Date de création

End of the 3^rd century

Material

Saint-Béat marble (Haute-Garonne)

Dimensions

H. 95 x l. 79 x P. 43 (cm)

Inventory number

Ra 34 l

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In Phrygia, Attis was the consort of the goddess Cybele. The latter was very much in love with him, and in an access of jealousy, she drove him mad, causing him to cut off his genitals and transform himself into a pine tree. Every 22^nd March in Rome, the procession of the « Entrance of the Tree » celebrated the death of the god. A cut pine tree, decorated with strips of red woollen cloth and musical instruments, was carried to the temple of Cybele.

The head of the young Anatolian from Chiragan has rightly been compared to that of Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, represented in one of the reliefs of the Labours of Hercules J.-C. Balty, D. Cazes, Les portraits romains, 1 : La Tétrarchie, 1.5 (Sculptures antiques de Chiragan (Martres-Tolosane), Toulouse, 2008, p. 126.. They are indeed very similar, wearing the same Phrygian cap and sporting identical curly hair. There is no doubt that they were all made by the same sculptor’s workshop.

Images of deities mounted on shields are a frequent theme in Roman art. Four centuries before our era, gods were already being depicted in this way in central Italy. This association between divine entities and the circular shape of the defensive weapon was based on the famous Homeric description of the shield that the goddess Thetis gave to her son Achilles Homère, Iliade, 7th century BC, XVIII, 478-617.. Legend has it that this precious weapon served as a cosmic symbol because it represented the Earth, with its circular shape surrounded by the waves of the ocean, and inhabited by city-building humans, either living in peace or engaged in terrible wars. In this context, the gods, as masters and great commanders of human destinies, contributed to the labours and activities of mortals, and their battles in particular. Because they were symbolic of heroism and eternity, in Rome images on shield (imago clipeata), whether sculpted, engraved or painted, also served the emperors’ aspirations to glory.

The tondi discovered in Chiragan and dated to the late 4th or early 5th century by R. Smith, can be linked to the series discovered at Aphrodisias, in Caria R.R.R. Smith, « Late Roman Philosopher Portraits from Aphrodisias, » The Journal of Roman Studies, 80, 1990, pp. 127–155, en partic. pp. 127-155.. Maybe because they are portraits and not divine representations, these oriental works appear to be more expressive than those found in Chiragan, whose faces, on the other hand, are stylistically very similar to that of the Helios of Esquilin kept in Copenhagen. The heads of Aphrodisias, which are more elongated and have narrower cheekbones, are also devoid of the deep circular trepan lines that are used to depict beards and hair, a characteristic that is typical of the heads of the villa by the river Garonne. The manner in which strands of hair are depicted on the statues found in Chiragan are infinitely more complex. On some of the carvings, individual locks of hair are connected by small but clearly visible « bridges » within the wide trepan lines that visually divide the strands of hair. Numerous fragments, kept in the museum’s reserves, bear witness to the importance of this series of imagines clipeatae (images on shields) that were part of the lavish decor, which, in addition to these medallions of the gods, included reliefs of the Labours of Hercules and large pilasters covered with acanthus foliage inhabited by tiny animals.

P. Capus