Amor

The association of Amor with Venus is hardly surprising, nor (in Roman eyes) is his presence in a composition about rule and victory.^[40] He is after all Venus' divine offspring, and his presence emphasizes her role as genetrix and highlights Augustus' status as her mortal descendant. The divine son is here to bestow honor on his mortal cousin, following his mother's example: he is not offering to Augustus, but rather with his patera and perfume jug he is seen as about to pour out his own particular blessings, to grace the occasion with "the sweet smell of success" (pl. 17).^[41] Note that Amor is shown as particularly youthful; in Greek contexts and sometimes in Roman art he can as easily be shown as an adolescent or as a youth. Showing him as a baby in Venus' company often seems a way to emphasize Venus' nurturing aspect, thus the baby Amor on Venus' hip versus the stripling Amores visible in the distance, in the Caesarian fresco at Boscoreale (fig. 4);^[42] thus too the Hellenistic type of a little Eros at the goddess's shoulder (cf. figs. 10, 28–29) was extremely popular in early Julio-Claudian representations.^[43]

Erotes/Amores hovering about a scene with various sorts of vessels are

an old stock motif of Hellenistic boudoir scenes; the motif has been transposed here to a more serious context.^[44] Erotes of similar type (especially the little round wings) in procession, one with an alabastron and an oinochoe, appear on a central Italian terracotta of the third century B.C.^[45] (In actuality, little boys miming Eros/Amor attended late Hellenistic and late Republican nobility, including Livia and Octavian at their wedding: Dio 44, 48.3.)^[46] Bustling Amores had entered the world of political art, via their association with weddings, in the panegyric painting of Hellenistic monarchs like Alexander (the Wedding of Alexander and Roxanne: Lucian Herod. 5). Amor's shell dish and alabastron were originally connected with Venus as patroness of love and marriage. Amor pouring into a phiale from an alabastron was a common earring pendant into the late Hellenistic period, especially in Italy,^[47] and one workshop specialized in Amorini with shell dishes;^[48] a fine example occurs on an early Hellenistic bracelet at Alexandria.^[49] Amor's role on the cup is paralleled in a late Republican version from Rome of a Hellenistic royal marriage painting, the Aldobrandini Wedding:^[50] a nymph pours perfume from an alabastron into a shell dish for a mortal bride sitting with Venus (fig. 13). Compare the Amor who attends the coupling of Mars and Venus with an alabastron on a Julio-Claudian skyphos pair from the Casa del Menandro.^[51]

In later Latin usage concha, "shell," was current to designate vessels used to pour and receive water.^[52] Already in the Hellenistic period in Italy the nymphs of the goddess of love were associated with shell dishes^[53] and alabastra on a class of bath paterae^[54] from central Italy;^[55] the bowls were set into a stylized shell hinge, and a nymph, sometimes holding an alabastron, functioned as handle.^[56] The bath of Venus or Diana might be attended by an Amor laving water from a shell dish in the late Hellenistic and early imperial compositions that must have inspired these scenes on Hadrianic sarcophagi^[57] and Flavian grave altars;^[58] compare lamps of the first century B.C.-first century A.D. where the goddess crouches alone using a shell dish.^[59] In the Hellenistic and imperial periods, numerous terracotta and bronze figurines from Italy and the Mediterranean document Amorini with shell dishes and/or alabastra.^[60] Wherever there is a broader figural context, these occur in association with Aphrodite's bath or toilette.^[61]

The BR Amor derives figurally and conceptually from this mixed Hellenistic and Republican background, with its strongly Italian character. In this iconographic tradition Aphrodite's son and nymphs might very well mingle, in court art and celebration, with favored rulers and aristocrats;^[62] such banquets and marriage paintings are quoted on the grave altar of a

Flavian private citizen, where Amor with shell and alabastron alights on the banquet couch of Q. Socconius Felix and his wife, a unique introjection in an ordinary funerary banquet scene.^[63] Significant on the BR cup is the shift of such Amor imagery into the sphere of outright political allegory dealing explicitly with conquest, hegemony, and politico-religious ritual. This is paralleled elsewhere in Augustan art, implicitly on the Ara Pacis (whose twin Amotes on Venus' lap (fig. 74) are analogues to Romulus and Remus and the children in the procession friezes; see p. 106 below). If the Trajanic reconstruction of Venus' temple in the Forum Julium copied the Caesarian/Augustan decoration, then the Augustan temple had a frieze of Amores readying Venus' bath and playing with the weapons of Mars.^[64] More explicitly, Amor attended Augustus in public monuments in Rome, as in the original of the Primaporta Augustus (fig. 64) made for Livia's suburban villa,^[65] as a Roman general who, like the BR Augustus, wears thoroughly mortal (albeit splendid) costume.^[66]

The Aquileia dish (fig. 17) shows that the "politicization" of Amor imagery is rooted in the propaganda war between Caesar's heirs; here a heroic Antony sacrifices to Demeter, assisted by two Amores and Psyche (symbolizing his three children).^[67] A parallel case is that of Amor with a large alabastron, who figures in rare love scenes, as on the Casa del Menandro skyphos; the only parallel in stone is an early Julio-Claudian monumental panel from Rome (fig. 12) reused on the Arcus Novus.^[68] Here Venus, holding (probably) a Victory, inscribes Augustus' clipeus virtutis, flanked by nymphs who personify the oikoumene, as a tiny Amor flies down with an alabastron toward his mother; the iconography of the shield and pillar group at censer (Augustus' clipeus in the Curia) (cf. fig. 11) dates it to the reign of Tiberius or Augustus.^[69] The thematic narrative (Venus ceremonially creates a symbol of rule for the emperor) is very similar to BR I:1, and the deployment of such an Amor in such a political allegory demonstrably links the BR composition to monumental relief. One can safely say that the "domestic" Amor motif was transformed under Augustus into a part of public commemorative vocabulary. Monumentalization of "domestic" imagery and theme is prominent in Augustan public monuments,^[70] and it is always interesting to light on another example.

A point on style can be made here. Save for the massed group of personifications at far right, which itself forms a single "character," this Amor is the only participant forced into overlap with another figure; this is handled by setting him against the neutral ground of the drapery of an

adult figure behind, whose lower body shades off into low relief so that Amor can be modeled as fully as possible. This is reminiscent of the handling of similar child figures in the friezes of the Ara Pacis (cf. figs. 76, 78). Whenever possible, the children in these friezes are made to stand between the adults around them, slotting them into the interstices. But when for lack of space or other (iconographic) imperatives they have to be shown against the lower bodies of the adults, they are similarly silhouetted against a drapery plane parallel to the relief ground, and the relative heights of the planes of relief are juggled in the same way.^[71]