Mutilation and Transformation: Damnatio Memoriae and Roman Imperial Portaiture (Monumenta Graeca et Romana) (No. 10)

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Ph.D. (1993) in Classics, Yale University, is Associate Professor of Art History and Classics, Emory University. He has published on Roman portraits, including the catalogue From Caligula to Constantine: Tyranny and Transformation in Roman Imperial Portraiture (Atlanta, 2000).

This book is volume 10 in the series m o n u m e n ta g r a e c a e t ro m a n a .

m.g.r 10

www.brill.nl

brill

i s b n 90 04 13577 4

9 789004 1 35 772

i s s n 0169-8850

Mutilation and Transformation

e r i c r . va r n e r ,

va r n e r

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t h e con de m n at ion of m e mory inexorably altered the visual landscape of imperial Rome. Representations of ‘bad’ emperors, such as Caligula, Nero, Domitian, Commodus, or Elagabalus were routinely reconfigured into likenesses of victorious successors or revered predecessors. Alternatively, portraits could be physically attacked and mutilated or even executed in effigy. From the late first century b.c. until the fourth century a.d., the recycling and destruction of images of emperors, empresses, and other members of the imperial family occurred on a vast scale and often marked periods of violent political transition. This volume catalogues and interprets the sculptural, glyptic, numismatic and epigraphic evidence for damnatio memoriae and ultimately reveals its praxis to be at the core of Roman cultural identity.

m o n u m e n ta g r a e c a e t ro m a n a

27-05-2004

brill

Bril/Varner/HS/MGR10/4de

Opgegeven en ingestelde rugdikte = 32 mm

Mutilation and Transformation da m n at io m e mor i a e a n d ro m a n i m p e r i a l p o rt r a i t u r e by

e r i c r . va r n e r

MUTILATION AND TRANSFORMATION

MONUMENTA GRAECA ET ROMANA FOUNDING EDITOR

H. F. MUSSCHE

VOLUME X

MUTILATION AND TRANSFORMATION Damnatio Memoriae and Roman Imperial Portraiture BY

ERIC R. VARNER

BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON 2004

On the cover: the four illustrations represent the chronological and conceptual span of the mutilation and transformation of Roman imperial images. Portraits were routinely reconfigured from the Julio Claudian period (as evidenced by the image of Nero transformed to Vespasian in Cleveland [top left]) through the Constantinian period (as evidenced by the colossal portrait of Constantine in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, transformed from a pre-existing image of Maxentius [bottom right]). Portraits were also attacked and defaced, especially in the late seond and third centuries (as evidenced by mutilated portraits of Plautilla, in Houston [top right], and Macrinus, at Harvard [bottom left]).

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISSN 0169-8850 ISBN 90 04 13577 4 © Copyright 2004 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

table of contents

D M Ann Varner

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments .................................................................................................................................... ix Chapter One. Developments, Implications, and Precedents ................................................................... 1 Chapter Two. Caligula, Milonia Caesonia and Julia Drusilla ............................................................... 21 Chapter Three. Nero and Poppaea ........................................................................................................ 46 Chapter Four. Other Julio-Claudians ..................................................................................................... 86 Julia Maior .......................................................................................................................................... 86 Agrippa Postumus ............................................................................................................................... 88 Julia Minor .......................................................................................................................................... 89 Agrippina Maior ................................................................................................................................. 90 Nero and Drusus Caesar .................................................................................................................... 91 Sejanus ................................................................................................................................................ 92 Livilla ................................................................................................................................................... 93 Valeria Messalina ................................................................................................................................ 95 Agrippina Minor ................................................................................................................................. 97 Claudia Octavia ................................................................................................................................ 100 Claudia Antonia ................................................................................................................................ 101 Julia Livilla, Julia Drusilla, Lollia Paulina and Domitia Lepida ...................................................... 102 Ptolemy of Mauretania .................................................................................................................... 103 Chapter Five. A.D. 69 ........................................................................................................................... 105 Galba ................................................................................................................................................. 105 Otho .................................................................................................................................................. 107 Vitellius ............................................................................................................................................. 108 Chapter Six. Domitian .......................................................................................................................... 111 Chapter Seven. Commodus, Lucilla, Crispina and Annia Fundania Faustina ................................... 136 Chapter Eight. The Severans A.D. 193-235 ........................................................................................ 156 The Rivals Of Septimius Severus: Didius Julianus, Clodius Albinus, and Pescennius Niger ........ 157 Plautilla ............................................................................................................................................. 164 Geta ................................................................................................................................................... 168 Caracalla ........................................................................................................................................... 184 Macrinus and Diadumenianus ......................................................................................................... 184 Elagabalus and Julia Soemias ........................................................................................................... 188 Severus Alexander and Julia Mammaea .......................................................................................... 195

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Chapter Nine. The Later Third Century (235-285) ............................................................................ 200 Maximinus Thrax, Maximus, and Caecilia Paulina ........................................................................ 200 Pupienus and Balbinus ..................................................................................................................... 203 Gordian III ........................................................................................................................................ 204 Philip the Arab, Philip Minor and Otacilia Severa ......................................................................... 205 Trajan Decius, Herrenius Etruscus, and Hostilian .......................................................................... 207 Trebonianus Gallus ........................................................................................................................... 208 Aemilian and Cornelia Supera ...................................................................................................... 209 “Celsus” ............................................................................................................................................ 210 Gallienus, Salonina, Valerian Minor, Saloninus and Marianianus ................................................. 210 Carinus ............................................................................................................................................. 211 Carausius and Allectus .................................................................................................................... 212 Chapter Ten. The Early Fourth Century ............................................................................................. 214 Maximian .......................................................................................................................................... 214 Maxentius, Galeria Valeria Maximilla and Romulus ...................................................................... 215 Maximinus Daia ............................................................................................................................... 220 Prisca, Galeria Valeria and Candidianus ......................................................................................... 221 Crispus and Fausta ............................................................................................................................ 221 Catalogue of Mutilated and Altered Portraits 1. Caligula ....................................................................................................................................... 225 2. Nero ............................................................................................................................................ 237 3. Julio-Claudians ........................................................................................................................... 257 4. A.D. 69 ........................................................................................................................................ 259 5. Domitian ..................................................................................................................................... 260 6. Commodus, Livilla, Crispina and Annia Fundania Faustina .................................................... 270 7. The Severans. Plautilla, Geta, Macrinus, Diadumenianus, Elagabalus, Severus Alexander and Julia Mammaea ................................................................................................................... 275 8. Third Century ............................................................................................................................ 283 9. Fourth Century ........................................................................................................................... 286 Bibliography .......................................................................................................................................... 289 Index of Museums and Collections ...................................................................................................... 307 General Index ....................................................................................................................................... 317 List of Illustrations and Photo Credits ................................................................................................. 335 Illustrations

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This project would not have been possible without the sustained help and encouragement of innumerable friends and colleagues. A very special debt of gratitude is owed to Diana Kleiner who, as mentor and friend, has generously shared with me her wide-ranging insights on Roman sculpture and who has nurtured the project along in its various guises. Many thanks are also due to Pat Erhart Mottahedeh who originally suggested the topic of damnatio memoriae to me and looked after it in its earliest incarnation. In addition, I would like to warmly thank the following: Paolo Arata, Musei Captiolini; Jane Biers, University of Missouri at Columbia, Museum of Art and Archaeology; John Bodel, Rutgers University; Sheramy Bundrick, University of South Florida; Maddalena Cima, Musei Capitolini; John Clarke, University of Texas at Austin; Robert Cohon, Nelson Atkins Museum; Diane Conlin, University of Colorado, Boulder; Penelope Davies, University of Texas, Austin; Stefano de Caro, Museo Archeologico di Napoli; Sandro de Maria, Università di Bologna; Jas Elsner, Oxford University; Harriet Flower, Princeton University; Jasper Gaunt, Michael C. Carlos Museum; John Herrmann, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Tony Hirschel, Indianapolis Museum of Art; Catherine Howett Smith, Michael C. Carlos Museum; Sandra Knudsen, Toledo Museum of Art; Ann Kuttner, University of Pennsylvania; Anne C. Leinster-Windham; Paolo Liverani, Musei Vaticani; Susan Matheson, Yale University Art Gallery; David Minten, Harvard University Art Museums; Mette Moltesen, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek; Sarah Morris, University of California at Los Angeles; Michael Padgett, The Art Museum, Princeton University; John Pappadopoulos, University of California at Los Angeles; Carlos Picon, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Jerry Podany, J. Paul Getty Museum; J. Pollitt, Yale University; J. Pollini, University of Southern California; Gianni Ponti, Sovrintendenza Archeologica di Roma; Gay Robins, Emory University; Peter Rockwell; Brian Rose, University of Cincinnati; V. Rudich, Yale University; Marion Schröder, Deutsches Archäologisches Institut Rome; Alan Shapiro, the Johns Hopkins University; Catherine Simon, Shelby White and Leon Levy Collection; Niall Slater, Emory University; Alaistair Small, University of Alberta; R.R.R. Smith, Oxford University; Renée Stein, Michael C. Carlos Museum; Katrin Stump, Deutsches Archäoligisches Institut Rome; Michiel Klein Swormink, Brill Publishers; Emilia Talamo, Museo Nazionale Romano; Marion True, J. Paul Getty Museum; Ute Wartenburg, American Numismatic Society; Bonna Wescoat, Emory University; Susan Wood, Oakland University. I would also like to thank all of my colleagues and staff in the departments of Art History and Classics at Emory University, the staff of the Michael C. Carlos Museum, the staff of the Library of the American Academy in Rome, the staff of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut in Rome, as well as my current and former graduate students, Katrina Dickson, Erin Black, John Stephenson and Brandon Foster for various, sundry and invaluable assistance. As always, heartfelt thanks to Brad Lapin for help on every level and for putting up with bad emperors (and the bad moods they have been known to induce) for so long. Ultimately, all omissions, errors, and translations are my own.

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developments, implications, and precedents

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CHAPTER ONE

DEVELOPMENTS, IMPLICATIONS, AND PRECEDENTS As vital expressions of political authority and prestige, imperial portraits permeated all aspects of Roman society. Representations of the emperor and his family were prominently displayed in civic, sacred, and domestic spaces throughout the empire and were carefully manipulated and disseminated in order to reach multiple audiences. The power of these images lay in their ability to speak to disparate members of the society, from the illiterate and slaves through the most educated members of the Roman elite. However, imperial portraits were neither immutable nor monolithic, and should an emperor be overthrown, his images were systematically mutilated or physically altered into the likenesses of other emperors. This process, popularly known as damnatio memoriae, is the first widespread example of the negation of artistic monuments for political and ideological reasons and it has inexorably altered the material record of Roman culture. Jerome aptly describes the fate of the portraits of Rome’s” bad” emperors: “When a tyrant is destroyed, his portraits and statues are also deposed. The face is exchanged or the head removed, and the likeness of he who has conquered is superimposed. Only the body remains and another head is exchanged for those that have been decapitated (si quando tyrannus obtruncatur, imagines quoque eius deponuntur et statuae, et vultu tantummodo commutato, ablatoque capite, eius qui vicerit, facies superponitur, ut manente corpore, capitibusque praecisis caput aliud commutetur).1 Although Jerome was writing in the late fourth/early fifth century, his description clearly reflects centuries of established practices regarding the public images of emperors condemned as tyrants. Beginning in the republican period, the legal sanctions which could be associated with damnatio memoriae provided the mechanisms by which an

individual was simultaneously canceled and condemned. The Romans themselves realized that it was possible to alter posterity’s perception of the past especially as embodied in the visual and epigraphic record. Sanctions passed by the Senate could mandate the destruction of the monuments and inscriptions commemorating capital offenders or hostes, the official enemies of the Roman state.2 As a result, the condemned individual’s name and titles were excised from all official lists ( fasti); wax masks (imagines) representing the deceased were banned from display at aristocratic funerals;3 books written by the condemned were confiscated and burned; property rights were forfeited; wills were annulled; the birthday of the condemned was proclaimed a day evil to the Roman people (dies nefastus), while the anniversary of the death was celebrated as a time of public rejoicing; houses belonging to the deceased were razed; and prohibitions could be enacted against the continued use of the condemned’s praenomen.4 After Augustus solidified his control of the Mediterranean in 31 B.C. and subsequently established the imperial system, damnationes memoriae and the attendant mutilation and transformation of images were almost exclusively enacted against deposed principes, other condemned members of the imperial house, or private individuals who had conspired against the 1

In Abacuc 2.3.14-16.984-88. P. Stewart (1999) 159, 180-

81. 2

F. Vittinghoff (1936) 13. On the imagines, see H.I. Flower (1996). Flower also discusses the term imago in its narrowest senses as a wax ancestor mask, and its later broader implications of portraiture in general, 32-52. 4 On the razing of houses, T.P. Wiseman (1987) 3934 and n. 3; J. Bodel (1997) 7-11. On the banning of praenomina, see H. Solin (1986)70-3; H. Solin (1989) 252-3; H. Flower (1998) 163-5. 3

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reigning emperor. Damaged or transfigured imperial portraits survive in vast quantities and include marble, bronze, and painted likenesses, as well as representations in relief, on coins, and gems. The term damnatio memoriae, literally the damnation or condemnation of memory, is modern, but it accurately reflects the Romans’ preoccupation with the concepts of memory and fame.5 The Latin term memoria has much broader repercussions than its English cognate, memory, and encompasses the notions of an individual’s fame and greater reputation. The belief that a deceased individual enjoyed an afterlife through the perpetuation of his memory or by being remembered is at the core of Roman cultural identity and is amply witnessed by the innumerable surviving works of funerary art and architecture created for all classes of the society, throughout the empire.6 Furthermore, Varro closely links the idea of monumental commemoration with the perpetuation of memory.7 In effect, the condemnation, damnation or abolition of an individual’s memory is a posthumous destruction of his or her very essence or being. When discussing the condemnation of a person’s memory and monuments, ancient authors usually combine the word memoria with particularly strong verbs damnare, condemnare, 5 The term damnatio memoriae covers a wide array of post mortem sanctions against a condemned individual’s memory and monuments. These penalties could be officially mandated by the Senate, emperor, or even army, or they could be unofficial, de facto sanctions; see F. Vittinghoff (1936) 13, 64-74; K. Mustakallio (1994) 9-15; J.M. Paillier and R. Sablayrolles (1994) 12-15; and H. Flower (1998) 155-6. The term first appears as the title of a dissertation completed in 1689 by Schreiter-Gerlach; see P. Stewart (1999) 184, n. 3. 6 On commemoration and perpetuation of memory, see M. Koortbojian in J. Elsner, ed. (1996) 210-34; P.J.E. Davies (1997) 41-65. For the “activity of memory in monuments” see, J. E. Young (1989) 69-106. 7 Ling. 6.49: Sic monimenta quae in sepulcris, et ideo secundum iviam, quo praetereuntis admoneat et se fuisse et illos esse mortalis. Ab eo cetera quae scripta ac facta memoriae causa monimenta dicta (...so monuments which are on tombs, and in fact along the roads, in order that they can warn anyone coming along that the deceased themselves were once mortal, just as they are now mortal. From this, other things which are written or done for the sake of memory are said to be monuments). See also J. Bodel (1997) 21.

accusare, abolere, or eradere.8 These verbs, to damn, condemn, accuse, abolish, or eradicate, themselves resonate with the process of historical censure which is the basis of damnatio memoriae. Overall, these sanctions were not conceived of in absolute terms, but were flexible and practical methods of destroying the condemned’s posthumous reputation and memory.9 Cancellation of a bad emperor’s identity and accomplishments from the collective consciousness was one of the fundamental ideological aims of damnatio in the imperial period. Portrait statues and busts were routinely removed from public and private display and the names and titles of overthrown rulers were ruthlessly excised from the inscriptions that had formerly extolled their virtues. This calculated obliteration of images, effectively an abolitio memoriae (abolition of memory), is starkly illustrated by representations which have been chiseled out of relief monuments, as for instance portraits of Commodus removed from the series of reliefs honoring his father, Marcus Aurelius, or the excision of Plautianus, Plautilla, and Geta from reliefs decorating Severan arches in Rome and Lepcis Magna.10 For representations of condemned emperors in the round, their removal from public display and subsequent storage in secure locations has often led, ironically, to their preservation for posterity. Indeed, damnatio contributed directly to the warehousing of great numbers of imperial images. Another important aim of post mortem sanctions could be the complete denigration of the condemned individual’s posthumous reputation as a 8 For example see, Suet. Dom. 23.1 (abolendamque omnem memoriam); HA.Com.19.1 (memoriam aboleatur), and Cod.Iust. 1.3.23; (memoriam accusare defuncti ) CodIust 1.5.4.4Pap. Dig. 31.76.9 (memoriam damanatam); Cod.Iust. 7.2.2 (memoria ... damnata); Ulp. Dig. 24.1.32.7 (memoria... damnata); Ulp. Dig. 28.3.6.11 (memoria...damnata); Paul. Cod.Iust 9.8.6 (memoria ...damnetur); Inst. 4.18.3 (memoria... damnatur); Inst. 3.1.5 (memoria...damnata); F. Vittinghoff, Staatsfeind 13; 66-69; T. Pekáry (1985) 135. 9 H.I. Flower (1995) 163. 10 Arch of Septimius Severus in the Forum Romanum, infra; Arch of the Argentarii, infra; and the Arch of Septimius Severus at Lepcis Magna, infra.

developments, implications, and precedents stark political warning to future offenders.11 Although posthumous denigration would appear at first glance contradictory to the total eradication of a condemned individual’s memory, in practice the two prove to be neither incompatible nor mutually exclusive. In visual terms denigration was effected through the physical mutilation of portraits. As recognizable signs of an overthrown ruler’s disgrace, deliberately damaged likenesses physically expressed the abstract concepts of infamia (disrepute, disgrace) and iniuria (insult, affront, revenge), and must have remained publicly visible for some time after the emperor’s overthrow. The sensory organs comprising the eyes, nose, mouth and ears were specific targets of the attacks on sculpted portraits. The resulting damage to the face is T-shaped, but still renders the representation recognizable. The mutilation of images is often described in graphically anthropomorphic terms. Pliny recounts the destruction of bronze images of Domitian just like they were living beings, capable of feeling pain and says that the portraits were attacked as if “blood and pain would follow every single blow” (ut si singulos ictus sanguis dolorque sequeretur).12 Dio similarly portrays the destruction of Sejanus’s statues: those who assaulted his images acted as if they were attacking the man himself.13 Although probably historically spurious, the account in the Historia Augusta of the “crucifixion” of a portrait of the North African usurper Celsus is certainly indicative of fourth century attitudes and expectations concerning the treatment of representations of condemned rulers, as well as the continued Roman perception of images as effigies.14 The anthropomorphic rhetoric employed when discussing the destruction of imperial im11 H. Flower discusses the these two approaches (“the tendency to forget” vs. the “urge to remember”) in the case of Gn. Calpurnius Piso (1998) 180. 12 Pan. 52.4-5; for an interpretation of the full passage in its Domitianic context, see infra. 13 58.11.3. 14 Tyr.Trig. 19: et novo iniuriae genere imago in crucem sublata persultante vulgo, quasi patibulo ipse Celsus videretur (and in a new kind of outrage, his portrait was hoisted on a cross, with the crowd running around as if they were seeing Celsus himself on the gibbet); see infra.

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ages underscores their function as literal embodiments of the imperial presence in stone or bronze. Trajan’s posthumous Parthian triumph, in which a statue of the emperor rode in the quadriga, illustrates well the positive, celebratory connotations of imperial portraits as effigies.15 Conversely, deliberate assaults on these images are directly analogous to physical attacks against the emperor’s person, a kind of mutilation or execution in effigy.16 The desecration of the vital sensory organs, the eyes, ears, nose and mouth, negates any “power” of these images to see, hear or speak. Furthermore, the disfigurement of imperial likenesses has close conceptual ties to the desecration of the corpses of capital offenders, a process known as poena post mortem.17 Lucan graphically describes the mutilation of a corpse and the attack on the ears, eyes, nose and mouth exactly parallels the disfigurement of imperial images: exsectaque lingua/ Palpitat et muto vacuum ferit aera motu./Hic aures, alius spiramina naris aduncae/ Amputat; ille cavis evolvit sedibus orbes, (And the tongue having been severed, squirms and with silent motion strikes the empty air. Someone amputates the ears, someone else the nostrils of his hooked nose, and another one gouges the eyes out of their hollow sockets).18 Although corpse abuse was not uncommon for criminals and other noxii executed in arena spectacles, the desecration of elite corpses was viewed as an extremely severe form of punishment, and as a result is fairly rare for condemned emperors or other members of the imperial house.19 Nevertheless, the bodies

15

As illustrated on Hadrianic aurei of 117-18, BMCRE 244, no. 47; S. Settis, ed. (1988) 78-9, fig. 33. 16 Actual effigies were important components of imperial funerals, see S.R.F. Price (1997) 64, 96-7. For the mutilation of imperial portraits as effigies, see F. Vittinghoff (1936) 13-19; J. von Schlosser (1910-11) 184; W. Brückner (1966) 192; J.P. Rollin (1979) 165-69; D. Freedberg (1989) 259. 17 On the post mortem abuse of corpses, see F. Vittinghoff (1936) 43-6; D.G. Kyle (1998) 131-3, 220-24, and 183, n. 106 where he calls the “abuse of statues” “surrogate corpse abuse;” E.R. Varner (2001a). 18 BC 2.181-4. 19 Although obviously comic in nature, Apuleius’s story of the guarding of a corpse at Larissa against mutilation

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of Nero Caesar, Drusus Caesar, Sejanus, Lollia Paulina, Claudia Octavia, Galba, Vitellius, Pertinax, Pescennius Niger, Clodius Albinus, Plautianus, Macrinus, Diadumenianus, Elagabalus, Julia Soemias, Maximinus Thrax, Maximus, Pupienus, Balbinus, Gallienus, and Maxentius were all abused in some fashion. Politically, the mutilation of imperial images and corpses was intended as a visual expression of dissatisfaction with the policies and personalities of the condemned emperor, and, concomitantly, loyalty to the new regime. Dio links the concepts of image and corpse abuse in his account of the attacks on Sejanus’s portraits, which the condemned man was forced to witness, thus becoming an unwilling spectator of his own imminent death and destruction (6"\ @ÜJT 2g"JZH ô< Bg\FgF2"4 §:g88g< ¦(\(