Votive Mirrors:
A Reflection

The mirror itself was scarcely wider than an eye. Thirty millimeters in diameter, its reflection would have probably included, at its very edges, the line of a cheekbone just beneath, and the floating arch of an eyebrow just over. Within the mirror, we can only imagine, the eye must have come to gaze at its own wobbling likeness. There, undoubtedly, it would have paused, lingered. Around it, on the surrounding lead frame, ran the uninterrupted garland of a propitiatory inscription. For the mirror, the reflected eye and the metallic frame (bearing as it did this running inscription) constituted a sacred offering. Indeed, several of the inscribed mirrors thus far discovered in southern Gaul (essentially in the lower Rhone valley) bear a full votive inscription to a Greek divinity. They're dedicated either to Aphrodite, the goddess of love, or Selene, the goddess of the moon. Together, these two figures reigned over the world of love in each of its multiple aspects, be it erotic, sentimental, magical, or—in Selene's case—propagative.

Frame of a votive mirror dedicated to Aphrodite.
Courtesy Guy Barruol.

We have, then, in concentric order, the eye, its reflection floating in the laminal disk of a glass mirror (one of the first of its kind), and the lead frame itself. The latter, square in outline, encased the pure circle of the mirror. Mirror—and reflection—have long since vanished, of course. We're dealing, after all, with evanescent materials dating from late antiquity: from, that is, the beginning of the second century to the end of the fourth. Nonetheless, minuscule bits of mirror have been detected still wedged between the narrow lead furrows of the frames. This "vitreous debris" has allowed specialists to determine the width of the glass itself (0.5mm in most cases), the method of its

fabrication, and the all-essential undercoat it once received, be it lead, silver, or, occasionally, gold. Above and beyond these considerations, however, their attention has focused almost exclusively on the frames. For it's the lead frames themselves that have offered up such a wealth of information. Thanks to the inscriptions alone, the relationship between dedicator and dedicatee, votary and the object of devotion, can at last be determined. Nearly two thousand years after the fact, something as ephemeral as an individual's quivering reflection in a looking glass can now be interpreted in terms of a lost reciprocity. These were offerings, after all, to one of two specific divinities. As such, they initiated, if not a dialogue, a dialectic between an individual (the votary) and an otherwise invisible entity. Vestiges of a rural and, most certainly, popular tradition, they might be read today as elucidating artifacts.

Votive mirrors existed throughout antiquity. In fact, they're probably as old as mirrors themselves. Poured in bronze, at first, and polished on one side to a high reflective luster, they were far too hard for anything more than the simplest, tool-scratched inscription. Even uninscribed, however, we may assume that they already served as votive offerings to those same two divinities. Traditionally, Selene and Aphrodite were as much recipients of mirrors (as well as rings, earrings, bracelets) as, say, Demeter, goddess of crops, was of miniature metallic hoes, sickles, plowshares. These offerings were all part of what historians have called a "votive contract." Basically, this "contract" functioned in one of two ways: either to invoke the favor of a god or goddess (thus, as a votive instrument), or to thank a god or goddess for a favor rendered (functioning as an ex-voto or acquittance). In both cases, the object, whether mirror or not, served as a token of exchange between a mortal and an immortal.

"I'm giving you this," it suggested, "that you might grant me that." Or, in the latter case, "since you've granted me that, here, take this as a measure of my everlasting gratitude."

With the advent of blown glass in the first century A.D. came the earliest reflecting lenses, no bigger than monocles, such as those encased within these inscribed lead medallions. Whether they evolved into votive objects from women's cosmetic impedimenta (indirectly, that is) or, to the contrary, were especially designed as amulets to serve magical purposes, we may be certain that they belonged entirely to the domain of women. What's more, they were offered by these very women to female deities. We know, for instance, from references to a lost poem by Pindar, that women in love made offerings to Selene, the moon goddess, whereas men in love made offerings to her brother, Helios, the sun god.^[1]

Three of the ten votive mirrors dedicated to either of the two goddesses still bear, in abbreviated Greek characters, a full dedicatory inscription. The same maker's name, Q. Licinios Touteinos, figures in each instance, as does the mirror's place of manufacture: Arelate (Arles). We can assume that this artisan was a lead smith (plumbarius ) and most probably a mirror maker (specularius ) as well. We may even consider the possibility that he was an initiate, a priest of sorts, in the mysteries of this amatory cult. Beyond that, however, it would be a serious mistake to confound his name with that of the votary. For the latter's name, unlike the artisan's, is never mentioned. Nor is the name of her beloved. We may infer, however, that the names of both votary and beloved need not have been named, for in the goddess's omniscience (be she Aphrodite or Selene) the names of her immediate subjects were already known, familiar, sympathetically perceived.

The fact that not only the goddesses but also the language employed in these

votive inscriptions happen to be Greek requires a word of explanation. Writes the historian Guy Barruol: "With the use of a foreign language, familiar to only an intellectual elite in the lower valley of the Rhone but most certainly incomprehensible, thus alien, to the average devotee in the Gallic countryside, we might attribute an added power in the use of these objects, richly endowed with magic properties."^[2] The use of Greek, in short, added strangeness, mystery, a deliberately orchestrated "otherness" to these votive inscriptions. Barruol goes on to tell us that, in the second and third centuries A.D. , a resurgence in both magical and astrological practices, clearly originating in the Near East, made itself felt throughout southern Gaul. He suggests that a certain "religious syncretism" might have existed between Provincia itself and those distant, still Hellenized encampments far to the east. There, the wives of Roman legionnaires might well have assimilated some of the esoteric practices still observed in those parts and, upon arriving in their recently allotted homelands in southern Gaul, introduced those very practices, still Hellenized, into local forms of worship. As a working hypothesis, this mode of transmission is perfectly plausible. Then, too, it has the consistency of rendering the entire cult—from the ritual itself to its sociocultural dissemination—exclusively female.

Before closing, we might consider the mirrors themselves in yet another light. Aside from being the objects of a rigorous metaphysical barter—the tokens of exchange between a particular votary and her invoked divinity—we might see in their ritual use something far more personal, inclusive, reciprocal. For the exchange implied a communication of sorts. More than simply reflecting, the mirrors disclosed, divulged. Rather than a replicated, visual echo, they offered—out of the depths of the devotee's gaze—a form of response. We know the magic with which reflections, reflecting pools, and the first cast, hand-hammered mirrors were invested, in the founding mythologies of most

Mediterranean cultures. The reflection alone, properly interpreted, could disclose an otherwise invisible world of hidden realities. From speculum , the Latin word for mirror, we derive speculation and all that the word suggests in terms of wonder, mystery, the deep drift of the mind in its search for essential verities. Gregory of Nyssa believed that the mirror's reflection invited the individual to enter the very realm of the reciprocal. The soul, he claimed, partakes in beauty the instant it enters beauty's reflection. We might say the same for our votary. As her eye came to gaze on its own wobbling likeness, it might have encountered, in its hallucinatory fixation, that long-sought response. Out of the unfathomable depth of that depthless reflection, the divinity herself might have appeared, spoken, proffered her assistance.

We've always drawn sound from silence, coerced vision out of opacity. From reflective surfaces such as these Gallo-Roman votive mirrors, we've traditionally mined, extracted our realities. Once, though, instead of calling those realities "virtual," we considered them—as well we might—"veritable." Within these flickering disks, it's not merely the votary who saw herself reflected but—at any given instant—her beautiful counterpart, the goddess herself.