.
Christian writers naturally inherited the antipathy to the Imperial
cult felt by the early Christians, who in this were probably also
influenced by the monotheism of the Jews (see Ad. Deissmann, loc.
cit.), while writers of a freethinking stamp condemned it along with
every other form of ritual. Of late years, however, a growing know-
ledge of the religious and political spirit which gave rise to the cult
has issued in a saner view. 'Time,' says Professor Wight Duff, in
a fine page on Augustan Imperialism, 'placed Augustus among the
greater public divinities, and Caesar-worship attained a universality
which prepared a way for the ultimate predominance of Christianity'
(Literary History of Rome, p. 525). Mr. Warde-Fowler, who owns
that Emperor-worship, as equivalent to 'worship of a man,' was at one
time abhorrent to him, handles the subject with sympathy and toler-
ance, and goes so far as to admit that 'its contribution to the idea of
deity was wholesome rather than the contrary' (Roman Ideas of Deity,
pp. 123 ff.).
Dr. Farnell (art. 'Greek Religion' in E.R.E.) says, in
alluding to the deification of great men generally, that 'for better, for
worse, it was a momentous fact belonging to the higher history of
European religion; for it familiarised the Graeco-Roman world with
the idea of the incarnation of the Man-God.' Professor G. Murray like-
wise, while condemning with characteristic vehemence the 'worship
of the Man-God with its diseased atmosphere of megalomania and
blood-lust,' in his discussion of Hellenistic deification points to the
1
NOTES
243
inspiring character of the 'potential divinity of man' (Four Stages of
Greek Religion, pp. 82, 139). Finally, two American historians,
Professor Scott Fergusson in his Greek Imperialism (1913) and
Professor Teney Frank in his Roman Imperialism (1914), show a far-
seeing appreciation of the aims and motives which were at the root
of both Hellenistic and Roman Apotheosis. The Hellenistic cult of
the ruler is treated by J. Kaerst in an Appendix to vol. ii. pt. i. (1909)
of Das Hellenistische Zeitalter, p. 374.
36 For the derivation of the Imperial Apotheosis from the Hellen-
istic cult of the ruler, and for the influence upon the Imperial cult of
the form of monarchy introduced by Alexander, see J. Kaerst, Studien
zur Entwickelung und theoretischen Begründung der Monarchie im
Altertum, 1898, ch. v. pp. 80-102 ('das römische Kaisertum'); p. 90
for the Augustan Apotheosis.
37 See Seneca, Epist., 108, 34.
38 Cicero, letter to Atticus, xii. 36.
39 At the end of the De Republica.
40 Plutarch, Vita Flaminini, ch. xvi.
41 Anthologia Palatina, ix. 402 (epigram attributed to the Emperor
Hadrian).
42 Letter to Atticus, v. 21. Cf. the passage in the famous letter to
his brother Quintus (ad Quint. fratr., i. 1. 26) written ten years earlier.
43 Cicero, Verres, ii. 21, § 52 and passim.
44 C.I.G., 2927, 2369, etc.; Boissier, Religion Romaine, i. p. 121.
4ō On the triumphator, see Eisler, Weltenmantel und Himmelzelt,
p. 40; cf. J. G. Frazer, Early History of the Kingship, 1906, pp.
198 ff.
46 On the chariot of the triumphator=the chariot of Sol, see
p. 168.
47
J. M. Cornford, in From Religion to Philosophy, p. 162.
48 Cumont, L'aigle funéraire, p. 157.
49 Furtwängler, Antike Gemmen, iii. p. 324, fig. 168.
50 Indian sardonyx, worked in very low relief, as a rule in three
layers and sometimes five. The most general view is that it com-
244
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
memorated the departure of Germanicus in A.D. 17 on the Parthian
expedition. The figure facing Tiberius is explained as Germanicus
between his mother Antonia (for whom the figure appears too young;
it is more probably an allegory) and his wife Vipsania Agrippina with
the boy Caligula. The group on the right is interpreted as Drusus
Minor, son of Tiberius, with his wife Drusilla. Of the deified princes
to either side of Augustus, the one riding the winged horse is probably
Marcellus, the other Drusus Major. Tiberius holds the augural
staff to indicate that the campaign is entered upon under his auspicia
(Stuart-Jones, Companion, p. 426; Strong, Roman Sculpture, pp. 89 ff.).
51 Cumont, op. cit., p. 152.
52 Some editions prefer to read bibet; but does the present bibit really
strike a false note, as maintained by Mr. Warde-Fowler (Roman Ideas
of Deity, pp. 128, 152, etc.)?
53 J. Kaerst (Studien, p. 88) seems, however, to date the worship of
the living Emperor from Augustus, and to consider that Augustus
was actually worshipped under the name of different gods (cf. Gardt-
hausen, Augustus, i. p. 885 and ii. pp. 517 ff.).
54 Temple of Ancyra, C.I.G., 4039. Temples at Pergamon and
Nicomedia, Dio Cassius, 51, 20. For the ara in Lyons, see C.I.L.,
xiii. p. 227. On the cult of Roma and Augustus, see Kornemann,
op. cit., p. 99, and the numerous examples given by Marquardt,
Staatsverwaltung, iii. p. 464, note 4. On the cult of Rome before
the Empire, see Warde-Fowler, op. cit., pp. 129 ff. The oldest instances
seem to be at Smyrna as far back as 195 B.C. (Porcio consule,
Tac., Ann., iv. 56).
55 On this episode, see the comments of Warde-Fowler, Roman
Ideas of Deity (1914), p. 87.
50 Arabian sardonyx. The scene is generally referred to the
Pannonian triumph of Tiberius in A.D. 12, when, before ascending the
Capitol, he alighted from his car to do homage to Augustus. To the
right of the car stands Germanicus, the adopted son of Tiberius, who
shared in the glory of the Pannonian exploit. (Suetonius, Tiberius, 20;
Gardthausen, Augustus, i. p. 1228; Stuart-Jones, Companion, p. 424 ;
Strong, Roman Sculpture, pp. 88 ff.)
57 The frequent use of this emblem is clear evidence of the
astrological leanings of the Emperor, who, likę Tiberius, was versed
in the occult sciences. The Capricorn appears on the reverse of
the gold coins of Augustus inscribed signis receptis; see Gabrici,
'Numismatica di Agusto,' in Milani's Studi e Materiali, ii. p. 151, fig. 1.
NOTES
245
56 Roman Sculpture, plates xxvii., xxviii.; R.R., 1. 93-96.
59 Warde-Fowler, op. cit., p. 143.
00 See on all this P. Wendland, op. cit., pp. 142 ff.
61 See Wight Duff, Literary History of Rome, pp. 524 ff.
62 E.g. Warde-Fowler, op. cit., p. 136, asserts that in Rome
'worship had not . . . the advantage of being combined with a
genuine feeling for the plastic arts.' On what evidence does the same
writer tell us of the sculptures of the Ara Pacis and the corslet of the
Prima Porta Augustus, that these would not 'have been religiously
impressive for the beholders, as well as interesting to the sculptor and
his employer' (op. cit., p. 138)?
63 A curious example of the influence of the stiff Roman grave
portraiture on Imperial art may be seen in the large cameo let into
a book now in the Library at Trèves (Furtwängler, Antike Gemmen,
iii. p. 323, fig. 167), showing an Emperor of the first century—possibly
Claudius-and his family, facing frontally and tightly packed side by
side as on a tombstone of the Via Appia.
64 In the archaic period the pediment was left open, but figures or
groups adorned its upper cornice. An interesting series of figures of
warriors now scattered between Berlin and Copenhagen survives
from an early temple at Cervetri. It is interesting to note that the
central warrior, who stood over the apex, is placed with the torso.
turned frontally, though his legs appear in profile in order doubtless
to unite him, partially at least, with the rest of the composition. For
the figures, see Arndt, Glyptothek Ny Carlsberg, plate 171; and
Wiegand, 'Terres Cuites Architecturales d'Italie' (in Arndt's text).
66 The terra-cottas from the Faliscan temples are in the museum of
the Villa Giulia. See my article in Journal of Roman Studies, 1915, V.
66 L. Milani, Museo Archeologico di Firenze, 1912, plate c.
07 Better seen in Roman Sculpture, plate xliii. (after Petersen's
Ara Pacis), where the modern pieces of the sides are omitted.
68 Roman Sculpture, plate x., fragment on right.
69 W. Amelung, Führer durch die Antiken in Florenz, No. 99;
Alinari photo, 1163.
70 Burlington Magazine, June, 1914.
246
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
71 Lucan's exhortation to Nero to fix his seat hereafter in the
precise middle of the sky, assuring him that otherwise he will upset the
equilibrium of the heavens (de Bello Civili, i. 45 ff.), reads now like
fulsome flattery, but as a fact it probably reflects current belief as to
the place assigned to the deified Emperor in the cosmic system.
Likewise when Gaius and Nero were adored in the East as the New
Sun, or when Nero is said to have introduced the radiate crown,
derived through Hellenistic monarchs from Eastern sun-worship, they
were but developing the religious policy of Augustus, who, if not yet
exactly identified with the Sun, was, as Wendland (op. cit., p. 147) points
out, considered as endowed with parallel power (see what has been
said above of the scene of Apotheosis on the Vatican altar of the Lares);
Horace, Odes, iv. 5, 5: Lucem redde tuae, dux bone, patriae, etc.;
cf. i. 12, 46. Cumont, in commenting on the passage of Lucan cited
above, and on the similar praises bestowed by Statius on Domitian,
denies that they are mere flatteries: 'Non; les rites et les représenta-
tions de l'apothéose prouvent que les louanges des poètes expriment
très exactement les croyances du culte Impérial. C'est moins de leur
part de l'adulation que de l'adoration (L'aigle funéraire, p. 156).
72 Eckhel, D.N., vi. 278.
73 The identification is, I believe, due to Mr. H. Stuart-Jones; for
the relief, see his Companion, plate 1. It was published by E. Michon
in Monuments et Mémoires, 1909 (xvii.), plate xvii.
74 Roman Sculpture, plate lxiii.
75 Domascewski in the Austrian Jahreshefte, 1899 (ii.), pp. 173 ff.
See my Roman Sculpture, pp. 214 ff. For monotheism and Jupiter
in Vergil, see F. Postma, p. 153 of the monograph cited, n. 11.
76 Roman Sculpture, plate lxxi. 2. On coins, Sabina, and likewise
Faustina, are represented borne upward by the eagle or by the peacock,
against a stellated mantle which represents the starry firmament, and
also perhaps carries with it the notion of a vehicle of Apotheosis
(see Lecture II., p. 177). The two types of coins are shown on
plate ix. 2.
77 Roman Sculpture, plate lxxiii. and p. 216.
78 The identification of the winged figure as the Aion is due to
L. Deubner, Röm. Mitth., 1912 (xxvii.). The Aion carries in his hand
the orb or globe encircled by the zodiac, and with the snake as
symbol of Eternity.
79 Roman Sculpture, plate lxxxix.
NOTES
247
80 Cf. F. Cumont, L'aigle funéraire, p. 155.
81 This important document has been published by Kornemann,
Klio, 1907 (vii.), pp. 278 ff. (Papyrus Gissensis 20); the opening lines
are specially interesting in the present context.
ἅρματι λευκοπώλῳ ἄρτι Τραιαν[ῶι]
συνανατείλας ἥκω σοι, ὦ δήμ[ε],
το
οὐκ ἄγνωστος Φοῖβος Θεὸς ἄνα-
κτα καινὸν ᾿Αδριανὸν ἀγγέλλ[ων]
ὧι πάντα δοῦλα[δὶ] ἀρετὴν κ[αὶ]
πατρὸς τύχην θεοῦ χαίροντες.
As Kornemann (p. 280) suggests, it is evident that Apollo has mounted
to heaven with Trajan on the Sun chariot, and then himself announces
Hadrian's accession to the throne. The idea is the same as on the
Vatican altar with the Apotheosis of Caesar.
82 Roman Sculpture, plate xciv. and p. 308; the identification is
Studniczka's. The same stone guarded by the Imperial eagle appears
enthroned in solitary splendour on a chariot guided by a star as
solar emblem on the reverse of coins of Elagabalus (Cohen, iv.
p. 240).
83 Riegl, Spätrömische Kunstindustrie, p. 81, with illustration ;
Thédenat, le Forum Romain, pp. 262 ff.; Huelsen, The Roman
Forum, 2nd ed., pp. 98 ff. It is also illustrated by von Sybel, Christ-
liche Antike, ii. fig. 20. For the interpretation of the relief as a
sacrifice in honour of Mithras, see Frothingham in A.J.A., 1914,
pp. 146 ff.
84 See Cumont, Mysteries of Mithras, pp. 209 ff.
85
Reproduced by Koepp, Die Römer in Deutschland, 2nd ed., 1912,
p. 141, fig. 112.
86 Venturi, Storia dell' Arte Italiana, i. p. 54.
87 Roman Sculpture, pp. 151 ff. and plate xlv. I now find a
further confirmation for the Domitianic date from the affinities of
style between these reliefs and the friezes of Domitian's Forum of
Minerva; it is a point I discuss in my new book on Art in the
Roman Empire. Huelsen's idea (Roman Forum, 2nd ed., p. 104),
that these reliefs were once introduced into the balustrade of the
rostra, now seems to me untenable. Dr. Carter has shown that the
background is continuous from one relief to the other, and this fact,
together with the arrangement of the animals on the front face-
!
248
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
placed as if moving towards one another and towards the same
point-tends to show that they were simply placed on each side of
the entrance to some sacred enclosure (A.J.A., 1910, xiv. pp. 310 ff.).
I should like to suggest tentatively that this was the space surrounding
the equestrian statue of Domitian near to the site of which the reliefs.
were found. The mutilation of the head of the Emperor is one point
in favour of this view; and the background of notable buildings seems
in the spirit of Statius, Silvae, i. pp. 22 ff. (for Carter's view see op. cit.,
p. 317).
* O. Wulff, Altchristliche und Byzantinische Kunst, i. pp. 160 ff.
89 This is a characteristic of later Roman architecture which has
been often dwelt upon. See H. Stuart-Jones in Quarterly Review for
January 1905, pp. 136 ff.
90 For this class of sarcophagi, see Garrucci, vol. v., plate 339;
example in Verona, ibid., plate 333, I; von Sybel, ii. p. 155; Kraus,
Geschichte der Christlichen Kunst, i. p. 112.
91 On the other hand, to represent all Christian art, and much
Christian literature and ritual as a mere development and trans-
formation of the antique, is an old view which many are now com-
bating (cf. p. 10 of my Preface to Della Seta's Religion and Art).
Rather must we admit with von Sybel (Christliche Antike, i. pp. 10,
181, and often), that within the sphere of the later antique were two
independent developments, the heathen and the Christian; but there
were points of contact as in the present instance.
92 See the criticism of S. Reinach in Revue Archéologique, 1907, ii.
p. 184 n.
This leaf of a diptych or book cover is variously assigned
to Theodosius and to Constantine, and the balance of opinion seems,
on the whole, in favour of the first attribution. See O. M. Dalton,
op. cit., p. 199 and note 1. incline to retain Strzygowski's view that
the ivory represents Constantine (cf. Roman Sculpture, p. 345 and
plate cv.), though he does not, it seems, necessarily think the date
Constantinian (B.Z., 1913, p. 281).
93 Ch. Diehl, Manuel d'art Byzantin, fig. 307; Dalton, Byzantine
Art and Archaeology, p. 224 and fig. 138; Vöge, Berlin Catalogue,
i. No. 7.
94 Ibid., fig. 308; Dalton, p. 227 and fig. 139; Molinier, Ivoires,
p. 197.
95 Kubitschek, Ausgewählte Römische Medaillons in Wien, 1909,
plate xxi., from which plate xiii. I is reproduced.
NOTES
249
96 Reproduced here from a photograph kindly sent to me by
M. Naville. The disc was found in the Arve, near Geneva, in 1721.
No. 4 of the list given by Strzygowski in the article cited note 103.
For the style see F. de Mély in Monuments Piot, 1900, vii. p. 74.
97 The long series of ivory diptychs affords splendid examples of the
new principles of frontal composition, and should be carefully studied.
The fine plates of Molinier's great work make the task easy, and
von Sybel in his Christliche Antike, ii. pp. 232 ff., has given a valuable
classification based on the dated examples. I may rapidly mention
here a few of the more remarkable pieces in the hope of attracting
students to these exquisite little monuments of later Imperial art
which are so consistently neglected by classical archaeologists and
left to enrich the repertory of early Christian art. I have already
mentioned the diptych of the consul Probus with the figure of the
Emperor Honorius. The one leaf of the diptych of Felix of the year
428 in the Cabinet des Médailles shows the consul standing frontally
between the looped-up curtains of a baldachino with the sceptre
in his left hand and his right upon his breast (von Sybel, ii. p. 432 and
fig. 67). The diptych of the young consul Orestes of the year 530 in
the Victoria and Albert Museum is a good example of the later style
of ornate diptych (O. M. Dalton, op. cit., fig. 120). The consul is seated
on an elaborate chair between the figures of Roma and Constantinople;
in his right hand is the mappa, the napkin to be thrown as a signal for
the commencement of the games in the open space below are
servants with sacks of money for distributing the consular largesse.
In the spaces above the inscriptions are medallion portraits of the
reigning Emperor and Empress. A lovely ivory at Monza (R.R.,
iii. 62) shows on its left-hand leaf the portrait group of a Roman
lady and her young son, and on the opposite leaf the portrait of her
husband in the military accoutrement which betokens a soldier of
rank (Dalton, op. cit., p. 194; Molinier, Ivoires, plate ii.). The per-
sonages have been called Stilicho, Serena and their son Eucherius,
and Galla Placidia, Valentinian and Theodosius II., but none of these
identifications are in the least certain. (Cf. Delbrueck, 'Porträts
Byzantinischer Kaiserinnen,' in Röm. Mitth., 1913 (xxviii.), p. 335.)
The massive composition of a diptych at Halberstadt suggests monu-
mental sculpture rather than the delicate technique of ivory in the
centre stands a consul with a high official on either side of him; on
an upper frieze the Emperor and his son are seen enthroned between
Roma and Constantinople, each with the solar nimbus; this group of
four, who are shown seated with their feet on a bench, is flanked by
an Imperial guardsman at either side(R.R., ii. 65; von Sybel, ii. fig. 68;
250
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
Dalton, fig. 118, consular group only). Good examples of diptychs
are given by Venturi, Storia dell' arte Italiana, vol. i.; a number are
reproduced under various Museums in Reinach's Répertoire; see also
art. 'Diptychon' in Saglio's Dict., and Hans Graeven's monograph
'Heidnische Diptychen' in Röm. Mitth., 1913 (xxviii.).
98 I see absolutely no reason for following Mr. Wace in dating these
reliefs in the epoch of Constantine (J.H.S., 1909, p. 64). On the
contrary, the adoption of the symmetric full-face position for all
the personages of the Imperial group points decisively, I think, to a
later date, and generally the style is later than that of the Diocleti-
anic reliefs on either the arch of Constantine or the arch of Galerius
at Saloniki. See O. Wulff, op. cit., p. 166; from Wulff's plate the
composition seems to me more impressive than I had supposed.
99 Dalton, p. 569 and fig. 356; see p. 10, No. 5, of the article by
Strzygowski and Pokrowski cited in note 103.
100 These discs are illustrated by O. Dalton, Byzantine Art and
Archaeology, figs. 57-62, 358.
101 Archaeologia, 1879 (45), plate xix. A fine example of the frontal
chariot occurs on a fragment of silk preserved at Cluny (Diehl,
p. 259, fig. 133).
102 Dalton, fig. 34, who dates the relief at about the eleventh century.
I should like to note here, in view of making it better known, the
Ascension of Alexander in a cage drawn by griffins which appears in
one of a series of fourteenth-century Burgundian tapestries with the
story of Alexander and Bucephalus, in the possession of Prince
Doria (Alinari photos, 29737-29742).
103 Plate i. 1, after the fine coloured plate given by Strzygowski and
Pokrowski, 'der Silberschild aus Kertsch,' in Matériaux pour servir à
Archéologie Russe, 1892 (with a list of the nine extant silver discs of
this class). See also O. M. Dalton, Byzantine Art and Archaeology,
p. 569; Ch. Diehl, Manuel, p. 290, fig. 150. A good example of the
Adventus Augusti, the Emperor returning or arriving as triumphator,
familiar from many coins and reliefs, is in the Terme Museum
(Paribeni, Guida, No. 103). A similar composition (but with the
figure of the officer omitted) to that of the Kertsch disc occurs on a
gold medallion of Justinian stolen from the Bibliothèque Nationale in
1831, but of which a cast exists in the British Museum. See Diehl,
op. cit., p. 292; Cat. of Byzantine Coins in B.M., vol. i., frontispiece;
Strzygowski and Pokrowski, p. 34; the medallion is illustrated here
from a cast kindly supplied by Mr. G. F. Hill (plate i. 2).
NOTES
251
104 He wears the pearl diadem with jewelled clasp, as we see it in
the statue of Barletta now claimed as a portrait of Valentinian, and
the pendant pearl-drops. His tunic is embroidered with the clavi.
III
LECTURE II
Bibliography.—The literature which deals with the different aspects
of ancient beliefs in the After Life is immense, and it is doubtless only
very partial justice that I have been able to do to it in the bibliography
upon which these lectures are constructed. Works that throw light
on special points will be mentioned in connection with these, but a
few general considerations may be of assistance to students.
(1) General. The books dealing with the magical origins of art
and of the gravestone and with sepulchral imagery are legion. The
early chapters of S. Reinach's Orpheus will be found invaluable.
See also Hubert and Mauss's article 'Magia' in Saglio's Dictionary.
Della Seta in his Religion and Art deals comprehensively with the
subject, not only as regards the sepulchral art of Greece and Rome,
but that of all the ancient races. It will be seen in the sequel that I
take a less exalted view than his of the art of Attica, of its mythological
tendencies and spiritual values. This is said that students who read
his book, as I earnestly recommend them to do, may not be confused
afterwards by my remarks.
(2) Greek.—For the sepulchral monuments of the Greek period
nothing has yet been written to surpass in value and interest Furt-
wängler's masterly introduction to his description of the Sabouroff
Collection (Adolf Furtwängler, La Collection Sabouroff, Berlin, 1886).
Here students will find an exhaustive discussion of the meaning and
origin of the gravestone as dos of the soul; of the cult of the dead
and the cult of the hero to which it gives rise; of the bearing of both
upon the development of the later ritual of the gods. In this preface,
written nearly thirty-six years ago, Furtwängler put forward ideas on
which researchers in that line have worked ever since. At the same
time his theory, based on Fustel de Coulanges' La Cité Antique, ch. i.,
that 'among the Greeks as elsewhere the cult of the souls contains a
very primitive fund of beliefs anterior to any adoration of the gods,'
possibly requires modifying, or should at least be held in suspense.
The question is debatable; for a lucid and recent résumé of opinions
see R. Dussaud, Introduction à l'Histoire des Religions, 1914, pp.
252
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
197-214. Conze's Attische Grabreliefs (3 vols., Berlin, 1893-1906)
forms the indispensable basis for all study of Attic sepulchral art.
A selection of Greek sepulchral monuments is conveniently grouped
together in Professor Percy Gardner's Sculptured Tombs of Hellas,
which has the one drawback, however, that it was written as far back
as 1896, and that much has been discovered since. M. Collignon's
Statues Funéraires de la Grèce, though the title leads us to suppose it
restricted to statuary, fortunately contains much also about sepulchral
reliefs. For Greek ideas as to death Rohde's great book Psyche,
now in its fourth edition (1909), and Gruppe's Griechische Mythologie
u. Religionsgeschichte, must be continually consulted, and read
through by those who have the time; also Gruppe's various articles
in Roscher's Lexikon, as well as in Bursian's Jahresbericht.
(3) Roman.-For Roman monuments there exists as yet no com-
prehensive history or handbook. Altmann's Die römischen Grab-
altäre der Kaiserzeit deals with the important class of grave altars;
C. Robert's huge Corpus of antique sarcophagi (Die antiken Sarko-
phagreliefs, 3 vols.; still in continuation) must be continually referred
to for Roman art; but I am mainly concerned with stelae, and only
refer incidentally to altars or sarcophagi. A. de Marchi, Culto
Privato de Romani, two volumes full of curious information for the
cult of the dead; V. Macchioro's 'Il Simbolismo nelle figurazioni
sepolcrali Romane' in Società Reale di Napoli, Memorie della Reale
Accademia di Archeologia, vol. i. (1911); the pages dealing with
the cult of the dead in Warde-Fowler's Religious Experience of the
Roman People, and F. Cumont's Les Idées du Paganisme Romain
sur la Vie Future, 1910, are of the first importance. So are the
following: (1) For Roman tombstones with scenes from trades:
H. Gummerus, 'Darstellungen aus dem Handwerk auf römischen
Grab und Votivsteinen,' in Arch. Jahrbuch (1913), pp. 63-126. (2)
For the tombstones in the provinces (a) Br. Schröder, 'Studien zu
den Grabmälern der Römischen Kaiserzeit'; (6) R. Weynand, ‘Form
und Dekoration der römischen Grabsteine des Rheinlandes'-these
two in Bonner Jahrbücher for 1902; (c) A. Furtwängler, 'Das
Tropaion von Adamklissi und Provinzialrömische Kunst,' in
Abhandlungen der K. Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften,
1903, with full references to previous literature on the subject. The
articles 'Funus' by Ed. Cuq and 'Sepulcrum' by E. Cahen in
Saglio's Dictionary are admirable compilations of the Greek and
Roman material. Cumont's Religions Orientales dans le Paganisme
Romain, his smaller book on Mithras (both translated into English,
the first with a suggestive introduction by Professor Grant Shower-
man), and his Astrology and Religion among the Greeks and Romans,
NOTES
253
should likewise be consulted for the After Life beliefs of the ancient
world.
1 A distinction should be drawn between ghost and revenant; or
rather, if the revenant='ghost,' then 'spirit' should be reserved for
the excarnate soul. The fear of the ghost is a subject that has
been treated many times, see especially J. G. Frazer, The Belief
in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, 1913 (full of curious
information from all parts of the world); J. C. Lawson, Modern Greek
Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion (1910), deals fully with fear of the
ghost in ancient and in modern Greece. For the 'mischievous freedom
of the ghosts,' see Warde-Fowler, Religious Experience, p. 85. The
literature on the subject is almost interminable. Gruppe, op. cit., ii.
pp. 75 ff., is a valuable introduction. For the salutary effects of the
fear of the ghost in historic Greece, see Farnell, Higher Aspects of
Greek Religion (1912), pp. 88 ff.; cf. ibid., p. 54.
2 The gesture is often seen on sarcophagi-for instance, on a
sarcophagus at Ostia (Castello) with the Death of Meleager (Vaglieri,
Guida, p. 149, No. 4). The soul can leave the body through the
mouth (Crusius, Untersuchungen zu Herondas, pp. 53 ff.), as on the
fragment of an early Attic vase to which I shall return later (p. 145),
where it is received by a Ker or winged daemon.
3 See A. J. Evans, 'Tree and Pillar Worship,' J.H.S., 1901, p. 119.
On the tombstone as dos or seat of the soul, see also Weicker, Seelen-
vogel, p. 9; Furtwängler, Coll. Sabouroff, Preface. For theories
concerning the origin of the sepulchral stele, see also Deonna,
L'archéologie, sa valeur, ses méthodes, i. p. 208.
4 See J. G. Frazer, Spirits of the Corn and the Wild, Preface, p. vi :
'This refusal of the savage to recognise in death a final cessation of the
vital progress, this unquestioning faith in the unbroken continuity of
all life, is a fact that has not yet received the attention which it seems
to merit from enquirers into the constitution of the human mind as
well as into the history of religion'; and Furtwängler, Coll. Sabouroff,
loc. cit. 'La question de savoir s'il y a ou non une existence après la
mort n'a été soulevée que par la philosophie des peuples civilisés.
L'ancienne croyance, commune à tous les peuples, même aux plus
grossiers, ne connaît que l'être au delà du tombeau; elle sait que la
mort n'est pas anéanti, qu'il continue à vivre sous telle ou telle forme
à l'état d'âme et qu'il conserve comme génie une puissance qui n'est en-
fermée dans aucune limite visible, ce qui lui permet d'exercer son
influence sur les vivants.'
254
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
5 So great was the fear of a return of the dead that sometimes, in
the case of inhumation, to make matters doubly sure, the corpse was
huddled together and tied up examples of this practice occur in
almost every Italian prehistoric museum, from the early cemeteries of
Italy, in what is called the cadavero ranicchiato; few anthropologists
believe now in the once captivating theory that the huddled-up pose
was intended to imitate the human foetus, and that the body was thus
placed in expectation of re-birth. Belief in the necessity of destroying
beyond recall what we dread and consequently hate, underlies not
only a whole series of beliefs and superstitions connected with the
dead, but also a number of practices, such as the burning of witches
and the auto-da-fé, which, springing from what were conceived by
primitive man as necessities, afterwards, when their original intention
had been forgotten, survive as apparently senseless and cruel prac-
tices. In addition to the fear of the revenant, we have, in studying
the origin of burial customs, to reckon with the belief which makes its
appearance very early, that unless the body be entirely destroyed the
dead cannot find their rest. Hence perhaps originates the custom of
cremation and other attempts, such as despoiling the dead body of its
flesh and leaving the bones painted red, which has been observed in
certain Neolithic burial caves of North Italy; the obvious breaking of
the bones in other cases, e.g. the cadavero ranicchiato already alluded
to, to do away finally with the flesh. Cf. J. C. Lawson, Modern Greek
Folklore (especially pp. 412 ff.), and Warde-Fowler, Religious Experi-
ence of the Roman People, p. 91.
6 Found in 1903 by the Italian excavators about two miles from
Phaistos, in a tomb of a type otherwise unknown in Crete, but familiar
in Lycia, ¿.e. a walled square chamber with a door (cf. the Harpy
Tomb), R. Paribeni, Monumenti Antichi dei Lincei, 1908 (xix.), pp. 1-86
(plate xv. 1, 2 (6) after his plates). See also F. von Duhn, ‘der Sarko-
phag aus Hagia Triada,' in Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, xii. (1909),
pp. 161-85; Karo, ibid., vii. (1904), p. 130, n. 1.; Lagrange, La Crête
Ancienne (Paris, 1908), pp. 61-67, whose theories are discussed and
disputed by A. J. Reinach, R.A., xii. (1908), ii. pp. 278-88; E. Petersen,
Der Kretische Bildersarg,' in Jahrb., 1909, p. 162; R. Dussaud,
Les Civilisations Pre-Helléniques dans le bassin de la Mer Egée, 2nd
ed., 1914, pp. 402 ff.; J. E. Harrison, Themis, 1912, pp. 158 ff.;
A. J. Reinach, art. 'Themis,' in Rev. Hist. Rel., 1914, lxix. 3, p. 342.
The sarcophagus which is in the Museum of Candia is dated at about
1400-1200 B.C. (see C. H. H. Hawes, Crete the Forerunner of Greece, pp.
86 ff.). It is a small chest or λápvaέ of a type commonly found in
Crete, see A. J. Evans, Prehistoric Tombs of Knossos, 1906, pp. 9 ff. :
NOTES
255
'They are narrow and short, but apparently the body was laid in them
with the knees drawn up' (cf. the cadavero ranicchiato above, note 5).
For the symbolism of the cult scene on the sarcophagus, as also for
the symbolic shape given to certain Minoan tombs, see A. J. Evans
in Archaeologia, 1914, pp. 54 ff.
7 This interpretation of the scene follows in the main Petersen,
op. cit.
• Professor Boni's own report is, I believe, not yet published. For
the mundus patet, see Warde-Fowler, Roman Festivals, pp. 211 ff.; the
same in J.R.S., 1912, i. p. 25, and J. E. Harrison in Essays and Studies
presented to William Ridgeway, 1913, pp. 143 ff.
9 Furtwängler, Pref. Coll. Sabouroff: 'On a attribué aussi à l'âme
la connaissance de l'avenir et recherché les moyens de l'interroger
sur cet avenir.'
10 First and last stanzas of a poem by Edmond Holmes, in The
Quest, vol. ii. (No 4, July 1911) pp. 762 f.
11 Berlin Cat. Sc., 883; Deonna, Les Apollons Archaïques, p. 17;
L. Curtius, Antike Herme, p. 18, figs. 12-14; cf. Pfuhl in Jahrb.,
1905 (xx.), p. 79.
12 For Tamuli and the Sicilian tombs of the giants cf. Pinza in
Monumenti Artichi, Lincei, xi. 1 (1901), and see Addenda.
13 Lechat, Sculpture Attique avant Phidias, p. 251; cf. Deonna,
op. cit., p. 17.
14 Collignon, Statues Funéraires, pp. 16 ff.
15 Deonna, op. cit., p. 34 and references.
16 On the Koûpos = the 'initiate youth,' see Gilbert Murray, Four
Stages of Greek Religion, pp. 42 ff. G. Lippold, Griechische Porträt-
statuen, 1912, takes a different view; while admitting (pp. 13-15) the
overwhelming number of sepulchral statues of κoûрo, he seems to
consider that all these were actually for the graves of young men,
and that old men were commemorated by draped statues, in support
of which he also quotes Tyrtaeus. The difficulty lies, as Lippold
himself admits, in the almost total absence of draped male statues
in the early archaic period.
17 On the short side with the winged chariot, cf. below, note 63.
For the soul-bird, see the exhaustive monograph by E. Weicker,
Seelenvogel, 1902.
256
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
18 The influence of modes of burial upon eschatological beliefs
has been well put by von Sybel, Christliche Antike, vol. ii. pp. 38 ff.,
'Jenseitsgedanken des Altertums.' It would seem as if the belief in
the resurrection of the flesh and the belief in the immortality of
the soul, which, though not mutually exclusive, represent radically
different conceptions of ultramundane survival, spring respectively
from the rite of inhumation which keeps in view a possible or even
an ascertained activity of the dead under ground, and from cremation
which by effectively destroying the body leaves the soul free to ascend
or reascend into the upper air. Mr. Lawson (op. cit., p. 489) remarks
of funeral methods in ancient and modern Greece 'that a preference
for cremation, considered as a means to the single religious end (i.e.
the destruction of the body), has been manifested'; and although in
his opinion inhumation equally aimed at destruction, there is no doubt
that it left a loophole for the introduction of the doctrine of a resur-
rected body. Probably cremation is in measure responsible for the
Orphic assertion that the body is the prison of the soul (oŵµa oîµa).
19 For the red colour as representing the aether, see Deubner,
Röm. Mitth., 1912 (xxvii.), pp. 11 ff.
20 The various modes of conveyance to heaven are enumerated by
A. Dietrich, Eine Mithras Liturgie, pp. 179 ff.
21 Cf. V. Macchioro, Simbolismo, p. 124.
22 This idea was held by E. P. Biardot among others, Terres
Cuites grecques funèbres dans leur rapport avec les mystères de
Bacchus, Paris, 1872, who, however, after the fashion of the time,
went on a false track of mythological interpretation in his desire to
see in every object some allusion to Dionysiac mysteries.
23 For the Mycenaean stelae from the shaftgraves, see literature
cited by E. v. Mercklin: Rennwagen bei den Griechen, pp. 7 ff.;
S. Reinach, R.R., ii. p. 316, 6; p. 317, 2; Perrot, vi. pp. 762 ff.;
Drerup, Omero, pp. 31, 205; P. Gardner, Sculptured Tombs of
Hellas, figs. 18, 19, 20.
24 Tree and Pillar Cult, loc. cit.
25 The best that has yet been said on these Spartan reliefs is by
Furtwängler, Coll. Sabouroff (text to plate i., example in Berlin). See
also M. N. Tod and A. J. B. Wace, Catalogue of the Sparta Museum,
pp. 102 ff., with references to recent literature; P. Gardner, Sculptured
Tombs, plate ii., pp. 76 ff.; Collignon, Statues Funéraires, pp. 71 ff.
Students are likewise recommended to read the earlier articles on
NOTES
257
these stelae by Milchöfer in Arch. Zeit., 1881, p. 294, and in the earlier
volumes of the Athenische Mittheilungen; also Furtwängler, Ath.
Mitth., 1882, vii. pp. 160 ff. For the 'banquet of the dead,' see
Deneken, art. 'Heros,' in Roscher's Lexikon ; and W. H. D. Rouse,
Greek Votive Offerings, pp. 3-36.
26 The snake is the dead man's 'spirit in another form,' as
P. Gardner puts it, op. cit., p. 82; it is what Professor Gilbert Murray
calls the 'old superhuman snake, who reappears so ubiquitously
throughout Greece, the regular symbol of the underworld powers,
especially the hero or dead ancestor' (Four Stages, p. 33).
27 Furtwängler, Coll. Sabouroff, text to plate i., where see references to
earlier literature, has pointed out that the cock, like the dog, was held
in Persian beliefs to ward off evil spirits. The cock, moreover, is
said to have been introduced from Persia; but this, as the Spartan
stelae, which cannot from their style be later than the seventh century,
show, must have been earlier than is generally supposed (Furtwängler).
For the apotropaic function of the cock, see Conze, Attische Grabreliefs,
i. p. 10.
The beautiful frieze of cocks and hens from a monument at
Xanthos (Brit. Mus. Sculpt. Cat., 82) is certainly apotropaic, it being
consistent with archaic custom to surround a monument, whether temple
or tomb, with a band of protective influences. For the symbolism of
animals see art. 'Animals' by N. W. Thomas in E.R.E.; O. Keller's
Thiere des Altertums, 1887-1912 (2 vols.); and Gruppe, op. cit., pp.
792 ff.
Below, note 57, and Lecture III. note 50.
28 The offering of eggs to the dead has a magical intention, since,
as Dr. Nilsson has pointed out (‘Das Ei im Totenkult der Alten,' in
Arch. für Religions wissenschaft, 1908 (xi.), pp. 544 ff.), the egg is an
apparently inanimate and inert substance which contains within itself
a potent principle of life, and that which has a special vital power
must perforce awake or enhance the vital powers of those to whom
it is offered. See also A. Dietrich, Mutter Erde, p. 103.
29 The pomegranate is likewise held by the enthroned female
figure; for its meaning on the Spartan reliefs, see Furtwängler, Coll.
Sabouroff, i., text to plate i.; Milchöfer in Ath. Mitth., ii. pp. 464,
469, etc. The pomegranate would be thought to contain in its
myriad seeds the principle of life, and, like the egg, became an easily
understood instrument of re-birth. It possibly appears in this sense
on the garments of the priests in Exodus, xxviii. : 'And upon the skirts
of it thou shalt make pomegranates of blue, and of purple, and of
scarlet.' Cf. E. Benzinger in the Jewish Cyclopaedia, art. 'Pomegran-
ates,' who remarks that throughout the East the pomegranate is the
R
258
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
general symbol of luxuriant fertility and life; see, however, the
various explanations of these pomegranates given by Flinders Petrie
in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible (art. 'Bell'), i. p. 269, and ibid.,
art. 'Art' ('lotus and bud in the shape of pomegranates, misnamed in
Palestine “bell and pomegranate"); Eisler, Weltenmantel, p. 25.
30 The interesting relief in Lansdowne House (R.R., ii. 519, 3), so
quaintly interpreted as 'Homer meditating on the Iliad,' comes
within the same category. It represents the dead man seated
leaning on a staff; under his seat, in the place often occupied by a
dog, appears the griffin as vehicle of the soul; opposite him is a tree
stem around which twines the snake-soul; on the top a bird and
branching foliage-all emblems of survival and resurrection. The
real provenance is unknown. The same influences pervade the stele,
said to come from Saloniki, in Constantinople, where the dead couple
seated are faced by the snake which feeds from a cup held by the
woman, while the man holds in his hand a burgeoning staff
(Mendel, Catalogue, No. 91).
31 J. A. K. Thomson, Studies in the Odyssey, Oxford, 1914, p. 93 :
'For the Homeric religion the world of the dead hardly exists any
more than it did for the religion of Israel.' The comparison does not
seem altogether exact (see below, note 85).
32 The Homeric conception of death, and its subsequent influence
on the Greek mind and on Greek art, have been admirably summed
up by von Sybel in the Introduction to his Christliche Antike, from
which my own summary in the text is largely paraphrased. . Cf. also
Della Seta, Religion and Art, pp. 179 ff. ('the funerary conception in
Homer'), and Carlo Pascal, Le Credenze d'Oltre Tomba, I. ch. xii.
('L'oltre tomba Omerico').
33 Stele of Xanthippos, from the monastery of Asomatos, near
Athens; generally interpreted as the stele of a shoemaker, unless
indeed it is a votive offering to Asclepios for the cure of a bad foot
(Brit. Mus. Sculpt. Cat., 628). The bird held by the girl is the symbol
of the soul.
34 Style of the Pheidian period.
35 Actors, e.g. the Attic stele at Lyme Park (R.R., ii. p. 520, 3;
first published by me in J.H.S., 1903, plate xiii.).
36 Cf. Della Seta, Religion and Art, p. 229. This is true, on the
whole; yet occasionally on an archaic stele (e.g. Villa Albani, of a
mother and her children = R.R., iii. 153; Helbig, No. 805) the
interest is as equally distributed between the dead and the living as
NOTES
259
on the stele of Hegeso. For an example in which the dead is almost
forgotten in the crowd of sorrowing relatives, see R.R., ii. pp. 402,
403, etc. Furtwängler's view, Coll. Sabouroff, Pref., that all the
persons represented on these stelae are either already dead or
thought of as dead, is, I think, untenable.
37 See Della Seta, op. cit., pp. 227-31.
38 Pp. 84, 184, and passim. Gardner's views largely represent
those of the scholars cited in note 25, who first interpreted the Spartan
reliefs.
39 Plate xvii. I, after Conze, Attische Grabreliefs, pl. i. (see text for
references to the older literature). A new drawing by Gilliéron
shows that only one horseman is depicted on the socle, not two as
formerly surmised (Loeschcke, Arch. Anz., 1913, p. 64, who explains
the picture as that of the 'heroised dead'). The dead man is
frequently represented as rider, e.g. on the socle of the stele No. 73 in
Coll. Barracco; the action of galloping suggests the further notion
of racing or riding as a noble pastime; for the discarded notion of a
scene of mortal racing see Ath. Mitth., iv. pp. 44, 291.
40 The socle in the archaic period seems to have been not un-
frequently reserved for symbolic scenes or objects; see, among others,
the archaic Ionian stele from the island of Symi in the Museum of
Constantinople, G. Mendel, Cat., 14, where the boar on the socle is
assuredly introduced as a prophylaxis; cf. Loeschcke in Jahrb.,
1887 (ii.), p. 223; and the Barracco stele mentioned in note 39.
41 For the meaning of both dog and horse in Greek sepulchral
imagery see Furtwängler, Ath. Mitth., vii. 163, and his introduction
to Coll. Sabouroff, p. 26; and cf. the articles of Milchöfer and Loeschcke,
quoted in note 25. P. Gardner (J.H.S., v. 131) suggested that a
mortal horse and dog were intended in these reliefs, but this view
is untenable. For the underworld dog see Erwin Rodhe, Psyche,
ed. 4, ii. p. 83 (dog of Hekate); i. p. 242, etc.; Gruppe, op. cit.,
pp. 803 ff. For the dog on the Chrysapha reliefs, Tod and Wace,
op. cit., No. 10; see below, note 56. On the stele of Eutamia the
guardian dog may likewise be intended to convey an allusion to the
lady's name. L. Malten's exhaustive article 'das Pferd im Toten-
glauben' in Arch. Jahrbuch, xxix. (pub. Jan. 30, 1915) only reaches me
as I revise these notes for press. Malten treats most fully of the
horse as dos of the soul and in the ritual of the dead, of the dead as
horseman, and also discusses the dog, the bird in its many forms, etc.,
in relation to the same cycle of beliefs. Malten postulates more
definitely than has been done so far, that dog, horse, snake, so often
:
260
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
accumulated on grave reliefs as underworld symbols, are originally
habitats or forms in which the soul appears (Erscheinungsformen).
42 Numerous examples in Gardner, op. cit., who, however, does not
go beyond seeing in these birds votive offerings or gifts. For the
birds souls which the dead hold in their hand on archaic grave
reliefs, especially in Cyprus, see Weicker, p. 26, note 5, who admits the
duality of representation 'as human being and as soul.'
=
43 The lion, to whom we shall often have occasion to return, occurs
at a very early date in Phrygia as guardian of the tomb, P. Gardner,
Sculptured Tombs, fig. 25, pp. 64 ff., and Sir William Ramsay in
J.H.S., 1888, 1889, and 1890. A good instance in Greece, at Corfu,
from the tomb of Arniadas (Gardner, p. 200); the classic examples are
the lion of Cnidus in the British Museum, which was set up on the tall
pyramidal structure on the promontory to commemorate the victory
of Conon in B.C. 394 (Gardner, pp. 225 ff., fig. 77), and the cele-
brated lion of Chaeronea still in situ. For other examples see
Gardner, pp. 130 ff.; Collignon, Statues Funéraires, figs. 147-53.
The three first all in Athens; of these, fig. 148 is especially interesting
as showing the Graeco-Oriental motive of a lion holding between his
paws the head of an animal which he has overcome (see p. 151). At
a later date aetiological stories (Lais, Leaina, etc.) were invented to
account for the lions on certain tombs, when their apotropaic and
other more primitive functions had been forgotten. For the lion and
its meanings and mythology, see, further, Gruppe, Handbuch, p. 380.
The basis for all study of the symbolism of the lion on graves remains
Usener's de carmine quodam Phocaico (in his Kleine Schriften, iii. 18).
See below, note 69.
44 The splendid stele of Dionysus of Kollytes, surmounted by a bull,
in the Athenian Ceramicus, is present to every one's mind, Collignon,
fig. 154, also fig. 155 and fig. 156 (bull in British Museum).
45 See A. Brückner and E. Pernice, 'Ein Attischer Friedhof' in
Ath. Mitth., xviii. pp. 73-191, and the more recent work of Frederick
Poulsen, Die Dipylongräber und die Dipylon Vasen, Leipzig, 1905;
for the vase placed on the actual grave, ibid., p. 19.
46 Saglio, sub. voc. funus, fig. 3342.
47 Plate xviii. after Fairbanks, White-figured Lekythoi in the Museum
of Boston, plate vi. As a class they can best be studied in E. Pottier's
Lécythes blancs attiques' (in Mélanges des Écoles Françaises
d'Athènes et de Rome), whose classification is important to the
NOTES
261
student of sepulchral ritual. Without seeking for examples outside
P. Gardner's ch. ii. (“Worship of the Dead'), I should like to show
briefly how closely the scenes on the lekythoi reflect the same beliefs
as to the other life that we note in connection with the most primitive
grave monuments. For instance, there can be no doubt, to my mind,
that in fig. 8 (lekythos from Eretria) the bunch of grapes which a lady
hands to a boy at her feet is symbolic of immortality. What Pro-
fessor Gardner calls a 'curious convention,' i.e. the introduction of the
actual dead into the scenes, is simply a proof of the belief that the
dead is immanent in his own stele (fig. 9). When the dead are repre-
sented as playing the lyre, it is probably in allusion to their ultra-
mundane pastimes (R.R., ii. 373, 4, at Athens, but it is noteworthy
that the stele comes from Acarnania, i.e. is non-Attic). Most
significant of all is fig. 11, from a red-figured vase in the British
Museum (Cat. Vases, iv. plate 4), where the pathetic central figure
standing on the grave is well explained by Gardner as the dead 'her-
self in spiritual presence.' As a rule, the scenes of the cult of the
tomb are confined to lekythoi. Besides the one mentioned in the text,
specially beautiful examples are Fairbanks, pp. 203 and 283, in Athens
and Paris respectively. On the whole question of votive offerings at
graves see Furtwängler in Coll. Sabouroff, ii. pp. 16 ff.
48 See R. W. Livingstone, The Greck Genius and its Meaning to us,
p. 86.
49 I use the words 'gave a new turn. . .' advisedly—as it is
impossible to look upon Plato as anything but a mystic by tempera-
ment, though his acceptance of the mystical faith of Pythagorean
Orphism may have been a later development in him. Neither
Orpheus nor the Orphic beliefs find any direct expression in Attic
sepulchral art, though Orpheus with his lute appeared, as a purely
mythological figure, in the Nekuia of Polygnotus at Delphi (Paus.
x. 30, 3, and cf. ix. 30, 3).
The allusions to the Orphism of Plato on p. 141 and the first part of
this note were written before I had become fully aware of the debated
question whether Plato was initiated into the Orphic doctrines by
Socrates-on this supposition himself an Orphic-or after his master's
death, and independently of the teaching of Socrates. (See F.
M. Cornford, From Religion to Philosophy, §§ 126-9, who in § 129,
'Plato's Conversion to Pythagoreanism,' seems to state the problem
very clearly; A. E. Taylor, Varia Socratica, 1911, passim; J. Burnet,
Greek Philosophy from Thales to Plato, 1914, pp. 151 ff.) Pisistratus
is credited with the introduction into Attica, alike of Homer and of
Orpheus; (for Orpheus see Gruppe, Handbuch, p. 1034; Roscher,
262
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
iii. 1196 and 1132; Burnet, op. cit., p. 32); of the two religious currents,
therefore, which are generally held to be antagonistic and irreconcil-
able. But their existence side by side, though Homer long kept the
upper hand, may account in measure for the persistence of resurrec-
tion and After Life symbolism noted on certain Attic stelae. Presum-
ably the Orphism so often scoffed at by Plato (e.g. Rep., p. 363, C,
etc.) is a popular form of Orphism full of naïve superstition, while the
Orphism for which, as some now have it, Socrates was put to death
(see A. E. Taylor, op. cit., pp. 30 ff.; J. Burnet, pp. 180 ff.) must have
represented a reformed faith introduced by the Pythagoreans of
Magna Grecia (cf. Adam, Religious Teachers of Greece, p. 191). All
hese are questions of vital importance for our sepulchral imagery.
50 See Lecture III. p. 197.
51 For the sentiment cp. also Pindar's second Olympian ode, 57 ff.,
131 ff., and especially the passage beginning ἔνθα μακάρων νάσος
Keavides. See J. Adam, Religious Teachers (Lecture vi., 'Pindar').
62 Wilamowitz, Bucolici Graeci, p. 94. Cf. Christ, Griechische Litera-
turgeschichte, ii. 1, 151, for the authorship.
63 Antike Denkmäler, iii. plates v.-vi.
54 C. M. Kaufmann, Jenseitshoffnungen, pp. 11 ff.
55 Colonna Ceccaldi, Monuments Antiques de Chypre, 1882, p. 71.
5 Antike Denkmäler, 1889, i. plates xliv.-xlvi. for the specimens in
Berlin, Vienna, and Smyrna, and the London fragment mentioned below
in note 57; for the example in Constantinople see Mon. dell'Inst. xi.
plate liv.; S. Reinach, Rev. des Études Grecques, 1895, p.161, enumerates
as many as eighteen of these sarcophagi scattered among various
museums. A complete list of examples known up to 1901 in A. Joubin,
de Clazomeniis Sarcophagis. For the splendid example in the British
Museum see A. S. Murray, Terracotta Sarcophagi Greek and Etruscan
in the British Museum, 1898, plates i.-vii.; for examples recently
acquired by Berlin, Ant. Denkmäler, ii. plates xxv.-xxvii. and plate
xxviii. My plate xix. is after Murray, op. cit. pl. iii. (detail of interior).
57 The young man with the two dogs occurs on a fragment in the
British Museum; see Ant. Denkm., i. 46, 3. For its interpretation see
Furtwängler in Arch. Anz. (1889), p. 147, who shows that the youth
between two dogs, signifying that he is their master, is in a sense a
symbol of Apotheosis. Furtwängler also recalls here that in Persian
belief dog and cock protect the soul from evil spirits on its way to the
underworld, cf. Loeschcke, 'Aus der Unterwelt' in Dorpater Programm,
NOTES
263
1888, and the criticism of his views by O. Immisch in Roscher,
art. ‘Kerberos,' pp. 1127 ff. I abide by the view expressed in the text
that the cocks are άñоτρоñаîa. Cf. Lecture III. p. 214. For this
function of the cock see especially Gruppe, op. cit., ii. pp. 794 ff.
68 See the epoch-making article 'Ker,' by Otto Crusius, in Roscher,
ii. pp. 1150 ff., and Weicker, Seelenvogel (1902), pp. 2-7, who discusses
the origin and nature of Keres, Erinyai, Sirens, etc., and shows their
cognate characters, and how the Ker, for example, from being a
daemon of the vampire class that sucks from the dead the blood
which is the principle of life, and so draws out his soul, can also be
identified with the soul (cf. O. Crusius, loc. cit., who conjectures that
the soul was thought to take on wings at the moment of separation
from the body). In this way the Ker, as Weicker points out, sheds
its character of death daemon to put on that of 'angel of death.'
59 Published by P. Hartwig, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1891, xii.
p. 340.
60 Bull. Corresp. Hellénique, 1893, p. 238, fig. 6; Weicker, op. cit.,
fig. 9, pp. 14 ff., who gives the interpretation followed above.
61 See above note 43; and below, note 69.
62 The Chariot of Monteleone, first published by Furtwängler in
Arndt Bruckmann, Denkmäler, pl. 586-587=(his Kleine Schriften, ii.
pp. 314 ff., pl. xxx.-xxxii.) Plate xv. 2 (a) from a recent photograph.
63 So also in Roman times; cf. the winged chariot that bears the
deified Caesar on the Vatican altar, above, p. 67.
64 E. Loewy in Mélanges Perrot, 1903 (‘Zum Harpyien Monument'),
pp. 223-225, shows that the pre-eminent position accorded to the
women of the family on the principal face of the monument points to
the matriarchal customs of Lycia where the leading position of
women, spoken of by Herodotus (i. 173) is borne out by the
inscriptions. Milchöfer had likewise regarded the scenes of the
Harpy Tomb as homage or worship rendered to the heroised dead
(Ath. Mitth., 1879, iv. p. 168; Arch. Zeit., 1881, xxxix. p. 53).
Gardner, Sculpt. Tombs, p. 72, regards the little kneeling female
figure below the Harpy on the west side to be that of the donor or
dedicator of the tomb. Winged figures similar to those of the
Harpy Tomb occur on the archaic fragments from Ephesus (Brit.
Mus. Sculpt. Cat., p. 37, Nos. 36-45), cf. Weicker, op. cit., p. 126,
and note I.
264
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
65 We are here confronted with a fresh proof of the close connection,
so often pointed out, between the inhabitants of Southern Gaul and
the Ionians. Marseilles had been colonised by the Phocaeans, and
other towns of the littoral may well have been of Ionian origin.
The resemblance between the 'Nativity of Aphrodite' and the
relief of a martyrdom at S. Trophime is noted by Dom Leclerq in
the admirable article 'Anges' in the Dictionnaire d'Archéologie
Chrétienne. Dom Leclerq likewise quotes the scene of the weighing
of the souls by the angels, but could not at the date of his article
have known of the Boston Throne.
66 The parallelism between the stooping angels and the stooping
nymphs is as remarkable as that between the nude kneeling souls in
the trays of the one balance, and the nude standing souls of the
other. On the other hand, the cloth held in front of the 'Aphrodite'
may have the same significance as that in which in Christian art the
angels receive and clothe the spirits as they pass to another world;
cf. the ivory in the British Museum with the martyrdom of S. Menas,
above whom hovers an angel spreading out his mantle to wrap about
the newborn soul of the saint (Cat. Early Christian Antiq., No. 297,
and plate iv.). It is in the same order of ideas that on the relief of
the Death of Our Lady in S. Maria in Trastevere (above the tomb of
Cardinal d'Alençon), the soul in the form of a swaddled babe is held
up by S. John.
67 Weicker, Seelenvogel, p. 96, fig. 25.
68 The art types of this tomb are discussed by Fr. Poulsen (der
Orient und die frühgriechische Kunst, 1912, pp. 150 ff., figs. 179-80),
who consider that they belong to the Phoenicio-Cypriote cycle.
See Poulsen, ibid., figs. 182, 183, for a fragment of relief from Isinda
in Lycia, now in Constantinople, with men, horses, and dogs moving
to the right. It resembles in style the Lycian processional reliefs in
the British Museum.
69 On the lion in Asia Minor, see Cumont, Oriental Religions,
p. 224, note 2, and references. A. B. Cook, Zeus, p. 238: 'Greeks
and Romans alike, therein agreeing with the Egyptians and the
nations of the nearer East, looked upon the lion as an animal full of
inward fire and essentially akin to the sun.' Both bull and lion, from
their tawny or reddish colour, were early connected with the idea of
fire (Gruppe, op. cit., ii. pp. 797 ff.); the sacrifice of bulls to the Sun
(= Fire) was of extreme antiquity, and, as Gruppe points out, at the
back of this ritual we doubtless have the conception of Fire or Sun
reabsorbing the particles (bulls) once detached from it. As the lion
NOTES
265
represents fire, the meaning of the lion devouring the bull is evident.
But the bull, as we shall see (Lecture III. p. 194), is something more than
the divine fiery particles to be reabsorbed; it also represents, I take
it, at least on the tombs, the earthly tenement within which the particles
are imprisoned; hence the bull must be devoured before the particles
can be liberated. I propose shortly to deal with the imagery of the
group of lion and bull at greater length than is possible here.
:
70 O. Benndorf, Das Heroon von Gjölbaschi-Trysa, Vienna, 1889.
I may briefly indicate those of the scenes that bear most im-
mediately on the present subjects :-(a) Over the entrance, outside:
four heads of winged lions, and between them in the centre the
mask of the Medusa, all apotropaic; beneath each pair of lions
the heroised couple facing. (b) Over the door, inside the row of
dwarf-like figures is again apotropaic; the dancing figures on each
side are emblematic of After Life joys, like the Bacchic figure on
Roman tombstones (pp. 199 ff.). (c) On the left of the doorway the
chariot of the Apotheosis (B. plate xxii.) here combined with the episode
of Bellerophon and the Chimaera. Behind the group of Apotheosis
is a long banquet scene with the Blessed reclining, etc.
Cf. Koepp,
Jahrb., 1907, p. 70, and H. Thiersch, ibid., p. 265, for the reinter-
pretation of certain subjects at Gjölbaschi which show the con-
tinued predominance of women in Lycia (cf. note 64 on Harpy
Tomb).
71 Brit. Mus. Sculpt. Cat., 950. Tomb of Payava. On each side of
the arched roof a chariot drawn by four galloping horses. Not the
horses but the chariot itself is winged. The two huge heads of lions
looking out frontally on either side are, of course, prophylactic; the
hunting scenes of the frieze carry the usual reference to After Life
pastimes; the reliefs at either end comprise in the two upper panels
guardian sphinxes, and in the lower panels portraits of the heroised
dead. The reliefs on the chamber of the tomb which resembles a
sarcophagus in house form, represent on one long side a combat scene,
probably an exploit in the life of the deceased; on the second long
side a judgment scene, unexplained. On one short side two armed
warriors leaning on their spears stand side by side; on the other,
a venerable draped man places a crown on the head of a nude
youth.
British Museum Scupt. Cat., 951. On the tomb of Merchi we have
on each side of the roof the chariot of the Apotheosis, and in place of
the apotropaic lions of the tomb of Payava, a chimaera on the one
side, and a panther on the other, used with similar intent to ward off
evil spirits. On the friezes along the crest of the roof—(a) Combat
266
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
scenes; (b) a judgment scene, the figure of an old draped man
placing a crown on a nude youth; (c) the banquet of the Blessed.
The chariot group, which, of course, can be no other than the chariot
of the Apotheosis, occurs frequently in Lycia. The most important
parallels are on the reliefs with the Apotheosis from Gjölbaschi
already noted.
72 Benndorf, Heroon, plates i., ii. of text, and plate xxxii. of atlas ;
tomb with apotropaic lion and banquet of Apotheosis. Cf. the
reliefs from the facade of a tomb at Tlos in valley of the Xanthos,
cast in British Museum, No. 260=R.R., ii. 112, 5; in the centre of
each panel of door apotropaic heads; on relief to left Bellerophon as
emblem of victory and Apotheosis (though I am not unmindful of
Pindar, Pythian, ii. 39). Another sarcophagus from Gjölbaschi is
in Constantinople (Mendel, Cat., 110). The representation is not so
'enigmatic' as the commentators make out. Along the crest are
represented the joys of the After Life (?); on each side of the lid,
within a panel, is the chariot of the Apotheosis. In the smaller
lower panel, a lion passant with head turned apotropaically to the
front; the lion has his paw on the head of a bull-already, I believe,
to indicate the consummation of the earthly body; at each side two
huge apotropaic gorgon heads in high relief; apotropaic also are
the heads of animals that projected from the shorter ends, and the
mask projecting from the long frame of the roof. Within each of the
oval panels of the short ends appear the dolphins as vehicle of the
soul's transit. On the panels of the chest protective garlands hang
between boukrania. This Lycian tomb is as well guarded against
the attacks of evil spirits as any primitive Latin temple with its
coronal of protective gorgoneia and other emblems in terra-cotta,
see my article in J.R.S., 1915, v. p. 164.
73 I cannot help reminding students in connection with the Mausoleum
and the Nereid monument, which each show statues placed in the inter-
spaces of the columns, that the famous Niobids of Florence probably
represent a similar decoration from one of the large temple tombs
which became increasingly fashionable in Greek Asia Minor; cf.
Collignon, Statues Funéraires, p. 264.
73 For the grave reliefs from Chios, and the stele of Metrodoros,
see Studinczka in Ath. Mitth., 1888 (xiii.), pp. 192 ff. On the imagery
of the Siren, see the first part of Weicker's Seelenvogel. The Siren
appears first as a habitat of the Soul and then becomes a Mourner.
74 Mendel, Cat., 63. The contest scenes (Centaurs, death of
Kaineus, etc.) are, as Mendel points out, borrowed from Attic motives,
NOTES
267
1
but I imagine they are used with symbolic content. The sculptor is
certainly under the spell of Pheidian influence, and almost hypnotised
by its suggestion, so that he has transformed into somewhat meaning-
less scenes the bold sepulchral imagery of the Lycian tombs.
76 Furtwängler in Abhandlungen der K. Bayerischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften, xxii. (1902), pp. 99-105, Das Heiligtum der Aphaia,
fig. 268; Collignon, Statues Funéraires, fig. 56. The relief, said
to have been found in Rome, was, when I first knew it, in the
possession of Dr. Hommel in Munich. Furtwängler pronounced it
Attic; it seems to me decidedly Ionian. For the motive of Hermes
placing his hand on the shoulder of the woman to introduce her to
the underworld Furtwängler compares the Ildefonso group in Madrid,
which is also probably sepulchral. The motive of the mourners
sitting in the Elysian fields seems borrowed from the Nekuia of
Polygnotus.
76 D. G. Hogarth, Ionia and the East, p. 7.
77 G. Murray, Rise of the Greek Epic, 2nd ed., p. 276.
78 For an attempted reconstruction, see C. Robert, 16 Winckelm.
progr., 1892, and cf. Schoene in Arch. Jahrb., 1893, viii. 213.
79 Revue de l'Art for 1910, i. pp. 404 ff., and Jahrb., 1913, p. 309
and plate xxvi., from which plate xxi. is taken.
80 These reliefs have been exhaustively studied by E. Pfuhl in
Jahrbuch., 1905, pp. 47 ff. and pp. 123 ff. (see also op. cit., 1907,
pp. 113 ff.), with analysis of the many symbolic objects represented
upon them (sirens, chests or λápvakes, baskets, altars, tables, double
horn of abundance with fruits; cf. British Museum 704 = R.R., ii. 503,
1); three fine examples of these stelae are in the Cook Collection at
Richmond (R.R., ii. 532, 1, 3, 4), and the Ashmolean at Oxford is
specially rich in examples from Smyrna. Collignon, Statues Funé-
raires, pp. 270 ff.
81 For the testament of Epikteta see Benndorf, Heroon, pp. 45 ff. The
shrine appears to have been to the Muses and to the heroised family
of Epikteta, i.e. she founded a hero cult for her husband Phoinix and
two dead sons Andragoras and Kratesilochos, into which Epikteta
was herself admitted. The articles of the dedication, consisting of
the testament of Epikteta, and the statutes of the confraternity which
she established for the administration of the cult, were engraved on
eight columns on a great marble podium which was set up on the site
and carried the statues of the foundress and her dead.
268
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
82 The Alexandrian stelae have been described by E. Pfuhl in Ath.
Mitth., 1901, xx. pp. 258-304.
83 W. Altmann, Architektur und Ornamentik der Antiken Sarco-
phage, pp. 31 ff., with references; cf. M. Collignon, Statues Funéraires,
pp. 347 ff.
84 See Rudolph Pagenstecher, Unteritalische Grabdenkmaeler, 1912.
85 On the Hebrew She'ol see C. F. Burney, Israel's Hope of Immor-
tality, pp. 7 ff. and passim ; also Dr. R. H. Charles, Religious Develop-
ment between the Old and New Testament, 1914 (ch. iv. 'A Blessed
Future Life'). It is usual to compare the Hebrew She'ol to the Greek
or rather the Homeric conception of existence after death (Burney,
p. 14), but the resemblance to the Roman view seems to me much
closer. She'ol and the Roman Manes alike represent a stage where
the dead were neither differentiated nor individualised. The Homeric
conception, on the other hand, seems rather the outcome of a feeling
of discouragement and helplessness on the part of a people who had
tried to lift the veil and solve the supreme mystery, and failed in the
attempt. The Nekuia of the XI. Odyssey represents a falling-away
from substantial and positive beliefs to a negative state of mind
which looks upon the dead as strengthless and powerless, the mere
shadows of their former selves. Yet these strengthless dead are in
possession of their human faculties and mindful of their life on earth,
a fact which differentiates them by a whole world of thought and
experience from the dim underworld of She'ol. It would seem as if
the action of memory in framing any conception of the dead were not
sufficiently taken into account. The living perforce tend to think of
the dead in the terms of this life, and to imagine them very like what
they were on earth. This process by which the other world becomes
peopled with highly individualised images issued in the 'unlimited
individualism' with which Dr. Charles reproaches the Greek doctrine
of immortality. Different religions or different phases of the same
religion may tend to check or to promote this action of the memory,
and our stelae afford interesting indication of the fluctuations of belief
with regard to a future state. In Greece a definite picture of a future
existence is first attempted; then, under Attic influence, the vision
is lost sight of, and in its place we get a mythological or historic view
of the dead, though outside Attica the belief in a future state was
never completely suppressed, and reasserted itself in later antiquity.
In Rome, on the other hand, in the beginning, everything seems
obscured by a magic mist, but when once under the influence of the
later Greek mysticism belief as to a future state had definitely
emerged, it was never again lost sight of.
NOTES
269
86 For the Roman view of death, and the cult of the dead, see,
especially, J. B. Carter, in E.R.E., under 'Ancestor-worship-Roman';
G. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Römer, 2nd ed., 1912, pp. 232 ff.;
Warde-Fowler, Religious Experience, pp. 84 ff. and passim; Cyril
Bailey, Religion of Ancient Rome, pp. 49 ff.
87 Saglio's Dictionary, art. 'Imago,' by Ed. Courbaud, pp. 409 ff.,
and art. 'Imagines Maiorum,' by H. Meyer in Pauly. In the exclu-
sively patrician right of the ius imaginum, which points to so different
a conception of the dead from that of the mass of the people of
Rome, we may perhaps see the trace of beliefs introduced by a
conquering race.
88 See Hülsen, Roman Forum, trans. Carter, 2nd ed., 1909, pp.
222-229, for an account of the Sepolcreto.
89 On early jewelry as amulets see Deubner in E.R.E. ('Charms
and Amulets').
90 Now well described by Dr. Weege in Helbig's Führer, vol. ii.
pp. 312-355. In speaking of the Villa Giulia, however, we must not
forget the excellently arranged collection in the Museo Kircheriano,
with finds from the necropoleis of Latin sites (Castel Gandolfo,
Albano, etc.).
91 Tomba Barberini in Museo di Villa Giulia, Helbig, ii. No. 1766;
and see the excellent article by Della Seta in Bolletino d'Arte, 1909,
iii. pp. 161 ff. Tomba Bernardini in Museo Kircheriano, see
Helbig, ii. pp. 259-271. Tomba Regolini-Galassi in Museo Gregoriano
of Vatican, Helbig, i. pp. 352, 387, and the new book (1914) by
B. Nogara and A. Pinza, La Tomba Regolini Galassi e gli altri
materiali coevi del Museo Gregoriano-Etrusco.
92 Della Seta, fig. 133 and p. 250, puts this more tentatively.
93 A number of these friezes are mentioned by Mrs. van Buren
in her article on terra-cottas, J.R.S., 1915, v.; see also Giuseppe
Moretti in Ausonia, 1912, vi. pp. 147 ff.
94 See C. Fries, 'Studien zur Odyssee,' in Mittheilungen der
Vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft, 1910, pp. 4 ff.
95 C. Fries, op. cit., p. 19. This is the passage which I had in
mind in describing the Roman triumphator on p. 64. With regard
to the triumphal chariot, Fries remarks that chariot and horses were
the attributes of the Sun, and recalls H. Winckler's theory that their
number four possibly represented the four Seasons.
270
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
96 Catalogue of the Museo Capitolino, by members of the British
School at Rome, p. 122, Galleria, No. 48a ('Sepulchral Monuments
of the Rupilii').
97 Della Seta, Religion and Art, p. 231, gives a different reason for
the reappearance of the frontal figure in Hellenistic and Roman times,
and thinks that it was consciously adopted as affording more scope
for the reproduction of individual expression.
98 Furtwängler in his discussion of the Adamklissi monument has
well shown the importance of this class of sculpture as representing
an old Italian strain, but he believed that this art was limited to the
provinces and to those cities where the Roman legionaries had set up
the tombs of their comrades. In point of fact this military or
provincial sculpture, as Furtwängler called it, is simply the art of the
Roman tombstone as we find it in Rome itself from the last century
of the Republic onward.
99 Collignon, Statues Funéraires, pp. 346-78, 'Figures couchées.'
See my article on the terra-cottas in the Museo di Villa Giulia,
J.R.S., 1915, v. p. 161, for the group on a sarcophagus from Cervetri.
100 The statue was found in 1911, behind the Abbey of Tre Fontane,
and published by Ghislanzoni, Notizie Scavi, 1912, p. 38. For a
similar sarcophagus lid, with a boy reclining on a bed, from Torre
Nuova, see Rizzo, Notizie Scavi, 1905, p. 408. It is a lifelike portrait
of the second century (incised pupils); the boy, with his chubby round
face and short nose, has none of the aristocratic beauty of our little
Augustan prince, though here again the excellence of the workman-
ship suggests that the portrait is that of a boy of illustrious parentage.
101 Gummerus in Arch. Jahrbuch, 1913, pp. 63-126.
102 Warde-Fowler, Religious Experience of the Roman People; the
chapter on Mysticism' is of capital importance.
(
103 For the influence of Posidonius see Warde-Fowler, The
Religious Experience of the Roman People, p. 382: 'The person
really responsible for the tendency to this kind of mysticism was
undoubtedly the great Posidonius, philosopher, historian, traveller,
who more than any other man dominated the Roman world of
thought in the first half of the last century B.C., and whose writings,
now surviving in a few fragments only, lie at the back of nearly all
the serious Roman literature of his own and indeed of the following
age.' Cumont, Oriental Religions, p. 164: 'The works of that erudite
and religious writer influenced the development of the entire Roman
NOTES
271
theology more than anything else.' Again, the influence of
Posidonius not improbably filtered to Vergil, and helped him to
remould the old traditional conception of an underworld.
104 I ought perhaps to say 'unique' as a funeral procession. I do
not forget the elaborate funeral rites depicted on the tomb of the
Haterii (R.R., iii. 285, 286).
105 For the literature see my article in J.R.S., 1915, v. pp. 153-156.
106 Robert Eisler, Weltenmantel und Himmelzelt, 2 vols., Munich,
1911.
107 The starred mantle is seen floating behind the deified Empresses
Sabina and Faustina, who, on the coins struck in honour of their
Deification, appear mounting to Heaven-the one on the peacock, the
other on the eagle (plate ix. 2, from casts kindly given to me by
Mr. G. F. Hill).
108 See F. Cumont, 'Les idées du paganisme romain sur la vie
future' in Bibliothèque de Vulgarization du Musée Guimet, 1910
(xxxiv.), and the same writer's Théologie Solaire du Paganisme, p. 3.
109 These ideas were by no means limited to the official circles of
benefactors of the State. Cicero, when planning a tomb for Tullia,
wished to avoid the appearance of a mausoleum, so that nothing
might detract from the idea of her 'Apotheosis': 'Fanum fieri uolo,
neque hoc mihi erui potest. Sepulcri similitudinem effugere non tam
propter poenam legis studeo quam ut quam maxime adsequar
ȧñoðéwσiv' (ad Att., xii. 361); i.e., in other words, Cicero did not wish
for the ordinary type of tomb, but for a shrine which might proclaim
the idea of Tullia's admission among the gods.
IV
LECTURE III
1 Before the eagle became messenger of the Sun he may have been
regarded as edos of the soul, more especially of the souls of departed
monarchs. What more natural than to suppose that the majestic and
solitary bird with its piercing vision and grandiose swoop was chosen
as his habitat by the soul of the departed sovereign? The eagle's
long flight till he becomes a mere speck and then disappears in the
upper regions of the air might well suggest the flight of a royal soul
272
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
to the stars. In time it was only natural to modify this cruder con-
ception of the eagle as the actual soul into that of the messenger that
carries the soul back to a Divine Master. At a later date, the eagle
would pass, like the whole doctrine of Apotheosis, into the service of
lesser personages also.
2 I have discussed these medallions in J.R.S., 1911, i. pp. 16 ff.,
where see references. See also the Catalogue of the Mostra Archeo-
logica nelle Terme di Diocleziano, pp. 52, 60, 61.
3 See my article on Antistius and Antistia in J.R.S., 1915, v. pp.
147-152.
4 By the great kindness of Mr. Arthur H. Smith. The medallion
was acquired in 1914, with a number of other objects formerly in the
collection of General Montresor of Denne Hill, near Dover, in Kent,
and is said to have been brought to England from Rome in the middle
of the eighteenth century.
5 These altars can be conveniently studied in Altmann, Römische
Grabaltäre der Kaiserzeit, 1905.
6 Frazer, Adonis, Attis and Osiris, p. 419.
7 M. Franz Cumont drew my attention to this instance of Apothe-
osis. The meaning of the Spalato frieze has been overlooked.
8 Niemann, der Palast Diokletians in Spalato, 1910, plate iv., also
fig. vi. 1, p. 115.
⁹ Students who have no time for Cumont's large work are referred
to his smaller Mithras (Eng. ed. 1912), from which I have mainly
drawn my short account of the Mithraic cults and monuments.
'The mysteries exerted a powerful influence in fostering some of the
most exalted aspirations of the human soul: the desire for immor-
tality and the expectation of final justice. The hopes of life beyond
the tomb which this religion instilled in its votaries were one of the
secrets of its power in these troublesome times when solicitude for
life to come disturbed all minds' (Mithras, p. 148). See also H.
Stuart-Jones in Quarterly Review, 1914.
10 This piece which comes from Heddernheim is of great import-
ance for its imagery (see the references in Reinach). The cap on a
pole between Sol and Mithras has been correctly explained by Eisler
as the dσTEρwròs πîλos—the emblem of the sky or the cosmos. The
animals pictured as rushing upward, on the surface of the monument
above the cave, are conceived as springing from the blood of the slain
bull.
NOTES
273
11 Roman Sculpture, pp. 309-312 (plate xcv. for the fine stele from
Osterburken).
12 Published Oesterr. Jahreshefte, 1909, xii. fig. 114 (Hofmann); and
Beiblatt, p. 213, for Cumont's interpretation of the reliefs above the
niche; cf. also his Astrology and Religion, pp. 192 ff.
13 J.R.S., i. p. 19 and references.
14 See above, p. 151, and notes 43, 69 to Lecture II. The lion motive
is very common, but I may mention here two striking examples:
A stele at Mayence (Weynand, 124) with the apotropaic Medusa in
the pediment; beneath, a crouching lion on each side of a pine cone.
Another from Aumale in Algeria (R. Cagnat in Strena Hellbigiana)
shows a husband and wife and two children, and above two lions
guarding the sacred banquet. Cumont, Textes et Monuments, ii. p.
527, inclines to recognise these groups as Mithraic (though see ibid.,
p. 440). The lion and bull motive was, as we have seen, very ancient,
and was current in Asia Minor, etc., long before the introduction of
Mithraism from Persia; but it seems reasonable to suppose that its
extraordinary vogue on later Roman tombstones was due to the
popular Mithraic cult where the lion had so prominent a rôle.
15 Frazer, Adonis, Attis, Osiris (3rd ed., 1907), p. 146.
16 For Attis see Hepding, Attis und seine Mythen, 1903; Cumont
in Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. Attis.
17 Cumont, Oriental Religions, p. 59.
18 J.R.S., i. p. 17, note 3.
19 For the connection between omphalos and tholos see Rohde,
Psyche, 4th ed., i. p. 132; against it, Diels in Miscellanea Salinas (1907),
p. 14.
For the pine cone over graves see Pfuhl in Jahrb., 1905,
pp. 88 ff. In the relief at Munich, of a peasant driving his cow to
market, the pine cone over the gate of the Priapic Sanctuary must
be placed there as emblem of generation. At the same time it cannot
be asserted that all cones and conical emblems necessarily derive
from the pine cone or the phallus, cf. G. F. Hill in Church Quarterly
Review, 1908 (lxvi.), p. 131. For the phallos on graves see examples
cited by Gruppe, ii. p. 266, note 2.
20 C.I.L., xiv. 3046-3310; and Ephemeris Epigraphica, ix. pp. 449 ff.,
Nos. 79-871. The material is a local calcareous stone. In a few
cases, always of women's tombs, the cones are replaced by statues, in
one or two by pillars. A reconstruction of this ancient cemetery
would form an admirable college thesis.
S
274
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
1
21 The Persian origin of Orpheus seems now fairly established by
R. Eisler in Weltenmantel u. Himmelzelt. This book contains an
exposé of Orphic doctrine, its origins and its ends. The same author's
four papers on 'Orpheus the Fisher,' in the Quest, vols. i. and ii.,
1909 and 1910, are full of curious information and theory which bear
on the eschatology of Orphism, and therefore indirectly on late Roman
sepulchral imagery. The literature that has gathered round Orpheus
of late years is immense, and the subject daily gains in attraction ;
but the book that shall bring together all the evidence, monumental
and literary, and also draw conclusions therefrom-somewhat on the
plan of Cumont's great work on Mithras-is still lacking. I myself
hope to make an insignificant contribution to the subject by a list of
all Roman sepulchral monuments representing Orpheus or affected
by Orphic beliefs. In the present lectures I have had perforce to
content myself with giving the barest indications. All study of
Orphism must necessarily be based on the monumental work of two
German scholars, E. Rohde in Psyche, and Gruppe in his Religions-
geschichte and in the exhaustive article 'Orpheus' contributed by him
to Roscher's Lexikon ; for the Orphic hymns see Dieterich, Hymni
Orphici; the latest discussion of the Orphic tablets is by Delatte in
the Musée Belge for 1912, where references to previous literature are
given; the various papers on Orpheus by S. Reinach in Mythes,
Cultes et Religions, and his paper on Orphic eschatology in Strena
Helbigiana should likewise be consulted. In England a good deal
of interesting work, based in a measure on foreign research, has lately
been done. See especially an eloquent and lucid résumé in James
Adam, Religious Teachers of Greece, p. 92 (Lecture v., 'Orphic Religious
Ideas'), and F. M. Cornford's paper on Orphism and the Pytha-
gorean Schools in From Religion to Philosophy, p. 160 onwards (espe-
cially Section vi., 'The Mystical Tradition'). The Asiatic Dionysos,
by G. W. M. Davis, suffers from the author's failure to cite original
authorities—not even Eisler being mentioned for the Persian deriva-
tion of Orphism. Recently Orpheus and Orphism have been brought
into fresh prominence by the researches of the St. Andrews school-
and notably of Mr. A. E. Taylor-into the sources of Platonic or,
according to these scholars, Socratic mysticism and eschatology. In
his Varia Socratica (Oxford, 1911), p. 268, Taylor has the following
striking passage: 'Behind Socrates we dimly discern the half-
obliterated features of Pythagoras of Samos, and behind Pythagoras
we can only just descry the mists which enclose whatever may be
hidden under the name of Orpheus. And behind Orpheus, for us at
least, there is only the impenetrable night.' If the rôle played by
Orphism, in what the world will doubtless continue to call the
•
NOTES
275
Platonic philosophy, is as great as the St. Andrews school claims, the
religion of Orpheus is likely to prove the greatest known to the ancient
world, and we shall not be surprised to find the reflection of its
eschatology on the tombstones of the late Roman or Graeco-Roman
period. That its rôle in the religions of the later Empire was very
important we must all be convinced-though not enough has been done
towards defining it and correlating it to kindred cults. Of these the
principal was Mithraism, which, owing to Cumont's brilliant series of
books, has perhaps held the field too exclusively of late years.
22 Mostra Archeologica Cat., p. 56; J.R.S., i. p. 18.
23 F. M. Cornford, From Religion to Philosophy, p. 197.
24 Bousset, Hauptprobleme der Gnosis, p. 294.
25 Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, pp. 101 ff.; on Orpheus and
Dionysus see further Gruppe in Roscher, iii. pp. 1110 ff. On the
connection of Attis and Dionysus see Cumont, Oriental Religions,
p. 48; on the Thracian Dionysus see especially the monograph of
Foucart, 'Le Culte de Dionysos en Attique,' in Mém. de l'Acad. des
Inscrr., 1904 (xxxvii.), pt. 2, pp. 1 ff.; and Gruppe in Roscher, iii.
p. 1084 f.
26 See the excellent reconstructions of these tombs in E. Krüger's
Kurzer Führer durch das Provinzialmuseum in Trier, 1911.
27 J.R.S., i. p. 22; Koepp, Römer in Deutschland, 2nd ed., fig. 133.
The Dioscuri are favourite figures on sepulchral reliefs, as is natural
from the fact that their cult is developed out of that of the heroised
dead (Furtwängler in Coll. Sabouroff, and in Roscher), and that they
never lost their connection with the underworld; a good instance is
R.R., ii. 129, 2—on the lower half the Dioscuri with their horses; above
the bust of Sol or Mithras within a wreath between two genii. In
an age of syncretism they seem to get confused with the mysterious
Thracian riders, who are beings of similar origin, since one of the
commonest forms in which the dead were conceived was as horsemen.
The Thracian horsemen appear on certain stelae at Sofia (G. Kazarno
in Archiv. für Religionswiss., 1912 (xv.), Nos. 4 and 8), where
the riders stand on each side of a female divinity trampling over
a fallen figure-in symbol of victory over the powers of evil rather
than over any mortal foe. The sanctity of the scene is emphasised
by the woman on the left with her hand to her lips (favete linguis).
The Dioscuri appear carved on the funeral chariot of a relief of
Constantinian date in British Museum (R.R., ii. 509, 1). The connec-
tion of the Dioscuri with the purifying forces of fire (Gruppe, ii. p. 727)
also accounts in measure for their popularity as emblems on graves.
276
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
?
28 Koepp, fig. 134. Appositely enough, the labour is the chaining of
Cerberus. On the front of the aedicula between two hangings appear
the deified figure of the deceased-a woman-with a libation cup in
her hand and the peacock at her feet.
29 Aeneas: J.R.S., i. p. 18, note 3. It is remarkable that on the
other face of the Intercisa stele we have the subject of Bellerophon,
the old Lycian symbol of Apotheosis.
30 Rhea Silvia, Mostra Archeologica Cat., p. 69.
31 On the sacred marriage of the soul, cf. Gruppe, ii. p. 865; C.
Pascal, Credenze, i. pp. 99 ff.; also Lawson, Modern Greek Folklore,
pp. 547 ff., on the conception of death as a lepos yáµos.
32 The translation of these lines has baffled Prior, Pope, Byron,
Merivale, and Christina Rossetti. To all these versions I prefer the
one given in the text kindly done for me by Mr. Hugh Dorrell, a
student of our school. There seems no reason to doubt, as some
have done, the genuineness of the lines or their attribution to Hadrian,
cf. Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East, p. 293.
33 J. H. Cabott, Stucchi figurati esistenti in un antico sepolcro
fuori delle mura di Roma, 1795.
34 The best publication is still that of Petersen in Annali dell' Įsti-
tuto Archeol., 1860, p. 384; 1861, p. 190. For certain details of the
stucco decorations see Ronscewski, Gewölbeschmuck, plates xvii., xviii.,
xx., and fig. 17, p. 30; fig. 20, p. 34.
35 See the plates in Cabott (above, note 33).
36 C.I.L., vi. p. 3418, and references.
37 Antichità di Roma, ii. plate xxx. Cf. Ashby in B.S.R., i. pp.
156 ff.: 'Stuccoes from the ceiling of a tomb octagonal above, circular
below, near Tor de' Schiavi.'
38 Ronczewski, Gewölbeschmuck, plate xxiii.; Piranesi, ii. plate xxxiii.
39 Ashby in B.S.R., vii. pp. 19, 20, 34; cf. Amelung in Atti della
Reale Accademia Ponteficia for 1910, pp. 203 ff.
40 P. S. Bartoli, Picturae antiquae cryptarum Romanorum et
Sepulcri Nasioniorum. The pictures in the British Museum appear to
have been purchased from George Richmond, R.A., in 1885; see my
article in B.S.R., 1915, vii. p. 316, note 3.
41 Pyramid of Cestius: Piranesi, Antichità, iii. plate xlviii.; cf.
Nardini, Roma Antica, iv. plate i.
NOTES
277
42 Von Sybel, Christliche Antike, i. p. 187; E. Samter in Röm.
Mitth. 1893 (viii.), p. 134; Nilsson, Archiv. für Religionswiss., p. 543.
Ashby and Newton in B.S.R., and my notes, ibid., pp. 469 ff.
44 Vigna Nardi, Studi Romani, i. pp. 355 ff. (Fornari).
45 Tomb near S. Sebastiano.
43
46 See B.S.R., 1914 (vii.), pp. 1-62 and plates i.-xxiv.
47 Discovered in 1911, and published, with elaborate commentary,
by O. Marucchi in Bulletino di Archeologia Cristiana, 1911, pp. 201 ff.;
cf. Delbrueck in Arch. Anz., 1912, pp. 293 ff., figs. 12, 13, 14.
48 Photo Moscioni; Piranesi, Antichità, iii. plate xiv. ; Canina, iv.
plate 277.
49 I cannot help recalling here the many beautiful tombs at Poz-
zuoli, the ancient Puteoli, near Naples, which, like so many of the
Roman tombs, have been allowed to perish miserably and to dis-
appear. Even when the tomb still exists, the subjects represented
have become undecipherable. Fortunately a number were engraved by
Paoli in his Antiquitates Puteolanae ; see especially plates xxxii., xxxiv.
Here also were to be seen the familiar winged figures, friezes of sea
monsters, the rape of the soul, and the sacred marriage typified by
Rhea Sylvia. See also Charles Dubois, Pozzuoles Antiques, Tombeaux,
pp. 349-355- For the fine painted decorations of tombs in Naples see
Monumenti Antichi, 1898 (viii.).
50 For the cock on tombs see note 27 to Lecture II. The lines from
Prudentius are quoted from Weicker, Ath. Mitth., xxx. p. 301. The
symbolism of the cock persists into Christian times. On a fragmen
of tissue (sixth century imitation of a Coptic model) from the treasury
of the Sancta Sanctorum, now in the Library of the Vatican (see P.
Lauer in Monuments Piot, 1906 (xv.), plate xvii.), we see the cock
wearing the nimbus as herald of resurrection (?) within a corona
triumphalis (?). M. Lauer appositely recalls the two 'cocks facing' on a
tissue of the thirteenth century, explained by Madame Isabelle Errera
(Collection d'anciennes étoffes, p. 10, No. 16) as symbols of the sun.
In Japan the cock is likewise held to symbolise the sun. Possibly no
emblem combines more meanings into itself. A good instance of the
apotropaic cock, with further allusion, it may be, to resurrection and
to this bird's connection with the sun, occurs on the stele of Antiphanes
at Athens (star or sun? in background). Perrot et Chipiez, Histoire
de l'Art antique, viii. p. 661, fig. 339.
278
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
51 English and Scottish Popular Ballads, ed. Child and Kittredge,
P. 168.
52 Mostra, p. 65 ; J.R.S., i. p. 19; C.I.L., iii. 10,514.
53 Stele of Mussius, C.I.L., vi. 22763.
54 Bruno Schröder in Bonner Jahrbücher, 1902, p. 67 and note 3.
55 Hettner, Illustrierte Führer durch das Provinzialmuscum in
Trier, 12ª, 12", 12° (pp. 13 ff.); Koepp, Römer in Deutschland, 2nd ed.,
fig. 98 and p. 161.
66 Blussus, Koepp, figs. 138, 139; inscr. C.I.L., xiii. 7067.
57 J.R.S., i. p. 14; Mostra, p. 59. The interesting inscription is
now probably published in the last Bericht des Vereins Carnuntum,
which I have not seen.
68 See also Koepp, Römer in Deutschland, 2nd ed., fig. 96 and p.
161.
50 Koepp, op. cit., fig. 97.
60 Cf. Koepp, op. cit., fig. 94.
61 The naïve shepherding scene which adorns the base of this stele,
and the quaint epitaph which turns from verse to prose in the writer's
evident despair of mastering the metre, are also worthy of attention.
The stele is given by Koepp, fig. 140 and p. 158; inscr. C.I.L., xiii.
7070. For a similar stele, of a suarius, see Notizie Scavi, 1898, p. 479
and fig. 3. On the upper part appears the inscription; on the lower
the suarius, wearing a tunica succincta, drives seven pigs to graze.
62 The only German publication of the whole monument seems to
be that by C. Osterwald of the year 1829 (with preface by Goethe).
The best reproductions remain those by Laborde in the Monuments de
France.
63 See E. Mogk's 'Baptism' in E.R.E. For its significance in
Mithraism and the later Gnostic sects see Bousset, Hauptprobleme
der Gnosis, ch. vii. (baptism 'originally a magical rite for freeing the
soul from evil influence,' ibid., p. 294).
64 Havámál, v. 158, quoted by E. Mogk, art. 'Baptism-Teutonic,'
p. 140 in E.R.E.
66 J. G. Frazer, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, 2nd ed., p. 85.
NOTES
279
06 Every detail of the curious scene has now been made clear by
Hans Graeven, Röm. Mitt., 1913 (xxviii.), pp. 271 ff. and plate vii.
The figure in the funeral chariot drawn by elephants is the Emperor, or
rather his imago; the youthful figure in the chariot above the rogus
is Sol, with the appropriate arching drapery above his head; above
again, the Emperor is seen carried from the rogus to heaven by the
twin brothers Sleep and Death, and is received by five divinities (?)
who emerge from the clouds at his approach. Graeven has further
shown it to be more than probable that the deified Emperor is
Constantius Chlorus.
67 Matz-Duhn, Antike Bildwerke in Rom, 1881, ii. p. 301, No.
3016.
68 This stele has been pointed out to me by M. Cumont; it is
probably published by now in the last Bericht des Vereins Carnuntum,
which I have not seen.
69 See Camille Jullian in his small book Gallia, p. 204; cf. J.R.S.,
i. pp. 14 ff. It is satisfactory to note that the beauty and importance
of the sepulchral art of the land of the Treveri, and its influence over
later cathedral and other sculpture, is beginning to be acknowledged ;
cf. H. Thiersch, An den Rändern des Römischen Reiches, 1911, pp. 128
ff. See also the recent discussion of several of these monuments
(especially from Arlon) by F. Cumont, Comment la Belgique fut
romanisée,' in Annales de la Société Royale d'Archéologie de Bruxelles,
1914, pp. 82 ff.
ADDENDA
P. 7. 'Domus Flavia' of Palatine.-Dr. Ashby points out to me
that, in view of the great interest now attaching to the Palatine and
its palaces, it may be well to add that even if (as I think probable)
Vespasian and Titus are responsible for the plan of the Domus
Flavia, they themselves apparently lived in the old Domus Tiberiana,
which was simply refaced on the side of the Forum (west), while
Domitian seems wholly responsible for the great palace connected
with the name of his dynasty, and left untouched from his time till
Septimius Severus and Julia Domna added to it on the south.
Whether Domitian worked on plans already approved by his father
and brother, and the exact share of Rabirius in the plan, are questions
that cannot be yet completely cleared up.
P. 40. For the sculptures from Corfu see also Martin L. d'Ooge in
Art and Archaeology, 1915, vol. i. pp. 153-158, with excellent illustra-
tions. Plate vi. is after his figs. 1, 2.
P. 101. The Art-type of the Christ.-Since writing the above, it
has become evident to me that the iconography of Christ, especially
that of the early beardless type, brings us by another road into the same
cycle of ideas as those developed in my lecture. It is the merit of
H. Dütschke to have called attention to the resemblance between the
type of the youthful beardless Christ and the portraiture of Alexander
(Ravennatische Studien, 1909, pp. 104 ff., a book I regret not having
read earlier). The kinship between the two which seems undeniable,
will cease to surprise us when we remember the beliefs and hopes of
an apocalyptic-messianic character that centred about Alexander
looked upon as the 'Prince of Peace' who was to return and unite
all mankind under his rule in a brotherhood of love. Thus Alex-
ander was offered to the imagination of the ancient world as a divine
280
ADDENDA
281
being at once differing from the gods of the Graeco-Roman Pantheon,
and in a sense exalted above them to a monotheistic position. What
wonder that his portraiture, idealised into a type, should influence the
plastic conception of the Christian God for whom his followers would
naturally avoid borrowing the features of any of the abhorred Pagan
deities. In the matter of the actual central figure, then, as well as in
the pose and place of that figure, we find the idea of the Monarch-
God influencing the artistic formulas of the new religion. I may add
here as an instance of the influence exerted by the Alexander idea
upon ancient religious imagery, the frequency with which the Roman
Emperors (Augustus, Nero, Caracalla, Gallienus, and others) were
represented in the pose of Alexander, or with features actually
assimilating to his. These 'Alexandroid' images of Emperors, long
thought to reflect the madness of the one or the impudent audacity of
the other, were in absolute conformity with the beliefs of the Roman
world and implied the attainment of Apotheosis, expressed in this
case by identifying the deified monarch with the Monarch-God par
excellence. In another order of beliefs, Commodus is portrayed as
Heracles, as in the well-known bust of the Conservatori, in sign of
Apotheosis through identification with Heracles. It is a striking
thought of Dütschke, and one which throws considerable sidelight on
the subject of Apotheosis, that the bearded type of our Lord first
appeared in the scenes of His earthly career, while the youthful
beardless type was reserved, in the beginning at any rate, for the
glorified Christ (Ravennatische Studien, pp. 120 ff.).
P. 111. The 'Paradiso' of Tintoretto.—I have often been questioned
as to this final illustration of my thesis. It was chosen not in the
least because I personally feel any extraordinary admiration for this
colossal work, but because so well-balanced and well-constructed a
grouping of myriad figures around a central motive would, I believe,
have been impossible in Greek art, or in any art previous to the
introduction of the centralised principle of composition which first
appeared to stay in the art of the Roman Empire.
P. 114. Sepulchral Imagery.-In this connection my cordial thanks.
are due to Professor Haverfield and the Editors of the Journal of
Roman Studies for allowing me to quote freely from articles con-
tributed by me to vol. i. and vol. v. of the Journal (especially i., 'The
282
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
Exhibition illustrative of the Provinces of the Roman Empire, at the
Baths of Diocletian'; and v., 'The Decorated Screen on a Relief from
Amiternum.' See above, pp. 177-180.
P. 122. Pillars at Tamuli in Sardinia.-I am indebted to Dr.
Ashby for calling my attention to these.
P. 129. The Spartan Reliefs.—In addition to the literature quoted
in the notes, see also Erich Küster, Die Schlange in der Griechischen
Kunst und Religion, Giessen, 1913, pp. 76 ff. I regret that this
excellent monograph was not known to me before. It is the most
comprehensive treatise that has yet appeared on the beliefs attaching
to the snake in Greece, on the cult of the hero and the sepulchral
iconography pertaining thereto (see especially p. 78 for the egg and
the cock; p. 75 and p. 82 for the pomegranate). I also note with
interest that Küster dismisses the old mythological explanation of the
Magoula basis (R.R., ii. 362), marked by the snakes on the narrow
sides as the stele of a ‘hero,' and rightly surmises that the scenes of
the two principal faces refer to events now unknown in the life of the
occupant of the tomb.
P. 141. Vergil and Orpheus. — See on this important point
Dütschke, op. cit., p. 185.
P. 154. The Sirens as token of the Soul's Survival.—The Sirens,
as later the Muses which so often appear on Roman sarcophagi, are
possibly placed on the tomb to ensure to the dead participation in the
'minstrelsy' which Pindar reckons among the joys that await the
Blessed (above, p. 140). In the case of the Roman sarcophagi of the
second century A.D. with figures of Muses, Dütschke (Ravennatische
Studien, 1909, p. 185) shows the absurdity of continuing to explain
the presence of the Muses by reference to the learned or musical
attainments of the dead.
P. 197. Orphic Symbolism.—See also Dütschke, op. cit., pp. 179 ff.,
pp. 185 ff. I would ask those who think I go too far in attributing
mystic or symbolic meanings to the imagery of the Roman tombs to
read Dütschke's learned and eloquent pages. I deeply regret that
his book was not known to me when I prepared or revised the
lectures.
ADDENDA
283
Pp. 201, 207. The Dioscuri in Sepulchral Imagery.-For the
original connection of the Dioscuri with the underworld see now
Küster, op. cit., pp. 77 ff.
P. 213 and p. 277, note 47. Tomb of Trebius Justus.-These
interesting paintings, unique of their kind, are rapidly becoming
celebrated; see O. Wulff, Altchristliche Kunst, 1914, i. p. 69 and fig.
71; C. M. Kaufmann, Handbuch der Christlichen Archäologie, 1913,
pp. 427 ff. and figs. 164, 165.
P. 215. Marine monsters as mystic escort of the dead.-Cf. Dütschke,
op. cit., p. 181.
P. 222 and plate xxviii. Owing to an error due to the present
difficulties of postal communication, the relief of Selene in the British
Museum (Cat. 2166) has been substituted on plate xxviii. I for a sepul-
chral relief of the same type as the one reproduced on plate xxviii. 2.
The monument is votive, and therefore does not fall within the
category of sepulchral reliefs described in the text; it has, moreover,
been published by M. Delatte in the Musée Belge, 1913, pp. 321-337.
Yet in view of its charm and interest I let it stand here. The back-
ground with the seven planets and the crescent moon recalls the
stellated canopy of the relief at Amiternum (above, p. 177), while the
frame adorned with the signs of the Zodiac is very familiar in Mithraic
altar-pieces (above, p. 188) and in the whole religious and sepulchral
imagery of the period (above, p. 226; p. 228).
The sepulchral relief from the urn of Cossutia Prima, plate xxviii. 2
(R.R., ii. 671, 5=Brit. Mus. Cat. Sc. 2364), exhibits an interesting
imagery (pine-tree, eagle, snake, and eagle holding in his beak the
butterfly as symbol of the soul; on the front face, Eros driving a
quadriga, and on the pilasters vine branches springing from vases, in
addition to a rich and delicate ornamentation which points to the
Flavian period).
P. 224. Ah dolor! ibat Hylas, ibat Enhydryasin.—Propertius, I. xx.
22. (Corpus Poetarum Latinorum, ed. J. P. Postgate.)
Pp. 278, 279, notes 57 and 68. I regret that these and certain
other notes must remain incomplete. But I, in common with many
others in Rome this year, labour under the great disadvantage of
284
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
having no adequately equipped archaeological library, now that we
are cut off by political circumstances from the great library on the
Monte Tarpeo, for so many years the hospitable centre of our studies.
No city perhaps is so rich as Rome in libraries and in books bearing
on art and archaeology, but much has to be done in the way of
co-ordination—a work, I may note, which has been undertaken by
Commendatore C. Ricci in the library which he has begun to
organise in connection with the Ministry of Fine Arts. Meanwhile
the difficulties of hunting up and finding books are great; and even
in preparing notes of so modest a compass as the present I was often
baffled in my researches, nor could I always verify the references
I had taken down in England. I am once more reminded of my
debt to Miss Hutton, who with her well-known and often-tried
liberality has made herself responsible for so much beside the weari-
some bringing together of the illustrations.
Note to Plate II.-The Brescia medallion is now dated by C.
Albizzati (R.M. 1914, xxix., pp. 247 ff. and fig. 3) in the second quarter
of the third century A.D., by analogy with the portraiture of the period.
For the women cp. Julia Domna, Julia Mamaea, Otacilia, etc.; for the
boy, Gordian III., Philippus Junior, etc. The proposed dating is
confirmed by the lettering of the inscription.
ADAMKLISSI, monument of, 171.
Adventus Augusti, 109.
AEGINA, temple of Aphaia at, 41,
44.
Aeternitas, 88.
INDEX
Ahenobarbus, Gn. Domitius, basis of,
58.
Aion (Spirit of Eternity), 89.
ALCANTARA, bridge of, 25.
Alexander the Great, 56; ascension
of, 107.
ALEXANDRIA, stelae from, 158.
Alxenor of Naxos, stele by, 159.
AMITERNUM, relief from, 175, 179.
Amulets, 163, 164.
ANCYRA, temple at, 71.
Antiochus of Commagene, 87.
Antistius, funeral slab of, 184.
AOSTA, ivory diptych, 104.
APAMEA. See Frîkyâ.
Aphrodite, 177.
Apollo, 177.
Apollo-Mithras, 87.
Apollos.' See Kouroi.
Apollodorus, 28.
Apotheosis: of Alexander, 108; of
Heracles, 147, 226; Imperial, 30,
61, 65; of Julius Caesar, 67; of
Sabina, 88; of Antoninus and
Faustina, 89; of Marcus Aurelius,
90; of Constantius Chlorus, 227.
AQUILEIA, silver disc from, 82, 106.
Ara Pacis Augustae, 59.
Arcadius, 105.
<
Arch of Constantine, 33 ff.; of Titus,
83; of Galerius, 99.
Archermos, Nike of, 41.
Architecture: American, 27; Roman,
25.
Aristocles, stele by, 133.
ARLES, S. Trophime, 36, 149.
Museum: stele, 216.
ARLON (Museum), tombstones, 201,
220.
Art: Alexandrian, 7; Antiochene, 7;
Byzantine, 4; Christian, 33, 38,
60 (see also Mediaeval); Etruscan
(see Italic); Etrusco-Roman, 65;
Greek, 38, 39-58; Hellenistic, 11,
56-60; Italic, II; Latin (see Italic);
Mediaeval, 50, 60 (see also Chris-
tian); Pergamene, 7, 9, 57;
Seleucid, 7.
Artemis, 177.
Ashby, Dr. T., 212, 218.
ATHENS:
Acropolis: archaic temples on, 42.
Ceramicus: stele of Dexileos, 101,
133; stele of Hegeso, 133; stele of
Pamphile and Demetria, 136.
Dipylon: graves, 137.
National Museum: stelae: by Aris-
tocles, 133; by Alxenor, 159;
from Chrysapha, 131, 135; from
Peiraeus, 135; from Thebes, 159;
from wall of Themistocles, 135;
of Eutamia, 135; of Lyseas, 134;
of Telesias, 133.- Relief from
Eleusis, 54.
Attis, 195; fruit of pine tree sacred to,
195.
Attis-Mên, 177.
285
286
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
Augustus, 6, 7, 13; deified on Grand
Camée de France, 69, 70; and
Lares, altar in Florence, 80; and
Roma enthroned, 71.
Aurelian, 13, 213.
BABYLON, temple of Marduk at,
168.
cletian, Io.
Bell, Miss G. Lowthian, quoted, 8 ff.
Benevento, arch of Trajan at, 85, 93,
98.
BERLIN:
Royal Museum: stelae: from
Chrysapha, 41, 130; of Metro-
doros, 154.
Antiquarium: sepulchral stone from
Sardis, 122; cylix with Selene
sinking, 38.
Kaiser Friedrich Museum: ivory
with coronation of Leo VI., 102.
Blessed banquet of the, 146; joys of
the, 129; Isles of the, 135, 186,
192, 215.
Baptism (of Achilles), 225.
Barberini ivory, the, 18, 101.
Basilica Nova, 25, 28.
Baths of Caracalla, 10, 25; of Dio- CAESAR, Julius, Apotheosis of, 61,
:
:
67; divine honours rendered to, 64.
Cameos with Apotheosis, 67; Grand
Camée de France, 68, 89; Gemma
Augustea, 71.
Merehi and Payava, 152, 223; from
acropolis of Xanthos, 151; sarco-
phagi from Clazomenae, 145, 154;
medallion portraits of Antistius
and Antistia, 184; of Flavian
period, 185; Selene relief from
Argos, 283.
BUDA-PEST, sarcophagus from Aquin-
cum, 202; stele of Nertus, 215.
Bull, Mithraic, 188 ff.
Blussus, stele of, 217.
Boatmen, stelae of, 216-21S.
Boeotia, cult of dead in, 159.
Boni, Comm. Giacomo, 120.
BORSIPPA, temple of Nebo at, 168.
Boscoreale, cups from, 73.
BOSTON (Museum), Boston throne,
|
150; Attic lekythos, 138.
BRESCIA (Museum), portrait (on
glass) of Imperial lady and her
children, 29.
BRITISH MUSEUM: bronze phalera
from Elis, 38, 229; ivory with Apo-
theosis, 179; Parthenon, pediments
of, 47; frieze of, 54; Harpy tomb,
148, 149, 157, 159; Nereid monu-
ment, 153, 219; sculptures of
Mausoleum, 219; Lycian stele, 150;
stele of Xanthippos, 133; tombs of
Campus Martius on Antonine basis,
89.
Canopy, starred, 177.
Capanne, 163.
Capricorn, sign of, 72.
CAPUA, 161.
CARNUNTUM: stele of Marcus An-
tonius Basilides at, 217; Mithraic
stele at, 228.
CERVETRI, Tomba Regolini-Galassi,
165.
CHALCIS (Museum), pediment from
temple of Apollo at Eretria, 46.
Chariot of Elijahı, 126, 147, 227; of
Sun, 64, 91, 168, 226; of Heracles,
226; of triumphator, 64, 168;
transit of the soul in, 126.
CHARTRES (Cathedral), tympanum
of, 36, 106.
CHÂTEAU GAILLARD, 8.
CHATSWORTH, stele of Herennia
Syrisca, 160.
CHICAGO, station of, 27.
Choisy, A., quoted, 10.
Christ: on the Barberini ivory, IOI ; on
the tympanum of Chartres, 36,
106; on a sarcophagus at Verona,
100.
Christianity, 205.
CHRYSAPHA, stelae from, 41, 129-
131, 135.
INDEX
287
96; commemorated on arch of
Constantine, 34; portrait of, 187.
Cicero, shrines offered to, 63; 'Dream
of Scipio,' 62, 178, 204.
CIVITÀ CASTELLANA, temple of Dionysus, 54, 177, 200.
Discs of Theodosius, 105; Valen-
tinian, 103; Justinian, 108.
Domitian on relief in Louvre, 84.
CLAZOMENAE, sarcophagi from, 145, Domus Flavia (Palatine), 7, 280.
Dürer, Albert, Sudarium by, 52.
Apollo at, 77.
Claudius, 22; on Julio-Claudian relief,
79.
154.
:
Columbarium of Pomponius Hylas,
211; at Villa Pamphili, 211.
Columns: of Antoninus and Faustina,
89; of Marcus Aurelius, 90; of
Nero at Mayence (see Jupiter); of
Trajan, 23, 85.
Communion, Mithraic, 189, 222.
Congiarium, on arch of Constantine,
35, 104.
Constantine, arch of, 85; period of, 109.
CONSTANTINOPLE, basis of Theo-
dosius at, 104; Santa Sophia, 10,
Elagabal, 93.
Elijah, 126, 147, 227.
ELIS, phalera from, 38, 229.
Empire, Rome's ideal of, 17.
Engelmann, R., 212.
Ennius, 62.
EPHESUS, relief with Apotheosis of
Marcus Aurelius, 90.
Epikteta, testament of, 158.
ERETRIA, temple of Apollo at, 46.
Espérandieu, Comm. Emile, 114.
Esquiline, fresco from, 168.
ETON COLLEGE, Topham collection
of drawings at, 212.
Eurydice, 198.
109.
Museum: frieze from temple of
Lagina, 57; sarcophagi from Sidon:
of Alexander, 49, 55; of mourning
women, 151; of the Satrap, 154; | Evans, Sir Arthur, quoted, 117, 128.
stelae: from Saloniki, 160; from
Thasos, 157.
FALERI VETERES. See Cività
CORFU, pediment from temple at, 40,
280.
Castellana.
Fire, purifying force of, 192, 194, 199.
Corona: civica, 185; immortalis, 185; | Flamininus, 63.
triumphalis, 183, 228.
FLORENCE, Uffizi, altar of Augustus
and Lares, 80.
Crusades, influence of, on art, 8.
Cumont, Franz, quoted, 4, 61, 182, 188, Frazer, Sir J. G., quoted, 194, 227.
FRÎKYÂ, tomb at, 182.
Frontality, 31, 36.
192.
Cybele, 105, 146.
CYPRUS (Nicosia), silver plate, 107. Frothingham, A. L., quoted, 32, 94.
Furniture of tomb, 126.
Furtwängler, Adolf, quoted, 43.
DALTON, O. M., quoted, 107.
Dante, and Imperial Idea, 2.
Death, an initiation, 198; as hiero- GALERIUS, arch of, 99.
gamy, 202.
Ganymede, 187, 229.
GARD, Pont du, 25.
Defensor Fidei, 17.
Della Seta, Alessandro, quoted, 30, 31, | Gardner, Prof. P. G., quoted, 53, 134.
32, 88, 105, III.
Gegenkaiser, the, 100.
DELPHI, treasury of Cnidians, 43.
Diocletian period of, 13; on basis in
Forum, 94; on lead medallion,
GENEVA, silver disc of Valentinian at,
103.
Ghost, 116, 117, 122.
288
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
Julian, 227.
152, 208.
GIESSEN, papyrus of, 91.
GJÖLBASCHI - TRYSA, Heroon at, Juno on column of Mayence, 81.
Jupiter, 64, 74, 78, 82, 85, 93; mono-
theism latent in, 79, 86, 110;
column of, at Mayence, 81; 'and
Giant columns,' 86; abdication
of, to emperor, 85; supplanted by
Elagabal, 93.
Justinian, 109.
Gorgon, on pediment at Corfu, 40.
GRADO, stele of boy at, 187.
Grave reliefs. See Stelae.
GRAZ (Museum), medallion portrait
of centurion, 183; of man and
wife, 183.
GROTTAFERRATA, Greek stele at,
136.
HADRIAN, Emperor, 28, 88, 112, 205.
HAGHIA TRIADA, sarcophagus from,
119, 120, 125, 148, 165, 167, 228.
HALICARNASSUS, Mausoleum of,
115, 219.
world, 132.
Homeric poems, influence of, 132, 139.
Honorius, on ivory diptych, 104; on
silver disc at Madrid, 105.
Horace, quoted, 70, 76, 77, 86, 204.
Hunt, Leigh, quoted, 141.
Hylas, rape of, 224.
Harpy tomb, 148, 157, 159.
Helena, portrait of, 24.
Helios on phalera in British Museum,
38, 108. See also Sun.
Hellenism, fate of, in Rome, 13.
Heracles, Apotheosis of, 156, 226.
Hermes psychopompos, 186, 215.
HIERAPOLIS, 182.
Hierogamy, 202, 209.
Hogarth, D. G., quoted, 13, 155.
Holbein, 184.
Homer, 155, 161; conception of under- Lycian tombs, 150 ff.
IAMBLICHUS, quoted, 194.
Igel, tomb at, 144, 222 ff.
Immortality, 139, 181, 187, 198, 211.
Incineration, 125.
Inhumation, 125.
Ionia, 151, 155, 157.
Isles of the Blest, 186, 215.
Kers [Keres], 145, 173.
KLAGENFURT (Museum), medallion
portrait of man and wife, 184.
Kouroi, 123.
JUDAIC monotheism, 100.
Julia Domna, 80, 92.
LAGINA, temple of Hecate at, 57.
Lamb of God, on early mosaics, 98.
Lang, Andrew, quoted, 140.
Lares, cult of, 66, 80; on column of
Mayence, 81.
Latium, art of, II. See under Art.
Livia, enthroned, on Grand Camée, 69;
on altar of Lares, 80.
Livingstone, R. W., quoted, 19.
LONDON. See British Museum.
Ludovisi throne, 37, 53, 149.
LUNI, pediments from, at Florence,
78.
MACEDONIA, cult of dead in, 159.
Mackail, J. W., quoted, 21, 24.
MADRID, silver disc at, 105.
Magna Mater, 190.
Maiestas, Christian, 17, 32, 36, 79, 111.
Mandorla, 36.
Manes, altar to, 185.
Mantle, starred, 177.
Marcellus, deified, 69.
Marcus Aurelius, 34; column of, 89.
Marduk, temple of, 168.
MAROS NÉMÉTI, sepulchral monu-
ment, 192.
Marriage of David, on silver plate at
Nicosia, 107.
Marriage, sacred, death as. See Hiero-
gamy.
INDEX
289
Mars, 74, 95, 97; on basis in temple | Neolithic peoples, 12.
of Neptune, 58.
Mars Ultor, temple of, 78.
MAYENCE (Mainz):
Museum: column of Jupiter, 61, 81;
stele of Blussus, 217; stele with
family repast, 220; sepulchral
aedicula, 201.
Picture of, on lead medallion, 97.
Medallions: of Valens and Valentinian,
103; of Justinian, 109; of city of
Mayence, 96.
|
Mithras: wears cosmic mantle, 177;
ascension of, 189; cults of, 113;
on Diocletianic basis, 95.
Moguntiacum. See Mayence.
Monolatric principle in art, 32, 41, 98.
Monotheism, Judaic, 100; in Jupiter,
79, 86, 110; in Zeus, 51.
MONTELEONE, chariot of, 167.
Moon, cult of, 177, 178; on column of
Mayence, 81.
Melkarth, 227.
OAK-WREATHS, 185.
Mithraic banquet, 189,221; bull, 188 ff., Oikoumene, the, on Gemma Augustea,
193.
72.
Mithraism, 187-197.
OLYMPIA, temple of Zeus at, 41,
46; Apollo of W. pediment, 47.
Olympian religion, character of, 50.
Orbis Romanus, 81.
'Orient or Rome,' cry of, 4.
Ormuzd, bull of, 188.
Orpheus, 198.
Orphic doctrines, 113, 139, 141, 180, 197.
Orphism. See Orphic Doctrines.
Moselle (river), 216.
Mundus (Palatine), 120, 163.
MUNICH :
PAINTINGS of Roman tombs, 205-213.
PALESTRINA. See Praeneste.
Palestine, Flavian conquest of, 7.
Pan-Orientalists, 4.
Glyptothek: sculptures from temple Pantheon, 12; dome of, 25; the
at Aegina, 44.
Olympian, 50, 110.
Antiquarium: pelike with Apotheosis PARIS:
of Heracles, 156.
Murray, Prof. Gilbert, quoted, 21, 51,
155.
Museums. See under names of different
localities.
MYCENAE, tonibs on Acropolis of,
128, 166.
Myres, Prof. J. L., 144.
NAPLES (Museum), vase with sacri-
fice to Dionysus, 54.
Nativity of Aphrodite, 37, 53, 150.
Nebo, temple of, 168.
NEMRUD DAGH, tomb of Antiochus
of Commagene, on the, 87.
Nereids, Monument of, 219.
Nero, on column of Mayence, 81.
NEW YORK: Pennsylvania station,
27; Grand Central station, 27.
Metropolitan Museum: chariot
of Monteleone, 147; plate from
Cyprus, 107; sarcophagus from
Golgoi, 144.
Nola, 161.
Numen Augusti, 74.
T
Cabinet des Médailles : cameo with
Apotheosis of Julio - Claudian
prince, 67; Grand Camée de
France, 68; diptych with Christ,
Romanus and Eudocia, 102; lead
medallion of city of Mayence, 96;
of Justinian (stolen), p. 250, n. 102.
Louvre: basis of Gn. Domitius
Ahenobarbus, 58; Flavian relief
with sacrificial scene, 84; stele of
Sosinos, 133; portrait of Helena,
24; the Barberini ivory, 18, 101;
cylix from Cyrene, 146.
Rothschild Collection: cups from
Boscoreale, 73.
290
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
Parthenon, pediments of, 47; frieze of,
54.
Pater, W., quoted, 117.
Pax on column of Mayence, 81.
Pediment, arcuated, 105, 106.
PETROGRAD, silver disc at, 108.
Pheidias, 48.
Pillar cult, 117.
Pindar, quoted, 129, 140.
Pisistratus, 132, 161.
Plato, quoted, 139.
Pliny, quoted, 204.
Plutarch, quoted, 198.
Polygnotos, 156.
Pompey, 7, 63.
Portraits: 'Aesop' of Villa Albani, 24;
Flavian, 24; Antonine, 24; of
Helena, 24; late Imperial, 28.
Portraiture, early Roman (sepulchral),
77.
Posidonius of Apamea, 63, 175.
PRAENESTE, cemetery at, 196.
Prudentius, quoted, 214.
Pythagoras, 139, 155, 174.
RABIRIUS, 28.
Rapes (of Proserpina, etc.), 203, 209,
211, 224.
Raphael, Madonna di S. Sisto, 52.
Res gestae in art, 30, 99, 111, 192,
223.
Revenant, 116, 117.
Rhea Silvia, 202, 224.
Rheims, Beau Dieu of, 51.
Richard Coeur de Lion, 8.
RICHMOND: Cook Collection, stele
of Archippos, 158.
Riegl, Dr. Alois, quoted, 94, 99.
Rivoira, G. T., 10.
Roma, the goddess, 71, 95.
Romans, as foil to Greeks, 19.
ROME:
Arches: of Constantine, 33; of Titus,
83.
:
Basilicas of Junius Bassus, opus
sectile from, 107; Basilica Nova,
25, 28.
Bridges: Pons Milvius, 9; Ponte di
Nona, 9.
Forum: Anaglypha Traiani, 99;
Diocletianic basis with relief to
Mithras, 95; Sepolcreto, 163.
Collections:
VILLA ALBANI: portrait of 'Ae-
sop,' 24.
PALAZZO BARBERINI: sarcopha-
gus with Apotheosis, 228.
MUSEO BARRACCO: portrait of
child, 173.
CAPITOLINE
MUSEUM:
stone of Rupilii, 170.
CONSERVATORI MUSEUM: fresco
from Esquiline, 168.
PALAZZO DEL DRAGO: opus sec-
tile, 107.
VILLA GIULIA: Etruscan sarco-
phagus, 172; contents of Falis-
can tombs, 163 ff.
LATERAN: relief of 'Medea and
Daughters of Pelias,' 54.
VILLA MEDICI: relief with temple
of Mars Ultor, 78.
PALAZZO SACCHETTI: relief of
period of Severus, 92.
TERME MUSEUM: Ara Pacis, 59;
Ludovisi throne, 37, 53, 149;
sarcophagus of boy, 172.
TORLONIA MUSEUM: relief of
'Theseus, Heracles and Peiri-
thoos,' 54.
VATICAN (Galleria Lapidaria):
tombstone of L. Cornelius
Atimetus, 173.
tomb.
(Giardino della Pigna): basis
of Antoninus and Faustina,
89.
(Braccio Nuovo): Augustus
from Prima Porta, 173.
(Belvedere): sarcophagus of
L. Cornelius Scipio Barbatus,
169; altar with Apotheosis of
Caesar, 66.
(Galleria delle Statue): stele
of athlete, 133.
INDEX
291
VATICAN (Rotonda): Genius of Septimius Severus, on Gate of Silver-
Augustus, 70.
smiths, 80, 92; on Sacchetti re-
lief, 92.
(Museo Gregoriano): Tomba
Regolini-Galassi, 165.
SEPULCHRAL IMAGERY:
Temples of Jupiter Capitolinus,
78; of Mars Ultor, 78; of Neptune,
58; Pantheon, 12, 25; of Vesta,
12.
Tombs; near Acqua Acetosa, 206;
of the baker Eurysaces, 173; of
'Arruntii' and 'Pancratii' on
Latin Way, 206, 207; of Nasonii,
210; of P. Vibius Marianus,
213; of Trebius Justus, 213;
of Pomponius Hylas, 211; at
Villa Pamphili, 211; Pyramid of
Cestius, 211; near S. Gregorio,
210; near S. Sebastiano, 212; in
Vigna Nardi, 212; in Vigna of
Trappists, 212; of the Scipiones
on Via Appia, 169.
Velabrum: Gate of Silversmiths,
92.
SABAZIUS, 200.
Salian priest, 185.
SALONIKI,
99.
SARCOPHAGI : from
Clazomenae,
145; from Golgoi, 144 ff.; from
Haghia Triada, 119, 148, 165,
228; Etruscan, at Villa Giulia,
172; Phoenician, 161; of L.
Cornelius Scipio Barbatus, 169.
From Sidon in Constantinople :
of Alexander, 49; of the Mourners,
151; of the Satrap, 154.
Christian, at Verona, 100.
Sardis, sepulchral stone from, 122.
Scorpion, sign of the Zodiac, 72.
Secundinii, tomb of (see also Igel),
222.
arch of Galerius at,
Selene, on relief from Ephesus, 90;
on relief from Argos, 280; on
cylix in Berlin, 38, 108.
Selinos, temple at, 40.
Sepolcreto in Roman Forum, 163.
(a) Symbolic Objects and Animals:
amphorae, 221; birds, 222; blos-
soms, 169; boar, winged, 210;
boat, 137, 216; bull, 136, 193;
cock, 131, 145, 214, 215; dolphins,
229, 230; dog, 136, 145; eagle, 183,
189; egg,131,172,211; foliage, 222;
four elements, 188; Gorgoneion,
183, 224; grapes, 199; griffin, 151,
209, 213, 221; horse, 135; horse,
winged, 69; kantharos, 221; lion,
146, 192, 193; lion and bull,
151, 192-195; Medusa head (see
Gorgoneion); pine-cone, 193, 196;
pomegranate, 131; rosette, 169,
185; sea monsters, 216; Seasons,
201, 228; Siren, 115, 146, 150-
154; snake, 130, 193; vannus,
209; winds, 192, 226, 229; wreath,
186.
(b) Figures: Aeneas, 202; Attis,
195; Bacchic figures, 199, 210;
Dioscuri, 209; Eris, 192; Gany-
mede, 229; genii, 209; Maenads,
199; Nereids, 186, 207; putti,
230; Orpheus, 198, 211; triton,
192, 216.
(c) Symbolic Myths: Admetus and
Alcestis, 257; Hector, ransoming
of, 208; Heracles, apotheosis of,
207, 226; Labours of, 201; Hylas,
rape of, 224; Perseus and An-
dromeda, 224; Perseus with head
of Gorgon, 144; Pluto and Proser-
pina, 199; Orpheus and Eurydice,
198; Rhea Silvia and Mars, 202,
224; Thetis and Achilles, 225.
(d) Symbolic Scenes: banquet, 126,
146; baptism, 225; chariot racing,
126; hunting, 126; Judgment
scenes, 207; revelling, 126; ver
sacrum, 210.
SERAJEVO, Mithraic altar-piece, 189.
292
APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE
She'ol, the Hebrew, 162.
Sky scrapers, 27.
Sol. See Sun.
72; on silver dish in Vienna,
82; on disc in Madrid, 105; on
column of Mayence, 81.
Santa Sophia, Constantinople, 10, THASOS, relief from, at Constan-
tinople, 157.
Theodosius: with his sons on silver
disc at Madrid, 105; basis of, at
Constantinople, 104.
Thermae. See Baths.
Thessaly, cult of dead in, 159.
Tiberius, enthroned, on Grand Camée,
68, 71.
Tintoretto, 111, 281.
Titus, arch of, 83.
Toga picta, 64.
Tomb, at S. Rémy, 223; of Tantalus,
195; of Trajan (see column of
Trajan).
109.
Soul, Ransom of, 208.
SPALATO, Mausoleum of Diocletian
at, 186.
Statues Augustus from Prima Porta,
173; Augustus from Via Labicana,
22; Beau Dieu of Rheims, 51;
Demeter of Cnidos, 51; Genius of
Augustus, 70; Hermes of Olym-
pia, 51; Zeus of Olympia, 51.
Stelae : Alexandrian, 158; Asia
Minor, 143; Attic, 131-142; Boe-
otian, 159; Macedonian, 159;
Mycenaean, 135; Peloponnesian,
129-131; Roman, 191-201, 214-
222; Thessalian, 159; of Archip-
pos, 158; of Blussus, 217; from
Chios, 153; of Demetria and
Pamphile, 136; of Eutamia, 135; of
Herennia Syrisca, 160; of Lyseas,
134; of Metrodoros, 154; of
Nertus, 215; from Orchomenos,
159.
Strzygowski, Josef, quoted, 4.
Stuccoes of Roman tombs, 205-213.
Sun, capitulation of, to emperor, 91;
chariot of, 64; guides imperial
chariot, 91; encounter with
Mithras, 189; on column of
Mayence, 81; on Igel monument,
229.
Tombs: from Acropolis of Xanthos,
151; of the Nereids, 153. See
also under Rome.
Tombstones or gravestones. See Stelae.
Topham collection of drawings, 212.
Torch-bearers, Mithraic, 188.
Trajan, 7, 13, 23; column of, 23, 85,
115.
TRÈVES (Trier), Museum: tombs:
of Albinius Asper and Restituta,
200; adorned with boats, 216;
reliefs from tombs: lady's toilet,
219; 'Rent-day Scene,' 219; family
repast, 220.
Triumphator, 64, 65, 69, 168.
TURIN, stele of Mussius, 215.
Tyrtaeus, quoted, 124.
TAMULI (Sardinia), 122.
UKHAIDIR, palace of, 8.
TARENTUM, 161.
TELAMON, pediments of, at Florence, VALENTINIAN I. and Valens, 103.
78.
VEII, Tomba Campana at, 166.
Tellus. See Terra Mater.
VENICE:
Temples of Ancyra, 71; archaic, on
Acropolis of Athens, 42; round,
12; of Selinos, 40; of Sibyl at
Tivoli, 12. See also under
Rome.
San Marco: Ascension of Alex-
ander, 107; 'Tetrarchy,' 28,
94.
Palazzo Ducale: Assumption of
Tintoretto, III.
Terra Mater on the Gemma Augustea, | Vergil, 20, 73, 74, 76, 198.
INDEX
293
VERONA, testament of Epikteta, 158; | WASHINGTON (U.S.A.), Hall of
Christian sarcophagus, 100.
all the Americas, 27.
Verres, 64.
Wax images, 163.
Wickhoff, 83.
VIENNA: cameo with Augustus and
Roma (Gemma Augustea), 71;
medallion with Valentinian and
Valens, 103; relief from Ephesus,
90; silver dish from Aquileia,
82, 106; stele from Klausenburg,
195.
WALBERSDORF, stele of Tiberius
Julius, 191.
Warde-Fowler, W., quoted, 79, 86.
WIESBADEN, Mithraic altar-piece,
189.
XANTHOS, Nereid monument, 153;
tomb from Acropolis of, 151; Harpy
tomb from, 148.
Xenophanes, 155.
ZEUS, monotheism latent in, 51.
Zodiac, 188, 284.
NOV 1 5 1916
Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty
at the Edinburgh University Press

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