Pteruges

[FlaviusCrispus]

Re. the Honorius diptych, there is good reason to suspect that these pieces, like the equally famous Symmachus sacrificial panel, are Renaissance forgeries by an artist whose enterprise and ingenuity far exceeded his skill. That's the opinion of Dr. Jerry Eisenberg, who wrote a long and thoughtful article on these pieces a few years ago in Minerva magazine. They might have been (poorly and sloppily) copied from actual pieces which have since been lost, or wholly created to match other the famous Stilicho panels and other Late Roman-early Byzantine ivories.

One of the reasons for identifying it as such is that the artist has only a vague concept of how the muscle cuirass is supposed to work. Not only does he have the "tongue pteruges" (or "lappets," as I've called them) as continuations of the cuirass, rather that protruding from under the lower rim of the cuirass as seen in virtually all other representations, each "tongue" is rather curiously deocrated with a fleur-de-lis pattern, something that rarely, if ever occurs in Roman art (but was widespread by the Renaissance); also, note how the upper shoulders of the cuirass actually continue right on over the wearer's shoulders— even if this were boiled leather, it would virtually preclude him from raising his arms even to chest level. Finally, he is wearing a sword (with the hilt rather badly copied from the Stilicho ivory) suspended from a baldric, which is something almost never seen on depictions of an officer (or emperor) wearing a muscle cuirass. Moreover, the art is exceedingly ill-proportioned and "clunky," even by late Roman standards (compare it to the elegant Stilicho diptych), so even if genuine, the artist's veracity and his ability to depict something from real life iis questionable, to say the least.