Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-r7xzm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T00:09:11.183Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Portraits, Power, and Patronage in the Late Roman Republic*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2012

Jeremy Tanner
Affiliation:
Institute of Archaeology, London

Extract

Recent work in ancient art history has sought to move beyond formalist interpretations of works of art to a concern to understand ancient images in terms of a broader cultural, political, and historical context. In the study of late Republican portraiture, traditional explanations of the origins of verism in terms of antecedent influences — Hellenistic realism, Egyptian realism, ancestral imagines — have been replaced by a concern to interpret portraits as signs functioning in a determinate historical and political context which serves to explain their particular visual patterning. In this paper I argue that, whilst these new perspectives have considerably enhanced our understanding of the forms and meanings of late Republican portraits, they are still flawed by a failure to establish a clear conception of the social functions of art. I develop an account of portraits which shifts the interpretative emphasis from art as object to art as a medium of socio-cultural action. Such a shift in analytic perspective places art firmly at the centre of our understanding of ancient societies, by snowing that art is not merely a social product or a symbol of power relationships, but also serves to construct relationships of power and solidarity in a way in which other cultural forms cannot, and thereby transforms those relationships with determinate consequences.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Jeremy Tanner 2000. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 In addition to the standard abbreviations in the OCD, the following frequently cited works are referred to as follows: Badian, FC = Badian, E., Foreign Clientelae 264–70 BC (1958)Google Scholar; Crawford, RRC = Crawford, M. H., Roman Republican Coinage (1973)Google Scholar; Gelzer, RN = Gelzer, M., The Roman Nobility (1969Google Scholar; o.v. 1912); Giuliani, Bildnis = Giuliani, L., Bildnis und Botschaft: hermeneutische Untersuchungen zur Bildniskunst der römischen Republik (1986)Google Scholar; Gruen, HWCR = Gruen, E. S., The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome (1984)Google Scholar; Gruen, CI = Gruen, E. S., Culture and National Identity in Republican Rome (1993)Google Scholar; Hallet 1993 = Hallett, C. H., The Roman Heroic Portrait (PhD dissertation, University of California at Berkeley, 1993)Google Scholar; Harmand, Patronat = Harmand, L., Le Patronat sur les collectivités publiques, des origines au Bas-Empire (1957)Google Scholar; ID = Inscriptions de Délos; Marcadé = Marcadé, J., Au Musée de Delos. Étude sur la sculpture hellénistique en ronde bosse découverte dans l'ile (1969)Google Scholar; Ritratto = Bonasca, N. and Rizza, G. (eds), Ritratto ufficiale e ritratto privato, Quaderni de la Ricerca Scientifica 116 (1988)Google Scholar; Römisches Porträt = Römisches Porträt: Wege zur Erforschung eines gesellschaftlichen Phänomens, Wissenschaftlichen Konferenz 12–15 Mai, 1981. Wiss. Z. Berl. 2–3, Berlin (1982); Sherk = Sherk, R. K., Rome and the Greek East to the Death of Augustus, Translated Documents of Greece and Rome vol. 4 (1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smith, HRP = Smith, R. R. R., Hellenistic Royal Portraits (1989)Google Scholar; Smith, Foreigners = Smith, R. R. R., ‘Greeks, foreigners and Roman Republican portraits’, JRS 71 (1981), 2438Google Scholar; Toynbee RHP = Toynbee, J. M. C., Roman Historical Portraits (1978)Google Scholar; Tuchelt = Tuchelt, K., Frühe Denkmäler Roms in Kleinasien I: Roma und Promagistrate, 1st. Mitt. Beiheft 23 (1979)Google Scholar — inscription numbers refer to the chronological list in the appendix, following p. 249; Vessberg, Studien = Vessberg, O., Studien zur Kunstgeschichte der römischen Republik (1941)Google Scholar; Wallace-Hadrill, Power = Wallace-Hadrill, A., ‘Roman arches and Greek honours: the language of power at Rome’, PCPS 36 (1990), 143–81Google Scholar; Zanker, Rezeption = Zanker, P., ‘Zur Rezeption der hellenistischen individual Porträts in Rom und in den italischen Städten’, in Hellenismus in Mittelitalien, Abh. Göttingen, Phil.-Hist. Kl., Dritte Folge 97 (1976), 581609Google Scholar; Zanker, Führender Männer = Zanker, P., ‘Zur Bildnisrepräsentation führender Männer in mittelitalischen und campanischen Städten zur Zeit der späten Republik und der iulisch-claudischen Kaiser’, in Les Bourgeoises municipales italiennes aux IIe et Ier siècles av. J.C. (1983), 251–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Giuliani, Bildnis; Smith, Foreigners; HRP; Zanker, Rezeption; Führender Männer.

3 Nodelmann, S., ‘How to read a Roman portrait’, Art in America 63 (1975), 2633Google Scholar; reprinted in and cited from D'Ambra, E., Roman Art in Context (1993), 1026Google Scholar.

4 Smith, HRP, 47–8 on ‘youthening’ of ruler portraits, 73–5 on Seleukos.

5 Zanker, Führender Männer, 258–61.

6 Gruen, CI, 161.

7 Giuliani, Bildnis, 190–9, esp. 198, ‘direct reflection’, ‘corresponds to a structural element of the Roman constitution’.

8 Giuliani, Bildnis, 51–5, esp. 52.

9 Smith, HRP, 115–30.

10 The reflex of ancient historians writing essentially formalist art histories shows an unwillingness to extend analysis of mounds of textual evidence concerning the social functions and uses of art to cultural analysis of the corresponding corpus of images on the grounds that they are not art historians. See for example R. van Bremen's insightful but purely textual discussion of the uses of portraits in Hellenistic cities — The Limits of Participation: Women and Civic Life in the Greek East in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods (1996), 170–90; Lahusen, G., Untersuchungen sur Ehrenstatue in Rom: literansche und epigraphische Zeugnisses (1983)Google Scholar; Gregory, A. P., ‘Powerful images: responses to portraits and the political uses of images in Rome’, JRA 7 (1994), 8099Google Scholar, esp. 82, for the desire to detach response and the political meaning of images as the province of the social historian from visual analysis as the domain of art history. For a sophisticated analysis of imperial statues in the context of the imperial cult, critical of notions of art as a reflection of ideology rather than constitutive of it: Price, S., Rituals of Pozcer: the Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (1984), 171200Google Scholar; although in practice Price concentrates, like Gregory, on statues as ‘objects of discourse’, provincial reflections about the nature of imperial power, rather than as a cultural discourse in their own right, or as objects of non-discursive visual response.

11 According to Zanker, ‘visual imagery reflects a society's inner life’, whilst ‘artistic style [is a] faithful reflection of social and political setting’. The absence of any stylistic norm reflects the normlessness of late Republican Roman politics. Stylistic contradiction and dissolution, for example in the portrait of Pompey, corresponds to political contradiction and the dissolution of the Republic: Zanker, P., The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (1988), 131Google Scholar; 3 and 11 for the quotations.

12 Panofsky, E., Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (1939), 117, esp. 14–17Google Scholar.

13 For criticism of the model of ‘propaganda’ see Wallace-Hadrill's, A. review of Zanker, , ‘Rome's cultural revolution’, JRS 79 (1989), 157–64Google Scholar; Elsner, J., ‘Cult and sculpture: sacrifice in the Ara Pacis Augustae’, JRS 81 (1991), 5061Google Scholar.

14 T. J. Cornell, The Beginnings of Rome (1995), 380: Hölscher, T., ‘Die Anfänge römischer Repräsentationskunst’, MDAI -R 85.2 (1978), 315–57Google Scholar, esp. 348–57. The same problem arises m Hallett's brief discussion of verism, where he argues that verism simply reflects ‘innate Roman feelings about what a Roman public man ought to look like’ (Hallett 1993, 213–25, at 217). Why then is there no verism before the late second century B.C.?

15 For catalogues and full references to the secondary literature: Hallett 1993, 226–9; Kleiner, D. E. E. and Kleiner, F. S., ‘A heroic relief on the Via Appia’, AA 90 (1975), 250–65Google Scholar.

16 Bandinelli, R. Bianchi, Rome: the Center of Power (1969), 47Google Scholar, speaks of an ‘insensitivity as regards style … typical of the times’. Stewart, A., Attika: Studies in the Sculpture of the Hellenistic Age (1979), 143–5Google Scholar, on realism and idealism, esp. concerning statues like the Pseudo-Athlete and C. Ofellius Ferus from Delos: ‘pastiche, a piece of pure kitsch, a monster of inauthenticity’. Zanker provides a reductionist sociological variant whereby stylistic contradiction reflects social contradiction, op. cit. (n. 11), 8–11, esp. 9, ‘the combination of simple physiognomies with heroic bodies points up the discrepancy between rhetoric and real accomplishment’.

17 M. R. Sanzi di Mino and L. Nista, Gentes et principes: iconografia romano in Abruzzo (1993), 36–7. Carettoni, G. F., ‘Replica di una statua Lisippea rinvenuta a Cassino’, Mem. Pont. Acc. 6.1 (1943), 5366Google Scholar. Cf. Coarelli, F., ‘Classe dirigente romani e arti figurative’, Dial. Arch. 4–5 (1971), 241–65Google Scholar, at 259, on C. Ofellius Ferus — classicism of the body as an expression of late Hellenistic artistic culture, verism as expressing the wishes of the Roman commissioner.

18 Smith, HRP, 136. Hallett's suggestion (1993, 213–25) that the collocation of verism and ‘ideal’ nudity requires no special explanation, since verism is simply ‘idealization’ in terms of Roman values seems to me to be nothing more than word-play. After all, if verism did not signal something distinctive from what was signalled in earlier Greek and Roman traditions of portraiture, why was it developed and used in the context of these statues that otherwise depend on Hellenistic Greek traditions?

19 A good deal more striking than Zanker, also, allows: Führender Männer, 258. Himmelmann, Contrast N., Herrscher und Athlet: die Bronzen vom Quirinal (1989), 116Google Scholar, on the development of nudity in civic honorific statues not of kings as ‘erstaunlich’; Hallett 1993, 145, ‘a dramatic innovation’ — although Hallett oddly concludes his study (219–20) by arguing that the Romans had ‘no ready formula for the appearance of the body’ (in contrast to verism for their faces) in portraits of their leaders, and this was why they adopted the Greek heroic image: quite why togate or cuirassed statues would not do the job, as they did for Augustus, is never made clear.

20 Zanker, P., ‘The Hellenistic grave stelai from Smyrna: identity and self-image in the polis’, in Bullock, A. et al. (eds), Images and Ideologies: Self-Definition in the Hellenistic World (1993), 212–30, esp. 218–21Google Scholar; idem, ‘Brüche im Bürgerbild? Zur bürgerlichen Selbstdarstellung in den hellenistischen Städten’, in Wörrle, M. and Zanker, P. (eds), Stadtbild und Bürgerbild im Hellenismus (1995), 251–73, esp. 251–5, 258–60Google Scholar; M. Wörrle, ‘Von tugendsamen Jüngling zum “gestressten” Euergeten: Überlegungen zum Bürgerbild hellenistischer Ehrendekrete’, in Wörrle and Zanker, op. cit., 241–51; Smith, HRP, 32–4 — but underestimating the elevating character of nudity in Hellenistic ruler-portraiture, as analysed by Himmelmann; R. R. R. Smith, ‘Kings and philosophers’, in A. Bullock et al., op. cit., 202–11, esp. 203–5; Himmelmann, op. cit. (n. 19), 115, on mantel statues as the norm for Hellenistic civic honorific statues of fellow-citizens, 62–5 against the use of nudity on portraits of living persons, except athletes, before Alexander, whose ideal nudity, echoing images of heroes like Achilles, became the norm for Hellenistic rulers; idem, Ideale Nacktheit in der griechischen Kunst, Jdl EH 26 (1990), 29–79.

21 Himmelmann, op. cit. (n. 19), 116; Queyrel, F., ‘C. Ofellius Ferus’, BCH 115.1 (1991), 389464CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 440; and Zanker, op. cit. (n. 20, 1993), 228, on the exceptional character of heroizing nudity amongst funerary reliefs. Hallett 1993, 30–4 on the funerary reliefs and 33–46 and 59–64 on ‘heroic nude’ funerary statues — noting in particular that all these heroizing images are of men who died young, consequently endowed with strongly idealizing faces, designed to lay stress on ‘the youthful beauty of the deceased’. The nudity, Hallett suggests, emphasizes the idea of ‘a young man in his physical prime’, and that, although dead, the deceased 'still young lives out his acme - the bloom of his youth — among the heroes’, quoting W. Peek, Griechische Grabesgedichte (1960), no. 255.

22 The best evidence we have of the range of statuetypes in third- and second-century Rome is the series of terracotta statues from the eastern sanctuary at Lavinium, published in Enea nel Lazio: archaeologia e mito (1981), 221–64, esp. cat. nos 241, 259, 261–2. Cf. also Giuliani, Bildnis, 159 and 210–20; Richardson, E. H. and Richardson, L. Jr., ‘Ad cohibendum bracchium toga: an archaeological examination of Cicero pro Caelio 5.11’, Yale Class. Stud. 19 (1966), 251–68Google Scholar. Richardson, E. H., ‘The Etruscan origins of early Roman sculpture’, MAAR 21 (1953), 79124Google Scholar, esp. 105–24, on early Roman statue types.

23 Gazda, E. K. and Haeckl, A. E., ‘Roman portraiture: reflections on the question of context’, JRA 6 (1993), 289302Google Scholar.

24 My account of pragmatist semiotics here draws on: Mead, G. H., On Social Psychology (1956), esp. 115–96 ‘Mind’, 199–246 ‘Self’, 249–82 ‘Society’Google Scholar; and Jones, M. P., ‘Post-human agency: between theoretical traditions’, Sociological Theory 14.3 (1996), 290309CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 I use the term in Mead's somewhat extended sense of any communicative act, ranging from animal stimuli, the dog growling at an intruding animal, to the human use of language in utterances.

26 Mead, op. cit. (n. 24), 121.

27 Parsons, T., ‘Expressive symbols and the social system: the communication of affect’, in idem, The Social System (1951), 384427Google Scholar.

28 Lidz, V. M., ‘Transformational theory and the internal environment of action systems’, in Knorr-Cetina, K. and Cicourel, A. V. (eds), Advances in Social Theory and Methodology: Toward an Integration of Micro and Macro-Sociologies (1981), 205–33, esp. 228.Google Scholar

29 Cic., , Phil. 5.41Google Scholar.

30 cf. Phil. 9.15–17, for a similar decre e passed in the Senate relating to a pedestrian statue for Servius Suphcius Rufus, who had died on an embassy to M. Antonius. Octavian makes much of a statue he is awarded by the Senate by representing it on a coin with the initials SC, senatus consulto — again pointing to the value placed on this relational dimension of the object — Crawford, RRC, nos 490, 497.

31 Pliny, , HN 34.30Google Scholar.

32 Lahusen, op. cit. (n. 10), 7–40 for a comprehensive collection of references on the spatial placing of portrait statues in Rome, but rather limited analysis; 129–30 on prestige and placement.

33 Pliny, , HN 34.24–5Google Scholar.

35 The language of gift-exchange and reciprocity is built into the decrees and discussion of them — ‘non solum enim datur propter spem temporum reliquorum, sed pro amplissimis mentis redditur’ (Phil. 5.41). The concept of gratia also presupposes reciprocity.

36 Cic., , Ad. Fam. 10.27Google Scholar — 28 March 43 B.C.

37 Dio 46.51 — June 43 B.C. Conversely, Lepidus' legate Juventius, who, when he found out what his commander had done and was unable to persuade him to change his mind, committed suicide in front of his soldiers, was honoured by the Senate with eulogies, a funeral, and a statue on the rostra.

38 Pliny, , HN 34.24Google Scholar.

39 Appian, , BC 2.106Google Scholar.

40 Appian, , BC 2.106Google Scholar. Cf. Dio 44.4.4–5 on the honorific statues of Caesar set up on the rostra in 44 B.C., ‘one representing him as the saviour of the citizens and the other as the deliverer of the city from siege, and wearing the crowns customary for such achievements’.

41 Lahusen, op. cit. (n. 10), 99. Cf. Appian, , BC 3.51Google Scholar, where the Senate, seeking to build up the power and prestige of Octavian in order to combat that of Antony, in addition to allowing him to stand before the normal age for the consulship, awarded him a gilt equestrian statue.

42 Cic., , Phil. 9.16Google Scholar.

43 Cic., , Phil. 5.41Google Scholar.

44 And thereby serve to generate power — see below Section V.

45 Conversely, moral norms are recognized even in the breach, as is anticipation of the anger at and sanctioning of such breaches. For example, after the defeat of Pompey by Caesar at Pharsalus, those at Rome removed the statues of Pompey (and Sulla) from the rostra in order to gratify their victorious enemy, Caesar — at the same time realizing that, if Pompey were to return to power, he would somehow need to be placated for this infringement of his honour (Dio 42.18). One of the ways in which Caesar signals his respect for the established Republican constitution is by restoring the statues of Sulla and Pompey to their place on the rostra (Plut., Caes. 57).

46 Dio 43.14.3–7.

47 idem, 43.45.

48 Cic., , Phil. 6.5Google Scholar.

49 Smith, HRP, 126; Wallace-Hadrill, Power.

50 SHA, , Claudius 7.7Google Scholar: ‘Quantam statuam faciet populus Romanus, quantam columnam, quae res tuas gestas loquatur’; with O. Skutsch, The Annals of Quintus Ennius (1985), 130(fr. 4), commentary 753–5.

51 Accepted even by sceptics concerning early honorific portraits, like Wallace-Hadrill and Smith, but with the (to my mind unhelpful) qualification that these are not proper honorific portraits, since the honorands were dead and the statues, at least in the case of the third-century group, only three feet high (Wallace-Hadrill, Power, 171; Smith, HRP, 125–6). Smith again misses Pliny's institutional point, namely that three feet was considered the appropriate measure for this type of memorial portrait, which Smith extends to being the norm for all third-century and earlier honorific portraits. Pliny, (HN 34.23–4Google Scholar) was relying on a text for this datum, the Annales Maximi, and it seems highly unlikely that the other honorific statues of the fourth and third centuries which he mentions as still surviving to his day were of this reduced scale, since he makes no mention of the fact in discussing them. On the contrary, the measurement is mentioned by both Pliny and the Annales as peculiar to the statues of this particular group of honorands — Fidenae ambassadors: HN 34.23–5; Livy 4.17; Cic., , Phil. 9.1.4Google Scholar; Vessberg, Studien, 91–2; Publius Junius and Titus Coruncianus, ambassadors killed by Teuta Queen of the Illyrians in 230 B.C.: HN 34–23-4.

52 HN 34.20, 23; Livy 42.20.1; Richardson, op. cit. (n. 22, 1953), 102–3; Wallace-Hadrill, Power, 172; F. Coarelli, Il Foro Romano II: periodo repubblicano e augusteo (1985), 39–53.

53 Livy 8.13.9; Eutropius 2.7; Lahusen, op. cit. (n. 10), 63. Wallace-Hadrill (Power, 171–2) finds this early use of honorific equestrian statues ‘difficult to accept’, on the grounds that this honour is only attested in the Hellenistic Greek world for kings as late as 314/13 B.C. Equestrian statues were, however, not uncommmon in the Greek world from the Archaic period onwards. We know of votive equestrian statues in the Classical period (Xenophon, , Hipp. 1.1Google Scholar), and there is evidence in the form of bronze statuettes for Etruscan equestrian statuary from this period (Richardson, op. cit. (n. 22, 1953), 115–23). The use of column statues conceivably (if one accepts the authenticity of the columna Maenia) and rostrate columns without question in public honorific monuments were Roman innovations, and it would not be surprising if Rome also took the lead in equestrian monuments, eschewed until the Hellenistic period in the more egalitarian Greek poleis. See esp., Hölscher, op. cit. (n. 14), 339.

54 Livy 9.43.22; Pliny, , HN 34.23Google Scholar; Cic., , Phil. 6.13Google Scholar; represented on the coins of the moneyer L. Marcius Philippus in 113/112 B.C., Crawford, RRC, 293/1; Wallace-Hadrill, Power, 72.

55 Hölscher, op. cit. (n. 14); idem, ‘Römische nobiles und hellenistische Herrscher’, in Akten des XIII Internationalen Kongress für klassische Archäologie, Berlin (1988), 7484, esp. 75–9Google Scholar; Cornell, op. cit. (n. 14), 333–44, for a recent account of the Licinio-Sextian laws and the formation of the patrician-plebeian nobility.

56 On honorific portraiture in Classical Athens, see Gauthier, P., Les Cités grecques et leurs bienfaiteurs, BCH Suppl. 12 (1985), 92111Google Scholar; Tanner, J.Art as expressive symbolism: civic portraits in classical Athens’, Cambridge Archaeological Journal 2.2 (1992), 167–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 Smith, HRP, 125–8.

58 Strong, D., Roman Art (2nd edn, 1988), 32–6Google Scholar on Etruscan bronze and terracotta sculpture, 47 on the Conservatori Brutus; Kleiner, D., Roman Sculpture (1992), 23–5 and 31–3Google Scholar; Bianchi-Bandinelli, op. cit. (n. 16), 11–1 7 on Etruscan and Roman sculpture in the early Republic. On the Conservatori Brutus: Gross, W. H., ‘Zum sogennanten Brutus’, in Zanker, P. (ed.), Hellenismus in Mittelitalien (1976), 564–80, esp. 576–80 (rejoinder of Torelli)Google Scholar.

59 For Roman suspicion of nudity: Plut., , Cato 20.5–6Google Scholar; Cic., , Tusc. Disp. 4.70Google Scholar; De. Rep. 4.4; cf. Pliny, , HN 34.18Google Scholar. Contra Gruen (CI, 112), such popular suspicion of nudity could also extend to statues: hence Cicero's gibe at the naked statue of Verres' son in Syracuse: Cic., , Verr. 2.2.63/154Google Scholar; cf. Hallett 1993, 67–117, esp. 113 on Cicero's joke; and Dio 45.31.1 on Cicero suggesting a nude portrait of Antony be erected in the forum, as an appropriate counterpart to a statue of Horatius ‘seen wearing his armour even in the Tiber’. The first state nude portrait statue seems to have been Octavian's statue of 36 B.C. Since Octavian/Augustus did not repeat the type, after the shortlived period when he seems to have been thinking of stylizing himself on the model of Hellenistic rulers, one supposes it was not a great success with the public to whom it was oriented (cf. Zanker, op. cit. (n. 11), 38–57, esp. figs 31 and 32).

60 The category of patronal portraits is recognized by Lahusen (op. cit. (n. 10), 84), and much of the epigraphic material referenced, but without sufficient critical analysis or any consideration of the connections between these relationships and the form of the portraits used to construct them.

61 For a generalized analytical account of the institutionalized regulation of reward symbolism, see Parsons, op. cit. (n. 27), 414–27.

62 NH 34.32: ‘iidem postea Fabricium donavere statua hberati obsidione, passimque gentes in chentelas ita receptae.’ According to Badian (FC, 157), the story of Fabricius' Samnite clientela is a late invention, and there are no genuine cases of foreign clientelae before the late third century (Marcellus and Syracuse). Foreign patronage really only becomes routinized during the course of the second century B.C., as also the giving of portraits to patrons as a part of the relationship — see below Section ii. For my purposes, the truth or otherwise of Fabricius' clientela does not really matter very much. It is only in the context of a routinized exchange of portraits in the context of clientela relationships that we might reasonably expect a reorganization of artistic form in portrait statues to have taken place.

63 Cic., In Pis. 25. Cf. also Cic., , Phil. 6.1314Google Scholar for statues erected to Lucius Antonius, the brother of Marcus, as patron by the equestrian order and by military tribunes who had served under Julius Caesar.

64 Pliny, , HN 34.17Google Scholar on atria, the halls, of the houses of Roman nobles becoming crowded with honorific portrait statues given by clients, as the Forum had become crowded with public honorific statues awarded by the state: ‘mox forum et in domibus privatis factum atque in atriis; honos clientium instituit sic colere patronos.’

65 Some sense of the kind of services which might give rise to the offer of a statue are afforded by Cic., , Ad. Att. 5.21Google Scholar, where Cicero talks of declining the statues which are offered to him (along with shrines — fana — and sculptured groups including four-horse chariots — tethrippa) in gratitude for the beneficia the people and communities of the province of Cilicia had enjoyed during his governorship, namely freedom from requisitions and billeting. Despite such offers, Cicero only accepts decrees in his honour. Cf. ILLRP 372: the Abbaitae and Epictetes, peoples of Mysia, set up a column (as a base for a portrait?) with a bilingual inscription in honour of the bravery of C. Salluvius Naso, who, whilst legate of Lucullus in Asia Minor in 73–1 B.C., saved them from Mithridates. The base was set up at Nemi in Italy, presumably Salluvius Naso's home town.

66 Cic., , Verr. 2.2.143–4Google Scholar. The epigraphic evidence confirms Cicero's suggestion that the manufacture of the statue and its erection was supervised by an appropriate local official, often the epimelete — e.g. ID 1604bis, ID 1659, SIG 3 681.

67 Tuchelt, 74–86, esp. 74–9.

68 Tuchelt, 66–8. Cic., , Verr. 2.4.41/90Google Scholar for Verres' insistence that the people of Tyndaris place his statu alongside those of the Marcelli, the patrons of Tyndaris, but on a higher base — a transparent symbol that their new patron, Verres, was now the top man in Tyndaris.

69 Cic., , Verr. 2.2.60/150Google Scholar for gilt equestrian statue of Verres at Rome, set up by various Sicilian communities including the farmers of Sicily; 2.2.59/145 for subscription by the Syracusans for statues of Verre at Rome, as well as those set up in Syracuse itself in their agora and bouleuterion (including statues of his father and son). Compare: (1) ILLRP 398 for (statue?)-base in honour of M. Favonius at Terracin in Italy by the people of Agrigentum, for service performed whilst he was legate in Sicily (cf. Münzer, RE VI. 2 (1909)Google Scholar, col. 2074); (2) ILLRP 372 (discussed above n. 65); (3) ILLRP 380 base from excavations in the area of the Largo Argentina in Rome, set up by Italians who were negotiatores, businessmen, at Agrigentum in honour of Pompey the Great, Imperator.

70 Cic., , Verr. 2.2.143Google Scholar and 145.

71 Cic., , Verr. 2.2.55/137Google Scholar.

72 Cic., , Verr. 2.2.65–6/158–60Google Scholar.

73 Cic., , Verr. 2.2.66–7/161–2Google Scholar.

74 Cic., , Verr. 2.2.67–8/162–4Google Scholar; Harmand, Patronat, 106–17 and Badian, FC, 282–4 for the complicated political and patronal context of Verres' prosecution.

75 The Sicilians, for example, petitioned the Roman Senate to pass a law whereby it should become illegal for any community to be allowed to decree portraits in honour of a governor until he had left the province— Cic., , Verr. 2.2.5960/146–8Google Scholar. The temptation to use subscriptions for honorific statues as an instrument of extortion was to some degree alleviated by a rule that the governor had to be able to show that the money in question had been spent on the erection of portraits within five years or be liable to face a charge of extortion — Cic., , Verr. 2.2.57–8/141–3Google Scholar.

76 Cicero's prosecution of Verres was in part a favour for Pompey, who was seeking to protect and gain justice for his clients in Sicily — Badian, FC, 282–4.

77 On the patron-client relationship as a general analytic category, see Wallace-Hadrill, A., ‘Introduction’, in idem (ed.), Patronage in Ancient Society (1989), 113Google Scholar. On Roman patronage, idem, ‘Patronage in Roman society from Republic to Empire’, ibid., 64–87, esp. 71, 84, for criticism of exaggerations of the importance of patronage as the primary means of ‘generating power’ in Roman political life, rather than just one, if an important one, amongst many.

78 Gelzer, RN, 70–3 on patronage in the courts.

79 Badian, FC, 1–14, 163–5, on the ideology of patronage and the reciprocal services; Gelzer, RN, 62–70 on the personalistic and hierarchical character of patrocinium. The classic statement of the moral ideology of clientela is Dion. Hal. 2.10.

80 Hellegouarc'h, J., Le vocabulaire latin des relation et des partis politiques sous la République (1963), 275–94Google Scholar ‘Les virtues du Patronus’; Giuliani, Bildnis, 225–33.

81 Hellgouarc'h, op. cit. (n. 80), 275.

82 ibid., 275–85.

83 ibid. Cf. Ter., Andr. 855 — ‘tristis severitas inest in voltu et in verbis fides’ — with Giuliani, Bildnis, 225–33.

84 Cic., In Pis. 25.

85 Cic., , Phil. 6.12Google Scholar.

86 Cic., , Verr. 2.4.138Google Scholar.

87 cf. Cic., , Verr. 2.2.151Google Scholar. Anticipating Verres' defence against the testimony of the Sicilian farmers — namely that they are not to be trusted, because they were upset by Verres' efficient management of the corn-supply for Rome and therefore presumptively hostile — Cicero heaps ridicule on Verres' defence in so far as it contradicts the testimony afforded by the statues set up in honour of Verres at Rome by the Sicilian farmers: ‘What an amazing position, what a miserable and hopeless line of defence! That the accused man, after being the governor of Sicily, should have to deny, when his accuser is willing to allow, that the farmers, of all people, have set up a statue of him of their own free will, that the farmers think well of him, feel friendly towards him, and hope for his escape (aratores ei statuam sua voluntate statuisse, aratores deo eo bene existimare, amicos esse, salvum cupere).’

88 Cic., , Verr. 2.4.139Google Scholar.

89 Parsons, op. cit. (n. 27), 387, on the internalization of expressive symbolism.

90 Badian, FC, 155; Harmand, Patronat, 14–23.

91 Harmand, Patronat, 14–23 patronage by right of conquest, 34–9 juridical patronage, 39–48 provincial magistracies and patronage.

92 Harmand, Patronat, 90–100 on the role of the patron in legal disputes.

93 Badian, FC, 148–53 (Italian cities), 157–67 (Greek world); Harmand, Patronat, 55–82.

94 Even where the relationship is not technically a patronal one, Roman provincial administrators seem to have projected themselves in accordance with a conception of authority derived from patronage, and with a strongly patriarchal character. Cicero, writing to his brother Quintus, advises him on the importance of constantia and gravitas in the administration of justice in his province (Asia), and suggests that if he carries out his duties to a sufficiently high level he will be ‘not only entitled but also esteemed the father of Asia —parentem Asiae’, Cic., , Ad Q. fr. 1.1Google Scholar., esp. 20 and 31. Cf. Badian, FC, 73–5; Harmand, Patronat, 100–4.

95 Badian, FC, 44; Harmand, Patronat, 58–60 for tables of early Roman proxenoi.

96 Harmand, Patronat, 74, Claudius Marcellus, sent as envoy to reconcile members of the Aetolian league in 173 B.C., patron of Delphi, BCH VI, 449, no 78.

97 Gruen, HWCR, 169–72, heavily emphasizing continuity in the language of honour.

98 The only exceptions are some inscriptions of freedmen, although obviously these are not communal clientela relationships, which are my concern here. For an emphasis on the development of relationships of patrocinium as an innovation within this pattern of honorific exchange, and transforming proxeny relationships in an inegalitarian direction, see Tuchelt, 61–3, Badian, FC, 157–67, Harmand, Patronat, 55–82.

99 SIG 3 649 — koinon of the Achaians, statue in honour of Q. Marcius Philippus, cos. 169 B.C., for his arete and kalok'agathia towards the Achaeans and the other Greeks; SIG 3 650 — polis of the Eleans, statue in honour of Cn. Octavius (praetor classi in Aegean 168 B.C.), for his arete and eunoia; IG VII 3490; SIG 3 710C, 110–106 B.C.

100 SEG I.149 — Roman legate (name lost) named as patron, honoured with statue by the koinon of the Phokaians; cf. SEG I.150; SEG I.152, orthostate from the base of an equestrian statue erected by the polis of the Delphians in honour of A. Postumius Albinus, their patron and benefactor, for his offices in securing their freedom (cos. 151 B.C., leader of the ten members of the commission sent for the organization of Achaia as a province in 146, although the letter forms of the inscription may suggest a later date). Cf. Gruen, HWCR, 170; Harmand, Patronat, 74 — Quintus Baebius, patron of Tegea, probably also a member of Postumius Albinus' commission.

101 IvO 328; cf. Harmand, Patronat, 39, koinon of the Achaians honours Q. Ancharius Q. f. as patron and benefactor, before 90 B.C., proquaestor of Macedonia-Achaia, statue-base. AJA 44 (1940), 485–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar, boule and demos of the Samothracians honour L. Calpurnius Piso (procos. Macedonia 57–55 B.C.) as autokrator and patron, statue-base. AJA 48 (1944), 76–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, people of Beroea and the Romans who possess land there honour L. Calpurnius Piso as their patron, statue-base.

112 Each of these statue-bases represents the material residue of quite complex sequences of interaction, preceeding and giving rise to the pattern of interaction involved in the giving and receiving of the honour itself. If the honorand was not immediately present on the occasion of the decreeing of an honour or the erection of a statue, he would need to be informed of it, so an embassy would be sent. See, for example, Sherk, 48 = SIG 3 700, 119 B.C., an inscription which records the sending of an embassy to the quaestor M. Annius, with a copy of the decree (as inscribed), to inform him of the honours afforded him by the Macedonian city of Lete. Cf. Smith, HRP, 16, for the same practice when statues of kings were set up in the cities of Hellenistic Greece.

113 Cic., Pro Sest., 9–10 and 36.

114 Sherk, 73 = IG Bulg. I2 314a.

115 CIG I.1695: Harmand, Patronat, 40. Some understanding of and orientation towards the particularities of Roman moral culture in these kinds of relationship is also implied by the coins issued by Epizephyrian Locris, representing Roma crowned by Pistis (Harmand, Patronat, 21). Cf. letter of the Scipios to Herakleia = Sherk, 14, SIG 3 618, 190 B.C.

116 Sherk, 26 = SIG 3 656, c. 160 B.C. Both the terms for patron and atria are transliterated into Greek on the basis of the Latin words. The word translated by Sherk as ‘salutation’ is (if correctly restored) proskynesis, suggesting an understanding of the deeply inegalitarian nature of the relationship, since the word is derived from court ritual and would, I expect, not often be used of an ordinary benefactor. Correspondingly, whilst one does quite often find the combinations ‘patron and soter’ (see further below), one never finds the combination ‘proxenos and soter’. Moreover, the term patron is, to my knowledge, only used in Greek inscriptions of Roman benefactors, generally members of the senatorial élite, which again indicates that it is not, as Gruen suggests, simply interchangeable with proxenos. Cf. Gelzer, RN, 89.

117 Inan, J. and Rosenbaum, E., Roman and Early Byzantine Portrait Sculpture in Asia Minor (1966), nos 93, 136, 137, 139, 203, 204, 284Google Scholar; Inan, J. and Alföldi-Rodenbaum, E., Römische und frühbyzantinische Porträtplastik aus der Turkei — Neue Funde (1979), nos 97, 122, 173, 248Google Scholar; Richter, G., ‘The origins of verism in Roman portraits’, JRS 45 (1955), 45Google Scholar; and Hallett 1993, 30–46 (pls 2.57, 2.58) for further examples.

118 Smith, R. R. R., ‘Philorhomaioi: portraits of Roman client rulers in the Greek East in the first century BC’, Quaderni de ‘La Ricerca Scientifica’ 116 (1988), 483–7Google Scholar; Smith, HRP, 130–4.

119 cf. Smith, Foreigners.

120 Sometimes quite literally—cf. F. Felten, ‘Römische Machthaber und hellenistische Herrscher: Berührungen und Umdeutungen’, OJh (1985), 109–54; Hallett, 1993, 148–64.

121 Bowersock, op. cit (n. 111), 111 – 15, 150–1; Gauthier, op. cit. (n. 56), 59–63; Price, op. cit. (n. 10), 40–7.

122 Plut., , Flam. 16.4Google Scholar on the cult of Flamininus as saviour at Chalcis; the Pistis of the Romans was particularly celebrated in the hymn in honour of Flamininus. Other cults of Titus are attested at Eretria (IG XII.9.233 — holiday, sacrifice, statue of Flamininus in the temple of Artemis) and Argos (SEG XXII.266, ll. 13–14).

123 Statues explicitly celebrating Flamininus as saviour include SIG 3 592 (the demos of Gytheion, after Flamininus had freed them from the domination of Nabis, cf. Livy 34.29.13), IG XII.9.931 (two gymnasiarchs at Chalcis dedicate the statue on leaving office). See Sherk, 6 for other statues dedicated in honour of Flamininus, by both individuals and communities.

124 Gauthier, op. cit. (n. 56), 46–53, esp. 50–3, on the use of the title soter in the Classical and Hellenistic periods, in particular in the context of cultic honours. On the use of the title soter by the Hellenistic kings, Smith, HRP, 50.

125 Sometimes perceived as part of a built-in tendency towards the trivialization of honours (cf. e.g. Wallace-Hadrill, Power, 151), this extension of the highest signs and titles of honour in the later Hellenistic period is in fact quite structured, being limited primarily to Roman citizens and magistrates — Gauthier, op. cit. (n. 56), 59–69. For Verres as soter and the festival of the Verria replacing festivals in honour of the original patrons of Syracuse, the Marcelli, see Cic., , Verr. 2.2.63/154Google Scholar. Cic., Flac. 55 for cult of the father of C. and L. Valerius Flaccus (themselves later governors, and honoured as patrons in Klaros — Tuchelt, nos 4 and 5) in Asia, after his governorship, in the late second century B.C. For a list of cults of Republican governors, Bowersock, op. cit. (n. 111), 150–1.

126 Tuchelt, no. 12: L. Licinius Murena, imp., honoured with a bronze equestrian statue by the demos of the Kaunians as euergetes and soter of the demos, on account of his arete and eunoia; after 83 B.C. Tuchelt, no. 13: C. Licinius Murena (son of no. 12), honoured with a bronze statue as soter and euergetes on account of his arete and eunoia by the demos of the Kaunians, after 83 B.C. Tuchelt, no. 26: Cn. Pompeius Magnus, imp., honoured in 63/62 B.C. as soter and euergetes of the demos of Miletopohs and of all Asia, on account of his arete and eunoia. Tuchelt, no. 43: Q. Caecilius Metellus Pius Scipio, imp., honoured in 49/48 B.C. as soter and euergetes by the demos of Pergamon. Tuchelt, nos 46, 48, 51, 52, 55; ID 1605, 1621; IG II2 4146; SIG 3 751.

127 Tuchelt, no. 4: statue-base from Olympia, set up in honour of Q. Mucius Scaevola (pr. pro cos, 98/97 or 94/93 B.C.) as soter and euergetes, on account of his arete, dikaiosune, and kathareiotes by the demoi, the ethne, the philoi of Rome in Asia, and the Greeks who celebrate the Mukiaia; cf. Sherk, 58 = OGIS 438. Tuchelt, no. 10: L. Licinius Lucullus, proqu., c. 80 B.C., statue-base from Thyateira, set up by the demos, honouring Lucullus as soter, euergetes, and ktistes tou demou, on account of his arete and eunoia — on the cult of Lucullus in Kyzikos, Appian, Mithr. 11.76; Plut., Lucul. 23. Tuchelt, no. 18: idem, imp., statue from the demos of Klaros as soter and euergetes, after 73 B.C. Cf. Durrbach, Choix d' inscriptions de Delos (1921), 162 = Sherk, 75B: statue of Cn. Pompeius Magnus, set up by the demos of Athens and the Society of Worshippers of Pompeius, c. 65 B.C.

128 I do not mean to suggest that every statue that had soter inscribed on its base would have been naked, over-life-size, and made of marble, any more than that every statue of a patron will be veristic, or that all of this group of naked veristic portraits will have had bases describing them as patron and soter. The selection of expressive symbolism is not so mechanical. Rather, these roles, and the cultural values associated with them, acted as a strong, generalized selective pressure in these processes of communication. Sometimes soter on a base will have been accompanied by an appropriately naked portrait; sometimes it will have been felt that it was sufficiently elevating to name the person as soter, without a correspondingly assertive portrait, or vice versa, as in the case of the portrait of C. Ofellius Ferus, who is simply named without any additional honorific titulature or Piso (below n. 130) who is named as patron but represented in a marble agalma. The complex negotiations that informed such particular decisions are suggested by the discussions in Cicero's Philippics 5 and 9 as discussed above.

129 Smith, HRP, 15–16. Tuchelt, 79–90 on the connections between ‘gottergleiche Ehrung’, especially cult, and marble portrait statues as agalmata, esp. p. 82 on the associations with the honorific title of ktistes of a community. Cf. Artemidorus 3.63 for the instruction that statues in stone, as opposed to bronze, which appear in dreams should be interpreted according to the rules specified for the interpretation of statues of gods.

130 Tuchelt, no. 102: L. Calpurnius Piso, awarded an agalma marmarinon on the occasion of renewed honours from the demos of Stratonikeia to their patron kai euergetes diaprogonon.

131 Zanker, Führender Männer, 253; Queyrel, op. cit. (n. 21), 442.

132 cf. Tuchelt, 84 and 95 on the choice of colossal formats for marble statues, and their departure from the standard chiton and himation type used for honorific statues of citizens in the Greek cities in favour of late classical models favouring the mantel and leaving the upper body bare.

133 Diotogenes, ap. Stob., , Anth. 4.7.62Google Scholar = 266f. [Hense], transl. in Goodenough, E. R., ‘The political philosophy of Hellenistic kingship’, YCS 1 (1928), 55104Google Scholar, at 71–3. Smith, HRP, 50–3.

134 Himmelmann, op. cit. (n. 19), 24, 126–49.

135 Brilliant, R., Gesture and Rank in Roman Art (1963), 14Google Scholar, for the paintings from Herculaneum and from the house of Gavius Rufus, esp. on the frontality of the hero, and the worshipful ‘adulation’ of the ‘hero who is greater than life, as the saved humiliate themselves before their saviour’. Proskynesis: Sittl, C., Die Gebärden der Griechen und Römer (1890), 157–60Google Scholar. The Cassino statue and the statue of Poplicola may also have soteriological connotations. In addition to recalling statues of Hellenistic monarchs, like Alexander (the Rondanini Alexander, Munich) or Demetrios Poliorketes, they may also have evoked their originals, both images of gods and of heroes, like Perseus rescuing Andromeda on the late classical painting by Nikias, frequently copied in Pompeii: Picard, G. Ch., ‘La statue du temple d' Hercule à Ostie’, in Bonfante, L. and Heintze, H. v. (eds), In Memoriam Otto Brendel (1976), 121–9.Google Scholar

136 IGRRP III.888: demos of Mallus honours [??] Valerius the son of Marcus as euergetes, soter, and patron of the polis. SIG 3 750: Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus, patron and soter of Cyrene (legate of Pompey in the 60s B.C.; cf. Harmand, Patronat, 30; Gelzer, RN, 88). BCH 14 (1890), 231Google Scholar no. 3: demos and boule of Nysa in Caria honours P. Licinius Crassus Junianus, propr. 49 B.C., as their soter, euergetes, and patron. Tuchelt, nos 41 and 42: L. Antonius, q. pro pr. 49 B.C., honoured by the demos of Pergamon as patron and soter; cf. Cic., , Phil. 6.12Google Scholar. Tuchelt, no. 47: C. Julius Caesar, honoured by the demos of Pergamon as their patron and euergetes and as soter and euergetes of all the Greeks, 48 B.C. Tuchelt, no. 59: M. Cocceius Nerva, imp., honoured with a bronze equestrian statue by the demos of Lagina as euergetes and patron and soter of the city, for his arete, eunoia, and euergesia, and in particular for the restoration of their ancestral freedom and constitution. Tuchelt, no. 60: idem, honoured by the demos of Teos as patron of the city, and common euergetes and soter of the province. Cf. Tuchelt, no. 28bis: Cn. Pompeius Magnus, honoured as patron [kai euergetes/soter] en isotheoi timoumenos by the demos of Side, after 67 B.C.

137 Plaut., Asin. 919; cf. Colum. 1. pref. 9; with Wiseman, P., ‘Conspicui postes tectaque digna deo: the public image of aristocratic and imperial houses in the late Republic and early Empire’, in Pietri, C. (ed.), L' Urbs: espace urbain et histoire, Ier siècle av J-C–III siècle ap. J-C (1987), 393–413, esp. 412Google Scholar; and idem, Roman Political Life go BC–AD 69 (1985), 10–12. On the appropriation of the decorative schemes of Hellenistic palaces in late Republican wall-painting, see n. 151.

138 On Scipio as euergetikos and therefore basilikos, see Polybios 10.3.1 and 5.6; 10.40; cf. Livy 27.19; Gauthier, op. cit. (n. 56), 40 and 59.

139 Harmand, Patronat, 40; Bloch, H., ‘L. Calpurnius Piso in Samothrace and Herculaneum’, AJA 44 (1940), 485–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Murray, O., ‘Philodemus on the good king according to Homer’, JRS 55 (1965), 161–82Google Scholar. The same ideology of rulership is manifest in Cicero's letter to his brother Quintus, advising him on his moral responsibilities as governor of Asia, and probably owes much to Panaetios’ development of Stoicism to fit the moral culture of the Roman élite and justify Roman imperialism in the Greek world: Earl, D., The Moral and Political Tradition of Rome (1967), 40–1Google Scholar.

140 Smith, HRP, 70–8 on the royal portraits from the Villa of the Papyri.

141 A good number of the original dedicants of portraits of Romans in the Greek world (most notably that of C. Ofellius Ferus) in the first place were Italians, who doubtless brought back both the relationships and the practice of giving portraits to patrons to Italy, as well as the artistic forms for such portraits — see for example ID 1999, ID 1694, ID 1695–7, ID 1699, ID 1642–6, ID 1648, ILLRP 376.

142 Zanker, Führender Männer, 260–1; with Schumacher, L., ‘Das Ehrendekret für M. Nonius Balbus’, Chiron 6 (1976), 165–84Google Scholar and Maiuri, A., Rend. Acc. Line. VII.3 (1943) 253–72Google Scholar.

143 Copies in biscuit-porcelain made before the accident indicate that the youthfulness of the head was characteristic of the original — Zanker, Führender Männer, 262 n. 65.i.

144 ibid., 261.

145 Elsner, J., Art and the Roman Viewer (1995), 162Google Scholar.

146 cf. for example, the statue from Pergamum, naked, cuirass-support, very similar to our group but considerably less than life-size: Maderna-Lauter, C., ‘Polyklet in hellenistischer und römischer Zeit: die Rezeption Polykletischer formen in hellenistischen Osten’, in Bol, H. (ed.), Polyklet: der Bildhaer der griechischen Klassik (1990), 298327, esp. 311, figs 191a–cGoogle Scholar; Hiller, F., Antiken von Pergamon XV. 1 (1986), 153Google Scholar. Both Maiuri, op. cit. (n. 142), 269, and Schumacher, op. cit. (n. 142), 182, suggest the possibility that the statue may have been heroically nude. But see now Pappalardo, U., ‘Nouve testimonianze su Marco Nonio Balbo ad Ercolano’, MDAI-R 104 (1997), 417–76Google Scholar.

147 CIL X.1430, with 1431, 1432, 1433, 1434, for further statues and other inscriptions in honour of Balbus erected by communities from Crete.

148 The arlier, more youthful types may owe something to the more youthful image established by Octavian-Augustus. As the case of Augustus demonstrates, natural aging per se does not explain the choice of an aged-looking portrait.

149 Schumacher, op. cit. (n. 142), 174–81.

150 One of the last examples is the Venice Agrippa: Maderna-Lauter, op. cit. (n. 146), 225, taf. 27.3.

151 Tuchelt, nos 70, 73, 82, 85, 87. Bowersock, op. cit. (n. 111), 119–21. Similarly, the imitation of the decorative schemes of the palaces of Hellenistic rulers in first and second style Pompeian wall-painting is replaced by the less overtly referential architectural fantasies of the third style, certainly strongly sponsored by and possibly even created for the imperial family: A. Wallace-Hadrill, Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum (1994), 24–31; Smith, R. R. R., ‘Spear won land at Boscoreale: on the royal paintings of a Roman villa’, JRA 7 (1994), 100–28Google Scholar, esp. 101–2, 127.

152 Plut., , Aem. 39.8–9Google Scholar. On Aemilius Paullus' clientes in Greece and Spain see Badian, FC, 122, 310; Harmand, Patronat, 14, 35, 105.

153 Badian, FC, 169 on the widening geographical extension of clientela in the second century.

154 Badian, FC, 163 on clients' officia.

155 Plut., Caes. 6.

156 Pompey' Spanish clientelae: Gelzer, RN, 95, n. 292; Harmand, Patronat, 15; Badian, FC, 318.

157 Crawford, RRC, no. 470 and p. 739. Cf. in the context of public honorific portraiture, the coins issued at Rome by moneyers seeking to reawaken and appropriate the good will and prestige enjoyed by their ancestors, manifested in public honorific portraits, by representing those statues on coins issued during their magistracy: Crawford, RRC, 242–3, 291, 293, 419, 425. It is in this kind of context that verism, a stylistic mode established for a major medium such as honorific portraiture, is transferred into such minor art forms as coins and gems. On clients wearing gems or glass-paste rings with the head of their patron, Vollenweider, H. M., ‘Verwendung und Bedeutung der Porträtgemmen für das politische Leben der römischen Republik’, Mus. Helv. 12 (1955), 96111Google Scholar, esp. 107–8.

158 On interpretation as translation, transformation, and displacement of meaning, rather than simple decoding, diffusion, and faithful transmission of meaning, see Jones, op. cit. (n. 64), 300–4 and especially Latour, B., ‘The powers of association’, in Law, J. (ed.), Power, Action and Belief: a New Sociology of Knowledge, Sociological Review Monograph no. 32 (1986), 264–80Google Scholar.

159 Cic., , Verr. 2.4.139Google Scholar; cf. above Section i.

160 Cic., , Verr. 2.2.167–8Google Scholar: alleging that Verres erected and provided with appropriate inscriptions the various honorific statues given to him by clients and subject communities in Sicily, precisely in order ‘to check the fierce attacks of all your enemies and accusers’.

161 The function of portraits as ‘delegates’ of the clients whose relationship to the patron they represent is another aspect of the capacity of the material artifact to act on behalf of a subject at a distance. For clientelae in court to show support for their patron, or their patron's man, see Cic., Sulla 60–2. Such personal or indirect manifestations of clients support became increasingly important to members of the Roman élite following the creation of the quaestio repetundarum in 149B.c.:Badian, FC, 161.

162 Cic., , Verr. 2.2.167–8Google Scholar.

163 Cic., , Verr. 2.2.59/145, 58–61/143–51, 66–9/161–8Google Scholar. Cf. Cicero's similar interpretative work on the portraits of Antonius, Lucius in Philippic 6.12Google Scholar.

164 Sherk, 46 = IGRRP IV.968; cf. Robert, Opera I, 559 for the details.

165 Sherk, 59 = OGIS 440 = IGGRP IV. 194 =ILS 8770.

166 Sherk, 12 = SIG 3 609. Cf. also SIG 3 607–8, 609–10; 191–189 B.C.

167 IG XII.9.931 = Sherk, 6A.

168 Cic., , Verr. 2.4.3940/85–7Google Scholar. Harmand, Patronat, 109.

169 The strong claims made by Syme, R. (The Roman Revolution (1939)Google Scholar) and Badian (FC) for the place of client relations in the Roman revolution was certainly exaggerated, but so also has been the reaction against it, as in Gruen (HWCR, 158–99) and Brunt, P., ‘Clientela’, in idem, The Decline of the Roman Republic (1987), 382442Google Scholar. One should perhaps distinguish between clientelae per se as a political end in themselves and the importance of clientelae as an instrument of power used in the realization of the concrete political goals which, as Brunt suggests, actually animated Roman political life. That said, the ancient texts are very alive to the distribution of people's clientelae and their capacity to mobilize them, particularly during periods of armed conflict when strategic decisions are sometimes explicitly informed by the distribution of one's own or one's enemies' clients (see, for example, Caes., Bell. Afr. 22; Bell. Civ. 2.18/ 38; Harmand, Patronat, 125–7). It is not a coincidence that Pompey's preferred recruiting ground in Picenum, and in fact the centre where he enlisted men in his legions, is also a place where we find statue-bases erected in his honour as patron (Gelzer, RN, 93; Plut., Pomp. 6; ILS 877).