Volume 86, 2011

Dionysos and Cheiron are the most important guests in the Wedding of Peleus and Thetis on the François Vase. Dionysos has been described as stumbling, turbulant, seeking sympathy, or burdened by the amphora. He is none of these. He is in perfect balance and looks out to draw attention to his gift for Thetis, the golden vessel that will contain the ashes of Patroklos and Achilles. It is not a burden and it does not rest on his shoulder, but hangs part way down his back. Cheiron’s branch is not a fir, but the ash he gave to Peleus that became the spear Achilles took to Troy. Only these guests bring gifts, each of enormous importance for the offspring of this marriage. Kleitias’ depiction of them has no equal.

‘Corinthianising’, primarily expressed by the dominance of animal friezes, is the main characteristic of Attic early black-figured pottery. Figure-scenes are limited and deities are only rarely represented. The only exception is Hermes, identified by his kerykeion and depicted flanked by sirens or sphinxes on a number of vases. The present article presents and examines in detail these scenes in an attempt to interpret the god’s role and meaning, emphasizing on the vessels’ archaeological context. Having as principal aim to demonstrate that the contextual approach of iconography can offer new interesting insights into its social background, this study explores the association of Attic early 6th-century funerary and cult practices with the iconography of deities, drawing a number of conclusions concerning contemporary Attica.

In recent decades data provided by funerary archaeology has revolutionized our understanding of the proto-urban landscapes of Latium in the early Iron Age. The data that provide a compelling argument for the emergence of fixed systems of social hierarchy contribute greatly to the study of the first wave of urbanism that transformed the Italian peninsula. The discovery in 2009 of two elite infant burials in the Latin city of Gabii contributes to this narrative, as these sub-adults were interred with grave goods that attest to the presence of a system of inherited social rank and thus provide important testimony about Gabii in the Orientalizing period. The funerary data presented here holds the potential of eventually being contextualized alongside settlement data from Gabii.

The incorporation of podia into Etruscan and Latial religious buildings during the 6th century BC marks the emergence of temples as a distinct architectural form in both the urban landscape and the archaeological record. Consideration of the significance of this change in elevation, however, has largely been overlooked to date in preference for the presentation of podia as a Roman form derived from Etruscan sacred aesthetics. This review of the evidence for the chronological and geographical development of podia in central Italy will suggest a means of differentiating podia from other substructures, demonstrate that they can be recognised in Latium before Etruria, and argue that their introduction may represent an architectural response to particular local conditions.

Although many examples of bathrooms in Punic houses of the Hellenistic period show that the Punic people had a keen interest in body care and hygiene, no latrines had ever been found in any archaeological excavation in the Punic world. During the bilateral excavations of the INP (Tunisia) and Ghent University (Belgium) on the Bir Massouda site in ancient Carthage, the remains of two domestic toilets and one public latrine came to light. These are considered in this paper, evidencing the introduction of a sophisticated system of evacuating human feaces from the Carthaginian city. The study of these structures and their fills allows dating their installation to about the end of the 5th century and the beginning of the 4th century BC.

This paper focuses on the potential contribution of wine and olive oil production to the agrarian economy of Adriatic central Italy between the 2nd century BC and the 2nd century AD. The study area assessed in this paper includes the Marche and northern Abruzzo. The application of a global approach incorporates the analysis of the available evidence in the countryside related to the manufacturing of wine and oil, and the cross-fertilization between archaeological, textual and ceramic documentation. It discusses its associated methodological problems and seeks to determine the production scale of these food products. It also raises the question whether the integration of our sources could allow for a deeper understanding of how these productions fitted within intra and extra regional economic networks.

Als Monumentum Augusti wird hier ein großes Columbarium zwischen der 2. und 3. Meile der via Appia Antica besprochen, das gemäß der vox popoli als das der Freigelassenen und Sklaven des Augustus bezeichnet wird. Es existieren keine Inschriften, die diese Vermutung stützen. Der Mangel an Funden führte bereits im 18. Jahrhundert zu Verwechslungen mit dem ehemals nahgelegenen inschriftenreichen Monumentum Liviae, das heute nicht mehr existiert. Besprochen werden die hypothetischen Rekonstruktionen und Ansichten der Neuzeit von G.B. Montano, G.B. Piranesi, J. Barbault, A. Uggeri, L. Labruzzi und L. Canina. Die Größe des Monuments und die Lage an der Konsularstraße machen das Kaiserhaus als Auftraggeber sehr wahrscheinlich, besonders die Tatsache, dass der Bau kein Hypogaeum besitzt, worauf ein privater Bauherr oder eine Begräbnisgesellschaft auf keinen Fall verzichtet hätte. Für den repräsentativen, funktional aber viel stärker als beispielsweise das Monumentum Liviae orientierten Grabbau wird eine Datierung in die Spätzeit des Tiberius um 30 n.Chr. vorgeschlagen.

This article reflects on some of the problems inherent in the study of imperial (self)presentation. It argues that Roman emperors had to bridge the gap between the reality of emperorship and its perception by different layers of society. Augustus solved the problem by putting forward a multi-faceted imperial persona, to whom different audiences could relate differently. This plurality characterised ‘normal’ images of power in the first two centuries of the Roman Empire. Exception to the rule was imagery of those rulers who expressly aimed to legitimate themselves through clear but controversial visual programmes. This resulted in inflexible imagery, and antagonistic reactions. The problems which the Roman Empire faced in the third century widened the ‘gap’ between imperial image and daily reality, and changed the dynamics through which Roman ideology was formulated.

The Roman imperial forum is a potent symbol of imperial authority and a key setting for the study of elite funded building-work. However, its interpretation as a monument at the centre of dynamics of elite social competition does not offer a comprehensive understanding of its surviving remains. This article proposes to enrich our view of this space by introducing the space-shaping role of urban-living. This is demonstrated through a re-interpretation of the forum of Timgad, in which a data-review will describe key processes that contributed to its present appearance. The re-interpretation of the genesis of this forum will show it to be ‘fragmented’ by urban-living and offer a new reading of the remains of fora in Roman Africa and in the empire at large.

It is suggested that the proportions given by Vitruvius for the ideal human figure (Vitr. De arch. 3.1.2) imply a division of the upper half of the body that approximates closely to the so-called Golden Section. The prerequisite of this is that the geometrical midpoint of the figure coincides with the base of the penis, a common convention in Greek male statuary. The result is a continuous proportion between the three main divisions of the body (legs, trunk, head + neck). It is further suggested that the conjecture a medio pectore is open to doubt.

Traditionally, the 2nd century AD in Roman Altinum (Northern Italy) has been described as a period of crisis. As a similar ‘commercial and agricultural’ setback has earlier been proposed for the whole Italian peninsula in general, this article evaluates the epistemological basis of this local variant. A historiographical research firstly contextualises the origins of the classical pan-Italic crisis idea. Starting from critiques on this influential concept, a new archaeological methodology for tracing a crisis in antiquity is proposed. Applying this approach to Altinum and the Venetia region, it can be argued that the alleged ‘2nd-century AD crisis’ for the town was not a reality but rather a mixture of historiographical determinism and archaeological scarcity.

The results of an archaeological dig carried out in 2008 in two Libyan coastal sites, Al Hamamah and El Ogla, together with a study of equally precious literary testimonies (Pseudo-Scylax, Strabo, Ptolemy, Stadiasmus Maris Magni, Itinerarium Antonini, Tabula Peutingeriana, Synesius of Cyrene), enable to identify modern El Ogla with ancient Ausigda. These data document the particular vivacity, rather than the decline, of the Cyrenaic coastal settlements in Late Antiquity and lead us to believe that the reworked products of the catch (fish sauce and salted fish, but also highly valued purple cloth), especially of tuna fishing, were not only destined for local consumption and use but were important either for trade and commerce with other Mediterranean areas – being, therefore, vital for the regional economy – or for enrichment opportunities and social mobility of local middle class, like in the case of Andronikos who, from simple thynnoskopos (‘assigned to sighting the tuna’), became the praeses Lybiae Superioris in AD 411. These reflections on the productive activities of Cyrenaic coastal sites have been confirmed by the particular curvilinear shape of El Ogla’s bay. The site in fact lies on an eminence above a sheltered cove, protected at the north-east side by a low promontory and in the north-west by a second short promontory and an island; on the beach there are two circular vats and remains of some harbour infrastructures. These vats, considered ‘storage tanks’ by Jones and Little, very probably should be regarded as basins for the preparation of fish sauce and salted fish (garum and salsamenta), both products highly valued during the Roman Imperial period. From Hellenism to Late Antiquity, the catch of crustaceans, molluscs and a great variety of fish (Plautus, Athenaeus, Synesius), among which the valuable tuna was surely practised along the North African and particularly Libyan coasts. The testimonies on the piscatio thynnaria (in a passage of the jurist Ulpian on a fundus maritimus in Byzacena) and on the particular strategy to capture tuna fish – which did not use the modern ‘death room’ in the open sea but achieved the tuna massacre directly on the beach (Oppianus Anazarbensis and Aelianus), and the processing of haul into ‘enormous recipients’ (ingentes lacus, as writes Manilius) – confirm either the natural ‘predisposition’ of El Ogla’s concave bay to the encirclement of the tuna with fishing nets, or the use of the vats on the beach for fish-salting and garum production, circular structures very similar to others of 3rd century AD found at Berenike, Taucheira, Ptolemais and Apollonia.

The signatures of sculptors and craftsmen have always had above all two purposes. They expressed that the manufacturers were pretty proud of their works and were at the same time means to win new customers through advertising. The antique Greek signatures of sculptors normally consist at least of the individual name in the nominative and a verb, mostly in a form of ?????. Beyond that the signatures could be extended by the patronymic and/or by the ethnicon. It is very interesting that obviously in some cases, above all in the more recent phases of the Graeco-Roman era, the verbal statements of all four components could be interpreted in a widened or even divergent way. The different possibilities of the understanding between the archaic epoch and the time of the Roman emperors will be demonstrated by means of some characteristical examples.