The Flight of Aeneas

While browsing the Getty's collections today I saw yet another intricately sculpted Roman cornelian gemstone from the 1st century BCE.

"The gem captures the moment when Aeneas, son of the Trojan prince Anchises and the goddess Venus, escapes with his family from Troy at the end of the Trojan War. Aeneas climbs up the steps to a waiting ship, with his father over his right arm and his son, Ascanius, holding his left hand. Aeneas wears a corselet but no other armor. His father wears robes with a mantle pulled over his head. Ascanius, shown just at the moment of leaving the gates of the city, wears a Phrygian cap, a chiton, and cloak while holding a pedum (a hunter's throwing stick) over his left shoulder. Anchises holds a cylindrical box with an X pattern on the side. Behind them, the walls of Troy rise up, and a Greek solider in a crested helmets looks towards them from the battlements while holding a lit torch aloft in his raised right arm, a spear upright in his left. Three Trojans await them on the ship, all wearing Phrygian caps: one works the rudder, another the still-furled rigging of the ship, and the third raises a trumpet or other horn-shaped object. Above them, a single star." - J. Paul Getty Museum

I noticed the similarities between the scene on the gem and a 1st century CE sculpture of the flight of Aeneas from the Sebasteion, an imperial cult temple of the Julio-Claudian dynasty and Aphrodite (Venus) in ancient Aphrodisias.  The three-storey complex was embellished with richly carved panels depicting mythological scenes, heroes, and gods surrounded by the emperors Augustus, Tiberius, Claudius, and Nero and their spouses, children and  a series of personified ethne or 'nations' of Augustus' world empire, from the Ethiopians of eastern Africa to the Callaeci of western Spain. The temple was excavated beginning in 1979.  Of the original 200 reliefs, 80 were recovererd.

Read more about the excavations and see more images of the temple here:

http://aphrodisias.classics.ox.ac.uk/sebasteion.html

 

Intaglio with Scene of Aeneas and his Family Escaping from Troy, Carnelian, Roman, 20 BCE now in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Pacific Palisades, California

Roman relief of the Flight of Aeneas with his father Anchises and son Ascanius helped by Aphrodite, 20 - 60 CE. The Trojan hero, Aeneas was the son of the prince Anchises and the goddess Aphrodite. His father was the second cousin of King Priam of Troy. The journey of Aeneas from Troy (with help from Aphrodite), which led to the founding of the city Rome, is recounted in Virgil's Aeneid. The 1st century CE relief is now in the Aphrodisias Museum in Turkey, image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Dick Osseman.

 

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The worship of Roma and the Imperial cult

In ancient Roman religion, Roma was a female deity who personified the city of Rome and more broadly, the Roman state. She embodied Rome in complex ways and symbolized the ideal woman in society. Roman political and religious ideas were portrayed through Roma in different forms of media such as coins, sculptures and designs on architecture. In Roman art and coinage, she was usually depicted with a military helmet, and often other military equipment, although in the Greek-speaking east she more often wore a mural crown, signifying Rome's status as a loyal protector of Hellenic city-states.  

After the assassination of Julius Caesar, his deification, and the development of the imperial cult, worship of such an individual posed a conflict with Republican values, so deified persons were worshiped jointly with Roma. In provincial Africa, temples to Roma and Augustus have been found at Leptis Magna and Mactar.  Tiberius built a temple to Roma and Augustus in Ostia. A total of six such temples have been documented on the Italian peninsula. 

In Lucan's poem, Pharsalia, the poet identifies Roma and the Res Publica with the revered Roman matrona who Julius Caesar repudiates, ending with his embrace of a mistress in Egypt.

Image: Goddess Roma depicted with crested helmet, marble, from Italy 2nd century CE at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto courtesy of the museum.

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Mars: The Roman God of War

Mars was one of the more important gods of the Roman pantheon. Numerous temples, shrines, and altars were dedicated to him in Rome and throughout the Empire. As the god of war, he had many of the same attributes as the Greek god Ares, but he was also closely associated with the imperial cult, since the emperor's power and popularity depended heavily on the army and its military successes. Mars was therefore often depicted on monuments celebrating imperial victories, notably on triumphal arches, a distinctively Roman type of public building. This fragment presumably comes from one such monument, perhaps even from the now lost Portico of Septimius Severus in Rome. Mars is represented in the canonical guise of an older, bearded man wearing a Corinthian helmet tipped back on his head. - The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Image: Mars fragment possibly from the Portico of Septimius Severus courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Colossal statue of Mars found in the forum of Nerva photographed at the Capitoline Museum

Colossal statue of Mars found in the forum of Nerva photographed at the Capitoline Museum

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