CUP (2016) h/b 387pp £74.99 (ISB 9781107072244)
Greek myths saturated the Roman visual environment, says N. in her first sentence. In this beautifully produced book, she explores how this happened and what it meant to the Romans who commissioned and were immersed in this ubiquitous imagery, especially when the fashion was at its height, between the later first and early third centuries AD. In successive chapters, following a scene-setting introduction, she covers statues and monuments in public places, private sculptures in up-market (including imperial) villas and parks, domestic wall-paintings, wall-paintings in tombs, and the sarcophagi sculpted with mythological scenes which appeared mainly in the second and early third centuries. Each type of image is illustrated by detailed analysis of a limited number of items which N. has carefully chosen to illustrate her points. Readers will find old favourites here, such as the Laocoon statue, but also many others which will be unfamiliar.
N.’s concern is to explore what these images meant to the viewer. Not surprisingly, she finds that they could engage on several different levels. They could show off the status and wealth of the owner, and make a statement about his culture and education. They could draw the viewer into a fantasy world, which could stimulate him both emotionally and intellectually. And, importantly for Romans, they could serve as exempla, showing the consequences of good or bad behaviour. Repeated themes in public settings and imperial villas were myths about the deadly consequences of offending the gods, such as Marsyas, Actaeon, the Niobids. But why choose painful subjects like these for a pleasure garden? Because the emperor too is a god, and it is good to remind people how dangerous it is to display hubris towards him.
N. draws out other interesting patterns. One of the best chapters is her lengthy treatment of domestic wall-paintings, mostly from Pompeii inevitably, but some from elsewhere including Rome itself. She shows how these were often themed: epic subjects from Homer or the Argonautica in rooms surrounding the entrance hall or the main reception room, more intimate fantasies about Dionysus or Aphrodite in the more private parts of the house. It is striking that a limited number of stories keep cropping up and must have been the painters’ stock in trade: Dionysus and Ariadne, Actaeon, Adonis, the judgement of Paris, Narcissus—all stories of humans’ interaction with gods, often (but not always) to their disadvantage. In funerary contexts favourite themes are the rape of Persephone, Alcestis, Endymion and Selene, Orpheus, Medea—examples of the unpredictability and finality of death but also praise for the departed and consolation for the bereaved. The stories could be slanted differently from their Greek originals: the Medea sarcophagus (in Basel) follows Euripides’ play, but without showing Jason as a villain.
In her final chapter, N. discusses the intriguing question of why Greek myths displaced as exempla the Roman custom of celebrating the virtues of one’s ancestors. Greek culture flooded in following conquest (although we tend to forget that Greeks were in Italy while Rome was still a village). Augustus tried to stabilise Roman society by reinvigorating concern for ancestral virtues and exploiting the Roman foundation myths, plus great historical figures, to support the moral climate he wanted to create. Why then did these exempla so quickly disappear, to be followed by Greek stories that had nothing to do with Roman history? N. relates it to the fact that society itself was changing: the patrician families which ‘owned’ the classic ancestral virtues were declining in importance, and losing wealth and influence to freedmen and others from wider and more numerous backgrounds, such as Petronius’ Trimalchio. To these newcomers, Republican history meant increasingly little, but the Greek myths were always there, part of everyone’s education.
These bald selections can only give a superficial flavour of N.’s detailed and nuanced arguments. Trying to understand how contemporary viewers understood works of art, from the limited and usually damaged examples available to us, inevitably involves speculation; contemporary texts give a bit of help (which is fully explored) but not much; of course, scholars disagree. N. gives an honest account of such disagreements; the picture she presents, even if not provable, is a compelling one. This book is highly priced, but with a quality to match, excellently produced on high-grade paper and where necessary well illustrated with photographs including a number of very clear colour plates. The notes and bibliography are comprehensive. A thought-provoking book which should at least be in any good reference library.
Colin McDonald