Fülöp Gyula (szerk.): Festschrift für Jenő Fitz - Szent István Király Múzeum közleményei. B. sorozat 47. (Székesfehérvár, 1996)

E. Alföldi-Rosenbaum: Womens Mantles with Decorated Borders

Fitz, along with other stones there built into artificial ruins.

(Figs. 11-12).

Tombstone of Septimius Constantinus and his mother Septimia Constantina. H. (total) 2,04 m., W. 0.71 m., Th. of slab 0.15 m.(22)

Inscription: D(is) - M(anibus) (above moulding) / Sep(timio) Con / stantino / q(ui) vixit an(nos) / XVI Sep(timiae) Constan / tin(a)e q(uae) / vix(it) an(nos) XXXVI / matri / ei[i]us Septimius) / Vibius a(v)un / cuius et her(es) / fa(ciendum) cur(avit) ex tes(tamenti) / vol(untate) et E Q An / pl(a)e sorori s(uae) / ben(e) merenti / circle containing letters STTL extending over lower moulding pos(uit).<23)

Date; Time of Alexander Severus.

CIL III 3363, with a short supplement 10340. E. Rosenbaum, op. cit.. Kat. No. 97.; L. Nagy, BudRég 14, 1945, 168, fig. 8.; G. Erdélyi, op. cit. (above Cl), 51 f. and note 25. Main publication: L. Barkóczi, Alba Regia XXV, 1985, 97 ff., esp. 98, 102 f., 104 f„ Pis. I. Ill, 2.

The three-quarter figures of Septimia Constantina and her son are placed in a rectangular niche framed by columns. The beardless young man wears a tunic and a sagum fastened on his right shoulder. His hair, which fits the skull like a thick cap, consists of short locks brushed towards the forehead and the temples, the tips forming a gently arched line. Septimia Constantina wears over her tunic an ample mantle, which seems to have wide sleeves, and whose edges have a fairly wide border decorated with a scroll. By contrast to the busts discussed so far, the mantle is here draped over both shoulders with the decorated border hanging straight down either side.<24) On the right side the scroll is rendered in flat relief, while on the left side it is barely raised and generally rather schematized.

Septimia Constantina’s hair is parted in the centre and brushed in thick, rather stiff waves down the sides, leaving the ears totally uncovered and reaching to the shoulders, where they are ballooning out and folded up to be gathered in the nape of the neck either into a flat, oblong nest or taken up part of the back of the head in a “Scheitelzopf”. The flat nest was worn by Julia Mamaea and other members of her family, while the “Scheitelzopf’ began to become fashionable with the younger women around Alexander Severus and continued in its shorter form, which was not visible from the front, to about the middle of the 3rd century. Thus, the coiffure of Septimia Constantina as it appears on the strictly frontal relief is not a precise dating criterion.,25) But in conjunction with the cut and treatment of Septimius Constantinus’ hair a date during the reign of Alexander Severus, as proposed by G. Erdélyi and most recently by L. Barkóczi, is most likely/262 This means that within the series of Pannonian tombstones the present piece would be 22 23 24 25 26

(22) Measurements given by L. Barkóczi, op. cit.

(23) The last three lines need re-examining.

(24) The mantle, including the “sleeves” and the decorated edges, is comparable to the garment worn by the orans in the Priscilla Catacomb, so-called cubiculum of the velatio, F.W. Volbach, Frühchristliche Kunst, München 1958, fig. 8, p. 44; B. Brenk (ed.), Spälanlike und Frühes Christentum, Propyläen Kunstgeschichte, Supplementband 1, 1977,fig.46a, p. 134(H. Brandenburg),datable in the 4th quarter of the 3rd century.

(25) In any case, comparisons with portraits in the round identified by various scholars as various empresses do not help much when dating a relief giving the frontal view only. The coins, on the other hand, present us only with profile views. “Style” in a provincial context is a concept even more dependent on subjective judgment than it is in official Roman portraiture.

(26) Barkóczi also mentions the later possibilities.

Fig. 11.

113