Were Roman Historical Reliefs More Concerned With Imperial Events Or Imperial Tropes?

The idea of the historical relief as the predominant form of monumental imperial art is, in and of itself, something of a misnomer. Twentieth Century scholarship identified the vast relief carvings that decorated the monuments of Rome and its provincial cities as depictions of actual historical events[1] in reality the historicity of reliefs on monuments is far from certain. Given the immediate confusion in the phrase historical relief , this essay considers all monumental public sculptural reliefs to be relevant to this question, even where such reliefs are not historical . This is the key question this essay will seek to answer did historical reliefs depict actual imperial events, and if not, what did they depict? The relevant definitions of a trope in the context of this question would seem to be either a significant or recurrent theme or to represent in a figurative or metaphorical way [2]. This essay will seek to consider both of these definitions and their relationship to concepts of historicity in relief sculpture it will not only interrogate what scenes are depicted in historical relief , but also consider how such scenes are depicted, and how their intended audience might have been expected to react to them. Imperial tropes are not the only tropes present in historical reliefs we must consider the relationship that other tropes have to imperial ones and more broadly the relationship they have with artistic depictions of reality. This essay will conclude that over the course of the Roman Empire, relief sculpture was more concerned with events than tropes , but there is no shortage of qualifiers to be made about both of those concepts.

An important point to be made regarding this question is that there is not necessarily an antithetical or mutually exclusive relationship between reliefs that utilise tropes and reliefs that depict actual events . A common argument against the idea that historical reliefs depict actual events is the incorporation of deities into their fabric if a work of art depicts a deity it must be an imperial trope rather than an imperial event . This criticism is regularly levelled against the Attic sculptural reliefs of the Arch of Constantine the Adventus Augusti panel (fig. 1) features a winged victory bearing a garland, Mars and Roma. Similarly, the Profectio Augusti panel (fig. 2) depicts the demure representation of a road, reclining against a spoked wheel, beckoning the emperor on the path to war. Similarly, on the Northern side of Trajan s column, we can see a winged victory inscribing a shield probably with Trajan s name to commemorate a military success this depiction comes at the intervening moment between the two Dacian campaigns with which the column is concerned. It seems slightly trite to say that because deities don t exist, any sculptural relief which features a deity cannot depict an actual event . Clearly these figures serve a metonymic function their purpose is to act as placeholders or symbols for certain concepts, be they War , Rome , a road or victory. However, they aren t merely symbols of their respective concepts, they allow for the communication of a more complex message to the audience. If we consider the composition of Fig. 1, we can see the frontality of the depiction of Rome, clearly the audience were supposed to recognise this Goddess as the symbol of their city, but perhaps also the sculptor envisaged a degree of association the beloved emperor, maintainer of the Pax Deorum, was at last returning to them, casting aside the perils of war and physically turning towards the city. The architectural background of the panel might not look exactly like the city and Temples to which the emperor returned, but here it is the trope of the Goddess that serves to identify and help us recognise the events depicted. Of course this doesn t discount the fact that this panel depicts a standardised adventus making it very difficult to ascribe a singular historical event to it. However, in Fig. 3 the sensual and recognisable form of Victoria simultaneously symbolises victory, makes an ideological statement about the desirability of conquest[3], and serves to identify this moment in the relief to the specific event in the narrative of Trajan s first victory in Dacia[4]. Furthermore, in Fig. 2 we have a depiction an unactual divine personification of a road, alongside identifiable individuals from Marcus Aurelius inner circle we can confidently identify the togate figure to the left as Gaius Senatus, which allows us to suggest a degree of historicity in this Profectio, possibly depicting his return from Parthia[5]. Of course this analysis is made much more complex and perhaps pointless by the fact that the sculptural decoration of the Arch of Constantine was entirely decorated by Spolia we can hypothesise at length about the original specific events depicted in the Attic frieze in its Aurelian context, but it all becomes rather immaterial once the heads were recarved and the monument dedicated to Constantine. Therefore we must concede that the use of non-Imperial tropes (such as deities) did in no way preclude the depiction of actual events however the visual language of imperial authority was reliant on the consistent repetition of schemes and imperial tropes without which an Emperor such as Constantine could not have reutilised depictions of an emperor from over a century ago to adorn his monument. Of course the use of spolia in Constantine s arch was the product of a political ideology that consciously proclaimed a return to the former glory days of singular imperial rule, and perhaps was precipitated by the decline of classically skilled masons in the city of Rome.

It is important to consider, just as we consider the use of metonymic divine tropes as a legitimate part of depictions of reality, that imperial tropes could be a perfectly legitimate tool in depicting events with intended historicity. The first concept that we must tackle is that events themselves can sometimes be imperial tropes ritualization within state events plays an enormously important role in stressing the legitimacy of the office by linking it to the past. Standardisation and continuity were a consistently important part of imperial ideology this related to certain fundamental Roman ideals that justified the emperor as fit to rule, namely: Pietas, Clementia, Concordia[6]. Visual representations of these values were imperial tropes in so far as they called on standardised imagic tools to convey these ideas to their audience. Figs 4, 5 and 6 depict three emperor s, all offering libations to the Gods. This is made immediately and consistently obvious through the replication of posture, with arm held at the same angle, togas wrapped in a large loop in identical manners. Admittedly the depiction of Constantine is lacking the cuculla, symbolic cowl of the Pontifex Maximus which the other two have, however it seems likely given the sudden break of the toga on his shoulder that he would originally have had a cuculla, but it was not replicated when the head was recarved as Constantine possibly a reflection of the first Christian emperor s discomfort at being depicted as a Pagan high priest. The consistency of certain details here is undeniably an imperial trope however it is not necessarily a trope restricted to the visual representations of the act, but rather that extended to the act itself. In both the repurposed Aurelian panel and the Trajanic scene, the specific ritual being carried out is a Lustratio Exercitus the ritual purification of land on which a military camp is to be built. These scenes may well seek to depict specific enactions of this ritual by the emperor but the ability to deduce such a fact is reliant on the audience s knowledge of the emperor s actions during a war. To a veteran legionary of the Parthian or Dacian campaigns, fig. 5 and 6 might evidently depict an actual event which they themselves were present at the Roman troops surrounding the emperors in both images become a similar metonymic placeholder for the audience themselves. However, evidently to a an audience member decades later, these depiction specific meaning and instead contribute to a collective trope of the Emperor s Pietas, repeated consistently in depictions of this form of ritual. The authority of a religious ritual is contingent upon its ability to fit into a consistent pattern of ritualized practice, therefore it is by its very nature not a singular historical event . If we attempt to pitch the trope of pietas against the event of a ritual, it is an inevitably pointless exercise because they both rely on one another. Of course fig. 5 is taken from the Arch of the Argentarii elsewhere its reliefs depict an imperial triumph and a sacrifice. These were both evidently practices and specific historical events that transcended their specificity through repetition and ritualization. The location of the Arch of the Argentarii on the edge of the Forum Boarium, the source of the market for cattle from which sacrificial animals would have been sourced. The lack of specific details on this unofficial arch, paid for by a guild of freedmen, makes it difficult to attribute the triumph or sacrifice as representative of a specific historical event[7]. Indeed fig. 7 displays the standardisation of a Classical sacrifice scene, with figures all exactly the same height, filling the frame and a lowing cow with upstretched tail. However, the narrative of the procession on the frieze is enormously effective in evoking a sacrifice for the audience the direction of the procession draws the audience member to walk in a figure of eight motion around the monument, ultimately drawing them back to the depiction of the emperor in the central passageway. A similar technique is used on the audience of Trajan s column, as the upward spiralling action of the helical frieze forcing the audience to circumambulate around it[8]. Circumambulation was itself an important part of the religious rituals of the Roman empire, and the arch of the Argentarii not only evokes the event-trope of the religious ritual of sacrifice, but also makes the audience a complicit part of this ritual by directing them to walk around it. Therefore we can see that in the depiction of the emperor and religious rituals in historical reliefs was reliant on generalised visual and metaphorical tropes however the relationship between these tropes and the audience experience of the monument or their relationship to actual events was complex and not necessarily antithetical.

In considering the relationship between historical reliefs and historical reality , it is important to note that the idea of artistic representations of events, usually military, has a textually founded history, which predates the Imperial period. Livy relates to us the practice of consuls sending paintings of victories in the field back to Rome Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus (the elder) had a painting depicting his victories in Sardinia hung from the temple of Magna Mater[9]. For some critics this has contributed to a distinctive Roman style, separate from the Classical high tradition, concerned with devotion to the actual event in every aspect[10] . The relief panels of the arch of Septimius Severus and the helical frieze of Trajan s column are two examples of historical relief that can be tied fairly confidently to specific historical events. In the case of the Severan arch, scholarship has confidently tied specific scenes to moments from military campaigns, including the fall of Ctesiphon (fig. 8) after which Caracalla was pronounced co-emperor the ideological significance of a militaristic dynasty immortalizing their victories in stone need not be taken further[11]. It is important to remember the context of the Severan Arch, which was wedged between the rostra adorned with the prows of defeated warships and the base of the Capitoline, where triumphal processions came to an end. What is really interesting in fig. 8 is the style bird s eye perspective is used in conjunction with figures in ordinary relief perspective to give a fuller understanding of the figures in their general context. This technique is also utilized in Trajan s column, where we simultaneously look dead on at the soldiers building their castra whilst simultaneously seeing over the wall into the camp itself (fig. 9). This technique plays a particularly interesting role in the context of Trajan s column, as some writers have emphasized the important role played by the column as a Belvedere, allowing Romans to see the new forum of Trajan from above, including the clearing of the Quirinal hill[12] thus offering the same perspectival trick presented in the frieze, whereby one could view the architecture from ground level and then from above. This is a noted departure from the formal tropes of the Classical frieze, and has by some been described as particularly Roman[13]. In some ways, the use of this sculptural language is in and of itself an imperial trope yet here it is used in the context of sculptural reliefs which forge narratives of specific historical events.

Throughout this essay we come up against the same issues all visual depictions, regardless of what they depict, are reliant on a language that is fundamentally made out of tropes be they Roman perspectival tricks, classical compositions, or recurrent images. This is partly because imperial events were themselves tropes , in the sense that they comprised of recurring, repetitive and consistent motifs be they the formalisation of the building of an army camp, a sacrifice or even the siege of a city. There is a compromise to be made between the specific and the general generalized visual motifs can be useful in imparting meanings to an audience, whereas specific depiction of events can be more powerful proclamations of a specific emperor s authority. The depiction intended by the maker or commissioner would not always be the same as what the audience saw or understood, defined by changing cultural and physical context. Ultimately historical reliefs are more concerned with imperial events because even the most generalized depiction of a sacrifice or religious ritual relied on the association of imperial power with that event as a continued and active practice in the life of the audience member, even in their interaction with the art itself.

Bibliography

M.G. Sobocinski & E.W. Thill (2015) Monumental Reliefs, in E.A. Friedland et al. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Roman Sculpture (Oxford)

Kousser, R. (2006). Conquest and Desire: Roman Victoria in Public and Provincial Sculpture, in S. Dillon and K. E. Welch (eds.) Representations of War in Ancient Rome (Cambridge)

Torelli, M. (1982). Typology and Structure of Roman Historical Reliefs (Ann Arbor)

Hamberg, P. (1945). Studies in Roman Imperial Art with Special Reference to the State Reliefs of the Second Century AD (Copenhagen)

Davies, P.J.E. (1997) "The Politics of Perpetuation: Trajan`s Column and the Art of Commemoration", American Journal of Archaeology 101

Von Blackenhagen, P. (1957). Narration in Hellenistic and Roman Art, American Journal of Archaeology 61

Claridge, A. (1993) "Hadrian`s Column of Trajan", Journal of Roman Archaeology 6

Elsner, J. (2005) Sacrifice and narrative on the Arch of the Argentarii at Rome, Journal of Roman Archaeology 18

Lusnia, S. (2006). Battle Imagery and Politics on the Severan Arch in the Roman Forum, in S. Dillon and K. E. Welch (eds.) Representations of War in Ancient Rome (Cambridge)

Livy, History of Rome

[1] M.G. Sobocinski & E.W. Thill (2015) p. 277

[2] Oxford English Dictionary

[3] Kousser, R. (2006) p. 239

[4] Torelli, M. (1982) p. 120

[5] Hamberg, P. (1945) p. 84

[6] Hamberg, P. (1945) p. 78

[7] Elsner, J. (2005) p. 94

[8] Davies, P.J.E. (1997) p. 59

[9] Livy 41.28.8-10

[10] Von Blackenhagen, P. (1957) p 83

[11] Lusnia, S. (2006) p. 295

[12] Claridge, A. (1993) p. 10

This resource was uploaded by: Matthew

Other articles by this author

• How important is the idea of legality to the lives and deaths of the Gracchi?