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The History of Art Survey
Lecture 13
The Art of the Early Roman Empire
Gardner 264-74
A Early Roman Empire (Augustus-Titus) 27 BC - AD 98
7-
25 Portrait of Augustus as a general Primaporta
Intro 10 Augustus wearing a corona civica (Civic Crown)
26 Bust of Livia Faiyum
27 Ara Pacis Augustae Rome
28 “Tellus” panel (Ara Pacis) Rome
29 “Imperial Family in Procession” (Ara Pacis) Rome
Forum of Augustus (model) Rome
* 30 Maison Carree Nimes
* 31 Pont-du-Gard Nimes
32 Porta Maggiore Rome
33 Octagonal Hall of the Domus Aurea of Nero Rome
* 34 Colosseum Rome
35 Portrait of Vespasian Ostia
36 Portrait of a Flavian woman Rome
* 37 Arch of Titus Rome
38 Spoils of Jerusalem (Arch of Titus) Rome
39 Triumph of Titus (Arch of Titus) Rome

Early Roman Empire (Augustus-Titus) 27 BCE-CE 98
The death of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE led to a civil war. This ended in 31 BCE with the victory of Octavian, Caesar’s grandnephew and adopted son, over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at Actium. Egypt was now another province added to the Empire. Octavian was declared Augustus by the Senate in 27 BCE. Though the laws weren’t formally changed, Augustus took all the major positions himself, as princeps (first citizen): consul, imperator (commander in chief), pontifex maximus (chief priest),

With the end of Rome’s civil war and the super power of the Roman state, a Pax (peace) Romana spread across the region. Trade and culture flourished. The empire itself commissioned a great number of public works, all of which featured important propaganda for the current rulers.

The break between the Republic and the Empire is a political one, not a cultural one. But it marks a change that does soon enough lead to a cultural development. Republican Rome was a local power rising into a regional, the art was essentially a local variation on a widely spread eastern Mediterranean style. The Roman Empire was a genuinely international, broadly multicultural development. But it took some time for this to develop. The art of the Early Empire was rich development of the local, regional, style.

If there is change in the art of Rome between the Republic and the Empire, it is in the level of opulence reached by what was now a vastly more powerful nation, and a much more cosmopolitan one.

Art Historiography

Though it is difficult to see it from the distance of two millenia, Augustus’s interest in the Classical went beyond the continuity of ordered columnar Mediterranian architecture and figurative imagery we have been following, to a conscious archaism focused on the specific forms of 5th century Athens, the Classical Period. For all the prestige of past culture that dominated this world and maintained the continuity of the broader classical styles (with a small “c” for the general style) there was a particular regard for the “Golden Age” of Athenian glory.

Augustus used this archaising historicism as a means of legitimation for his rule, which was a revolutionary submerging of the Republic’s shared authority in the permanent dictatorship of an Emperor. He, through the esthetic choices of his designers, put himself and his rule forward as a return to the forms of the Golden Age by this conscious display of similarity with what was then seen as old fashioned or traditional . This is visible in a figure style that is more rigid, formal and abstract in its details, as that of the later 5th century and architectural forms with similar echoes.

This was true within a Roman culture whose elite held Greek culture in peculiarly high regard. We have already seen that many of our best surviving examples of Greek art either found their way to the Italian penninsula by trade or through the conquest. This was already a habit in Etruscan times, and the Romans continued it. A good Greek education was highly valued by the Romans, as Latin and Greek educations were valued by the British in the 18th and 19th centuries.

It is particularly important to remember this when trying to evaluate claims of Greek influence on Roman culture. The Romans themselves were somewhat ambivalent about their relationship with Greek culture, mining it without apology at one moment and defying it for their own intrests at another.

25 Portrait of Augustus as a general, Primaporta, 6’ 8”,
c 20 BCE
Instead of the established Roman standard of individual portraits of the wizened older oligarchs, made for their families to remember them, we now have the production of multiple images of the single emperor. And as a young man, who called himself the “son of god,” Augustus continued to use his youth portraits as standard, throughout his long rein, of over 40 years. Son of god? Caesar had been declared a god by the Senate, posthumously.

The form chosen for Augustus portrait was an idealized one, distinctly different from the verism preferred by the Republican oligarchs. It was inspired by Classical Greek art. The image from Primaporta depicts him as a general. It was found at his wife’s villa. It is based upon Polykleitos’s Doryphoros (5-38).

It is based not on the specific figure so much as on the level of realism and general style of solid, balanced rigidity.

It is in the pose of an emperor addressing his troops, right arm raised and extended, as already seen here in the Aule Metele (9-15). The face is a portrait of the man himself, but as we can see it is a simplified, formalized one. The hair is stylized with sharp edges. The cuirass over the athlete’s body carries an image of the return to the Romans of their military standards by their enemies, the Parthians. The cupid at his feet symbolized Caesar’s family, th Julians, who traced their ancestry back to Venus.

It is a “totally political” work of the highest propaganda. Official emperor and Empress portraits were displayed in every Roman center, throughout the empire, Britain to Syria. As they are in all American post offices , and the public offices of most nations around the world today. These portraits in the Roman world were placed on different bodies, depending on positions they held. Augustus was shown as a general, a veiled priest, a toga clad magistrate, a traveling commander on horseback, a heroically nude warrior, and also the gods Jupiter, Apollo, and Mercury. And also as below, with the civic crown, as a savior of fellow citizens. The Emperor’s wives too took on roles, as the goddesses Ceres, Juno, Venus, and Vesta, or as personifications of Health, Justice or Piety. Ordinary citizens sometimes did the same.

Intro-10 Augustus wearing a corona civica (civic crown), 1’ 5”, early 1st. c. CE
It is not uninteresting to compare the Primaporta Augustus to this prettier, slighter , bust image of the emperor. Or to compare it to the Republican ideals of the Aule Metele (9-15) or the Roman Patrician of 75 BCE (10-6) or the general of 75-50 BCE (10-7). On one hand it is clearly a portrait of Augustus, or at least what Augustus wanted to be seen as. On the other it is clearly an image idealized to a perfection. What can be said other than that he looks like a Greek god. That is how he is portrayed. And this at the age of over 60 years. He was born 62 BCE. This image was made some three decades or so after the Primaporta image.

Whatever else one might say about this shift from a mature, wizened and veristic ideal to a youthful and prettified one, for depictions of the nation’s rulers should tell us something about the difference between Rome of the Republic and Rome of the Empire.

If this discussion seems a little to focus on the pointless, take a look at the coin portraits of our presidents Jefferson or Washington. Why do we prefer to depict our great presidents as if they were in their younger years, when they served much later?

26 Bust of Livia, 1’1”, early 1st c. CE, Faiyum
It must be admitted that this portrait of Livia, Augustus’s wife, is as perfected, if not quite so pretty. This, like the Primaporta image seems a degree more formal and so austere and bland than the bust of Augustus wearing the corona civica. There is the same simplified, somewhat abstracted 5th century naturalism of Classical Greece. The life-like intimacy that came in the Hellenistic period is avoided here for a more formal, eternal quality. As time went by, Livia’s portraits were always in the most current hair fashion, but she never aged. She stayed a Classical goddess through the of 87.

Slatkin points out Livia’s activity as a major patron of the arts. At Primaporta, her villa have been found some of the most important and interesting works of the Augustan period. We began this lecture with the finest image of Augustus to survive, and it is one that comes from there. We’ve previously considered the Gardenscape of the Villa Livia. She was also known to have commissioned public buildings, including a number of temples, including the prestigeous temple commemorating Augustus.

27 Ara Pacis Augustae, 13-9 BCE, Rome
The Ara Pacis Augustae, the Altar of Augustan Peace, was inaugurated on his wife’s birthday in 9 BCE. It commemorates the peace brought to the empire under his leadership. It is a small square-walled compound, with the altar open to the sky inside and fine relief sculpture explaining its function on the exterior. The outer walls are divided into two registers over the basement that raised it slightly off the ground. Front and back it has images of deities flanking its entrances. On the sides the lower register is filled with acanthus tendrils. The upper zone is filled with figurative panels.

The panels nearest the entrance feature mythological scenes. The one immediately right of the entrance shows Aeneas making a sacrifice. Aeneas was the son of Venus celebrated as one of Augustus’s ancestors. Virgil’s major poem, the Aenead was written during Augustus’ reign as a means of raising his importance by claiming the decent of his line from the gods. [Though he was only the adopted son of Caesar.]

28 “Tellus” panel (Ara Pacis), 13-9 BCE, 5’ 3” h, Rome
Here is a panel, showing a mother with a pair of infants. She may be Tellus (Mother Earth), but she may be Pax (Peace) or Ceres (Grain), or Venus. What is clear is that she symbolizes fruitfulness and abundance. She is surrounded by blossoming plants and domesticated animals. Personifications of the winds flank her, one on a sea creature [dolphin?] the other on a bird [goose].

29 “Imperial Family in Procession” (Ara Pacis),13-9 BCE,
5’ 3” h, Rome
The other scene from the monument shows a procession of the imperial family and important dignitaries, on the northern and southern walls. As the Panathenaic freize, this one shows the leaders of the nation proceeding towards the altar. In emulating the famous Classical monument in this way, Augustus to some extent claimed to have created a second Classical age.

Unlike the Panathenaic procession, which showed a generic or typical procession and classes of individuals, not particular individuals, this one shows a specific mment, the inauguration of this altar in 13 BCE. The various individuals in it are, were particular recognizable individuals. [All quite abstracted in the manner of the Augustan portraits we have already seen, of course.] Even children were included, as they were not in any other state monument. The portrayal of whole families here, not just great men, was intended to follow Augustus’s policy of family development. There was a fear of a declining birthrate among the Roman nobility at the time. [Our section begins with the edge of Livia’s robe.]

Slatkin follows Diana Kleiner in focusing specifically on the figures that appear this same section of the freize. This is one of the sections showing three families following directly after Augustus himself. Augustus put through the Senate a series of laws intended to buttress the family of the patricians (the upper class). His lex Julia de adulteriis was against adultery, that brought it into the realm of state judges, from the private sphere. Other laws were intended to encourage marriage and the raising of children. Celibacy and childlessness were taxed against, while having more children was encouraged.

Indeed Augustus’s laws more or less required all upper-class girls to marry, and they were married at puberty. Motherhood brought special status, but it was of course even more dangerous at this young age than it would be otherwise. “Unmarried women forfeited their inheritances, and childless women lost half of their inheritances.”

The most important decision about any image is what to include in it. Following that is the decision of how to portray that subject. But it is the appearance of a subject that counts most. Weather or not the children on the Ara Pacis are seen as miniature adults or as adolescents and toddlers is less important than the fact of their appearance. Similarly the age or degree of idealization of emperors or anyone else is less important than the fact of their appearance. So then the fact that “freed” men and women appear shows that slavery was something one could recover from in ancient Rome.

It is important Roman art gives us some of our earliest and most interesting images of specific women. As Romans women took a more prominent place in public life than they were allowed by the Greeks and some other early states, images expressing recognizing prominence appeared. Portraits of particular women and images of women engaged in practical tasks are more revealing than symbolic Images of women goddesses in this regard.

In the second half of the 1st C. BCE Rome began to build with great amounts of white, Carrara, marble. Earlier there was very little in this bright stone. Augustus used it in great amounts as he built monumentally in the city. His claim was, he found a city of brick and transformed it into a city of marble. The Ara Pacis is an example of this work.

* 30 Maison Carrée, Nîmes (France), 1-10 CE
The Neo-Classical, Augustan, style can be seen in the Maison Carrée at Nîmes (ancient Nemausus), in the Roman province of Gaul. It is in the same basic Roman form we have already seen, a rectangular structure on a high podium, entered from one side, It is a pseudoperipteral temple with a cella filling up the 7 rear bays and its open porch the front three. Its pillars are Corinthian. The style is so totally and specifically Roman that many scholars feel that the workmen came directly from there.

The views on Plato’s Cave show the crispness of the cutting of the details. They also give us a clear look at the Roman Corinthian which is little different from the Greek, except for a few proportions. The Romans generally preferred the Corinthian. Now we can see up close how the fluting of a column makes its forms stand out in the light, as a smooth shaft could not do. Fluted columns appear thicker and stronger than smooth ones. Though the Roman temple lacks the figurative details of the Greek temple, we are reminded that the distance to the figurative art on a temple like the Parthenon makes appreciation of the sculpture quite difficult. It is too far away and too small. The crispness of the architectural details here, the moldings in the base and the architrave, the repetitive dentals and other structural elements stand out strongly and pleasingly. The keep a conventionally repeated temple form from being boring. This one also has great stone vases flanking the entrance, that relieve the simplicity to an extent.

Vitruvius, whose treatise, The Ten Books of Architecture, was dedicated to Augustus, preferred this classical [pillar and lintel, rectilinear] style to the arcuate of later Rome. Thomas Jefferson visited the Maison Carrée in order to study its forms. It is the best preserved of any Roman temple.

It is enjoyable, if totally irrelevant, to note that the popular twilled cotton fabric, from Nîmes is named for that fact denim, which is “de Nîmes.” The Genoese liked it in blue, and so we say “jeans.”

* 31 Pont-du-Gard, Nîmes [Fr], 16 BCE
The Pont-du-Gard, the bridge over the river Gard, is also an aqueduct. The Romans have left an astonishing number of structures, because of their very fine engineering in stone. Their empire was more than a knitting together of sovereign states, from which they collected taxes or tribute. They ruled their vast collection of different nations with quite different cultures to a significant degree through the application of a single set of laws, while providing each with a basic set of civic amenities, such as police, fire protection, trade with the rest of the empire, and beyond, access to food, drinking water and sanitation.

The water for the city of Nîmes, which passed over the Pont-du-Gard was brought from 25 miles away. It provided water equal to a hundred gallons a day for each citizen. To do this required a channel that sloped gradually downward for 25 miles. We see that channel here as it crossed the River Gard, several miles east of the town. The aqueducts of Rome itself go back to the fourth century BCE.

The structure is a causeway for humans below and an aqueduct on its upper level. It is composed of ashlar blocks of around 2 tons each, assembled without mortar. The combination of larger arches below and smaller ones above forms a rather handsome effect.

Though it appears regular, and is to a degree on top, the large arches below are relatively varied in their spans. Since they are all typical Roman semicircular arches they have slightly different springings to maintain the same height. The differences are managed carefully enough to appear satisfyingly regular. The largest arch is an 82 foot span over the main channel of the river. The other’s vary between 62 & 50. At the lowest level the great piers are faced with pointed buttressing on the up-river side, to protect strengthen it against the flow of the current. The total is 155’ high and 882’ long. Up close it is a magnificent example of handsome arcuate ashlar engineering. Its rugged, slightly rusticated, surface finish trumpets the strength as well as the actual engineering of the structure.

Despite the care of the original construction, the structure has only lasted this long because of the continuing careful upkeep by later French masons, who used it as a model structure for training apprentices. The blocks projecting out from the otherwise smooth facade are there to support the scaffoldings necessary to work on the structure.

32 Porta Maggiore, Rome, c 50 CE
The Porta Maggiore is a gateway carrying an aqueduct, that stands at the point where two major, intercity, roads cross and two different aqueducts converge. At this point the there are still two separate water courses, one above the other. The lower story f the gateway is an example of rustication of a stronger type than found on the Pont-du-Gard. Its three crisply cut pediments stand in contrast to the rugged irregularity of the rustication. The esthetic is one focused on the strength and power of stone. Rustication makes for a great showing of power, as finely carved narrow moldings seem to speak of refinement and elegance.

33 Octagonal Hall of the Domus Aurea of Nero, Rome,
64-68, Severus & Celer.
The Domus Aurea, Nero’s Golden House was one of those fabulous perks the ruler of a vast empire can have created from his pleasure. In 64 the city of Rome suffered the famous and devastating fire that the Emperor Nero has remained famous for. As far as the majority of people were concerned, the city took on new rules requiring better fireproofing and so increased use of concrete. For Nero it meant the building of yet another palace.

The major rooms of the Domus Aurea are concrete vaulted forms with brick facings. Though they also received fine marble, stucco, and fresco decorations, these have been lost. The Octagonal Hall, designed by Celer and Severus, stands out for its new approach to concrete. The hall is a richly complex combination of symmetrically playful geometric chambers. The central ceiling of the hall modulates from eight sided to round as it rises. The five of the eight sides that do not open to the exterior, open onto vaulted satellite rooms. Sky lighting is fit between the vaults.

What is most significant here, according to the view of later architects, is the treatment of “walls and vaults not as limiting space but as shaping it.” As one passes through the spaces, the thin pillars hardly intrude into consciousness and what one feel is not moving through a series of separate chambers, but through a single complex of geometric spaces.

It is difficult to read this on a diagram such as we have, but you will see what it means when we get to the Byzantine halls based upon similar premises, in lectures to come. Here is a small and compact version of the significant contribution to esthetic vision that I have spoken of earlier, in the discussion of Pompeii’s Forum, the esthetics of space.

* 34 Colosseum, Rome, 70-80 CE
Amphitheaters were a Roman invention, to provide venues for the vast gladiatorial contests that the state used to entertain the populace. And we might add, keep their aggressively violence oriented in ways the state could control. The spread them throughout the empire. A good number survive around Italy, France and elsewhere. Only the Greeks seemed to have rejected them, the apparent reason being a rejection of gladiatorial combats for entertainment.

The Colosseum in Rome was built for Vespasian, on land that had formerly belonged to Nero, on the grounds of the Domus Aurea. It was named for the colossal statue of Nero that once stood nearby. It was large enough to accommodate 50,000 spectators, for gladiatorial and some other spectacles.

Like the earlier amphitheater at Pompeii, this one could not have been built without concrete and use of the tunnel vault. The enormous oval platforms for seating were supported over concrete barrel vaults. Much of this is visible today in the skeleton of the structure that has survived the picking over its finely veneered surface of marble got from those seeking stone for post-Roman projects. Beneath the floors we can now see the corridors and waiting rooms for the gladiators and animals, lifted by elevators into the arena.

It is easy to see how the engineering of vaults, and most intensively variations on the barrel vault, were a fascinating field of endeavor for the Romans. Much as digital computer technology has taken over much thinking and designing in the later 20th century, so barrel vaulting was a rage of interest and creativity for the Romans. The Colosseum is a wonderfully intricate weaving of barrels and groins: concentric rings of them around the oval outline, intersected and strengthened by 76 tunnels radiating like spokes from the center to the edges.

The outer walls rose to 160’, the height of a 16 story building today, divided into four stories on the exterior facade. The famous design of this facade was of three layers of arcades, topped by a flat wall. On the outer surface the arcades were decorated by depictions of pillar and lintels with the orders different on each level. The pattern here was a model for many later multistoried designs. The plainer, stronger-looking, Tuscan Doric at the base; the more elegant Ionic on the story above, the Corinthian on that, and a thinner, flatter Corinthian on the low relief of the upper most tier.

The form of an arched structure within a rectangular frame detailed by pilaster columns was the Roman (Italian?) standard. We can see it back as far as the second century BCE Porta Marzia (9-13). “Like the pseudoperipteral temple, which is an eclectic mix of Greek orders and Etruscan plan, this way of decorating a building’s facade combined Greek orders with an architectural from foreign to Greek post-and-lintel architecture, namely the arch.” (272)

This Roman bay, of an arch framed by pilasters and lintels, is totally different from anything the Greeks could conceive, because the Romans used arches as the Greeks did not. But do we want, or need, to consider their use of pillars a peculiar adoption from the Greeks, rather than a continuation of a Mediterranean tradition that was older than the Greeks and shared by many Mediterranean’s who were not Greek? I don’t think we want to do this any more than we want to consider Roman temple plans Etruscan, when they were shared by several Italian cultures besides the Etruscans. Though the hegemonic (or aristocratic) preference is to attribute all creativity to the major ruling power of a particular moment or place, the more democratic approach is to recognize the polycultural sharing of motifs and authorship.

The point here is that it is relatively arbitrary as to where we want to cut into a continuing development of widely shared forms and call one or another version the real one and make subsequent variations beholding to that hegemonic alternative. This privileging of one culture’s point in a widely spread continuum is done to establish hegemonic traditions over others. Why not consider pillars Egyptian, and so all Greek architecture derived from the Egyptians? Classical Greece which has been taken as the ideal, golden age, of “Western” culture normally gets the nod as the true inventor of all that it touched. So in this case a uniquely Roman design is made to derive from the Greeks.

Once again we have an hegemonic claim that a variation on established Mediterranean themes is a derivation from a more prestigeous source. The Romans used all the styles known to the Greeks, plus a couple the Greeks didn’t use. The Roman variations were is somewhat different proportions than those used by the Greeks. The Romans Corinthian, for instance could be done with unfluted columns. The Romans regularly superimposed one order over another, the Greeks never did.

35 Portrait of Vespasian, 69-79 CE, 1’4”, Ostia
With this portrait of the Emperor Vespasian we get a return to the verism style of the Roman Republic. Vespasian was a former army officer, who projected himself as the opposite of the profligate Nero. Though this isn’t as brutal as some earlier imagery, it is a jump away from Augustus and his successor’s depiction of themselves as youthful gods. It is unquestionably a mature adult, with a receding hairline a somewhat worn looking appearance.

Though there is a question in our text as to how much of this was the artist’s idea and how much the emperor’s, we should notice that it is always the artist who makes the art, but it is always made to suit the wish of the patron. This is particularly true when the artist wants more work or the patron has a life and death power at their disposal as well as a bottomless purse.

36 Portrait of a Flavian woman, 2’ 1”, c 90 CE, Rome
In contrast to the Republican period, when only elders were commemorated in stone portraits, now women as well were subjects, and age was no question. Here is an elegant young woman, likely a princess. The work is elegant and delicate and particularly interested in the different textures of skin and hair. The coiffure is particularly elaborate. It reveals the use of a drill as well as the usual chisels.

What is most striking, however, has to be the natural, personal realism. Roman realism was such that one can hardly ask for more sensitivity to the human form.

Slatkin 6-3 Marcia Furnilla, Roman Matron as Venus

Here is the next step beyond the personal portrait, the personal idealization to the level of the gods. As we’ve seen men portraying themselves as gods, here is a woman doing the same thing. Here the portrait head is added to the body we already know as the “Capatoline Aphrodite.” The actual person here is probably Marcia Furnilla, the second wife of the Emperor Titus, though this has been questioned on the date of the hair style.

[This may look a bit racey to us today, but classicists over the years have found it a model worth emulating, the most notable of whom was probably Napoleon Bonepart and his sister. Her image is now in the Borghese Gallery in Rome. His was taken home by the British General who defeated him at Waterloo, and whose house it has been on display ever since.]

* 37 Arch of Titus, 81 CE, Rome
The arch of Titus, commemorating his conquest of Judea and the destruction of the Hebrew temple there in 70 CE, was constructed on the order of his brother, in 81, the year of his death. Though the type is regularly called a triumphal arch, they were commemorative of other sorts of events as well. They go back to the second century BCE. Titus’ arch is located on the Sacred Way leading into the Republican, Forum Romanum.

It is a simple and compact version of what could be a much more elaborate structure: a single arched passage way crowned by a thick attic and framed by engaged columns. These columns are depicted in the Roman’s newly created Composite Order: a combination of Corinthian acanthus leaves and Ionic volutes, that became popular in the third quarter of the 1st century. This is the earliest known use of the Composite Order. The arch is just under fifty feet in height (47’4”) and 43 feet in width (43’8”). It is 15 feet (15’6”) in depth. The architectural detail includes a plaque in the attic with a dedicatory inscription saying it was set up to honor the god Titus, son of the god Vespasian. A bronze image of the emperor driving a four horse chariot (quadriga), once stood atop the arch.

The spandrels of the arch are filled with Victories (winged females) and converging on a strongly projecting keystone carrying images of Fortuna and Roma. The entablature over the arch has a narrow figurative freize showing an episode from the Judaean war. The interior passageway is richly decorated. The soffit (underside) of the arch is articulated in coffers with the apotheosis of Titus at its peak. There are framed relief panels spanning the full width, just below the springing.

38 Spoils of Jerusalem (Arch of Titus), 81 CE, 7’10” h, Rome
The panels of the passage represent Titus’s triumphal return to Rome and his passage down the Sacred Way. On one side is a depiction of his armies carrying back the spoils of the Temple in Jerusalem, including a great menorah (7 branched candelabrum), symbol of the Jews. There is a strong attempt here to show movement in the figures by the careful depiction of their poses, with several leaning forward. There is also an interest in perspective with the placing of an arch diagonally across their path, that is depicted as if fading into the background. The relief here is much higher than that on the Ara Pacis, with some figures nearly free from the ground, and some so free they have actually lost their heads to vandals.

39 Triumph of Titus (Arch of Titus), 81 CE, 7’10” h, Rome
Opposite, and moving in the same direction, up the Sacred Way, toward the temple, is a relief of Titus driving a quadriga, surrounded by his troops. Here there is an element of allegory, as a Victory stands behind him, placing a wreath on his head. Personifications of honor and Valor (leading his horses) are included. This is apparently the first known example of Roman artists showing humans consorting with deities in an historical relief. [Though we may remember that under the Empire, the Senate regularly declared Emperors to be divine, after their passing.] It would not be long before they would show living Emperors consorting with the gods.