A Companion to Greek Mythology by Dowden Ken Livingstone Niall & Niall Livingstone

Author:Dowden, Ken, Livingstone, Niall & Niall Livingstone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Published: 2011-03-02T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Myth and Death: Roman Mythological Sarcophagi

Zahra Newby

Myth and the Sarcophagus: The Question of Interpretation

The sudden emergence in the second century AD of marble sarcophagi decorated with stories from Greek mythology has been a cause of wonder and debate for over a century. 1 Leaving aside the question of the reasons behind the change from cremation to inhumation, great debate has also ensued over why particular myths were chosen and what messages they were supposed to convey. 2 In this chapter I will discuss the range of myths shown on Roman sarcophagi and suggest some ways forward in our understanding of their significance in a funerary context.

My main focus is on sarcophagi produced by workshops in the city of Rome, where sarcophagi with mythological themes were especially popular and can help to illuminate the ways in which Romans appropriated and adapted Greek myth for their own purposes. Two other major centres of sarcophagi production were located in Attica in mainland Greece and at Dokimeion in Asia Minor. Attic sarcophagi also feature mythological imagery, though the range of myths is more restricted than in Rome: scenes of the heroes Achilles, Hippolytos, and Meleager and the battles of the Trojan War are most popular. 3 In Asia Minor frieze sarcophagi (for which see below) are less popular than garland or columnar sarcophagi, and there are few examples of unified mythological narratives. However, individual mythological figures do appear in the niches of columnar sarcophagi. These imitated the statuary types that adorned contemporary buildings and contributed to the architectonic form of these sarcophagi, but the figures chosen may also have provided analogies to the life and virtues of the deceased buried within. 4 The choices and presentation of mythological figures on sarcophagi differ in the east and west of the empire, and while some Roman sarcophagi added portrait features to mythological figures (discussed below), this is not found in the east. It seems likely that the ways myth was understood in the funerary sphere varied across the empire, with myths in the east probably much more tightly bound up with communal senses of Greek identity. 5

Table 16.1 Periodization of the second–third centuries AD.

period dates principal emperors

Hadrianic 117–138 Hadrian

Antonine 138–161

161–180

180–192

192–193 Antoninus Pius

Marcus Aurelius

Commodus

Pertinax

Severan 193–211

211–217

218–222

222–235 Septimius Severus

Caracalla

Elagabalus

Alexander Severus

The debate over the symbolism of mythological sarcophagi has largely focused around the large number of sarcophagi produced in Rome, and is still most clearly expressed by the polarized views of the French scholar Franz Cumont and the American Arthur Darby Nock in the 1940s. 6 While Cumont argued for complex allegorical symbolism concerning the fate of the soul after death, Nock expressed scepticism, stressing instead the link with representations of myth in other areas of Roman art and their association with classicism and education. Cumont’s elaborate readings of mythology, which relied on the interpretations given in Neopythagorean texts, often in contrast to the features stressed by the reliefs themselves, have now largely fallen out of favour. Yet scholars are equally reluctant to accept Nock’s minimalism, arguing that the

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