Aims and Methods
This study fills a long-standing gap in Roman studies as the first comprehensive examination of the skyphos pair commonly known as the Boscoreale Cups, or the Boscoreale Cups of Augustus and Tiberius (one of my aims is to see that Tiberius' brother Drusus henceforth comes to mind also when the cups are mentioned; see chapter 8). Excepting one recent article on one panel of one of the cups, after the initial publication in 1899 no one has explored the cups' relief decoration in any depth.[1] Discussion of individual scenes, and of the program of the cups as a pair, has been cursory, subordinate to other investigative goals, and unbacked by rigorous visual or iconographic examination. Indeed, it is fairly plain that one reason the cups' iconography is so little known is that many cursory surveys supply only one shot of each cup face, omitting a good two-thirds of each scene; many more give one shot only to illustrate both cups.[2] Many published references to the cup pair make it plain that their authors have not looked beyond such an abbreviated visual record.[3] The Augustus cup, especially the center shot of its allegorical panel, is most popular in general surveys, and correspondingly in the scholarly literature.[4]
Because it is generally taken for granted that some at least of the four decorative panels copy monumental prototypes—that is, imperial state reliefs—the cups figure briefly in many surveys of Roman relief as well as of Roman silver, as in many general handbooks on Roman art. This (usually) implicit premise is seldom developed. The date assigned to the cups, or to their postulated monumental sources, ranges from the reign of Augustus to that of Claudius. Early datings based on iconography are contested, for instance, by scholars who see the style as Claudian but look at
the height of the relief work rather than at figure style. There has been little or no interchange between iconographers and stylistic historians of Roman relief, on the one hand, and silver specialists, on the other. Indeed, although every beginning student of Roman art is taught that the Boscoreale Cups are somehow important, the advanced student can seldom say exactly why.
The answer to the why of the cups' importance is basically very simple: they are iconographically rich and stylistically superb. They document one of only two cycles of Roman imperial state reliefs to survive from the entire Julio-Claudian period, the other being the Ara Pacis; and they supply the only surviving nonfragmentary examples of a genre not common even among the Julio-Claudian fragments, that is, scenes that are not solely processions on foot in the manner of the Ara Pacis friezes. By thorough comparison with the canons of official representation, as they can be reconstructed from late Republican and Imperial coinage, relief, and commemorative sculpture, the cups are shown here to copy a unified set of monumental relief panels. All four of the cup scenes depend on these monumental panels, including the well-known and problematic allegory of Augustus as world ruler. This study not only verifies the "monumental prototype" hypothesis once and for all; it embraces the implications of that hypothesis: this is a book about a Julio-Claudian imperial state monument. I would hope that after this study no comprehensive study or exhibition on the Age of Augustus would ever again overlook the cups. In exploring their iconography and compositions, I have ended by feeling as if I had been given the miraculous chance to write the first monograph analysis of, say, the Ara Pacis reliefs . . .
Whether or not my readers become fully convinced of my dating of the cups and of their prototypes—both Augustan, before Tiberius' "exile"—this study should interest not only art historians but also historians, an audience not much exposed to the cups in the literature of its own discipline. I hope that the cups will now become as familiar as the Ara Pacis or the Gemma Augustea to historians of imperial image making.
The four sides of the Boscoreale Cups are decorated in high relief with political and historical subjects. This itself is noteworthy: the four panels are unique among extant Roman silver, where figural representation seems generally to have confined itself to mythological subjects. Literal historical narrative, what I call documentary narrative, was not the usual province of any luxury art (silver, gems, figured pottery, domestic wall painting and stucco). Overt political allegory is more common in the imperial luxury arts, especially gem work, and on military paraphernalia,
but the allegorical panel on the Augustus cup has no real parallel in the extant silver corpus. The only piece remotely comparable is the problematic Aquileia dish (fig. 17), on which Antony in the character of Triptolemus (?) sacrifices to Demeter, attended by various mythological figures. However, this tableau—a portentous conflation of Neo-Attic and Hellenistic court styles—has no narrative impact to speak of compared with the Boscoreale, or BR, allegory.[5]
Some Arretine ware does hint at lost silver with allegorical political imagery, as this fine molded pottery imitated the shapes and decorative vocabulary of vessels in precious metal. Such political images are, however, as rare in the vast Arretine corpus as in silver, and the extant examples seem themselves to depend on compositions (especially statuary groups) formulated originally for imperial state monuments (figs. 65–67). (Significantly, the politico-allegorical Arretine fragments are Augustan, which agrees with an early Julio-Claudian date for the BR cups.) None of the schemata preserved by ceramics, though, approach the BR allegory in iconographic or stylistic complexity, nor do they have any narrative content to speak of; none pretend to depict historical "reality" transpiring before our eyes.[6]
The unique status of the cups qua decorated silver hampers all stylistic analyses based solely on comparison with other surviving metalwork.[7] Not only the subjects represented but also the figure types used are unparalleled in luxury metalwork. The relief style employed has struck silver specialists as distinct from other figural relief styles in the genre of decorated silver.[8] The only aspect in which the cups can genuinely be compared with other silver is in the working of the medium itself: that is, the decoration of drinking cups with a shell of silver worked in repoussé (beaten out from behind) to produce very high relief decoration. Comparison with other Roman silver avails little in explaining the style or iconography of the cups' decoration and is useless for construing an exact date.[9] As discussed in appendix A, this taste for very high relief decoration in silver (and, one might add, in decorative marble work) can be observed elsewhere in Augustan art, especially in the surviving repertoire of floral and vegetal themes (cf. fig. 1).
This leads me to state a major premise: to date the cups, one must begin with iconography, including under that heading not only content (e.g., Venus Genetrix) but also the forms in which the content is expressed (e.g., a particular figure type of Venus Genetrix). Iconography in this sense is inextricably involved with "style," overlapping to a greater or lesser degree with characteristics usually discussed under the heading of purely
formal aspects of the execution of individual figures. Also falling under both headings (iconographic and stylistic) is the analysis of compositional schemes, narrative and symbolic groupings of two or more figures; in such schemes the figures can have a fixed iconographic significance of their own, or the identities of the figures involved can change while maintaining stereotyped groupings that have expressive or esthetic value. Although such analysis by means of compositional iconography is common in other areas of art history (e.g., the Kurt Weitzmann "school" on medieval and Byzantine manuscript illumination), up to now I. S. Ryberg's Rites of the State Religion in Roman Art has stood alone as a sustained effort to apply such a mode of analysis. Finally, there is iconography in its most restricted sense: the identification of individual figures by means of their attributes and (in the case of real persons) their facial features. Such portrait identification (in this case, of Augustus and his stepsons Drusus the Elder and Tiberius) places the cups in time and provides the starting point for their interpretation; iconography in all its senses will permit the cups to be situated within an evolving artistic tradition, where real stylistic affinities to official art tie the cup representations to the middle Augustan period.
This investigation follows the structure of the cups, considering each of the panels in turn. "Panel" means one of the four sides of the two cups, demarcated by the placement of the cup handles; each panel constitutes a distinct composition narrating a distinct event, real or imagined. I begin with the Augustus cup, BR I: BR I:1 (allegorical narrative) shows the bestowal and confirmation of Augustus' world rule, including homage by a group of ethnic personifications (chapter 1); on BR I:2 (documentary narrative) Gallic leaders sponsored by Drusus the Elder hand over their children to Augustus' fatherly protection (chapter 3). The Tiberius cup, BR II (documentary narrative), shows the precampaign sacrifice (nuncupatio votorum ) and triumph of 8-7 B.C. of Drusus' brother Tiberius (BR II:1 and 2; chapters 5 and 6). Next I investigate echoes of the BR cups in two later monuments, the Arch of Trajan at Beneventum and the Ludovisi sarcophagus (chapter 7); their demonstrable dependence on the iconography and compositions of the BR cups shows that the cups' own monumental prototypes continued to stand in Rome and to influence later imperial art into the third century A.D. And I discuss the status of Tiberius and Drusus in ancient and modern sources, in order to set the BR cups in their proper context as documents of Augustan succession policy, touching on key genre compositions in Augustan propaganda and on the nature of the BR cups' monumental prototype (chapter 8). In con-
clusion I provide final statements on the date and visual sources of the BR cups' decoration, and on the themes and program of the cup pair. The text closes with appendices on the cups' relation to Roman silverworking and on K. Schönberger-Münch's 1988 dissertation analysis of the cups.
To identify the participants and explain the action and themes of each panel, I range over many new or problematic aspects of Roman art, politics, and religious rite. So, the allegorical panel BR I:1 is treated in two chapters: the second discusses special problems in the depiction of Augustus, the seated togate honorific type, its association with ethnic personifications, and the association of "real" with divine figures in Republican and Augustan art; it includes a lengthy excursus on the so-called Anaglypha Traiani and the Hadrianeum province-emperor group. The third chapter discusses the political iconography of ethnic personifications in the Republic and early Empire, distinguishing modes of depiction to track the depiction of corporate groups. Chapter 4, devoted to BR I:2, explores the practice of "son-giving" by non-Roman elites to the Republican state and to Augustus; the evolution of rapidly stereotyped compositions to express Augustus' new message of dynastic inheritance of rule; and the political mandate of Drusus the Elder in Gaul for Augustus, critical portions of which are reconstructed on the basis of visual evidence (especially this cup) that supplements gaps in the textual record. Chapter 5 discusses the BR victim-slaying composition (the "Pausias motif"), explains the rite of nuncupatio votorum, and outlines Augustan modes of architectural depiction in decorative and monumental relief. Chapter 6 explores the role in actuality and art of the servus publicus, who makes a unique appearance in the triumph of BR I:2, and reconstructs military styles for displaying awards to show that Gallic auxiliaries accompany Tiberius' procession.
Thorough analysis of the iconography of these four scenes shows that the cups were made in the lifetime of Augustus before Tiberius' accession in A.D. 14, indeed before his exile in 6 B.C., copying a set of monumental reliefs commissioned by or for the emperor and his heirs in the city of Rome. These reliefs (which can be linked to the Ara Pacis) were made around the time of Tiberius' triumph awarded in 8 and celebrated in 7 B.C., associating with Tiberius' gloria projects completed by his brother Drusus shortly before Drusus' death in 9 B.C., both brothers acting under the auspicia and to augment the glory of the emperor Augustus. The date mandated by political iconography is supported by stylistic evidence; the purely artistic aspects of these panels, from small details to broad spatial and compositional structures, have multiple correspondences in the extant
corpus of late Republican and Augustan imperial art. Miniaturization of a public monument is no anomaly in this age—the inner altar of Augustus' Ara Pacis (13-9 B.C.) is itself a radically miniaturized version of the great Hellenistic royal altars of Asia Minor (Pergamon, Priene, Miletos).[10]
Because the cups, like much Roman art, describe political reality and historical event, I would naturally have to touch on historical problems. This text, however, aims at more than art history backed by bare historical outline: the cups are valuable historical documents in their own right and deserve to be so included in the historical debate on policy and practice in the Age of Augustus. Most obvious is the contribution of BR I:2 (see chapter 2): this panel and its comparanda describe an historical event known from no surviving text, a carefully staged "happening" connected on the one hand with Augustus' policies in Gaul and on the other with the political role of Drusus the Elder as one of Augustus' prospective heirs before his untimely death in 9 B.C. The Tiberius cup and the program of the cup pair help to illuminate the place of the brothers Tiberius and Drusus in Augustus' dynastic schemes prior to Drusus' death and Tiberius' self-imposed exile in 6 B.C., a place often slighted and misunderstood. The nature of Augustan propaganda about such dynastic schemes is itself a significant historical fact; the BR cups are valuable and legible examples of such propaganda. Finally, the allegory BR I:1 and its ethnic personifications (thoroughly examined for the first time), in apposition to the "son-giving" scene of BR I:2 and to the Tiberius cup, delineate a particular Augustan form of benevolent imperialism and illuminate the Augustan dialectic of pax and bellum .