The "Anaglypha Traiani"

This is the traditional English sobriquet given to a set of reliefs found in the Roman Forum at its eastern end (now housed in the Curia; see figs. 37–40), whose dimensions and subsidiary cuttings have suggested to many that they were part of a balustrade (stone topped by metal grillwork) for a rectangular enclosure about some sacred spot or monument in the vicinity, such as, perhaps, the Marsyas or ficus Ruminalis depicted on the reliefs themselves. Two of the four reliefs show in mirror image the animal triad for a suovetaurilia sacrifice (bull-ram-pig);^[42] the other two are documentary reliefs depicting the emperor at complementary tasks, in complementary roles, in analogous compositional frames. (Possibly these reliefs were amphiglypha, that is, an animal procession and a documentary scene on either side of one wall.) Unfortunately, the heads of all figures have been damaged, in particular that of the emperor in each scene, so that the pieces must be dated by style and historical inference; there is fierce controversy as to whether they are Trajanic or Hadrianic. The two documentary reliefs consist of an oratio to the plebs performed by a togate em-

peror (fig. 37) and a burning of records (e.g., remission of debts) initiated by an emperor in tunic and paludamentum (figs. 38, 40). Both scenes are set in the Forum Romanum against a backdrop of the actual buildings and monuments there visible—the imperial address is given from the rostrum before the Temple of Divus Julius; the record burning is carried out below the Rostra proper.^[43]

My first interest is in the statues depicted in these reliefs. The records-burning panel shows at far right a statue of a female personification or divinity set at the corner of the Rostra, with some object against its near leg (fig. 40);^[44] this is the same spot where imperial portraits are situated on the Arch of Constantine oratio panel (fig. 36), indicating that they replaced earlier seated figures. A cognate statue group appears in the oratio relief at the far right of that panel. These figures (like the Rostra statue) are on the same scale as the "living" actors (fig. 39): a togate emperor seated on a draped throne balances a scepter in his raised left hand, his right arm bent at the side and the forearm extended; at left, a standing female personification holds on her left hip a clothed baby that twists on the goddess's arm to reach out its little arms to the seated emperor; the personification rests her right hand on the head of a child standing pressed against her right thigh (broken away). The breaks on the relief ground show that the emperor and baby in fact touched hands. The point is obviously to stress symbolic identity between the emperor in the statue group and the later, living emperor making a speech at left; just so, the divinity represented on the tax-burning relief is signified to be the patron of the emperor there.^[45]

Who is depicted in this statue group? The answer depends in large part on the date one assigns to the relief. The emperor shown cannot be the same person as the emperor orating from the Temple of Divus Julius—no work of Greek or Roman art seems to include in a single frame a depiction of an individual and a depiction of a depiction of that individual. The statue group must show an emperor who reigned prior to the emperor who is orating, and he must be an emperor exemplary for the imperial orator. If the protagonist is Trajan, this must mean a Julio-Claudian emperor, most likely Augustus; if the protagonist is Hadrian, as is more probable, then the group will represent Trajan as he is shown on alimenta coinage (fig. 41).^[46]

The records-burning relief is key to dating the set. In one view, this record burning is that ordered by Hadrian in 118 (Hist. Aug. Vita Hadr. 7.6), which is said in CIL VI.967 to have been the first example of such forethought.^[47] However, the Vita Hadriani says that the burning was car-

ried out in the Forum Traiani, where in fact CIL VI.967 was found. Also a Hadrianic relief (the Chatsworth relies does show a record burning, against the remains of an architectural backdrop that is different from any portion of the Anaglypha, and this has been taken to be the Forum of Trajan.^[48] M. Torelli maintains that the relief shows a remission of debts by Trajan in 106, linking to a notice in the Chronicon Paschale for that year the fact that the statuary group of the oratio was shown by Mason Hammond to resemble the Trajanic coins of 108–110 commemorating the alimenta extended to Italy (BMCRE III, pl. 33.2 = 184, no. 871) (cf fig. 41).^[49] This view has been criticized (by R. R. R. Smith, followed by M. T. Boatwright) because the evidence of CIL VI.967 should cancel the "dubious temporary remission of taxes" reported by the Chronicon;^[50] these most recent authors find no evidence sufficient to convincingly resolve the problem of date and occasion.

We can begin by correctly identifying the emperor in the debt abolition scene. With one exception, all think that the statue placed on the Rostra (fig. 40) is the emperor "supervising" the occasion,^[51] while the paludatus (misidentified as wearing the hooded paenula ) is a lictor. Yet it is plain that the enlarged paludatus immediately below the Rostra must be the emperor, who is setting the first flames to the record pile. Note his enlarged size, the way he is flanked and backed by two paludate lictors (a triad familiar from the Trajanic Column and Beneventum Arch panels), is further framed by a broadened foreground "niche" of lictor-togatus, and most especially is hallowed (when the head existed the effect would have been even more dramatic) by the arch between the two temples in the background. The paludatus perfectly complements the oratio imperial togatus, who also stands and gestures, hallowed by the architectural background (pediment of the Temple of Castor); the positions of ficus Ruminalis and emperor are neatly reversed, while on the other hand a seated draped statue is set at right on each panel.

By figure style, the reliefs certainly look as if they are at least late Flavian (compare the menorah relief, Arch of Titus; fig. 108) or Trajanic. Although most heads are battered or missing, enough remains to show that very few figures were bearded. On the other hand, the neck of the paludate emperor in the tax-burning scene seems to show traces of a beard, which makes the reliefs definitely Hadrianic. The careful pairing of deeds by an emperor togatus/paludatus, in compositions connected with imperial benefits, is extremely similar to the pairing that structures the choice of episodes for the Arch of Trajan at Beneventum, exemplified in

the facing passage reliefs (figs. 91–92). If the reliefs are Trajanic, the parallel is contemporary; if they are Hadrianic, then the Beneventum formula is a paradigm, as for the Arch of Constantine panels.^[52]

Arguments based on CIL VI.967 are dubious at best. What that inscription actually says is that Hadrian is the first to really assure the security of present and future generations because he has remitted a truly significant amount of money; it does not claim that Hadrian was the first to remit debts to the treasury. How could it do so, when second-century authors like Appian (BCiv. 5.130) were fully aware that Augustus himself, for example, had remitted tax debts in his first big adventus to Rome, after the fall of Lepidus. The inscription is still significant, however, for it indicates that Hadrian had staged such a remission; also, the location of an official account of this act in the Forum Traiani may explain why the Historia Augusta puts the ceremony here. One would expect the records to be most easily disposed of near the Rostra in front of the Treasury (the Temple of Saturn), from which they had to be extracted, which is where the Anaglypha locates such a ceremony. The later Hadrianic Chatsworth relief is thought to depict the porticoes of the Forum of Trajan, but it could simply show the lower portions of some of the Forum porticoes, at an angle different from that used on the Anaglypha.

It is ordinarily a dubious proceeding to contradict textual evidence on the grounds of an artistic representation whose own date is not yet secure. However, the text in this case is the notoriously inaccurate Historia Augusta; the archeological record offers a reason why the Historia might have gotten its facts wrong; and the iconography of the Anaglypha tax-burning panel accords in other ways with official Hadrianic propaganda about this event, that is, with its numismatic commemoration. Hadrian commemorated his remission of taxes in A.D. 119–121 with several related types centered on the same figure, a standing male in tunic and paludamentum facing three-quarters left, putting a torch, lowered in his right arm, to a pile of records and cradling some long object in his left arm. One variant shows this figure alone; another shows him saluted by several citizens at left; a third reverses the scheme, with two citizens at right (figs. 42–43).^[53]

The central figure of this issue has always been identified as a lictor, carrying fasces, and has been (rightly) identified with the figure who sets the first torch on the Anaglypha Traiani panel, on whose left shoulder have been noticed breaks attributed to a bunch of fasces . However, as I have shown, this so-called lictor is in fact the emperor himself, and the pattern of breaks from hand to arm to shoulder does not correspond to

the straight line of a bunch of fasces . If the emperor held anything at all in his left arm (the breaks could simply be dents in drapery), one would expect perhaps an unlit torch, possibly a sheathed sword. By the same token, the coin figure seems to be an emblematic representation of the emperor himself. On any other coin one would take an isolated three-quarter figure in the paludamentum, displayed upright and at ease as here, to be the emperor; he does correspond to the Anaglypha emperor; and in the multifigure compositions, the groups of citizens are noticeably smaller than this figure and raise their arms to salute him, like the crowd saluting in the Anaglypha oratio . These points seem to rule out the possibility that this figure can have been read as a mere lictor. If the figure on the coins is carrying the fasces, then I think this has to be taken as a symbolic attribute, like a cornucopia or scepter, for instance. A reidentification of the coin appears sound; whatever one feels, it remains the case that Hadrian's numismatic commemoration of his remission of taxes uses the key figure of the Anaglypha depiction as its prototype, and so strengthens the relief's claim to "official" authenticity as a document of Hadrian 's performance of the ceremony.^[54]

Appian's passage is worth further comment, for it corresponds closely to the narrative structure of the Anaglypha. It has Octavian/Augustus' remission announced in orations (a ) to the Senate and (b ) to the plebs —the latter, exactly what is shown happening on the oratio panel; speech and remissions are associated with his triumphal entry into Rome in a pompe, some kind of military adventus probably in the form of an ovation, as well as with a kind of official accession. Speeches and remission are associated also with the restoration of civil pax and abundance to Italy (for Octavian had just broken Sextus Pompey's blockade of the grain fleets), and all this in turn is connected with the grant of an honorific statue of Octavian in the Forum.^[55] The Anaglypha connects a remission of debts with a speech specifically addressed to the plebs, alludes to its protagonist's military, as well as civil, auctoritas, and associates the occasion with a monument in the Forum that is itself about imperial maintenance of the fertility of Italy. I think that Hadrian's ceremony, carried out so near in time to his accession to power, is likely to have been quite explicit about its Augustan antecedents—that it was carried out in the same way and that we see the same themes, as well as the procedure itself, worked into the Anaglypha depiction. This is borne out by the architectural setting of the two panels, which is made up of buildings associated with Augustus,^[56] including details like the use of the Actian arch to help frame the imperial party in the oratio (fig. 37), for which "true" perspective had to be altered.^[57]

The evidence so far points to a Hadrianic date for the reliefs, and so for an identification of the seated togate emperor group (fig. 39) in the oratio panel as an earlier emperor; the group appears on Trajans alimenta coinage (fig. 41). At left Italia holds a little girl in her left arm and rests her right hand on the head of a little boy at her side (broken away on the relief); Trajan sits at right on a throne, togate, with an eagle-tipped scepter in his left hand; the baby in Italia's arms reaches out to Trajan, who extends to her something in his right hand. The statue group is arranged so that Trajan's right hand meets that of the baby girl; on the coin the draftsman garbled this, so that the baby's outstretched hands go over, rather than meet, Trajan's. The composition shows a symbolic Italia with the puer alimentarius and puella alimentaria, who appear on their own on other Trajanic coinage and on an honorific statue base for Trajan from Terracina;^[58] they appear also in the alimenta panel of the Arch of Trajan at Beneventum, where the personified cities of Italy hold infant children and where the little puella and her older brother are prominent among the human actors (fig. 91). The evidence of the coinage and the Terracina base permits Trajan's scepter on the Anaglypha to be restored with an eagle on its tip, the triumphator's scepter; this conforms to the military and triumphal associations of the alimenta on the arch, where in distinction to the togate emperor in the facing sacrifice panel, Trajan performs the alimenta in military dress.

So, the Anaglypha Traiani depicts a statue group put up for Trajan in the Forum Romanum, commemorating his benevolence to the communities of Italy in the form of an alimenta program for Italian children. It is extremely interesting that a seated togate emperor portrait, in type resembling the Forum Julium Tiberius with bare head and scepter, should make one of its rare appearances here under Trajan in an artistic and political context identical to that of the Julio-Claudian monuments discussed above: for imperial benefits to the cities of Italy, the seated togate emperor shares a pedestal with an ethnic personification of the entity benefited. The parallel to the Julio-Claudian monument type is obvious, and obviously deliberate (Tiberius' group, for instance, was on view only a short distance away). The only difference is that here, in the interests of a telling narrative, the multiple communities of Italy are condensed into a single personification rather than being shown as a band of personified communities, as on the Beneventum alimenta (fig. gi). It is no accident that Trajan located his allegory of imperial authorship of the well-being and fertility of the SPQR near the ficus Ruminalis and the statue of Marsyas (fig. 37), which stood next to each other in this part of the Forum, both notable

and emotion-laden landmarks from the Republican past. The political significance of these monuments was tied to the dignity and well-being of the Roman plebs, for whom they remained potent symbols.^[59] The truth of this interpretation by Torelli is borne out by the Anaglypha, which selects from all the freestanding monuments in the Forum this trio (Trajan's alimenta group, Marsyas, and the ficus Ruminalis ) to comment on Hadrian's announcement of his benefice to the plebs .^[60] Note that in the same series where the emperor/lictor coinage quotes one of the Anaglypha reliefs, the other is quoted on a coin where Trajan's Italia and her children now greet the living Hadrian, seated on a "real" tribunal, as symbols of LIBERTAS to the people.^[61]

Above I showed that there must have been a group or groups of Augustus with personification(s) resembling the documented senatorial monuments of his reign and the imperial monuments of his own dynastic successors. Trajan's monument was certainly meant to show not just vague ties to the Julio-Claudian past but specific links to Augustus. (Hadrian, by showing himself orating in apposition to Trajan's group, manages to align himself with his adoptive father and with Augustus at one and the same time.) There are further ties between Trajan's group and Augustan art, however.

The composition used for Trajan's allegorical group is structured around a meeting between the seated emperor and a baby who is held out to him by a standing figure functioning as the infant's parent, and with whom he makes physical contact. In all of Roman art, this striking and emotional composition occurs only once with different actors: on the Gaul-and-baby coinage of 8/7 B.C. (fig. 87). Augustus, togate and seated, touches the hand of an infant held out to him by its standing parent (see chapter 4; BMCRE 1, pl. 12.13–14; CNR IV, cat. 129), symbolizing Augustus' extension to Gallia of the benefits of his pax . No other documentary or symbolic group in any medium depicts a baby in this way; the group seems to be an outright invention of the Augustan period (it may have some very vague antecedents in Attic grave stelai),^[62] with no other future save here. An emphasis on children, especially very young children, is widely known to be an especial feature of Augustan art, which lapses after Augustus' reign; the sudden prominence of children in Trajan's alimenta propaganda, especially with female personifications, must have been part of his general program of "Augustanism."^[63] The seated emperor-and-baby composition, I believe, must have been borrowed outright from the Augustan composition documented by the Lyons coinage, whose symbolic content is also very close to that of the Trajanic group.

One wonders, however, why a major statuary group would be based on a much older coin composition, as its sole Augustan reference; the unique reappearance of the Augustan composition under Trajan could best be explained by the hypothesis that the Lugdunum coinage depicts an Augustan statue group, in the same way that the group documented by the Anaglypha was depicted on contemporary coinage.