From the culture of<i>spolia</i>to the cult of relics: the Arch of Constantine and the genesis of late antique forms

Elsner, Jaś

doi:10.1017/s0068246200003901

Cited by 102 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…18 The seminal discussion of this 'fundamental and radical set of changes in Roman visual practice' in late antiquity is that by Jaś Elsner. 19 Elsner saw as the archetypal example the Arch of Constantine, the triumphal arch dedicated to Constantine in the second decade of the fourth century to celebrate his victory over the 'usurper' Maxentius in 312. The arch reuses not only basic building materials but a series of images from earlier imperial monuments, in particular, four sections of a Trajanic frieze, eight roundels of a probable Hadrianic hunting monument, and eight relief panels from a lost arch dedicated to Marcus Aurelius.…”

Section: A Literary Transformationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The rescript of Antoninus Pius is in its immediate context supporting evidence for the apologist Justin Martyr's intellectual prominence, proof of Eusebius' general claim that Justin 'laboured most competently against the Greeks' (HE IV.11.11 Constantinian law evidences privileges granted to, or imperial interest in, Christiansfreedom of religious worship (HE X.5.2-14), restoration of property to the Catholic church (HE X.5.15-17), summons to a synod at Rome (HE X.5. [18][19][20], summons to a synod at Arles (HE X.5.21-4), a grant of money to the churches (HE X.6.1-5), and exemptions to clerics from public offices (HE X.7.1-2).…”

Section: A Literary Transformationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Emperors, bishops, art and jurisprudence: the transformation of law in Eusebius of Caesarea

Corke-Webster

2019

Early Medieval Europe

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This article analyses the collection and repurposing of legal documents in the early fourth‐century historical writings of Eusebius of Caesarea. Some of these individual documents have been the object of repeated study; others are still largely neglected. But they are even more interesting, I suggest, when considered as a collective, as Eusebius’ careful editing reveals they were intended to be. This mobilization of collated and embedded law was, I argue, the meeting of two separate wider trends that took off in this early fourth‐century watershed moment – the so‐called late antique artistic aesthetic, and the gradually changing legal dynamic between government and governed. Eusebius used both as strategies to resist imperial dominance in the uncertain times in which he wrote, constructing an image of the bishop capable of going toe to toe with emperors. In doing so, he anticipated not just the growing conflict between church and state in the centuries to come, but the rhetorical strategies that would come to be employed.

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Section: A Literary Transformationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: A Literary Transformationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emperors, bishops, art and jurisprudence: the transformation of law in Eusebius of Caesarea

Corke-Webster

2019

Early Medieval Europe

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“…106 The honoric statues dedicated in the Forum of Trajan in the second century helped to create a senatorial dimension to the space. 112 Moreover, the Trajanic reliefs reused on the Arch almost certainly came originally from the Forum of Trajan. The statues dedicated to senators in the second century established a precedent for the commemoration of senatorial achievement in the Forum of Trajan.…”

Section: Statues Of Senators In the Second Centurymentioning

confidence: 99%

Statues of Senators in the Forum of Trajan and the Roman Forum in Late Antiquity

Chenault

2012

J. Rom. Stud.

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The epigraphic evidence from the Forum of Trajan shows that this forum was the most important public venue for the honoric statues of senators in the city of Rome in the fourth and fth centuries A.D. These dedications celebrated the achievements of individual senators, and thereby helped to promote an image of a coherent senatorial order whose members were dened by their civil ofces, literary accomplishment, outstanding personal virtues, and the approbation of their peers and the emperor. In contrast, statuary honours in the Roman Forum continued to be largely restricted to emperors and, in the fth century, to the powerful generals who increasingly controlled imperial policy. This pattern in the distribution of statues suggests a basic differentiation in the use of the two most important representational spaces of late antique Rome.

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“… 72 For some of the intertexts see the presentation of the poem in Polara, 1973: I, 15–16. On Constantine and the aesthetics of spoliation on his eponymous arch see Elsner, 2000 (noting the parallel with Optatian at p. 175); cf. Prusac, 2012 and Varner, 2014 (on Constantine's reuse of earlier imperial portraits, discussing the arch at pp.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

‘HOW TO READ A ROMAN PORTRAIT’? OPTATIAN PORFYRY, CONSTANTINE AND THEVVLTVS AVGVSTI

Squire¹

2016

Pap. Br. Sch. Rome

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This article takes its lead from research into the ‘language’ of Roman portraiture. More specifically, it explores a work that literalizes the idea of ‘reading’ a Roman portrait (to quote Sheldon Nodelman's classic phrase): a picture-poem by Publilius Optatianus Porfyrius — a much maligned poet active in the first decades of the fourth centuryad— that purports, through its iconotextual form, to visualize the countenance of the emperor Constantine (uultus Augusti). After a brief introduction to Optatian and hisœuvre, the article offers a close reading of his third poem, demonstrating the sophisticated ways in which it probes the latent iconic potential of written script. What particularly interests me about this case study is its underlying paradox: on the one hand, Optatian boasts that his painted page will outstrip antiquity's most celebrated painter (it ‘will dare outdo the waxes of Apelles’,uincere Apelleas audebit pagina ceras); on the other, the actual form of the picture seems to eschew mimetic modes of representation, rendering Constantine's ‘portrait’ a geometric pattern. So how should we make sense of this image? What does the poem reveal about ideas of portraiture in the fourth century? And how might we contextualize Optatian's abiding fascination with the limits of ‘seeing’ and ‘reading’?

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From the culture ofspoliato the cult of relics: the Arch of Constantine and the genesis of late antique forms

Cited by 102 publications

References 40 publications

Emperors, bishops, art and jurisprudence: the transformation of law in Eusebius of Caesarea

Emperors, bishops, art and jurisprudence: the transformation of law in Eusebius of Caesarea

Statues of Senators in the Forum of Trajan and the Roman Forum in Late Antiquity

‘HOW TO READ A ROMAN PORTRAIT’? OPTATIAN PORFYRY, CONSTANTINE AND THEVVLTVS AVGVSTI

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