7. Myth, Image, and Memory

Something pensive, spellbound, and but half real, something cloistral or monastic, as we should say, united to this exquisite order, made the whole place seem to Marius, as it were, sacellum, the peculiar sanctuary, of his mother, who, still in real widowhood, provided the deceased Marius the elder with that secondary sort of life which we can give to the dead, in our intensely realized memory of them—the “subjective immortality,” to use a modern phrase, for which many a Roman epitaph cries out plaintively to widow or sister or daughter, still in the land of the living.

The sarcophagus sculptures are vehicles for remembrance. These images, the correlatives of dreams of a hoped-for future, reclaim the past and keep it alive. In them, by means of myth, the virtues and values by which the deceased wish to be recalled are played out on a heroic scale; by means of portraiture, the dead themselves emerge from the shades to serve as the catalyst for the act of reminiscence. The powers of nostalgia depend on this complicity between past and present, between myth and reality. These powers derive from the most general aspects of religious practice and are rooted in the belief that the “dead and the living can affect one another mutually.”^[1] Thus the mythological images carved on the sarcophagi are not merely allegories—they enact with a trenchant realism a belief about the relation between death and life that lies at the heart of human affairs.

Just as dreams are known in the form of images, so too memories. Reminiscence provides us—quite literally—with mental images of the past. The ancients, astutely aware of the apparent presence of things recalled, did not hesitate to recognize that memory functioned by virtue of “something like a picture.”^[2] The preeminence of sight among the senses emphasized this visual quality of memory as its primary characteristic.^[3] The use of images on the sarcophagi must be regarded as an appeal to this quality, and as an exemplification of the ancient practice of prompting and dramatizing the recollection of the past.

The ancient world had systematized memory and its modus operandi as an art in itself—the ars memorativa.^[4] Thus memory played a fundamental role in oratorical rhetoric, as the orator demonstrated astounding skill without the aid of a text. The rhetorical treatise known as the Ad Herennium provides the most complete explication of this art and its application. According to the ancient theories it recounts, memory was divided into two parts, natural and artificial, with the latter structured as a complement and aid to the former. What was to be remembered was divided into two classes, res (things) and verba (words), that is, the orator’s topics and the precise words of his speech. New mental images had to be formed of those things to be remembered. Images were conceived and arranged according to loci (places), often defined as the topography of a familiar architectural form such as a typical Roman house, in order that a programmatic rehearsal of an entire body of material could be readily recalled.^[5]

While the elaborate structure of this rhetorical system may have had little to do directly with the creation of the sarcophagus reliefs, certain details of the system of the ars memorativa help to explain the formation of their imagery, the consistency of the established repertories for the myths, and their unique presentation of lives of the deceased whom they celebrate.^[6]

The mythological sarcophagus reliefs clearly were intended to complement “natural” memories of the dead, and in this sense they function as an example of memoria artificialis. More importantly, these highly dramatic portrayals of the dead correspond precisely to the prescriptions of the memory treatises that detailed the kind of imagery desired for the fruitful application of their theoretical precepts. Above all, the memoria artificialis required a dramatization and intensification of the materials to be remembered and to this end utilized exceptionally striking images that would easily be called to mind. The author of the Ad Herennium makes this particularly clear:

Now nature herself teaches us what we should do. When we see in every day life things that are pretty, ordinary, and banal, we generally fail to remember them, because the mind is not being stirred by anything novel or marvelous. But if we see or hear something exceptionally base, dishonorable, unusual, great, unbelievable, or ridiculous, that we are likely to remember for a long time…Nor could this be so for any other reason than that ordinary things easily slip from the memory while the striking and the novel stay longer in the mind.…

We ought, then, to set up images of a kind that can adhere longest in memory. And we shall do so if we establish similitudes as striking as possible; if we set up images that are not many or vague but active (imagines agentes)…[it] will ensure our remembering them more readily.^[7]

The rhetorician calls for “active images,” those that work upon the mind, excite thought with their inherent drama, and thus implant themselves in that repository called memory. Cicero repeats the prescription, and emphasizes the implicit notion of psychological effect, when he calls for “images that are active, trenchant, and unusual and capable of swiftly striking and penetrating the mind.”^[8] These are the characteristics of the sarcophagus reliefs as they have been defined here: novel conceptions of the ancient myths dramatically presented, their various elements and episodes framed so as to evoke interpretation of their significance in relation to their sepulchral function and context. The tragedy of Adonis’s early death despite Aphrodite’s love for him, the bittersweet fate of Endymion, seduced by Selene amid his endless slumber—the mythic dramas captured in these images are offered as memorabilia, aids to recall the memories that, buried like the dead whose coffins these images ornament, lie awaiting revival.^[9]

Tableaux and gesture

The relationship between the sarcophagus images and memory had its parallels in the other arts.^[10] Just as their carved reliefs evoked recognizable stories, so too in the literature of antiquity did the recitation of stories evoke recognizable images. These practices were related as if they were two aspects of the same phenomenon. Memory lay at the heart of the signifying process of both the visual and verbal forms.

The historiated compositions displayed on the sarcophagi were familiar to those who beheld them. That familiarity can be gauged by the frequency with which similar tableaux appear, not only in other visual representations of the myths, but also in literary descriptions. The account in Theocritus’s Idyll XV of a tapestry representing Aphrodite and Adonis derived much of its rhetorical force from its readers’ visual familiarity with the subject from a wide variety of monuments.^[11] The poet’s description, or ekphrasis, directs readers’ thoughts from the realm of words to the realm of things, in which his literary images find their correlative in the reality of visual works of art.^[12] While the Imagines of Philostratus provide the most extensive example of the genre, the same may be said of Achilles Tatius’s account of a painting of the Rape of Europa, Apuleius’s description of Lucius’s encounter with a statuary tableau representing the Death of Acteon, or Xenophon’s mention of a bed canopy painted with a scene of Ares disarmed by Aphrodite.^[13] The power of all of these passages resides in the recognizability of the standardized scenes their descriptions evoke, the reader’s ability to visualize the reality of the depictions they describe, and the intensity of a response that welds together these two realms of experience.

In much the same fashion that the mythological scenes on the sarcophagi provided an analogy for memory of the deceased, in these ekphrases mythology offered an analogy that characterized the tale about to unfold. The mythological protagonists of the images described in these texts served as exempla, and they figured typologically as the “heroic analogue” for the author’s characters. Knowledge of the “depicted” myth thus raised the readers’ expectations, as it provided, proleptically, a foreshadowing of the events of the narrative.^[14]

The mythological scenes from the literature written for drama and pantomime provide a distinctive variation to the customary relation between text and image—for drama and pantomime were performed, and their scenes were known in visual as well as literary form.^[15] The desire for visual clarity in the performance of pantomime is specified by Lucian, who claims that it is essential for the mimetic art of the dancer—as for the orator—that everything be intelligible without an interpreter.^[16] As an example, Lucian tells of Demetrius the Cynic, from the time of Nero, who disparaged the dancer’s pantomime as meaningless movement. Demetrius was challenged by the leading dancer of the age to witness a performance without the usual accompaniment of musicians before passing such a judgment. According to Lucian,

He danced the amours of Aphrodite and Ares, Helius tattling, Hephaestus laying his plot and trapping both of them with his entangling bonds, the gods who came in on them, portrayed individually, Aphrodite ashamed, Ares seeking cover and begging for mercy, and everything that belongs to this story, in such wise that Demetrius was delighted beyond measure with what was taking place and paid the highest possible tribute to the dancer; he raised his voice and shouted at the top of his lungs, “I hear the story that you are acting, man, I do not just see it; you seem to me to be talking with your very hands!”^[17]

In all ancient dramatic performance, physical, bodily gesture carried the mimetic burden, since facial expressions were eliminated by the masks worn by the actors.^[18] While the grouping of figures on the stage in tableaux could reproduce narrative scenes recognizable from works of visual art, gesture was the chief means by which the actions of the plot were represented.^[19] Gesture, its importance accentuated in pantomime by the absence of speech, played a far more significant role in a solo performance, such as the one described by Lucian, than when a group of actors staged a scene.

The fixing of gestures in visual form emphasized the representation’s memorable character and resulted in a more highly codified repertory of images. As familiar gestures were transferred from the realm of everyday life to the stage, and then to the visual arts, there was a progressive “petrification” of their form, and concomitant “crystallization” of their content, necessary for their continuing intelligibility.^[20]

Thus the relationship between the dynamic gesticulations of individuals and the static tableaux effected by the group was altered when dramatic scenes were reproduced in contemporary paintings—just as the mythologies were altered when reproduced on the sarcophagi. Crucial scenes were extracted and codified in images whose repetition ensured their comprehensibility. The affinity between these frescoes and the sarcophagus reliefs may be seen in the painted scenes derived from Euripides’ Madness of Herakles from the walls of both the Casa del Centenario and the Casa dei Quadretti Teatrali in Pompeii (Figs. 60 and 61), as well as in the related mythological scenes found at the former site (Fig. 62).^[21]

These “illustrations” of Greek drama suggest that familiarity with the imagery of the staged tableaux increased because it was adapted for painted wall decoration. Conversely, the scene of the Punishment of Dirce in the Casa di Giulio Pubilio, which illustrates Euripides’ Antiope, indicates one of the ways dramatic imagery might rely on the visual arts.^[22] This painting demonstrates as well how the creation of visual works of art could be conditioned by one’s ability to visualize a literary text, to call forth from the imagination the vision of a scene reported by words. For Dirce’s death would have taken place offstage and would have been narrated, not enacted. This particular scene of the painting’s continuous narrative—the crucial scene—thus corresponds to the mental image an audience was required to form in response to, and as a result of, the poet’s ekphrasis and the actor’s rhetoric.^[23]

Vita simia artis

The figures on the painted and sculpted monuments, statuesque in their poses and frozen in their gestures, conveyed the antithesis of natural action. Yet the clarity and the gravity of these images—in fact, their very theatricality—explain not only their comprehensibility but their desirability as vehicles of symbolic expression. The fleeting impression of things amid the flux of life—above all, the impression of significant acts—could be fixed in an image that would sustain the extended engagement of the beholder. Consequently, the very permanence of this image would stand as a symbol for the eternal character of its significance.

The most profound acknowledgment of such imagery’s effectiveness was its adoption as a model for real life. Thus Ammianus Marcellinus reports the adventus of Constantius II at Rome:

He himself sat alone in a golden chariot, shining with the splendor of a variety of gems, amid whose brilliance another sort of light seemed to mingle.…And there marched on both sides twin ranks of soldiers, arrayed in shining breastplates, with shields and crests radiant with gleaming light.…Such was his stillness, that he showed himself as he was seen in his provinces.^[24]

The theatricality of the event was intended to convey its sacral character.^[25] The emperor’s numinous presence was produced, as Ammianus explains, by the glistening of the regalia—the fourth-century equivalent of “special effects.” His gravitas was projected by the rigidity of his pose: his head never moved, his eyes stared straight ahead, “nor was he ever seen to spit, or to wipe or rub either his face or his nose, or even to move his hands”; thus the entirety of his figure presented an icon of dramatic immobility.^[26] Constantius appeared to the Romans “as he was seen in his provinces”—as a statue. For the adventus numbered among the standard repertory of scenes common to innumerable imperial monuments. It was a visual topos familiar to Romans at the center and at the periphery of the empire: in one instance a celebration of the emperor’s triumphant return to the seat of power, in the other a demonstration and acclamation of his presence and authority at the farthest reaches of the state.^[27]

Ammianus’s description captures the reciprocity between the promulgation of an emperor’s image in statuary and his imitation of that imagery in real life. The emperor needed not only to conform to his imagery, and the conception of his person it had disseminated, but to confirm the sense of gravitas and maiestas it imputed to him.^[28]

To keep the dead before the eyes of the living

This reciprocity between life and art lay at the heart of the employment of mythological imagery on sarcophagi. Yet in contrast to the emperor’s effort to project stabilitas by assuming a statue’s lifeless pose, funerary imagery was charged with keeping the dead alive, if only in memory. The mythological sarcophagus was heir to a long Roman tradition that celebrated the past by preserving images of the dead.

Herodian describes the ceremonies that attended the deification of the emperor and the ritual that presaged his apotheosis.^[29] A wax effigy was fashioned showing the deceased lying upon an ivory couch and was displayed before the imperial palace. For seven days his death was re-enacted in a public spectacle as the mourners surrounded the image, and then the effigy was carried to the funeral pyre. To this public testimony of the living was added that of the dead. The charioteers who accompanied the body to the pyre wore masks, by means of which they portrayed all the famous Roman generals and emperors. Thus these heroes of state seemed to emerge from the past, to gather as witnesses to the newly deceased emperor’s virtus, and to symbolize his proper role in Roman history and tradition.

The parade of images from the past, as if come to life, played a part in the funerary rites for the viri illustres as well as for the emperor. Polybius reports how the body of the deceased was carried to the rostra in the forum. Often the body was displayed seated upright, as if symbolically to deny the reality of his death. The members of his family removed the wax ancestor masks from their household shrines,

putting them on men who seem to them to bear the closest resemblance to the original in stature and carriage…They all ride in chariots preceded by the fasces, axes, and other insignia…according to the respective dignity of the offices of state held by each during his life; and when they arrive at the rostra they all seat themselves in a row on ivory chairs. There could not easily be a more ennobling spectacle for a young man who aspires to fame and virtue. For who would not be inspired by the sight of the images of men renowned for their excellence, all together and as if alive and breathing? What spectacle could be more glorious than this?^[30]

The virtues and achievements of the deceased were recounted for those gathered so that the facts of his life could be “recalled to their minds and brought before their eyes.”^[31]

The power of rhetoric was aided by the image of the deceased himself, seated before the crowd, as if present at the event. The oration specifically linked him to the illustrious forebears conjured by the actors with their wax masks who surrounded him. Following the funeral he would take his rightful place alongside them: both symbolically, in the atrium filled with these waxen images of the ancients, and experientially, in the memories these images would keep alive for those who survived him.

This was a fundamental purpose of these ancestor portraits: to keep the dead before the eyes of the living. Ovid declares that the waxen images were kept “to give back your features to my sight.”^[32] Statius attests the mimetic power of these “deceiving forms of wax, about to speak.”^[33] And Sallust proclaims their exemplary value: “eminent men of our country had the habit of saying that whenever they contemplated the imagines of their ancestors, their souls burned with the most vehement desire for virtue.”^[34] The imagines not only took the form of masks but appeared as portrait busts as well.^[35] These representations of the ancestral viri illustres were often accompanied by their honorific tituli.^[36] Together text and image declared the glorious history of the family and announced the standards of accomplishment against which future generations might measure themselves.

Echoes of this great tradition can be found on even modest funerary monuments:

Here lies Varius Frontonianus whom his charming wife, Cornelia Galla, has placed here. To revive the sweet solaces of their old life she added his marble image, so that for a long time she would be able to satisfy her eyes and her mind with his dear form. This sight will be her comfort. For a pledge of love is preserved in the breast by the sweetness of mind; nor will his lips be lost in easy oblivion; but while life remains, her husband is totally within her heart.^[37]

The appearance of the ancient myths on the sarcophagi, particularly in those instances where they feature the portrait of the deceased, served a similar purpose. They provided a text to accompany the image of the deceased—one that proclaimed his accomplishments and his virtues. Locked away in the tomb, just as the cerae imagines were usually shuttered within cabinets, the mythological sarcophagi continued the tradition of ancestral portraiture. Thus the audacity of the sarcophagus imagery—the consecratio in formam deorum—was justified as an innovative continuation of a revered ancient custom.

The appropriation of the myths, as it forged an identification of contemporary individuals with the ancient heroes, elevated the lives of those who were recalled to the status of myth. The insertion of such individuals into the mythological fabric transferred to the deceased those ideas and values the tales exemplified. But in the context of the ancient traditions and customs the sarcophagi reprised, the reciprocity between art and life, between myth and reality, suggests a grander significance. For just as the mythologies elevated those who were recalled by them to the status of myth, so the imposition of portraits rationalized the mythological heroes and their exploits. The exemplary character of real persons celebrated by comparison with the ancient heroes reinvested the myths with a new validity and a new immediacy. In the ritual processions of the ancestor masks, the actors had assumed the roles of those whose facial features they bore; on the sarcophagus reliefs mortals seem to imitate heroes; a certain ambiguity and reciprocity bound together heroes and mortals at the heart of this tradition. The force of that ambiguity and reciprocity may be seen in parody, where the heroes who have taken on these portrait features may be seen to impersonate the dead. Thus in the Amphitryon of Plautus, Mercury assumes the form of the slave Sosia, and after she has examined him thoroughly, she exclaims: “for this one possesses my complete likeness, which was mine till now. He does for me while I’m living what no one will do for me once I’ve died.”^[38]

The sarcophagus images subjected life to a form of mythopoesis. Recognition of this transformation was an act of imagination and belief; it was fueled by memory and confirmed the value of remembering itself. Not only did it give continued meaning to those extinguished lives, but it granted to the act of remembrance the power to transform the lives of one’s ancestors—it endowed them with the unmistakable yet intangible aura of a living tradition. And in the celebration of ancestors by such mythological analogies, memory provided a form of apotheosis.

But it was the myths chosen to represent the deceased to their descendants that announced this fate. It was the myths that told the present and the future how the past was to be remembered. The dead, as they selected their own “vision” of their future and composed it in a mythological key, left behind this prospective vision as a monumental memory image of the past. If the posterity toward which this vision was directed continued to hold to the same beliefs, the dreams expressed by the sarcophagus imagery would appear as wishes fulfilled. Posterity’s retrospective regard for these images would then confirm this faith as it carried on the tradition.

If there is any place for the spirits of the devout, if, as the wise believe, the great soul is not consumed with the body, you should rest peacefully, and call us, the members of your household, away from weak grieving and womanly weeping, to the contemplation of your virtues, which by rights should be neither mourned nor bewailed. Let us revere you, by admiration, with never-ending praises, and, if our nature enables us, even by imitation: this is true honor; this, the duty of one’s kin.^[39]

Notes