CLASSICAL CIVILISATION

AS Unit CC6 (F386) City Life in Roman Italy

Imagines Clipeatae from the Baths of Mithras at Ostia Antica

By Mr G. de la Bédoyère MA FSA FHA FRNS for KSHS

These are the imagines clipeatae sculptures from the Baths of Mithras at Ostia which are included in the prescribed material for OCR’s CC6 City Life in Roman Italy paper. Clipeus means ‘shield’ so the term imagines clipeatae effectively means ‘shield portraits’, a reference to the motif of depicting a person in a circular frame modelled on a shield. The images have had their contrast exaggerated to maximise detail.

You can access better-quality (but old images) at E23919 and E23920. They are featured on this page Ostia - unidentified marble.

IMAGINES CLIPEATAE - ORIGINS

In the Roman world imagines clipeatae became a form of ancestor portraiture as early as the mid-490s BC when Appius Claudius set up images of his ancestors in the temple of Bellona accompanied by appropriate inscriptions. By 78 BC the practice had extended to displaying them in the Basilica Aemilia in Rome and in private houses. The design was appealing because the shield motif was thought to denote a sense of valour, especially if it depicted the man who had once used such a shield. Pliny the Elder discusses all this in his Natural History (35.12-14). It seems that by imperial times the design had become a more everyday stylistic convention of ancestral portraiture, affected by those or by their families with pretensions to grandeur. They could be paintings, cast in metal or carved in stone.

DATE AND IDENTITY

These Ostia examples in marble are generally dated to the beginning of the second century AD (during the reign of Trajan 98-117, or possibly Hadrian 117-138). Unfortunately, they are entirely anonymous though they are likely to represent members of the family responsible for financing the construction of the baths. This means they might portray a father and son but they might only have been related through marriage or adoption.

It is also quite clear from close examination of the sculptures that the busts were carved separately from the roundels. From a practical point of view this is not surprising but it also means the busts were probably made at a different date from the roundels. It looks as if the busts were found detached from the shield roundels and have been rejoined – there are distinct traces of repairs around the neckline on both.

So it is also quite possible that, regardless of when they were carved, the busts may actually represent remoter family ancestors from earlier generations and these individuals may not even have been contemporary with one another. If so, then the busts were originally ‘ancestral busts’ and would have been displayed and carried about as such during family religious ceremonies., and were only later attached to the shields. You can see an example of an Augustan-period man carrying similar ancestral busts here.

The individuals represented may have belonged to the curial class (those eligible to serve as councillors), and indeed probably did so, but it is also possible that the ‘family’s’ original success had begun with an affluent freedman whose descendants were thus eligible to stand for office. It is also possible (even likely) that they were originally accompanied by other similar pieces which did not survive but which if they had could materially alter any conclusions about who these represent.

In my book Cities of Roman Italy I erroneously assumed these pieces represented husband and wife, thanks to the huge problems incurred in tracking down decent images during the production of the book and actually seeing the sculptures (see below about problems accessing the museum). The better-quality images at E23919 and E23920 were only found recently by searching under the modern Italian imago clipeata. The photographs on this page were taken at Ostia (with permission) on Friday 16 April 2010, a couple of hours after I had shelled out several hundred pounds for a sleeper ticket and the Eurostar at Rome’s Termini Station in order to get home after most of Europe’s airspace was closed thanks to the Icelandic volcano crisis.

PRESENT LOCATION

The sculptures are now displayed in a very badly-lit room at the far back of the museum at Ostia (which was closed on all my previous visits to the museum until February 2010) and do not form part of the main collections on display. Photography is not permitted in the museum without going through an unbelievably arcane procedure involving email, faxes, and half-a-dozen members of museum staff – believe me, I have done it and I won’t ever bother again. You’d have thought I had applied to come and steal the Pope’s mitre. By April 2010 the sculptures had been moved even further back in their cave and cannot now even be seen properly down the corridor at the end of which they lurk. Even close up they are exceptionally difficult to photograph because there is no artificial light; instead a ceiling glass means the faces are in permanent shadow. Flash of course has the inevitable effect of washing out the stone though the pictures at the top have had their contrast enhanced to offset this effect with some success. This rather exaggerates the natural colour of the stone, which appears whitish-grey ‘in the flesh’.

The upshot of which is this webpage is as good as you are going to get on this subject.

The sculptures have no accompanying labels and it is not possible to approach them closely without a permit. Their diameters are about 80 cm. Their considerable weight, biased towards the heads, is likely to have encouraged them to fall down and forwards into the ground – this might explain why the faces are well-preserved though I have not been able to establish exactly where they were found in the baths or how and when they were recovered.

Needless to say, the museum shop has neither photographs, postcards nor guidebooks which feature these sculptures.

Russell Meiggs in his book Ostia (Oxford 1960, 416) stated that these sculptures were found in the ‘Baths of Buticosus’ (I.xiv.8), but this was corrected by Giovanni Becatti in Journal of Roman Studies LI (1961), 205.

Youtube tour of the Baths of Mithras

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