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Fragment of relief showing a captive. (©Archaeological Exploration of Sardis/President and Fellows of Harvard College)
Captive
Report 2: Sculpture from Sardis: The Finds through 1975
(1978)
Cat. 191
- Date
- 2nd or 3rd C. AD?, Roman
- Sardis or Museum Inv. No.
- NoEx62.014
- Material
- Marble, Stone
- Object Type
- Sculpture
- Sculpture Type
- Other Relief
- Site
- Sardis?
- Findspot
- Findspot unknown.
- Description
A male figure is seated with his legs out before him, r. leg bent at the knee, and his hands behind his back. To the r., a short distance from the man, are traces of a cuirassed Roman; and to the l. is a shallow relief of a ribbon-like object with three points. The man seems to have had long hair in the barbarian manner; pose and type show him to be a captive.
This is the only Sardis fragment to show official Roman Imperial iconography. Its battered state precludes precise dating, but treatment seems crude: note especially the clearly visible claw chisel marks on the background surface and the roughly carved “ribbon.”
- Condition
White marble.
Only bottom edge surface preserved intact. Relief surface badly damaged.
- Dimensions
- H. 0.355; W. 0.49; Th. 0.21.
- Comments
- Cf. e.g. Gemma Augustea and numerous other Imperial reliefs, as well as coins, for which see Franke, Kleinasien zur Romerzeit, nos. 42, 46; also A. Levi, Barbarians on Coins, esp. pp. 27ff. and 41ff., pl. III:3. For a local Sardian coin of Trajan with two bound kneeling captives at trophy see Sardis XI, 30, nos. 282-284, pl. I, proconsul L. Balbius Tullus; an additional example will be published by A.E.M. Johnston in a forthcoming Sardis monograph Sardis M7.
- See Also
- Bibliography
- Author
- NHR