Plebian alienation from the civitas

(2nd-3rd c. Roman Empire)

Portrait busts

1. Marble portrait bust of Memnon the African philosopher, 150-160 A.D. (Berlin: Stadtl. Mus.) 0.27 meters tall. The Graeco-Roman Hellenistic style of portrait bust tended to be outer-directed, but after 150 A.D., the center of interest shifts inward. While the concern for inner life is not new, henceforth it is reconciled with outer life, not through political action, but by means of thought. Philosophy reconciles a person to a harsh or intractible world, and the philosopher becomes the new saving hero. The famous philosopher Memnon was the chief pupil of the Athenian philosophical school founded by Herodes Atticus. The drilled eyes focus on infinity, not this world, and the deep relief around the eyes create a dark triangular shadow to convey inner intensity.

2. Portrait bust, perhaps of the philosopher Plotinus, late 3rd c. A.D. (Ostia Museum). Forms convey the inner reconciliation with the world offered by philosopy. The 3rd Century was probably Rome's most trying period, and was also when Rome began to develop a philosophical tradition of her own rather than a pale imitation of the Greek. More than anyone else, while not himself being Christian, Plotinus offered to Christianity a philosophical superstructure.

Statuary

1. Limestone funerary pillar, from S. Ambroix, of the carpenter Mansuetus with his tools, 2nd c. (S. Germ. en Laye, Mus. d'Antiq.) 1.90 m. tall. In the plebian-Aquitainian provincial style. The funerary monument had great ideological importance in Rome because it contributed to immortality (fama). So it is significant that Mansuetus is memorialized here as a private workman rather than a political being. Cicero once said: Any man who works with his hands is no better than a slave. Such political ideology apparently did not penetrated very deeply in Gaul.

Stone relief

1. Relief fragment from a marble sarcophagus showing Bacchus meeting Ariadne. Rome, c. 190-200 A.D. (Rome: Villa Medici). The traditional legend of rebirth and the apotheosis of immortality after the mid-2nd century is no longer represented in the political, worldly, and optimistic terms of Herculean heroism, but as a victory over death by sacrificial or erotic love, such as that of Bacchus for Ariadne.

2. Relief detail from a marble sarcophagus of a vintaging scene, ca. 3rd c. (Rome: San Lorenzo f.m). In an Attic-provincial style. The new sensibility required that personal satisfaction or immortality arise from personal, rather than political experience. It required a new iconography: Wine or the grapevine represents love transcending death; the dove represents love; the peacock, whose flesh never decays, eternal life.

Painting

1. Fresco of Christ as Good Shepherd, 2nd half of 3rd c. A.D. (Rome: Catacomb of St. Priscilla). Early Christians were relatively poor and socially marginal, and so Christ is often represented as a caring Good Shepherd or a magician (thaumaturge) who saves one from worldly distress. The worldliness is classical, but the appeal to the supernatural suggests little confidence that the system will deliver and address one's emergent private needs.

2. Fresco of an orans figure from the end of 3rd c. A.D. (Rome: Catacomb of Priscilla, Crypt of the Vel. Virg.) In what is called the Early Tetrarchal style: dark figure on light ground; compact, tense angular, with an emphatic gesture. Early Christian art could make excellent use of the development of expressivism in Roman art. The dead person here portrayed as praying, shoots to heaven like a rocket, and the readily available iron-oxide brick-red pigment provides emotional depth in terms of color.

Minor arts

1. Early 2nd century papyrus from Oxyrhyncus, Egypt. One of earliest copies of Luke's Gospel. In the deserts of Palestine and Egypt at this time emerged one of the major expressions of alienation from the worldly civitas, monasticism, for which the barren unpopulated desert becomes a new and spiritual city, as the arena of personal development.

2. Marble inlay of the deified Sun from a Mithraeum, 202-229 A.D. (Rome: S. Prisca). 0.50 meters. Simplified form is reduced to its essentials for the sake of dramatic impact. It reflects a turn to cosmic energy rather than worldly political action as the source of creative power, and a private manifestation of that power in terms of a stimulus to the senses. The nervous line, upturned eyes, and emotional color convey this very effectively.