PIOTR DYCZEK

AN IMPERIAL MARBLE HEAD FROM NOVAE (MOESIA INFERIOR) Novae, a site known from several ancient written sources, marked on the Tabula Peutingeriana and probably also depicted on two metopes of the Column of Traian, has a long historical record, primarily connected with the Roman legions stationed there. First, about the middle of the 1st cent. AD, it was the Legio VIII Augusta, later, starting from the year ca. AD 70, the Legio I Italica, which, to believe Svetonius, was known as the „Phalanx of Alexander the Great".1 The Archaeological Center for Archaeological Research Warsaw University is investigating the site, concentrating mainly on the legionary architecture: thermae legionis, valetudinarium and principia (Fig. 1). Exploration of the site of the hospital and the changes which occurred in the architecture following its abandonment presumably in the times of Caracalla brought to light in 1983 the remains of a big building.2 Comprehensive investigations were undertaken again in 1992-1998, aimed at revealing the entire structure.3 The foundations of the building, from 0.60 to 0.73 m thick, turned out to be dug about 0.4 m into the layer of debris left from the destruction of the hospital; they were executed of irregular stone bonded in mud mortar, while the walls above them, 0.60-0.65 m thick, were made of mudbrick measuring 9 x 21 x 21 cm. Several shattered elements of the ruined hospital were reused in the construction of these walls: pieces of inscribed marble slabs, fragments of a marble architrave decorated with a cymatium, parts of votive marble plates depicting the Thracian rider, small altars. In the last stage of the occupation, the complex consisted of four rooms (Aa, Ba, Ca, Da) and a small courtyard (Ea),4 (Fig. 2). Two furnaces, a domed one and a rectangular one, numerous glass accretions, pieces of slag, vessel and pane shards indicate beyond all doubt that the complex had served as a glass workshop.5 The structure was destroyed violently by fire and to judge by the traces of burning, the catastrophe had been caused by an unsafe glass furnace. The flames consumed the whole building causing the roof and the mudbrick walls to collapse, after which sparks presumably jumped to the nearby horreum.6 The violence of the fire took the residents by surprise, hence the large quantities of storage and table wares, coins, fibulas, iron tools and even remnants of a cart, of which the metal fittings have survived in the debris. In 1998, a short portico was discovered next to the domed furnace which had once stood in the courtyard. The portico was 1.40 m long and its foundations, made of building material from the earlier ruins, revealed two big pedestals and a piece of a marble head. The lat-

ter object was associated immediately with another fragment found in 1997 in the wall closing off court Ea on the west. Upon reconstruction the two pieces formed a marble portrait head of natural size (Fig. 3). It is the second head found in this area, the first one being a portrait of Maximinus Thrax presented at the Congress in Celje; this piece came from a paved street running in front of the structure here described.7 With respect to the newly discovered head, there is dating evidence coins and fibulas for a terminus post quern of the building in which it was found. The erection of the workshop (referred to as a Mudbrick Building in the provisional report) was dated on the grounds of a coin of Helena to after 330.8 However, coins of Claudius II and Aurelian found in 1998 in the earth bonding the foundations have pushed the dating to the eighties of the 3rd century AD, after the raid of the Goths. This data is in agreement with other observations, including a provisional dating of the road running along the axis of the former military hospital.9 The head itself was not just smashed; I believe the features had also been obliterated on purpose. Taking all this into consideration, it appears that we are dealing with a case of damnatio memoriae10 of an emperor after Aurelian but who reigned before the end of the 280s. The head was made of a fine-grained marble with pale gray veining. The preserved height is 18 cm, transversal axis 17 cm, long axis 18 cm. The crack runs obliquely from the right temple, above the right eye, through the base of the nose and under the left eye to the upper part of the left cheek, damaging also the upper part of the ear lobe. The blow smashing the head came from the top, from the right, where a small piece of the marble is chipped away. To judge by the head, the statue must have been life-size, hence the smashing could have taken place only after it had been pulled down. The right ear lobe was removed and the outside part of the left one. Most of the hair on the head was also hammered off, as was the upper part of the forehead, the beard which was removed very precisely, and the nose and mouth which were broken off. Despite this treatment, the characteristic features of the image are still in evidence. The oval head with sunk temples looks straight ahead. Small fragments of the original hair modeling testify to a schematic carving style with the slightly wavy locks shown flat against a smooth head. The short hairdo reached the ears. To judge by a surviving line, the lower hairline arched on the back of the neck. The sideburns joined the beard. Despite very precise

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hammering, the evidence indicates that the beard had been much more bushy than the hair on the head. The small round ear lobes were finely carved. An arching wrinkle is evident on the low forehead. The eye between finely carved eyelids is almond-shaped and the upper eyelid is drawn out toward the temple. Deeply set, the eyeball has a clearly marked pupil with a drooping upper eyelid. The cheekbones are prominent, emphasized still further by shallow depressions running from the end of the nose. Although the small nose has been destroyed, what remains of it is enough to indicate that the bridge was rather narrow, widening toward the bottom. The most characteristic feature of style of this portrait is the modeling of the hair on the head, which is typical of the period AD 270-285 according to current portrait research.11 Consequently, our efforts at an attribution are narrowed down to just three emperors: Aurelian, Probus and Carinus. I am inclined, based on all the evidence presented so far, to attribute the head from Novae to an official statue of the emperor Marcus Aurelius Carinus, who took the title of Augustus after the death of Carus. Carinus was the son of Magnia Urbica and Carus, prefect of the Pretorián Guard, who ascended to the throne in unclear circumstances after the death of Probus. Carinus, who was born around 250 AD, and his ten-year younger brother Numerianus received the title of Caesar from their father in the summer of 282. Carinus was a tribune twice and a consul three times. After the unexplained death first of his father in 282 and then his brother in 284, Carinus became the only ruler, albeit briefly. His rule was terminated by the rebellion of Diodes, the later emperor Diocletian, which ended in 285 in the battle on the river Margus (modern Morava). His own officers killed Carinus then. After the victory, Diocletian had the names of the two brothers removed; hence the smashing of the statue from Novae may be dated to the second half of AD 285. The portrait head from Novae reveals many features identical with that of a head of Carinus discovered in 1872 in the Castro Pretorio in Rome (Fig. 4), now in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, room of the dei Magistrati 9, in v. no. 850.12 It was thought at first that the head depicted the emperor Gallienus.13 In later studies, it was assumed based on the style that it was an image of an emperor after Gallienus, most probably Carinus.14 An attribution to Probus was also suggested in the seventies.15 However, a comparison of the head from Rome with coins reveals a clear similarity between the portrait and the issues of Carinus:16 the same shape of the skull, short hair, more bushy facial hair, deep-set eyes. The head from Castro Pretorio is frequently cited in studies on the Roman portrait from the second half of the 3rd century AD.17 It is important not only because it is so unique after all, Carinus reigned for a very short period of time and failed to be popular but primarily because it is in such a good condition that it permits 64

students of the portrait to trace the changes in style which took place in this field of art from Aurelian to Carinus.18 What is emphasized in different studies is most of all the characteristic hairdo clearly observed on the portrait head from Rome and compared with other images, e.g. on sarcophagi dated to the second half of the 3rd century AD.19 Initially, it was suggested that the head from Rome dates to AD 285.20 J. Meischner is of the opinion, however, that it should be assigned to AD 283/284.21 The absence of other analogies makes it difficult to consider a detailed analysis of different portrait variants. The similarity of Carinus' portrait to images of Probus has been pointed out repeatedly: hair texture, beard form, eye and ear modeling. The differences, however, are also in evidence, sufficiently distinct in the case of the head from Novae to support, despite the damages, the suggested attribution. This concerns primarily the skull shape: flat on top in the case of Probus, rounded for Carinus. The Novae piece also bears the characteristic arching wrinkle on the forehead, less deep-set eyes and the upper eyelid extended onto the temples, as well as a shorter and broader nose. While no other surely attributed portraits of Carinus exist, the characteristic features of style can be observed on a bust from Perge in Asia Minor, now in the Museum in Antalya22 dated to AD 270-290 (Fig. 5 a-c.). Two further parallels come from the Cleveland Museum of Art.23 The head itself says little of the type of statue it had come from. The frontal treatment suggests a statua togata and this could find confirmation in the coin images of the emperor. As no other pieces of this statue have been found, it can be assumed with considerable certainty that after the smashing (taking off ?) of the head of an emperor condemned to be forgotten the bust itself might have been reused. A problem definitely more difficult to resolve is where the statue of Carinus might have stood. It seems quite obvious that the fragment of a smashed statue could not have been carried from any great distance. The archaeological context described earlier shows that the fragmentary head was used in a foundation made of sandstone and marble pieces coming in the majority from the ruins of the abandoned military hospital. The hospital itself is now believed to have been abandoned in the times of Caracalla, hence the statue could not have stood in the hospital courtyard. Neither is it very probable that it had come from the principia as none of the pieces uncovered so far can be said to have originated from the command headquarters. Current research appears to indicate another possibility, which may also be true in the case of the other already published head of Maximinus Thrax. Bordering with the area of the valetudinarium is the scamnum tribunorum, presently excavated by Bulgarian archaeologists A. Milceva and E. Genceva. The statue of Carinus might have stood there originaliy-

Equally unclear are the reasons for erecting a statue of Carinus at Novae. It might have been due to the fact that Cams, Carinus' father, had been raised to power by the Danubian forces. Perhaps the reason was Carinus' putting down of the rebellion of Julian in Pannónia in early AD 285. After that the emperor stayed in the Danubian provinces awaiting the army of Diodes marching from Asia Minor. After the death of Numerianus in 284, Diodes had been made the emperor by the army near Nikomedia. The presence of the emperor might have caused his image to be erected in Novae and hence the portrait could be dated to AD 284 or 285. The discovery of this head allows for a numismatic remark to be made as well. The occurrence of coins of Claudius II and Aurelian in the same context with the head of this emperor indicates that the issues of these two emperors were in circulation in Moesia Inferior until the times of Diocletian. The present attribution of the marble portrait head

from Novae should be treated as provisional. In the absence of parallels, even the attribution of the head from Rome is highly hypothetical. Further field work might bring new data to resolve this issue satisfactorily. At present, all that can be said with considerable certainty is that the head is an imperial portrait from an official statue and that it should be dated to AD 270-285. At the same time, however, the discovery of another unique imperial portrait head on the same site reveals the importance of Novae also in the 3rd century AD, a fact not yet confirmed in full by the results of archaeological findings. Novae now appears to have been an important military center despite the destruction and abandonment of some of the legionary structures of the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. In this context, the architectural changes were merely a reflection of an army organization undergoing transformation in effect of the deep economic and political crisis, a process that was to be validated later by military reforms.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

SVETONIUS, Nero 8. DYCZEK 1985. 97. DYCZEK 1997. 61. DYCZEK 1998a. DYCZEK 1998. DYCZEK 1997a. 87-94; idem 1998, 48. DYCZEK 1997. 60; idem, 1997 b, 87-93. DYCZEK 1997. 61. DYCZEK 1997. 60. see MAJEWSKI 1965. 69-71. FITTSCHEN-ZANKER 1985. 142. see FITTSCHEN-ZANKER 1985. 141. BERNOULLI 1894. 167, 169f, no. 3; STUART JONES 1926. 76, no. 5, Taf. 22; L'ORANGE 1929. 184-186. 14. L'ORANGE 1929. 184-186. 15. WEGNER 1979. 154.

16. DELBRUECK 1940.192, Taf. 20, 31, 31; FELLETTI MAJ 1958. 282, Tav. 201, 202. 17. FELLETTI MAJ 1958. 282, no. 378, Taf. 58,203; HEINZE 1959. 186-188; BERGMANN 1977, 104, 118, Taf. 36, 5, 6. 18. BERGMANN 1977. 104. 19. HEINZE 1959. 186-188; FITTSCHEN 1979. 588, fig. 15; MEISCHNER 1981. 147. 20. FELLETTI MAJ 1958. 282. 21. MEISCHNER 1981. 154, 155. 22. INAN-ALFÖLDI-ROSENBAUM 1979. 255-256, no. 33, Taf. 166. 23. see INAN-ALFÖLDI-ROSENBAUM 1979. 323-324, nos. 320, 321, Taf. 226, 1,3; 229, 1, 230, 1,2, and 227, 2,4, 229, 2, 230, 3,4.

BIBLIOGRAPHY BERGMANN 1977 = BERGMANN, M.: Studien zur Porträt des 3. Jahrhunderts n. Chr. Bonn, 1977. BERNOULLI 1894 = BERNOULLI, J. J.: Römische Ikonographie III. 3. Stuttgart, 1882-1894. DELBRUECK 1940 = DELBRUECK, R.: Münzbildnisse von Maximus bis Carinus. Berlin, 1940. DYCZEK 1985 = DYCZEK, P.: [et. al] Novae-Sektor Zachodni, 1983. Archeológia 36. (1985), p. 89-105. DYCZEK 1997 = DYCZEK, P.: Novae-Wester Sector, 1992-1995. Archeológia 47. (1996) [1997], p. 51-64. DYCZEK 1997a = DYCZEK, P.: New Late Roman horreum from sector IV at Novae. In: Late Roman and Early Byzantine Cities on the Lower Danube from the 4 th to the 6 th Century A. D. Poznan, 1997. p. 87-94. DYCZEK 1997b = DYCZEK, P.: Marble Sculptures from the Valetudinarium at Novae (Moesia Inferior). In: Akten de IV. Internationalen Kolloquiums ber Probleme des provinzialrömischen Kunstschaffens, Celje 8.-12. Mai 1995. Situla 36. (1997), p. 87-93.

DYCZEK 1998 = DYCZEK, P.: Novae-Westem Sector, 1996. Archeológia 48. (1997) [1998], p. 43^t9. DYCZEK 1998a = DYCZEK, P.: A glass atelier from Sector IV in Novae. In: Der römische Limes an der unteren Donau von Diokletian bis Heraklios. Sofia-Berlin, (in print) FELLETTI MAJ 1958 = B. M. Iconografia romána imperiale da Severo Alessandro a M. Aurelio Carino (222-285 d. G). Roma, 1958. FITTSCHEN 1979 = FITTSCHEN, K.: Sarkophage römischer Kaiser oder von Nutzen der Porträtforschung. JDAI94. (1979), p. 578-593. FITTSCHEN-ZANKER = FITTSCHEN, K. - ZANKER, P: Katalog der römischen Porträts in den Capitolinischen Museen und den anderen kommunalen Sammlungen der Stadt Rom I. Mainz am Rhein, 1985. HEINZE 1959 = HEINZE, H. von: Studien zu den Porträts des 3. Jh. n. Chr. - 5. der Knabe des Acilia-Sarkophags. AM 66. (1959), p. 175-191.

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INAN-ALFOLDI-ROSENBAUM 1979 = INAN, J. ALFÖLDI-ROSENBAUM, E.: Römische und ftühbyzantinische Porträtplastik aus der Türkei. Neue Funde. Mainz, 1979. MAJEWSKI 1965 = MAJEWSKI, K.: Bezobrazowosc oraz burzenie swiatyn, posa,gów bogów i pomników wladców w swiecie grecko-rzymskim. Archeológia 16. (1965), p. 63-83. MEISCHNER 1981 = MEISCHNER, J.: Fragen zur römischen Porträtgeschichte unter besonderen Berücksichtigung Kleinasiatischer Beispiele. BJ 181. (1981), p. 143-167.

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L'ORANGE 1929 = L'ORANGE, H. P.: Ein Porträt des Kaisers Diokletian. AM 44. (1929), p. 180-193. L'ORANGE 1933 = L'ORANGE, H. P.: Studien zur Geschichte des Spätantiken Porträts. Oslo, 1933. STUART JONES 1926 = STUART JONES, H.: A Cataloque of the Ancient Sculptures Preserved in the Municipal Collections of Rome. The Sculptures of the Palazzo dei Conservatori. Oxford, 1926. WEGNER 1979 = WEGNER, M.: Gordianus III. bis Carinus. Das Römische Herrscherbild III. 3. Mainz, 1979.

Fig. 1. Plan of Novae (Drawn by T. Sarnowski)

Fig. 2. Plan of the glass workshop at Novae (Drawn by P. Dyczek) 67

Fig. 3. Marble head of Carinus from Novae (Photo by M. Dqbski)

Fig. 4. Head of Carinus from the Palazzo dei Conservatori (Photo by M. Dqbski)

Fig. 5 a-c. Head from Perge in Asia Minor (Photo by M. Dqbski) 69