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
decorated with scrolls that might imitate embroidery is the statue of a woman found in the eighties of the 19th century, together with an equally headless cuirassed statue, in the praetorium in Carnuntum.128’ From the beginning, the statue attracted the attention of scholars, and the general opinion was and is that both headless statues were imperial and contemporary. Moreover, there was little doubt about the approximate date and hence the identification :(29) for the woman one of the ladies of the Severan house, i.e., a member of the Syrian family from which they come. The decoration of the cuirass of the man’s statue includes Iuppiter Heliopolitanus. Thus, if the statues were put up together, the most likely pair would be Alexander Severus and his mother Julia Mamaea, both murdered in Mainz in 235. There are, of course, other possibilities around that time, and Heliogabalus has been mentioned also. As the list of examples of female portraits wearing an embroidered mantle shows, this kind of mantle alone does not prove that an emperess is meant. However, the statue is a piece of sculpture so distinct in the surroundings in which it was found that its imperial character appears to me certain now. The lost head was apparently carved separately and dowelled into the neck. The right arm is broken off entirely, and part of her left arm, including the upper part of the body of the infant she is carrying in her left hand are missing also. What looks at first glance like a decorated border is, in fact, probably one very long band of spirally curled rinceau draped around so as to give the impression of two bands, parallel and adjoining in the part below the hips, splitting apart slightly over the left shoulder, overlapping over the right shoulder and curved separately around the middle with one end slung over the left hand. It is in fact the complicated way of draping the decorated band that distinguishes the mantle of the Carnuntum lady from all other examples listed here. Around her neck the lady wears a tight-fitting band of oblong beads with a string of disk-shaped beads below. This jewelry is not as elaborate as we see it, e.g., on coins of empresses of the later third century and later still, dressed in a gala costume.130’ Some of the women on the grave monuments discussed here wear similar jewelry. III. The discussions of the statue from Aquincum and the tombstones nearly all have references to the oriental connections, and Syrian, more specifically Palmyran, parallels were quoted in 28 29 30 31 (28) M.L. Krüger, Die Rundskulpturen von Carnuntum (CSIR Österreich 1/2), Wien 1967, No. 82, PI. 29. To the fairly complete bibliography should be added: A. Alföldi, "A Carnuntum díszes ruhájú nöszobor" (Die weibliche Prachtgewandstatue von Carnuntum)", Az országos Magyar régészeti társulat évkönyve (Jahrbuch der ungarischen archäologischen Gesellschaft) I, 1920-22 (1923), 39-41, PI. Ill, 1 (German abstract 217 f.); id. “Insignien und Tracht der römischen Kaiser”, RM 50, 1935, 27 f, fig. 1 ( = Die monarchische Repräsentation im römischen Kaiserreiche, Darmstadt 1970, 145 f., fig. 1). Of the studies quoted by Kriiger I repeat here E. Swoboda: Carnuntum2 Wien 1953, pp. 108, 234 f. (= Anm. 65), Pl. XIV, 2. The statue has been mentioned in works after 1967, usually amongst comparative material: see the bibliography cited here with most of the pieces discussed, especially the Pannonian ones. (29) The Constantinian date and identification by some scholars need not be discussed here. (30) See below, note 33. (31) I did the same in my thesis of 1944. - For the impact of Palmyran art on that of other regions see K. Parlasca, in: Palmyre, bilan et perspective. Colloque de Strasbourg ( 18-20 Oct. 1973) organisé par support of an “eastern” origin of the embroidered mantle.(3,) In the case of the Carnuntum lady the Syrian link served frequently as the principal argument for the identification. Most of the stone carvings listed above belong without a doubt into a funerary context. All of those with a known provenance come from the provinces: Northern Italy, Asia Minor, Dalmatia, Pannonia. There were, of course, Syrians in the Roman army as well as amongst the civilian population, in Rome and in the provinces. The names in the inscriptions of the Pannonian tombstones and the sarcophagus from Salona discussed here point on the whole to Italy rather than to the East. The dates of the works discussed range from the late Severan period to about the end of the third century, and the earliest pieces are from a time when the women of Julia Domna’s family were prominent figures at the Imperial Court. Although there is no doubt that “Syrian” influence grew considerably during this time, as, for instance, the popularity of oriental religions show, this did not necessarily also have a bearing on a particular type of dress or jewelry or any kind of personal ornament of the period. Even a cursory examination of Syrian sculpture, religious as well as funerary, and especially the very numerous Palmyran works that have survived, shows that the connections, if they existed at all, are very superficial. The decoration is rarely restricted to the borders. The types of women’s garments and those of divinities are all of a kind different from that of the mantle types listed by me here. I have used the term “border” for the decorated bands throughout as has been done by most scholars describing the monuments in question. With regard to the pieces of my groups A and B one can be reasonably certain that the bands were indeed part of the mantle in reality. There is no doubt of this in the case of the full figures nos. A 1 and 2. The bands could either have been woven separately and stitched on to the mantle’s edge, or they were of the same piece of cloth but embroidered individually. On the tombstones of group C we see different possibilities. In particular the border of the mantle of Septimia Constantina (C 3) might either have been attached to, or an integral part of, the mantle, or it could be interpreted as a separate band as seems to be certain in the case of the Carnuntum statue.132’ Embroidered borders and the rinceaux motif on such bands appear on coin portraits of empresses first towards the end of the third century and continue in the fourth century and later. le C.R.P.O.G.A. à la mémoire de Daniel Schlumberger et de Henri Seyrig, Strasbourg 1976,43 : “Hierbei (seil. Verflechtung der palmyrenischen Kultur mit ihrer weiteren Umgebung) handelt es sich jedoch nicht um stilistische Phänomene. Die Tätigkeit palmyrenischer Künstler - ausserhalb der Palmyrene und Duras - und der angeblich weite Export palmyrenischer Bildwerke haben damit nichts zu tun.” Sculpture allegedly found in Carthage, Belgrade or the Merv oasis do not come from these places. ... (32) In general I have avoided using the Latin terms for the types oft mantle discussed here, because I find it difficult to connect the surviving monuments with the descriptions found in ancient texts with absolute certainty. The mantles of my groups A, B, and partly C could qualify for the toga picta, or trabea might apply also. For group B and perhaps group C palla would not be wrong. In the relevant literature of the last hundred years or so all these terms as well as stola can be found in descriptions of such garments. For example, in Rostovtsev's Gesellschaft und Wirtschaft the bust from Salona (A 3 above) is called on p. 237 (ad PI. 34, 4) “Büste einer femina stolata”. It is not clear to me whether this term was Rostovtsev’s own or that of the translator. The cyclas is also a case in point. The term became current only in late antiquity, but it 115
