Trajan\'s Column V Adamklissi

[tlclark]

Crispus,

However much you can say that other provincial sculpture is 'caracatured' classical, it remains markedly different to what is to be seen in Rome, even when it is in close proximity to more 'classical' images, such as many of the finer Rhineland tombstones.

Most of the examples I cited, the tomb of the Haterii, the circus magistrate relief are FROM Rome, so this is not the case. The "genre" style is as much a part of Rome as anywhere. "Provincial" is a loaded and pergorative term IMO. It is used to describe this style it's true, but it's really an out of date term, even though I used it carelessly earlier myself. That's how ingrained these ideas are.

In truth, we see aspects of genre art in both the Antonine Column base and the Columns of Trajan, and M. Aurelius. By the time of the tetrarchs, it is THE official style. It is as native to Rome as the toga. It is not an import from the provinces it is an export TO the provinces. There is no local monumental sculptural tradition in most of these places, so when it appears, we have to ask, where does it come from? It comes from the Romans. Adamklissi, is frankly, one of the exceptions.

The military sculptures of the Rhineland and northern Britain are not classical, but few would suggest that they were executed by anyone other than the Roman army. An important point to bear in mind is that the Roman army in Trajan's time, for the most part, was not from Rome.

I think the Mainz stelae are excellent examples because they look nothing like the Adamklissi reliefs. To me they look as different as night and day. They are fully within the context of Roman genre or 'provincial art'. They resemble the reliefs from the tomb of the Haterii, and many other genre examples, the relief of the vicomagistri or the relief of the circus magistrate, all famous examples.

You suggest that the treatment of the eyes and drapery of the Adamklissi monument is simply in keeping with the provincial examples. It is clearly not. Look how big and ponderous the eyes in the Adamklissi reliefs are, how there is no sense of teh pupil, which by this time was carved in the Roman tradition. In all three examples you posed, the profile is a primitive rendition of a classical form, with the eyes in profile, not frontal aspect, and not at all carved in a similar way. They are both similar in that they are both primitive, but similar only in the way that masks from west Africa and Oceania appear similar, but are very different in their details.

The drapery is simplified, but not utterly abstracted as in the Adamklissi. Compare for example the folds in drapery on these stelae to the heavy yoke-like folds of the paenula in the Adamklissi monument. One is a simplification of a classical detail. The other demonstrates no affinity with it what-so-ever. Primitivism alone is not what connects these two, but the style of primitivism. They really are very different.

So I completely disagree with your assessment here and I think I am on the more solid stylistic grounds. If we could put on next to the other and see them in person I think I could convince even you that this is the case. The genre reliefs employ all of the conventions of the Roman genre style we are used to seeing. The Adamklissi metopes simply do not. This doesn't make them inferior in any way, but it does make them different in terms of style, and that style, is at least as big a hurdle to reconstruction as the stylisitic conventions of the Column of Trajan.

You do raise an interesting point to, which I alluded to earlier. What exactly is a "Roman". These reliefs in dacia would have been made up to a generation after the occupation of dacia. What would these artists have been exposed to? What was their inspiration? What did they think of themselves? Were they not "Roman" in some sense? It's impossible to say for sure. We probably should be speaking in terms of fudge factors here like "Romano-dacian" at this point. What I think we are seeing, and I've said this before, is an attempt by local artists to appropriate a Roman subject matter with interesting mixed results.

As far as to who carved these things, whether they were soldiers or not, that is an entirely impossible question to answer. If you've ever picked up hammer and chisel you know why most sculpture is a specialized profession, even at the level of the stelae you reproduced. The statement "As they come from a fortress, it is also highly unlikely that they would have been executed by native craftsmen. " is pure supposition. Even in our culture, military bases are swarming with locals and civilians. Given the vast retinues of slaves, hanger-ons, collaborators and what not, the argument that they MUST be the work of soldiers is just pure wishful-thinking. Most likely they are the work of craftsmen, camp followers or recently transported settlers, (and perhaps some veterans) or integrated second generation locals. Any of these would have had more than a passing understanding of Roman military grab to recreate these sculptures. At the same time assuming that they represent accurate garb is another pure supposition.

Let me ask you, why do military historians suppose that soldiers are so slavishly dedicated to accurately recreating their own gear? Rather the reverse is often true in civlian art. Romans had ambition and often potrayed themselves in a grander light. Roman generals have been mimicking Alexander and Hellenistic kings. Merchants and bakers used art to self-aggrandize themselves. Or do bakers just have more imagination than soldiers?

Like I said at the beginning of this, this is a huge interdisciplinary cat-fight. I will admit to a certain ignorance of military matters, but I have also seen military historians make hay out of obscure details that are clearly just artistic conventions that have a long history.

The column of Trajan is a perfect example. It is the first evidence presented when it agrees with a military historians' reconstruction and the first condemned when it doesn't. That is selective quotation and it's very convenient.

I admit, when I first starting in on the Adamklissi, I was convinced I was seeing just more of the same selective evidence, where the art is interpreted in light of archaeological evidence. I've seen this a dozen times, a line or a piece of an image bears some passing to a find and suddenly, it's evidence that the image is validated, authentic, made by soldiers, when in fact its reading evidence into something that may or may not be there.

I've had a good hard look at the Adamklissi monument and I have to admit, it seems that there is more 'there' there than I first gave it credit for, but I still think some people's enthusiasm for it is a little over the top.

Travis