Volume 79, 2004

More than sixty – complete or fragmentary – Laconian bronze hydriae are preserved and catalogued. The article aims at showing the stilistic and chronological coherence of this rather exceptional output of the Laconian bronze industry between ca. 650 and 550 BC. It should contribute, moreover, to end a rather long standing controverse about the dating of a well-preserved group of bronze hydriae which came to light at Paestum and Sala Consilina (here incorporated in the ‘Gitiadas Group’): In fact the history of the whole bronze industry of Sparta, Corinth and other centres of the Archaic Period is at stake.

The discovery of Pythagoras’ shrine at Paestum in South Italy will enrich our knowledge about geometry done with numbers of various geometrical and arithmetical progressions. The accuracy of the constructions is fabulous. The diagonal of a square with side 309 was found to be rational by measuring. A golden isosceles triangle has been laid off by using the telling numbers 618 and 1000. The Archimedean value for pi was already known in the 6th century BC. The Delian problem is older than the time of Plato. The Pythagoreans solved this problem as well as the quadrature of the circle.

The recently regenerated, vexed question of Etruscan origins should be related to the fact that the Etruscan, Raetic and Lemnian languages have strong resemblances. According to M. Pallottino the languages originally belonged to a Mediterranean, non-Indo-European language dating back to the time of the Eneolithic Rinaldone-culture, which is partially of East-European origin. ‘Orientalists’ suppose that Tyrsenians (Etruscans) emigrated from (North) Western Asia Minor, or the North Aegean area, to Italy around the turn of the 12th century BC. C. de Simone (1996) reasons that Etruscans from southern Etruria settled on Lemnos before or around 700 BC. However, the differences between Etruscan, Raetic and Lemnian show that these languages evolved during some time on their own spot. The question is: did they have a common ancestor, and if so, where and when? What are the implications for the question of the origins? Can archaeologists solve the problem? Which sources are most reliable: linguistic, archaeological or philological-historical evidence? The linguistic evidence is strongly in favour of the orientalist theory.

This article attempts to illustrate the chronological development of ‘vernice nera’-pottery in the Marches (East-Central-Italy), based on published contexts and the material of the Potenza Valley Survey.* The ‘vernice nera’-pottery sheds light on the Romanization of the area as it documents the first Roman occupation of the territory and the subsequent phases of influence. All components that contributed to the pottery-facies of the Romanized ager Gallicus et Picenus will be treated. Particular aspects of the ‘vernice nera’-pottery will be emphasized, such as the evolution of local productions and imports. The phenomenon of regional resemblances, which hinders an understanding of origin, chronology and distribution, will be stressed. In addressing these issues, the article constructs a preliminary framework for the commercial relationship between the Marches and its neighbouring regions.

Im Rahmen einer Neustrukturierung seiner Kriegsflotte ließ Augustus in Misenum an der Spitze des Golfs von Neapel einen Hafen anlegen, der durch eine ebenfalls neu gebaute Wasserleitung versorgt wurde. Sie erschloss das mehr als 90 km von Misenum entfernte Quellgebiet von Serino im Apennin, und weil man die Wasserleitung nach Pompeji als Ableitung aus dieser Serinoleitung verstand, wurde ihr Bau ebenfalls augusteisch datiert. Tatsächlich aber wurde das Wasserversorgungssystem Pompejis schon in sullanischer Zeit gebaut, und darüber hinaus ist das volle Ausmaß der damit in Zusammenhang stehenden Baumaßnahmen bislang im Dunkeln geblieben: Neben den eigentlichen Versorgungseinrichtungen wurden nämlich große Geländeauffüllungen im Bereich des äußeren Pomeriums vorgenommen, die Porta Vesuvio wurde stark verändert und die innere Pomerialstraße nach Westen wurde als Fahrstraße aufgegeben, umgebaut und überbaut. Im folgenden Beitrag werden diese drei Baumaßnahmen sowohl im Einzelnen als auch in ihrem inneren Zusammenhang mit dem Bau des Wasserversorgungssystems vorgestellt und die Belege für die Datierung in sullanische Zeit diskutiert.

This paper presents metal utensils from the time of the Bar Kokhba Revolt that were discovered at Moran 1 site in the Southern Judaean Foothills. Moran 1 site contains sparse remains of buildings with underground cavities beneath them. In 1981, a large hiding complex was examined here, the first one to be discovered in this region. In February 2000, we re-examined the site. On the surface we found twenty bronze coins, dated from the first to the eighth century CE. A bronze Bar Kokhba’s coin was discovered at the entrance shaft to the hiding complex. In one of the chambers of the complex, three metal objects were found: an elbow key, an iron strigil and a bronze mirror. The objects were hidden together in the complex, during the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132-135 CE). The mirror’s back was ornamented with attachments cast in bronze in the form of busts of Isis and Sarapis. The gods faces were deliberately rubbed, apparently by pious Jews, in order to strip them of their idolatrous status, as described in the Mishnah (Abodah Zarah 4:5). The article describes the objects and offers interpretations as to their meaning. Did the artifacts belong to a man or a woman who lived at the site? Strigils and mirrors are associated with bathhouses or gymnasia in the Graeco-Roman world – seemingly far removed from Jewish life in a remote village in the early second century CE. Or was the strigil taken, along with the bronze mirror, as booty from Roman soldiers stationed in the Jewish region, at the beginning of the revolt? Were Roman army units billeted in the Judaean rural areas during the first-second centuries CE?

The reconstruction of the city centre of Beirut, destroyed after years of civil war, has given archaeologists the opportunity to carry out salvaging excavations. This paper discusses the sculptures uncovered between 1995-1998. The statuettes of Aphrodite and Apollo, the heads of Dionysus and Hadrian were all found in disturbed trenches and/or secondary deposits. The Aphrodite, on exhibition in the National Museum of Beirut, dates from the 1st century BC. The Apollo and the heads of Dionysus and Hadrian were created in the 2nd century AD. The most likely context and function of the sculptures, in particular the head of Hadrian, in Hellenistic and Roman Beirut are mentioned in the summary.

In this article we re-examine in detail a group of private Roman female portraits often considered to have been reworked through the chiselling away of all or part of the coiffure, followed by the addition of new updated portions. Our aim is to expand on Elizabeth Bartman’s criticism of the modern theory that Roman women followed fashions in hair so closely that they frequently commissioned the updating of the coiffures on their marble images. We argue instead that the appearance of these supposedly reworked images can better be explained in technical terms, as a result of initial piecing or later repair.

This article pays close attention to one aspect of the famous battle of images between Mark Antony and Octavian in the build-up to Actium. It challenges the common assumption that the figures of Hercules and Omphale were purposefully portrayed as Octavian ‘anti-propaganda’&Mac226; against Mark Antony and Cleopatra, displaying the triumvir as emasculated by the Egyptian Queen. The link between Hercules and Antony was tenuous, especially in his later career, and there is little evidence that the mythological scene had propagandistic connotations. With this in mind, it seems that a political reading of the images is stretching the evidence too far.

In this article the iconography of the Roman emperors Pertinax and Didius Julianus (193 AD) is studied, starting from a portrait in the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden. On the basis of coin portraits and ancient descriptions of the emperors, it is possible to divide the existing portraits of Pertinax into two different types: one dating from the period before his accession to the throne (two examples, including a bust found in the villa of Lullingstone) and one posthumous type (at least four examples). Of Didius Julianus only one portrait type is known, represented by two examples, including the head in Leiden.

A woman’s grave found in the late Roman cemetery of the inner city of Nijmegen in 1957, and dated by 55 coins to the years 317-320 AD, contained in the place of the vanished right arm among other objects a miniature pair of scales and several North Sea shells. The scales are interpreted as an attribute of Sabazios worship in its Cologne variant; the shells as a passport to the happy part of the underworld: a common whelk showing that she had been initiated on various levels, and cockles in order to prove that she had ‘clammed up’ to the uninitiated about the rites.

Pages 211-234.

The purpose of this article is to take a significant appurtenance of feminine fashion – the wig – and demonstrate its ideological function. We know that Roman women wore wigs in ‘real’ life. References in the literary sources and rare yet significant examples of surviving wigs and hairpieces provide solid evidence for the use of wigs by Roman women. However, the explicit depiction of wigs seems to have been restricted to a selection of women’s portraits dated to the late 2nd to 3rd century AD. This consequently marks a significant development in female representation, confined to a specific historical context. The purpose of this article is to understand why it was that these portraits presented women bewigged. What was the ideological function of these portraits and how can this more broadly inform our understanding of the cultural priorities of this era?

This paper started as a review of Antike Plastik fasc. 28. It gives a short description of three of the four chapters, those dealing with Apollo Sauroktonos, with a colossal head of Heracles in Sparta, and with a well-known relief in Epidaurus. The first chapter, however, in which the fascinating statue of Phrasikleia and the kouros found together with her, are published by N. Kaltsas, asked for extensive comments and supplementary descriptions. This concerns drapery and folds, the uncut area around the feet under the skirt, the shades of colour seemingly visible in the excellent photographs, the structure of the meanders that decorate the garment, aspects of the sculptural style and, finally, the clumsiness of certain details, which may perhaps be attributed to a helpmate of the Parian sculptor Aristion (whose name is mentioned in the inscription recognized as belonging to the kore).