Excellent Offerings": The Lausos Collection in Constantinople

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"Excellent Offerings": The Lausos Collection in Constantinople Author(s): Sarah Guberti Bassett Source: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 82, No. 1 (Mar., 2000), pp. 6-25Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3051362Accessed: 30-08-2015 23:35 UTC

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"Excellent Offerings": The Lausos Collection

in Constantinople Sarah Guberti Bassett

In 324 C.E., the emperor Constantine the Great (r. 324-37) founded the city of Constantinople as a new imperial capital on the site of the old Greco-Roman town of Byzantium. In so

doing he undertook one of the greatest projects of urban renewal the ancient world had ever known. City limits were

drawn, and an armature of colonnaded streets strung with rich palaces and monumental public gathering places was

imposed upon Byzantium's extant plan. To complete this

project, the emperor brought famous cult images and com- memorative monuments, antiquities of pre-fourth-century manufacture, from the cities and sanctuaries of the Roman

Empire to adorn the capital's forums, streets, and public gathering places. His aim in decorating the major public spaces of his city in this distinctive manner was didactic. With the installation of these major public collections Constantine drew on time-honored notions about urban beauty and with them the descriptive role of sculpture in public life to shape the image of his city and define its role within the larger context of empire. In settings such as the Hippodrome and the great imperial baths known as the Zeuxippos, the display of antiquities culled from the empire's heartland gave the

newly founded capital a patina of age and respectability that not only lent the city an air of beauty but also linked it

ethically and morally to the cultural traditions of the Greco- Roman past, thereby illustrating the city's legitimate right to unrivaled imperial status.1

The visual tactics initiated by Constantine were embraced

by his successors in the later fourth and fifth centuries as established collections were augmented and new ones initiated around the city. Perhaps the best known of any of these later ensembles was the collection amassed in the very early years of the fifth century by the Constantinopolitan aristocrat Lausos. Destroyed by fire in 475, this gathering is now known

only through literary sources. For the modern art historian its destruction represents one of the Greco-Roman world's most

haunting losses, as the collection was reported to have included some of the most famous works of Hellenic antiquity, the Zeus by Pheidias from the sanctuary at Olympia and Praxiteles' Aphrodite of Knidos among them.

As the presence of these noteworthy statues suggests, the Lausos collection was a marvel in a city filled with marvels. Remarkable for its holdings even in the context of imperial Constantinople, this rich collection was no piecemeal gathering but a carefully crafted ensemble that relied on antiquities and the attitudes brought to bear on them by contemporary viewers to mediate a course between the potentially antitheti- cal claims of Hellenic tradition and the new exigencies of Christian spirituality. It is the aim of this article to describe how and why this course was charted.

Although the Lausos collection first entered the modern

historiographic tradition in the sixteenth century and has been referred to intermittently since then, treatment of the

gathering has been sporadic.2 Most references are superficial and incomplete, and it is only recently that any attempt has been made to consider the gathering synthetically. The first such consideration was made by Antonio Corso as part of a

larger project documenting the literary sources of Praxiteles.3 In an overview of the Byzantine references to the Greek

sculptor, Corso examined the textual documentation for the Lausos gathering and outlined the collection's contents. A second study, a joint publication by Cyril Mango, Michael

Vickers, and the late E. D. Francis, revisited the issue of the

literary sources and took up the problem of the collection's

meaning.4 Both studies assumed a private context for the

collection, and Mango, Vickers, and Francis associated it with the excavated remains of a Constantinopolitan palace that has been identified with Lausos. In this article I would like both to build on and rethink some of the assumptions that drive these

investigations and to propose a new way of approaching the Lausos collection. I shall do so first by examining the literary and archaeological evidence and then by describing the contents of the collection. I shall then consider the collection in light of two issues: Roman habits of collecting and the

ongoing debate between pagans and Christians that was such a defining feature of late fourth- and early fifth-century civilization.

Because of the early date of its destruction, the Lausos collection is known exclusively from literary sources. Any account of the gathering must therefore begin with a consideration of the pertinent texts. Two Byzantine sources provide the basic documentation for the gathering, a late eleventh-

century chronicle known as the Synopsis historion by the chronicler George Kedrenos and a twelfth-century work by John Zonaras, the Epitome historion. Kedrenos and Zonaras were compilers of a type of historical compendium known as the universal chronicle. Like most surviving examples of this

genre, both the Synopsis and the Epitome aim to describe a

comprehensive world history. Accordingly, each begins with an account of the creation and biblical history before turning to an elaboration of the Greco-Roman past, which in turn

merges with the history of Byzantium. Kedrenos tracked world history to the year 1057, while Zonaras continued the record into the twelfth century, concluding with the year 1118. In both authors' work, materials were compiled and, in a manner consistent with Byzantine historiographical practice, taken over wholesale from earlier sources.5

Kedrenos mentions the Lausos collection in two separate passages. The first, Kedrenos A, appears as an insertion in the text after a description of the death of Theodosios I in 395:

Note that in the quarter of Lausos there used to be various buildings and certain hostels at the place where the [cistern of] Philoxenus ["fond of guests"] provided its water, whence its name. There stood there also a statue of



THE LAUSOS COLLECTION IN CONSTANTINOPLE 7

Lindian Athena, four cubits high, of emerald stone, the work of the sculptors Skyllis and Dipoinos, which Sesostris,

tyrant of Egypt, once sent as a gift to Kleoboulos, tyrant of Lindos. Likewise the Knidian Aphrodite of white stone, naked, shielding with her hand only her pudenda, a work of Praxiteles of Knidos. Also the Samian Hera, a work of

Lysippos and the Chian Bupalos; a winged Eros holding a

bow, brought from Myndos; the ivory Zeus by Pheidias, whom Perikles dedicated at the temple of the Olympians; the statue representing Chronos, a work of Lysippos, bald at the back and having hair in front; unicorns, tigresses, vultures, giraffes, an ox-elephant [TravpEX••xs],

centaurs and pans.6

The second passage, Kedrenos B, refers to the collection as

part of the description of a chain of events following the

inauguration of the usurper emperor Basiliskos in 475:

When he [Basiliskos] had been proclaimed, there occurred a conflagration in the City which destroyed its most

flourishing part. For it started in the middle of the

Chalkoprateia [Copper Market] and consumed both porticoes and everything adjacent to them and the so-called

Basilica, in which there was a library that had 120,000 books. Among these books was a dragon's gut 120 feet long upon which Homer's poems, namely the Iliad and the

Odyssey, were written in gold letters together with the story of the heroes' deeds. [The fire] also destroyed the porticoes on either side of the street Mese and the excellent

offerings of Lausos: for many ancient statues were set up there, namely, the famous one of the Aphrodite of Knidos, that of the Samian Hera, that of Lindian Athena made of a different material which Amasis, king of Egypt, had sent to the wise Kleobolus, and countless others. The fire ex- tended as far as the Forum of the great Constantine, as it is called.7

Zonaras refers to the Lausos collection in a single passage reminiscent of Kedrenos B:

A great, consuming conflagration broke out in Constanti-

nople, beginning in the Chalkoprateia and spreading to all the nearby areas and reducing the public portico and

adjacent buildings to ashes, including the so-called Basilica

where there was a library that housed 120,000 books.

Among these books was a dragon gut measuring 120 feet with the poetry of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey, written in golden letters, which Malchos mentioned in

writing of the emperors. The fire utterly destroyed this

object and both the splendor in the city's Lausos quarter and the statues set up there, the Samian Hera, the Lindian Athena and the Knidian Aphrodite, famous works of art.8

A glance at these passages reveals them as a potentially rich source of information; however, because of the chronological gap between the destruction of the ensemble and its description, they remain problematic. More than five hundred years separate the testimony of Kedrenos and Zonaras from the loss of the Lausos gathering in 475, with the result that their observations regarding the collection have often been dismissed as fiction.9 Yet analysis of the texts indicates that their

information derives from a single source contemporary with the collection and its destruction, a late fifth-century history by Malchos of Philadelphia.10 This history, which is preserved only in fragments, covered the period from Constantine to Anastasios (330-491), devoting particular attention to the

reigns of Basiliskos and Zeno, the very period in which the Lausos collection was destroyed. As we have seen, Zonaras mentions Malchos as a source for his discussion of the fire in his passage. Although there is no specific reference to the destruction of the Lausos statuary in the surviving fragments, there is evidence to indicate that this is just the sort of information that Malchos might well have provided. Con-

sider, for example, the entry dedicated to him in the great tenth-century compendium the Suda Lexicon:

Malchos of Byzantium, sophist. He wrote a History from the reign of Constantine as far as Anastasios in which he relates rather grandly the events of the time of Zeno and Basiliskos and the [destruction by] fire of the Public

Library and the statues of the Augustaion and certain other matters which he laments as in a tragedy.11

As the passage intimates, Malchos's fame rested in large part on his description of the fire, a description that is said to have detailed the destruction not only of the library but also of the

statuary in the public square known as the Augustaion and "certain other matters." Reference to the fate of the Augusta- ion statuary signals that Malchos was interested in such details as sculpture, and the summing up of the events under the rubric of "certain other matters" suggests that the description is likely to have mentioned the Lausos collection.12

Any doubt about this connection may be dispelled in the

analysis of Kedrenos A, which also may be linked to Malchos, albeit by a different route. Similarities between the content and phrasing of Kedrenos A and an ekphrastic poem on the wonders of Constantinople by the tenth-century courtier Constantine the Rhodian indicate a source for Kedrenos in the ekphrasis. This association is important, for while Constan- tine the Rhodian's poem dates to the tenth century, his sources also have been established in Malchos.13 Thus, Kedre- nos A, like Kedrenos B and Zonaras, should be thought of not as an eleventh-century fiction but rather as a document based on sources that are themselves derived from an eyewitness fifth-century account.14

By tracking Kedrenos's and Zonaras's sources to their common origins in late antiquity, scholars have closed the gap between the destruction of the collection and its description, thereby giving the texts a legitimacy that they previously lacked and transforming them into a valuable source of information. In a description that is unusually detailed by the standards of Byzantine historiography, Kedrenos A locates the

gathering and lists its contents, while Kedrenos B and Zonaras establish the patronage of Lausos together with the date and circumstances of the collection's destruction.

Working from this evidence it is possible to reconstruct the contents and appearance of the Lausos collection. As we have seen, Kedrenos A offers the most extensive inventory, beginning with a detailed report on an Athena from the goddess's sanctuary at Lindos on Rhodes.'5 Kedrenos first describes the statue's general appearance in terms of scale and medium,



8 ART BULLETIN MARCH 2000 VOLUME LXXXII NUMBER 1

1 Praxiteles, Aphrodite of Knidos. Vatican Museums (photo: Scala/Art Resource)

noting that it stood at four cubits and was made of "emerald stone." At this height the statue would have measured between three and seven feet (one and two meters), depend- ing on the length of the cubit. The reference to emerald stone

probably indicates color rather than medium, which suggests that the statue was carved of green basalt, granite, porphyry, or serpentine.'6

In addition to describing the Athena, Kedrenos situates the

statue historically by attributing it to two sculptors, Skyllis and

Dipoinos, and noting that it was a gift made by Sesostris of

Egypt to Kleoboulos of Rhodes. Although Kedrenos B confirms an Egyptian origin for the gift, it specifies another

Egyptian king, Amasis, as the donor. In broad outline this information accords well with what is

known about the Lindian sanctuary. Located on the acropolis at Lindos, the shrine of Athena is alleged to have been founded by the mythical king Danaos. Kleoboulos, ruler of Lindos in the mid-sixth century B.C.E., is said to have refur- bished this sanctuary by outfitting it with a new temple. Reference to Kleoboulos is consistent with the attribution to

Skyllis and Dipoinos, two Cretan sculptors who were born between 580 and 577 B.C.E.17

The conflicting report about patronage is the only mis-

shapen chronological piece in this puzzle; however, the issue is easily resolved in favor of Amasis. While all of the Egyptian rulers by the name of Sesostris predate Kleoboulos by centu-

ries, Amasis, who ruled during the sixth century B.C.E., was the Lindian tyrant's contemporary.18 Moreover, he is known to have made donations in Hellenic sanctuaries, Lindos included. Among the gifts recorded are "two stone images and a marvelous linen breastplate" at the sanctuary of Athena.19

What was this green statue of Athena? It is clear that this statue was not the sanctuary's main cult image. That statue, a

jewel-encrusted wooden image of the enthroned goddess, not

only was different in medium but also appears to have been

destroyed when the temple burned in the fourth century B.C.E.20 Kedrenos's Lindian Athena therefore must have been a votive offering from the site, as reference to the foreign source of the gift suggests.

Attribution to Skyllis and Dipoinos coupled with references to Amasis and Kleoboulos confirm the Lindian Athena as a work of sixth-century B.C.E. dedication. Egyptian patronage suggests further that the figure may well have been one of

Egyptian manufacture, a notion supported by the report of the characteristically Egyptian hard stone medium. Although seemingly contradictory, such a picture is not at odds with the

archaeological evidence for the period. Excavation of the Greek settlement at Naukratis, the first autonomous foreign settlement permitted in Egypt under pharaonic rule, yielded a series of sixth-century B.C.E. Greek votive images created in an Egyptianizing style. Nor were such dedications restricted to

Egypt proper. As fragmentary remains of a black basalt statue

carved in the Egyptian manner and inscribed in Greek from Kameiros on Rhodes indicate, such offerings were exported to the Greek sanctuaries as early as the seventh century B.C.E. The Lindian Athena must have belonged to this tradition; however, beyond a general association with the formal conven- tions of late Egyptian and early Archaic sculpture, the

appearance of the statue cannot be reconstructed.2' Completely different in appearance and nothing like the

enigma of the Athena was the statue of Aphrodite from Knidos (Fig. 1).22 Created by Praxiteles in the mid-fourth

century B.C.E. as the main cult image for the Knidian sanctu-

ary, this statue was one of the most famous images in the ancient world. Its appearance is well known from coin issues and later copies. The goddess stands naked in a classic

contrapposto pose, her weight carried on her straight right leg, her left leg slightly bent. Her right hand shields her pubic




area, while her left arm is raised at the elbow and her left hand holds a piece of drapery that falls onto an amphora. Her head turns toward the right. Kedrenos A confirms knowledge of the Knidia, describing the figure as an Aphrodite "of white

stone, naked, shielding with her hand only her pudenda, a work of Praxiteles of Knidos." More succinctly, Kedrenos B

supposes a statue in no need of introduction and refers only to "the famous one of the Aphrodite of Knidos."

Kedrenos A next lists a statue of Hera from Samos,23 a work also mentioned in Kedrenos B. Neither text offers information about appearance, but Kedrenos A describes the figure as the work of two sculptors, Lysippos and Bupalos of Chios. This

joint attribution is curious. Lysippos lived in the fourth

century B.C.E. and Bupalos in the latter half of the sixth,24 so the image could not have been the product of these two hands unless Lysippos somehow completed or restored a statue made initially by Bupalos. Alternatively, the joint attribution may be explained as the result of an error in textual transmission. Arguing that the name of Lysippos should be connected with a statue more properly associated with this sculptor, the next statue in the sequence, an Eros, A. Frickenhaus assigns the Hera to Bupalos alone.25 Although the latter is known to have created several cult statues, no other source credits him with the carving of the Samian Hera. Manufacture of that image, which was of ivory and gold,26 is

generally given to another early sculptor, Smilis.27 Moreover, Smilis's statue replaced an aniconic wooden image that was still in existence in the second century.28 Attribution to

Bupalos therefore suggests that, as in the case of the Lindian

Athena, a votive statue other than the main cult image was

brought to Constantinople. Whatever the case, the image of Hera should be understood as a sacred representation of

sixth-century B.C.E. manufacture. As with the Lindian Athena, no specific description is possible.

A statue described as a winged Eros from Myndos follows the Hera.29 Uncharacteristically, there is no attribution. Be- cause of this lacuna, Frickenhaus posited that the text

originally described the figure as being by Lysippos.30 If, as seems likely, Lysippos was the sculptor of the Eros, it is

possible to suggest its general appearance. An Eros attributed to Lysippos on stylistic grounds is known in several copies, of which the best-preserved replica is that in the British Museum

(Fig. 2).31 Dating from the last quarter of the fourth century B.C.E.,32 the statue shows a prepubescent youth with tousled

hair and wings sprouting from his back. As in Kedrenos's

description, the little god holds a large bow out to his right side, which he is attempting either to string or unstring. Scant

knowledge of ancient Myndos makes it impossible to postu- late a more specific provenance.33

Kedrenos A next mentions the Zeus created by Pheidias for the sanctuary at Olympia (Fig. 3), described as an ivory figure dedicated by Perikles. Although the attribution to Perikles is mistaken, the ivory medium is consistent with details of the statue given in numismatic evidence and ancient literary sources.34 A chryselephantine figure of Zeus sat on a jewel- encrusted throne carrying a small figure of Nike in his left hand, a scepter in his right. Visitors remarked that the statue was enormous and would have broken through the temple ceiling had the god chosen to stand, an observation confirmed by the analysis of an epode by Kallimachos that puts

2 Attributed to Lysippos, Eros. London, British Museum

the height of the statue at about forty-five feet (fourteen

meters).35 Kedrenos's description makes no mention of any of these details except to state that the statue was ivory, an observation that has led to the suggestion that the gold had been removed from it, possibly in the time of Constantine.36

Following the Zeus, Kedrenos A documents a second statue

by Lysippos, which it identifies as Chronos and describes as

being bald at the back of the head with a shock of hair in front. Although the reference is to Chronos, the explicit description of the figure's coiffure and the Lysippan attribution relate the sculpture to that artist's image of Kairos, a

freestanding bronze statue created sometime in the later fourth century B.C.E.37 No freestanding versions of this figure survive; however, literary sources and relief representations document its appearance. Descriptions characterize the statue as a running figure with winged feet that moves forward on

tiptoe while carrying a razor. The distinctive coiffure remarked by Kedrenos is also noted.38 Images corresponding to this description are known from reliefs and gems, among them a relief in Turin (Fig. 4) showing a winged youth running along on tiptoe.39 In his left hand he carries a razor, on top of which a scale balances. His right hand tips these scales as if to test them. As in the descriptions, the youth is bald in back with flowing locks in front.

Identification of this figure as Chronos (Xp6vos) may be

explained in the definition of kairos (KocMpos) itself. In its most




3 Reconstruction of Pheidias' Zeus in the Temple of Zeus, Olympia (from H. Berve and G. Gruben, Griechische Tempel und Heiligtumer [Munich: Hirmer, 1961], 123)

4 After Lysippos, Kairos. Turin, Museo di Arte Greco-Romana (photo: DAI, Rome)

straightforward interpretation kairos expresses the idea of a moment within the longer passage of time. Time itself, conceived of as a series of linked but fleeting moments

merging with one another over a sustained period, is ex-

pressed as chronos. At times, however, the words are used

interchangeably, and sometime in the late Hellenistic period

there is a shift in meaning as chronos takes on the meaning of kairos in certain contexts.40

The inventory concludes with a list of animals and half- human creatures, noting tigresses, vultures, and giraffes together with mythical unicorns, pans, and centaurs. The

passage also refers to an unfamiliar animal known as the




taurelephant (TrcppEXS4tUs). Mango translates the word as

"ox-elephant" and suggests that it might be some kind of

buffalo.41 The sixth-century writer Kosmas Indikopleustes uses the term to refer to two different animals, a tame Indian buffalo and a wild Ethiopian one.42 The latter may be identified as the Cape buffalo and is described by the ancient naturalist Aelian, who refers to it as the Ethiopian bull, as

being particularly savage.43 Because all the other animals included in the collection were wild, it is likely that the more ferocious African animal was intended in this description.

What these various figures were or where they came from is not immediately clear, as the account makes no effort to

provide any sort of descriptive or historical information. Because the interest in attribution and provenance that characterizes the first part of the Kedrenos inventory is

completely missing in this last sentence, it is impossible to visualize the animals in any but the most generic manner. Absence of any viable sculptural comparanda makes the task even more difficult. Although animal statuary was certainly known and many famous works existed, no statues corresponding to any of the Lausos figures survive or are mentioned in

literary sources. Evidence of extant animal sculpture suggests, however, that the Lausos statues probably would have been of Hellenistic or Roman manufacture.44

The pans and centaurs seem less elusive. Although there is

nothing in Kedrenos's report to connect the statues with any particular historical period, as with the animal statues, the

increasing popularity of such subject matter in the Hellenistic and Roman age offers a reasonable frame of reference, and works such as the Centaurs (Fig. 5) in the Musei Capitolini may give a fair approximation of their appearance.45

A survey of the Lausos collection indicates that there were at least thirteen statues in the ensemble. Subject matter included cult images, animals real and fantastic, and a single personification. These figures represented a range of styles from the early Archaic to the Hellenistic. Variety in scale and medium was also a feature of the collection's holdings, as

comparison of the Lindian Athena, the Knidian Aphrodite, and the Olympian Zeus underscores. What, if anything, was a

fifth-century Constantinopolitan viewer to make of such a

gathering? An approach to the answer to this question lies in the

understanding of two issues: the identity of the collection's

patron, Lausos, and the display context established for the

gathering. While Kedrenos and Zonaras are silent on the

subject of the fifth-century reception of the collection, they do open the door to speculation by naming Lausos as its

patron. Of that historical figure, little is known. He is described as praepositus sacri cubiculi, or grand chamberlain, at the court of Theodosios II (402-450), a post he appears to have held first around 420. By 422 he was replaced, but there is evidence to suggest that he was again chamberlain on two later occasions, in 431 and in 436.46

In addition to his court service, Lausos is known from his

patronage of an inspirational religious history, the Lausiac

History. Written by Palladios (ca. 365-425) and dedicated to Lausos in the period when he first held office as chamberlain, the book is a collection of stories about holy men and women of the Egyptian desert.'47

While these references are elliptical, they do allow certain

5 Centaur. Rome, Musei Capitolini (photo: Alinari/Art Resource)

inferences. First, association with the Theodosian court in

general and the high rank of chamberlain in particular describe Lausos as a person of power and influence, an observation seconded by Palladios's description of him as

"guardian of our holy and revered empire."48 Second, it is clear from the history that bears his name that Lausos was a devout Christian. Not only was he the project's patron, but also in his dedication Palladios characterized his patron as a "Noble and Christ-beloved servant of God."''49

Identification of Lausos as a high-ranking official at the court of Theodosios II creates a specific context for the

interpretation of the collection, whose implications were

explored by Vickers and Francis. They began by identifying Lausos as Theodosios II's sometime court chamberlain and

proposing a date for the formation of the collection in the

early fifth century.50 Further, in agreement with the then-

prevailing ideas about Constantinopolitan topography, the authors associated the gathering with the remains of a palace complex on the north side of the Constantinopolitan Hippo- drome that had been identified as the palace of Lausos.51 This

structure, a long, multiapsed hall, provided the framework for their reconstruction of the collection's organization and

display, a reconstruction that in turn led to an interpretation based on a Christian reinterpretation of pagan imagery.




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o Symachus? St.

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6 Plan of Byzantine Constantinople (from Bardill, "The Palace of Lausus and Nearby Monuments in Constantinople," 70)

Mindful of the fact that Lausos was a Christian, they were troubled by his choice of specifically pagan images for what

they believed to have been his private collection of statuary. Viewing the use of such imagery on the part of a high-ranking official at Theodosios II's uncompromisingly Christian court as a potentially loaded act, Vickers and Francis felt that the

only way to explain the collection was in terms of Christian

allegory. Focusing on the cult images, they argued that the Lausos ensemble should be understood as a description of the

triumph of Virtue over Fortune, with Virtue being embodied in the representation of Eros and Fortune in the figure of Kairos. They reinforced this interpretation by positing a

display order for the statuary based on its placement within ruins that have been identified with the palace of Lausos.52

Several difficulties bedevil this interpretation. First, al-

though the desire to interpret the collection as a cohesive

display with deliberate programmatic intent and to place it within the context of late Roman pagan-Christian rivalry is

correct, the arguments in support of a Christian allegorical explanation do not stand up to scrutiny. To begin with, evidence for collecting in Constantinople does not support the authors' underlying assumption that devout Christian belief was incompatible with the appreciation of antique statuary on its own terms. The public tradition of appropria- tion and reuse established under Constantine indicates that

pagan statuary was displayed in a manner consistent with its

original meaning and that Christian allegorical interpretation was simply not an issue.53 A similar approach is evident in the

private sector. Decoration of a complex in a fifth-century bath built for Marina (404-449), the unmarried daughter of the

emperor Arkadios (r. 395-408), included mosaic scenes of a marine and mythological nature, statues of river gods, and a relief representing the struggle of the gods and the giants.54

In terms of subject matter and media, this choice of decoration was perfectly in keeping with established modes of late

antique thermal decor, and it is likely that Marina, a woman known for her Christian piety and acts of public charity, saw no contradiction between her own faith and the selection and

appreciation of classical subjects in the sensuous environment of the bath.

Apart from the evidence of the collection, the specific arguments marshaled in support of allegory are both fragmentary and anachronistic. In their interpretation of the collection's overall meaning, the authors concentrate on the two

figures of Eros and Kairos, with the result that there is no real

attempt to account for any of the other cult statues, much less the animal images, which are completely ignored. In addi-

tion, the interpretative framework used to discuss the images derives not from contemporary late antique sources but rather from Renaissance and Baroque interpretations of

writings by Ausonius as outlined in an article by Rudolph Wittkower.55

Also problematic is their association of the collection with a

specific archaeological context. Vickers and Francis reconstructed the collection to stand in the ruins of a rotunda and

adjoining multiapsed hall that have been identified as the

palace of Lausos. Apart from the fact that none of the

surviving descriptions mentions a specific palace context, recent reconsideration of the evidence pertinent to the identification of these ruins by Jonathan Bardill56 calls this association into question and, with it, the display of images.

The rotunda and hall that have come to be associated with the palace of Lausos were excavated by Rudolf Naumann in 1964.57 The complex stands on a wedge of land at the heart of late antique Constantinople (Fig. 6, center, with the designa- tions "Rotonda" and "Great Hall"). The Hippodrome rose




immediately in front, to the building's south. A second

palace, that of the fifth-century eunuch Antiochos, stood next

door to the west, and the main Constantinopolitan thoroughfare, a colonnaded street known as the Mese, ran on an east-west axis behind the building.

Material remains show three phases of building activity. The initial period dates to the fifth century and, more

specifically, to the Theodosian period, as evidenced by alter-

nating courses of brick and stone that are comparable to the

building fabric of the fifth-century landwalls and the Hebdo- mon Palace. Subsequent alterations were made in the later fifth and sixth centuries.58

Naumann made a tentative identification of the site as the Lausos Palace, noting, however, that the association was

problematic.59 His instinct to reserve final judgment was seconded by Raymond Janin, who kept open the possibility that the actual palace lay further west along the Mese.60 In

spite of the caution voiced by these early interpreters of the

evidence, however, the site's identification as the Lausos Palace has come to be taken as a given.61 It is this certainty that Bardill challenges by reexamining both the texts associated with the palace and the monuments connected with it.

As with the collection itself, knowledge of the palace and its location derives from Kedrenos A, which describes the Lausos

quarter as being close to the Philoxenos cistern. Identifica- tion of this cistern is thus crucial to the location of the palace and the neighborhood to which it lent its name. Since the sixteenth century, that identification has been made with the

underground water-storage facility known as the Binbirdirek cistern. Binbirdirek, which lies to the west of the putative Lausos ruins on the south side of the Mese, may be dated to the sixth century on the basis of its brickwork. This date, in

turn, has led to the association with Flavius Theodoros

Philoxenos, consul of 525.62

Identification of Binbirdirek as the Philoxenos cistern lends weight to the identification of the ruins as the palace of Lausos. Bardill, however, questions the identification, noting first that the initial association between this cistern and Philoxenos appears to have hinged on the fact that this was the largest and best-known cistern in the area, and, second, that the sixth-century date is too late for the context of the Lausos discussion. He also points out that there were at least two other cisterns in the area, one of which may be dated to the early fifth century, and hence to the period of Lausos, on

the basis of its building fabric. It is this fifth-century structure, an open-air storage facility, the remains of which survive further west along the north side of the Mese, that Bardill identifies as the Philoxenos cistern, associating it not with the

sixth-century Philoxenos but with a fifth-century magister

officiorum (master of the offices) of that name (Fig. 6).63 The reidentification and relocation of the Philoxenos

cistern necessitates a relocation of the palace of Lausos and its

eponymous quarter. If Bardill is correct, and I believe he is, the Lausos neighborhood should be placed north of the Mese and to the west in the region adjacent to the Forum of Constantine. This new location also would be consistent with

references to the palace in tenth-century sources and with the

path of the 475 fire that began in the Chalkoprateia, or

Copper Market, an area north of the Mese and to the east. As reconstructed by Bardill, the flames would have burned south

from the market along a colonnaded secondary road connect-

ing to the Mese, the modern :atalregme Sokagi, before

spreading west toward the Forum of Constantine, where they were eventually brought under control.64

Bardill's relocation of the Lausos Palace has implications for the Vickers and Francis interpretation. In their study of the collection, the authors posit a viewing order that is

designed to work within the architectural setting of the extant ruins. Further, the meanings that they establish for the individual statues are seen to be enhanced by this sequence.65 Thus, with the identification of the palace no longer a

certainty, the display of these statues and the interpretation derived from it must be reconsidered.

If, as has been previously assumed, the Lausos collection can no longer be seen as a Christian courtier's private allegorical vision, how then can it be understood? In the absence of the collection itself, Kedrenos A provides a starting point for interpretation. Analysis of the structure and detail-

ing of the inventory reveals not only the contents of the collection but also a sense of some of the attitudes brought to bear on different types of statuary.

Of the thirteen images noted, six are described in very specific terms, while the remaining seven are mentioned only cursorily. The extent to which individual figures are detailed

appears to correspond to subject matter: cult images are observed with great precision, while animal statues are given only brief mention. Corso observed this duality, characteriz-

ing it as a split between famous works of art and minor

figures.66 I would suggest instead that the division is one between cult images and animal statues.

In this division, it is striking that each of the cult images is identified in terms of a specific history that emphasizes provenance and attribution: the Lindian Athena by Skyllis and Dipoinos, the Knidian Aphrodite by Praxiteles, the Samian Hera by Bupalos, the Myndian Eros by Lysippos, and the Olympian Zeus by Pheidias. Moreover, because each cult statue was attributed to a particular artist, it was also linked to a particular historic moment. In complete contrast to this careful and consistent documentation is the virtually anonymous presentation of the animal statues. This list is tacked onto the end of the sculpture inventory without any elaboration. References to individual animals are made in both the

singular and the plural, but there is no precise or consistent numerical specification. This vagueness is underscored by a

complete lack of historical information; although several ancient artists were famous for their renditions of animals, not one statue in the Lausos collection is attributed, supplied with provenance, or in any way described in terms of conventional historical detail.

The stark contrast between the treatment of the cult images and the treatment of the animal statues suggests that these two types of images were perceived in very different ways. In the case of the cult images, the clear and detailed documentation in matters of provenance and attribution appears to have been driven by an antiquarian impulse to set these images within a historical framework. Each of the cult images derives from one of the great Hellenic sanctuaries in the heartland of the Greek world. Corso noted a distinct geographic distribu- tion of the figures: the Lindian Athena and the Knidian

Aphrodite originated in Dorian lands, the Hera and the Eros




in Ionia, and the Zeus and Kairos in the Peloponnesos.67 There is, further, a sense of the chronological flowering of the individual religious centers. Samos and Lindos were two of the most important centers to develop in eastern Greece

during the seventh and sixth centuries B.C.E., while Knidos came into its own in the fourth century. Olympia, one of the

great pan-Hellenic sanctuaries, was located in the western Greek world and had its floruit in the fifth and fourth centuries.

The association of specific statues with specific places may not have been accidental, for Hellenic cult images, unlike their Christian counterparts, had no universal or generic religious function but were uniquely linked to the locus of their cult. Thus, the specific statue of a specific god or

goddess was associated with a distinct cult, its sanctuary, and a

unique set of rituals.68 The sense of place as a point of access to and focus for the sacred informs Pausanias's description of the Greek world, with its enumeration of cities and sanctuar-

ies, their sacred shrines and associated rituals. That this sense remained a component in the mapping of the sacred into late

antiquity is suggested by the itinerary of Egeria. Written in the fifth century, her travel diary describes the author'sjourney to the holy places of the Christian East. Like Pausanias before

her, Egeria is interested in documenting places, monuments, and the rituals associated with them as points of access to the sacred. Emphasis on typology and provenance in the Lausos collection may be of a piece with this approach. If so, it is

possible that it reflects a general understanding of the cult

origins of the collection's holdings and, with it, an awareness of both the religious history and sacred geography of the Hellenic world.69

In a like manner, attribution may have situated these

images in terms of artistic tradition. For the reader, identification of a statue with a particular artist may also have linked the

image to a discrete historical moment. For the actual viewer of the collection, that same history could have been expressed in the visual language of style. The statues included in the collection had been created over a span of three hundred

years: the Athena and the Hera were made in the sixth

century B.C.E., the Zeus in the fifth century, and the Aphro- dite and the Eros in the fourth century. This chronology would have been given life by the formal and material differences between the figures. The still abstraction of

Bupalos's sixth-century Hera would have stood in marked

contrast to the contrapposto poise of Praxiteles' fourth-

century Aphrodite or the dazzling torsion of Lysippos's Eros. Contrasts in scale and medium such as that between the

Lindian Athena and the Olympian Zeus also would have contributed to this sense. In these instances the contrasts were

great and obvious, but the display could not have been conceived exclusively in such grandiose terms. Juxtaposition of similar works such as the Athena and the Hera or the

Aphrodite and the Eros could have invited more subtle observations of formal similarities and differences.

Taken together, the cult images created what may be described as a visual epitome not only of Hellenic religion but also of the history of sculptural form. It is an epitome familiar from such ancient writings as Pliny's Natural History. Pliny's art historical discussions describe first the invention of individual arts and then their inexorable move toward technical perfec-

tion as demonstrated in the accomplishments of individual artists. In the discussion of sculpture, each of the artists included in the Lausos ensemble holds a place in Pliny's developmental outline of history. He characterizes Skyllis and

Dipoinos as the first sculptors to achieve fame by sculpturing in marble70 and notes that Bupalos followed in their wake.71 He extols Pheidias as an artist who revealed possibilities in the

sculptural medium which were then taken up and elaborated

by sculptors such as Praxiteles72 and perfected with the innovations of Lysippos.73 Underpinning these observations is the sense of the history of the development of style, a belief in the universality of naturalism as a stylistic point of refer-

ence, and a notion of artistic perfectibility.74 Implicit, too, in Pliny's approach to sculpture is the under-

standing of these works in terms of antiquarian retrospection, an emphasis that was perhaps highlighted in the Lausos collection itself by the inclusion of sculpture of recognizably Greek manufacture. Statues of this early date were a rarity in the Constantinopolitan world of the fourth and fifth centu-

ries, where it was far more common to see works of Hellenistic and Roman manufacture.75 Display of statuary of bona fide ancient manufacture in this collection therefore would have confirmed an element of antiquarian interest, an interest that dovetailed with the sense of religious history outlined in the elaboration of provenance.

It is impossible to say whether or not the Lausos collection was assembled as a direct response to Pliny, a work that still had wide currency in late antiquity. Although the prominent display of works by artists championed in the Natural History certainly suggests as much, there is no direct evidence to connect the book with Lausos or members of his circle. It is, however, clear that the Natural History was read into the fourth and fifth centuries. Well-known readers included the historian Ammianus Marcellinus, the Roman senator Symmachus, who is reported to have sent a copy to Ausonius, the author

Macrobius, and the pharmaceutical writer Sextus Placitus.

Eusebius, Jerome, and Augustine also mention Pliny. These readers and others like them would have known and studied the book both in the original and, more frequently, through excerpted compilations of thematically related passages.76

It is also possible that a direct connection is not necessary, and that the collection may be understood as a gathering that reflects an approach to the appreciation of ancient sculpture of which Pliny is simply the best-known exponent. Evidence

from pagan and Christian sources indicates that many of the

points of view espoused in the Natural History were held into the late antique period.

Consider, for example, the issue of artistic perfectibility, so much at the center of Pliny's interpretation of the arts in general and sculpture in particular. The notion of a progres- sive development of art is a common one that was argued in a variety of ways. Antiquarian authors of the second century like Plutarch and Pausanias described an age before art in which

primitive peoples worshiped unformed, aniconic images such as rocks and planks. To their way of thinking, this simple age preceded a subsequent "age of art," a period in which

worship was transformed by the introduction of images created with aesthetic sense and skill.77 The distinction made here is a broad one between two different categories of

representation, the aniconic and the figural.




The notion of progress implicit in this before-and-after

argument was also a driving force behind more focused discussions of painting and sculpture in the "age of art." Pliny is the primary exponent of this point of view, largely because his text survives. As we have seen, his observations about

painting and sculpture focus on the individual works of individual artists that somehow can be seen to have advanced the cause of better-that is, more convincing--illusionistic representation.78 A very similar approach to viewing in

general and to the understanding of individual images in the context of a visual history is documented by the second-

century Christian apologist Athenagoras, who writes:

Eikones were not in use before the discovery of plastic, graphic, and modeling arts. When came Saurius of Samos, Crato of Sicyon, Cleanthes of Corinth and the Corinthian

maid, tracing out shadows was discovered by Saurius, who drew the outline of a horse in the sun; graphic art was discovered by Crato, who painted in the outlines of the shadows of a man and a woman on a whitened tablet; and

coroplastic art was discovered by the Corinthian maid (for she fell in love with someone and traced the outline of his shadow on the wall as he slept; then her father-he made

pottery--delighted with so precise a likeness, carved out the outline and filled it with clay; the tupos is preserved to this very day in Corinth). After these came Daidalos, Theodoros, and Smilis, who went further and discovered

modeling and plastic arts.79

Here the author upholds the distinction between an age before and after art and then, like Pliny, goes on to describe the stages by which the arts were first discovered and then

perfected by the innovations of certain individuals. That similar approaches were familiar in late antiquity is

evident from the testimony of the fourth-century philosopher and rhetorician Themistius, who wrote, "Before Daidalos, not

only were herms worked in rectangular form, but also all the rest of andriantes [statues]. Daidalos, because he was the first to separate the two feet of agalmata [statue] was thought to make living things.""80 Like Athenagoras in the second cen-

tury and Pliny in the first, Themistius believed in a primitive age before art that was left behind with the invention of

figural representation by Daedalus. As well, he is able to point to certain inventions, specifically, the separation of feet, that

put representation on the road to the conquest of naturalistic illusion, which allows artists to create "living things." Thus, from the first century through the fourth, there appears a sustained tendency to understand the history of representa- tional art in terms of a development toward mimetic perfec- tion that is propelled by the inventive force of individual artists and their techniques.

What of the animal statues? If the detail lavished on the

account of the cult images can be said to have shaped an interpretation of this group within the framework of a human

history that was defined in terms of sacred geography and aesthetic chronology, then the corresponding absence of such description in the treatment of the animal statues could well have set these images outside that particular construct. Without the identifying flags of sacred provenance or artistic attribution, the animal statues took their place within a

different order, that of the animal kingdom and, by exten-

sion, the natural world.8' The nature of this natural context is

suggested by the actual choice of animals. Wild beasts and

mythological creatures predominate at the expense of domestic animals, and there is an emphasis on origins that are

mysterious or alien. Pedestrian European and Mediterranean wildlife such as the bear or stag is rejected in favor of animals such as tigers with origins in the alien turf of Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Other creatures, such as the vulture,82 cannot be traced to any known place according to contemporary writings on natural history, which emphasizes their air of

mystery. These alien origins are underscored by the strange and savage behavior attributed to these animals by the ancient naturalists.83

Associations with the alien and the savage also characterize

contemporary attitudes toward the mythical creatures. The unicorn was described as terrible and invincible in battle,s4 and pans and centaurs were similarly understood. In ancient lore these half-human creatures were representative of wild-

life, animal desire, and barbarism. Pan had the power to induce "panic" terrors among men when roused, while centaurs were known for their wild and lustful natures, as evidenced in stories like that of the battle between the Lapiths and the Centaurs or the tale of Herakles and Nessos.85 Thus, while describable, these animals and half-human creatures are essentially unknowable, mysterious, and unpredictable. As such they point to a world operating beyond the confines of human reason.

How that world might have been perceived is suggested by the one context in which such creatures would have been familiar to the Roman viewer, the staged animal shows, or venationes, that were so prominent a part of amphitheater and circus entertainment.86 Here all manner of wild and exotic

creatures, tigresses, giraffes, and wild birds among them, were sent out for slaughter in combats and artificial hunts. Al-

though first and foremost a crowd pleaser, the venationes also had a didactic intent: there was a lesson to be learned in the

display and slaughter of wild beasts. In their wild and alien

nature, these animals were the embodiment of all that was uncivilized and, therefore, of barbarian irrationality and evil.87 The ability to marshal the resources for the capture of these dangerous creatures and to control their presentation in the amphitheater was a way to give tangible expression to the wealth, prowess, and far-reaching moral authority of the

imperial house.88 In a very real sense the venationes were the

quintessential metaphor for the balance between order and chaos.

That this particular image had broad appeal is apparent from its use in contexts far removed from the amphitheater. The appearance of hunt scenes and representations of animal combats in domestic floor mosaics from settings as geographi- cally remote and chronologically separated as the second- century House of Dionysos at Paphos on Cyprus and the unnamed fourth-century villa at Piazza Armerina in Sicily suggests not only the enduring popularity of the theme but also the extent to which this subject was an expression of the

civilizing force of Rome with which the prosperous upper classes identified.89

A similar appreciation of animal imagery was carried over into the period of the late empire, as demonstrated by the




7 Great Palace mosaic. Istanbul, Mosaic Museum (photo: Erich Lessing/Art Resource)

sixth-century peristyle mosaic from the Great Palace at

Constantinople. In a vast mosaic covering approximately 20,000 square feet (1,872 square meters), scenes of bucolic

harmony and sylvan bliss are punctuated by violent episodes in which all manner of wild animals are shown attacking domestic animals, each other, and men. Leopards attack

antelope in one section. In another a griffin devours a lizard. Next to this grizzly pair, in complete antithesis, a young boy plays with a puppy. Elsewhere an eagle attacks a snake (Fig. 7), while goats lounge to one side, deer wander, and a hunter brandishes his spear. As in other contexts, the presence of wild animals in this mosaic suggests the menace of alien, uncivilized forces in need of the control offered by the

imperial house.90 The wild animals also may have been understood in a

different, but related, sense as apotropaia. Because of their

threatening aspect, representations of these creatures were often used to ward off evil. This was the case in the Hippo- drome, for example, where animals such as the hyena, notorious as a trickster and killer of men, were displayed with such equally nefarious half-human creatures as sphinxes. Captured and harnessed in a civilized setting, their own dark

powers were turned loose against the very forces that had

spawned them, thereby keeping other evil spirits at bay.91 The animals, pans, and centaurs in the Lausos collection

may have evoked an idea of Nature in its most unruly and

threatening aspect. Redolent of the irrational and the uncon- trolled, these alien, outright barbarous images stood cheek by jowl with some of the most refined and noble creations of the Hellenic past. Comparison must have been inevitable as art confronted nature and the civilized faced the barbarous.

Given the increasingly Christian tenor of the later Roman

Empire and Lausos's own religious persuasion, it is not unreasonable to suppose that one point behind thejuxtaposi-

tion of these different types of statuary was to make a

fundamentally negative statement about cult images. Such a statement had been anticipated by Constantine's biographer, Eusebius of Caesarea, who explained the emperor's use of cult images and votive offerings in the city's urban decor as a

way to humiliate pagan images.92 In the context of the Lausos collection, it is possible that a similarly negative impact was

sought. In fact, emphasis on provenance and attribution may have contributed to this impulse, for as Christian iconoclastic

writing indicates, the ability to recognize sacred images as the works of individual artists undermines their sanctity by mak-

ing them the outgrowth not of divine creation but of human craft. Consider, for example, the comments of Athenagoras:

So short, then, is the time since [the introduction of] eikones and the making of eidola that it is possible to name the craftsman of each god. Endoios, a disciple of Daedalos, made that of Artemis in Ephesos and the old one of Athena from olive-wood (or rather of Athela; for she is Athela, the unsuckled, as those ... the more mystical sense ...) and the Seated Athena. The Pythian is the work of Theodoros and Telecles, and the Delian and the Artemis were the

craftsmanship of Tectaeos and Angelion. The Hera in Samos and in Argos are the works of Smilis (and the rest of the eidola of Pheidias). The Aphrodite in Knidos is another work of Praxiteles, the Asclepius in Epidauros is the work of Pheidias. To put it in a word, not one of them eludes identification as the work of a man. If, then, they are gods why were they not so from the beginning? Why are they more recent than those who have made them? Why did

they need human craftsmanship for their existence? They are earth, stones, matter, and futile craftsmanship.93

The comparative display of two ostensibly different classes of




images also may have helped to underscore a negative view of the cult statuary. Juxtaposition of great images from the great sanctuaries with anonymous statues of animals may have been intended to draw attention to similarities between the two

groups and in so doing to denigrate the cult statues by ascribing to them characteristics of beasts. Early Christian

antipagan rhetoric is heavily iconoclastic in slant, and in it

images are condemned for two reasons: an inherently inanimate nature that in no way corresponds to or captures the sense of the divine, and the potential for these lifeless objects to become harmful by housing demons that might take up residence in their dead cores.94 It was this inanimate quality that was particularly troubling to the Christian apologists. As lifeless objects devoid of soul or sense, cult images were condemned on the grounds that they could neither feel nor see nor hear. The inability to speak completed the lack of sensation. This lack of language was perhaps the most

damning element of all. In the Greco-Roman world the refined mastery of speech and rhetoric was a sure index of cultivation and civility.95 Conversely, failure to achieve such rhetorical proficiency was an index of barbarism and, by extension, primitivism, a characteristic shared by children,

foreigners, and animals.96 Classed with the mute, cult statues, which were often described in the same category as animals, were thus open to ridicule and derision.

Built in to this polemical comparison was the safety valve of the apotropaia. The same beasts that invited comparison with the cult images also might defend the city and its inhabitants

against the demons that, given half a chance, were sure to take

up residence in these discredited statues. While the bald-faced denigration of idols may well have

been a factor in the organization of the collection, it is also

possible that much more was intended in this careful selection and display of statuary, an idea supported by the inclusion of the last statue in the group, the Lysippan Kairos. Kairos is the only statue in the Lausos collection that is

iconographically distinct from either of the two major sculpture groups. Although documented in detail with the cult

images, the statue, properly speaking, is not a devotional

image but a personification. As such it is also distinct from the animal group. In this capacity the figure serves as an ideal mediator between the collection's two major sculpture groups,97 a role implicit in the definition of kairos itself.

As noted above, the general meaning of kairos is bound up with the definition of time and the sense of the moment. An

aspect of this definition was the notion of opportunity, a connection expressed in the figure's unique coiffure, whose particular combination of long forelock and rear baldness

suggested the need to seize the moment as it arrives, not after it passes. This sense of the moment also lends the word a

secondary meaning, which can be defined as congruence, the essential element in the creation and definition of beauty. Plutarch described this aspect of kairos in the following passage of the Moralia: "Now in every piece of work beauty is achieved through many numbers coming into a congruence (kairos) under some system of proportion and harmony, whereas ugliness is immediately ready to spring into being if only one chance element be omitted or added out of place."98 Kairos is therefore the state in which all of the elements that form a work of art are perfectly balanced to create beauty.

Lysippos's personification is thought to have been created to give visual life to this concept and with it the sculptor's own ideas about artistic excellence. The statue's unique form demonstrated the role of and the relationship among the elements of proportion, movement, and accuracy of detail in successful artistic creation. Because these issues were so fundamental to the Lysippan aesthetic achievement, the statue is thought to have stood outside the sculptor's work-

shop as an advertisement for his own artistic concerns.99 The inclusion of the statue Kairos in the Lausos collection

may well have been intended to recall and highlight the

particular meaning of the word kairos as congruence. How- ever, instead of illustrating the particular achievement of a

particular artist, it seems likely that the statue stood as the embodiment of a more general application of the idea of

congruence to a range of visual experience. In conjunction with the cult statues, the display of Kairos

may have called attention to the formal history outlined in that series of images. Individually, each statue was representative of a different kind of aesthetic congruence, some more successful than others, according to the standards indicated

by authors such as Pliny and his followers. Collectively, the

group thus may have demonstrated the changing nature of the idea of congruence over time and the move on the part of the Greek artists toward an imitation of nature that described

physical form and the intangible energies that enlivened it in a perfected state.

The emphasis on aesthetic issues contingent on the presence of Kairos may also have been intended to transform the sense of what these images were. Kairos made the great images of Hellenic cult the subject not of religious veneration but of aesthetic contemplation, thereby denying their cult nature and affirming their status as works of art.

The emphasis on formal issues created by the interaction between Kairos and the cult statues also may have colored the

viewing of the animal ensemble. In this group, where no formal aesthetic history was described, the aim, as has been

suggested, was to describe an untamed state of nature. The brute energy of this natural world was the antithesis of refined kairos. Seen in conjunction with the animal statues, the statue Kairos thus may have underscored the very absence of

congruence and the aesthetic mediation that produces it in the natural world. This absence stood in contrast to its

overwhelming presence in the cult statue group, with the result that the animal statues took their place in the aesthetic order. Untouched by the refining force of kairos, wild nature and its savage denizens were shown in their original, unper- fected state. In a society for which the principle of idealized naturalism was an acknowledged aesthetic category, this emphasis may well have described nature as the source for artistic invention.

Kairos thus pulled the raw stuff of animal imagery into league with the perfected artistry of the cult statues by making both statue groups the subject of aesthetic meditation. This emphasis on problems of art and artistic creation forced the contemplation of the relationship, at once contradictory and complementary, between the natural and the man-made, the imperfect and the perfect object.

These issues may have been emphasized in the actual disposition of the statuary. Evidence for display is, however,




negligible. While it may be possible, as suggested by Francis and Vickers, that the Kedrenos A inventory reflects a display order, comparison of this passage with Kedrenos B, which mentions only three of the cult images, and these in a different sequence, suggests that no hard and fast order should be understood.

That the Lausos collection was at all bound up with issues of art and artistic creation should come as no surprise. In the sense that Roman collectors had long since demonstrated an interest in and sensitivity to the formal issues inherent in the creation and exhibit of works of art, the collection's formal and thematic emphasis falls well within the established norms of artistic appreciation. The invited comparison between

images of early and late date, or the juxtaposition of natural

images with those man-made creatures of pure artifice recall the kind of tactics used by collectors from as early as the second century. This was the case, for example, in the display of four statues, two each from the Claudian and Hadrianic

periods, in a second-century house in Rome. The statues, which include a heroically nude male, a replica of Praxiteles'

Resting Satyr, and two representations of Scopas's rendition of the personification of Desire, the Pothos, one of first-century, the other of second-century date, were set up in pairs to either side of two doorways along the central axis of the house. This exhibit of iconographically unrelated subjects aimed to highlight the formal similarities and differences between the individual figures and encouraged the aesthetic study and

appreciation of the series as a whole.100 At the same time that it corresponds to established display

principles, the emphasis on aesthetic appreciation in the Lausos collection seems an anomaly in the particular context of Constantinople. Although the use of antiquities in urban decor was well established by the end of the fourth century, comparison of the Lausos collection's emphasis on religion and aesthetics with other Constantinopolitan gatherings suggests a very different sort of display. In the Hippodrome, for

example, statuary was marshaled to depict Constantinople as the New Rome. Monuments from the old Rome, such as the she-wolf with Romulus and Remus, were brought to the circus as part of a display designed to recreate the image of the old

capital in the new. Inclusion of other monuments, such as the

Serpent Column from Delphi, described how Constantinople not only rivaled but surpassed the status of Rome. Evidence from other public areas signals a similar preoccupation with

imperial ideology and propaganda.101 Given this tradition, the emphasis on religion and aesthetics in the Lausos ensemble, two subjects seemingly at odds with the established concerns of public life, appears difficult to understand. Contemporary sources confirm, however, that by the end of the fourth century these seemingly anomalous issues were at the heart of public debate about the relationship between traditional Hellenic religion and the new faith, Christianity.

The formation of the Lausos collection occurred against a

backdrop of increasing religious authoritarianism on the part of the Theodosian house.102 Although Constantine had been the first emperor to accord Christianity legal status, it was not until 380, during the reign of Theodosios I (379-95), that the new faith was proclaimed the official state religion. This declaration was part of an ongoing legislative and administrative campaign designed to put the last match to Hellenic

religion. The systematic suppression of pagan cult and reli-

gious culture is documented in the Theodosian Code.1'03 First

published in 438 during the reign of Theodosios II (405-50), this corpus of Roman law preserves a series of fourth- and

fifth-century edicts that curb pagan religious practice. Al-

though they attempt to regulate everything from sacrifice to cult administration, these laws are particularly interesting for their legislation regarding temples and sanctuaries. Five laws issued between 382 and 435 are preserved in the code. Each confirms the illegality of sacrifice and calls for the closing of the temples as sites of worship. Provisions for the fate of

temple buildings and their contents also are made. Solutions

vary in the case of buildings. In some instances, the edicts

enjoin the preservation of the temples.104 In others, they insist on their destruction.105 No such ambivalence occurs, how-

ever, with respect to sculpture. Although cult images are

recognized as the fons et origo of superstition and error in a manner consistent with the iconoclastic discussion outlined

above, the legislation is unequivocal about saving them. Theodosian Code 16.10.15 stipulates the general preservation of the "ornaments of public works," and 16.10.18 decrees the supervised removal of images from temples by qualified "office staff."

Given the belief in their corrupting potential, it is not

immediately clear why or how these images could be recon- ciled to a new Christian order that simultaneously feared and derided sculpture. That there was any effort at all to preserve cult statues bespeaks the status of sculpture in the later Roman world. Sculpture was the great medium of public expression in the cities and sanctuaries of the Roman Empire, an attitude expressed in the adornment of Constantinople itself. It was the descriptive vehicle that gave life to and documented the history of a place. Accomplishments were

commemorated, allegiances expressed, and piety demonstrated with the dedication and maintenance of a vast range of

public monuments. This public display of statuary shaped the

image of a city and gave visual life to its own claims to

importance and prestige.106 In addition, this distinctive use of

sculpture meant that statuary itself was emblematic as a medium of Hellenic tradition.

In a culture that defined itself so completely through the

expressive medium of sculpture, the problem thus became one of reconciling the claims of Greco-Roman tradition with

the exigencies of Christian piety. An approach to this problem of reconciliation is indicated in Theodosian Code 16.10.8.

Issued at Constantinople in December 382, the edict provides for the fate of a temple in the eastern city of Edessa as follows:

By the authority of the public council We decree that the

temple shall be continually open that was formerly dedicated to the assemblage of throngs of people and now also is for the common use of the people, and in which images are reported to have been placed which must be measured

by the value of their art rather than by their divinity; We do not permit any divine imperial response that was surrepti- tiously obtained to prejudice this situation. In order that this temple may be seen by the assemblages of the city and by frequent crowds, Your Experience shall preserve all celebrations of festivities, and by the authority of Our divine imperial response, you shall permit the temple to be




open, but in such a way that the performance of sacrifices forbidden therein may not be supposed to be permitted under the pretext of such access to the temple.107

What is interesting in the decree is the insistence that the

temple images be "measured by the value of their art rather than by their divinity." In other words, viewers are exhorted to see and understand these ancient statues not as religious images but as works of art.

The emphasis on art and aesthetics in the Lausos collection and the religious images to which it is applied is of a piece with this legislative approach to the Christianization of the

empire. In a display that was a visual corollary to the legal language of the law code, the collection sought a way around the impasse between the revered institutions of Greco-Roman tradition and the upstart demands of the new religion by exhorting the viewer to reject the claims of religious history and consider statuary as art.108 As public policy this exhorta- tion was shrewd, for the recommendation could be directed to Christian and pagan alike. Emphasis on the aesthetic

appeal of cult images neutralized their sacred qualities and in so doing made them legitimate objects of profane aesthetic

contemplation for the Christian viewer. For the pagan tradi- tionalist this same recommendation offered the chance to rethink attitudes toward statuary and, with it, the very nature of religious belief. Consider, for example, the words of the

fifth-century Christian author Prudentius to a predominately pagan Roman Senate:

You should give up your childish festivals,

your laughable rites, your shrines unworthy of so great an empire. Oh noble Romans, wash your marble statues wet

with dripping spatters of gore- let these statues, the works of great

craftsmen, stand undefiled; let them become the most beautiful adornments

of our native city-may no

depraved purpose taint these works of art, no

longer in the service of evil.109

Written at the same time as the formation of the Lausos

display, this passage captures the spirit of the Constantinopoli- tan collection. In language that draws on the same associations between childishness, ignorance, and barbarism that were at work in the Lausos ensemble, Prudentius urges the great senatorial families of pagan Rome to abandon "childish festivals" and appreciate statues not for their sacred but for their aesthetic qualities. Underpinning this appeal to the beautiful is the unstated belief that this approach is the only correct one for those who would be seen as civilized and

refined. It is a dazzling apology, and in it Prudentius walks a fine line. On the one hand, he is unstinting in his criticism of pagan religion. On the other hand, himself a member of a

power elite that defined itself and all that was worthy in terms of the standards of classical culture, he is eager to reconcile the old with the new. He does so in the realm of the aesthetic, guided by the same sentiments that contributed to the formation of the Lausos collection.

The official nature of the collection's message must have

been underscored by its location. As we have seen, Bardill's

interpretation of the archaeological and literary evidence

places the Lausos quarter north of the Mese and immediately to the east of the Forum of Constantine. It does not, however, give a precise location for the palace or suggest how the

statuary was displayed. Indeed, Bardill accepts the notion that the collection was a private one, shown internally. There is, however, no reason to assume such a context, as neither of the relevant texts makes any mention of a palace location. Kedrenos A notes only that the Lausos collection was dis-

played in the Lausos quarter near the cistern of Philoxenus. Kedrenos B is equally silent on the issue of a palace context, stating only that the fire "destroyed the porticoes on either side of the street Mese and the excellent offerings of Lausos." Far from describing an interior display, the mention of the

statuary in the same breath as the Mese porticoes suggests that the collection may well have been shown outside in a

portico along the city's main thoroughfare. If this was the case, the implications of such a setting are

profound. Removal of the statuary from the enclosed, interior environment of a palace to which access would have been limited to the exterior world of the city street would have set the Lausos collection squarely in the realm of the public and in so doing underscored the official aspects of the collection's

imagery. Significantly, a setting for the collection in one of the

porticoes flanking the premier Constantinopolitan thoroughfare would have linked the gathering to a long tradition of

portico display that had its origins in the late Republican and

early Imperial age.110 The great Roman porticoes derived their luster from the

fame of the statuary they displayed.111 The earliest and

perhaps the best known of these gatherings was the Porticus Metelli, later the Porticus Octaviae. Donated to the city of Rome in about 146 B.C.E. by Quintus Caecilius Metellus, the

portico was outfited with no less splendid a piece than

Lysippos's multifigured equestrian tribute to Alexander the Great and his cavalrymen, the Granikos Monument, a work

brought by Metellus to the capital as plunder in the wake of his eastern campaigns. Other famous works of Greek sculpture subsequently joined the Lysippan statue, among them

figures of Artemis and Askleipios by Kephisodotos and the Eros by Praxiteles from Thespiae. Prized for their status as

original autograph works of Greek art, these images stood as witnesses to the civilizing power of Rome.112

Because the Lausos collection may well have continued this tradition, the question inevitably arises as to whether the

images displayed in Constantinople were originals or copies. The culture of copying that was so defining a feature of Roman artistic experience might suggest that the Constanti- nopolitan images were replicas, as would questions about the feasibility of transporting such fragile and delicate works as the Olympian Zeus from Greece to Constantinople. At the same time, however, several factors point to the likelihood that they were originals. First of all, the account in Kedrenos A makes it clear that these statues were prized for the same star quality as the statuary in Rome, a star quality that in large part derived from and depended on their status as originals. Given the interest in particular statues, any difficulty surrounding the transport and subsequent display of individual works could have been overcome. In addition, evidence indicates




that copies of cult images proved the exception rather than the rule.113 The language of the texts also argues for the collection of originals. References are specific and particular, describing details of pose and medium in ways that ring true.

Finally, the historical moment of the collection's formation makes it very possible that it contained originals. The early fifth century was an optimum time for assembling such a collection. With the closure of the temples sacred property reverted to the imperial fisc, providing a man like Lausos with

seemingly limitless resources.114 What Lausos would have drawn on in the formation of his

collection was a notion of collecting and public display that had first been established in the expansionist age of the Roman Republic. The great Roman porticoes displayed statuary that had been brought from the cities of the Greek east in the wake of the military campaigns that had drawn the Hellenic world into the political and administrative orbit of Rome. Thus, this statuary amassed at Rome was as much

plunder as it was art, with the difference that statuary was not war booty in the conventional sense of captured arms, but rather spoils whose real value lay in their symbolic importance. While the capture and transport of booty such as arms,

precious metals, livestock, and slaves were largely undertaken for financial reasons, symbolic value also was acknowledged. Spoils illustrated the riches of a conquered nation better than

any possible description, thereby offering proof that a cam-

paign had been worth the undertaking. Even more important, however, was the very act of possession: ownership demonstrated dominion. The control of resources implicit in the display of booty also signified absolute regulatory power over public life. In the case of works of art, the more

ephemeral issues of civic pride and cultural identity were often at stake."5 This was the case, for example, in the display of the Herakles Trihesperos on the Roman Capitol. Made by Lysippos in the fourth century B.C.E., the statue, which was a colossal bronze, had stood on the acropolis at Tarentum, where it was both the focus and the emblem of the city's pride. In 209 B.C.E., when the city fell to Fabius Maximus and his

army, the Herakles was taken off as a spoil.116 This removal to Rome in the wake of the city's conquest was no idle act of

plunder. Indeed, Fabius Maximus must have been aware that the transport of the Herakles to Rome would cap the Tarentine sense of humiliation and degradation. It was tantamount to dragging the city away in chains. Conversely, at Rome, the display of the statue in the capital's historic heart would have proclaimed the reality of Roman expansion and the force of its dominion.

If I am correct and the Lausos collection was indeed a

public gathering, the reuse of statuary by Theodosios's chamberlain should probably be seen in much the same light. Like the statuary in the great Roman porticoes, these images could be understood as spoils. As we have seen, the Lindian Athena, the Samian Hera, the Knidian Aphrodite, the Olym- pian Zeus, and the Myndian Eros were all images plundered from the great sanctuaries of the Hellenic world. Just as the Herakles Trihesperos described the capture and submission of Tarentum and its population, so these uprooted images embodied the notion of pagan religious defeat. The humiliation embodied in this defeat must have been compounded by the fact of public exposure. Most cult images were never

meant to be seen in the open, being displayed instead in the inner sancta of temples where limited viewing access was a

defining feature of their sanctity.117 Contemporary Christian

writings confirm this sense of degradation by noting that removal of a statue from its sanctuary resulted in automatic

deconsecration.11s Ripped from their sanctuaries, deprived of their altars, and paraded openly as art, these spoils were indeed "excellent offerings," great cultural treasures that

gave ample evidence of the Christian triumph over Hellenic

superstition, and thus stood as witnesses to the success of Theodosian religious policy.

As this play on the idea of spoils and conquest suggests, the Lausos collection was less likely to have been conceived as a Christian allegory than as a display designed to express the nuts and bolts of imperial policy regarding some of the most

potent symbols of Hellenic civilization, cult images. This

public agenda would have put the collection in line with the other great Constantinopolitan gatherings. Like the displays in the Hippodrome and the Baths of Zeuxippos before it, the Lausos ensemble used ancient statuary for the pragmatic end of describing an imperial ideology.

At the same time, however, this collection charted new

ground. Whereas the earlier collections used plundered antiquities with a sure hand to describe cultural continuity with the Greco-Roman past, the Lausos collection expressed the discomfort of rupture and the longing for reconciliation. With the display of cult images as spoils, the Lausos collection

gave visual life to the imperial house's intent to wipe out

pagan cult and, with it, some of the Greco-Roman world's

longest-lived and most prestigious cultural institutions. At the same time, however, the proposed aesthetic interpretation of these images expressed an antiquarian regard for the past and a profound desire to preserve it, if only in a denatured state. Writ large in these contradictory impulses is the conundrum of the later Roman world: a society that defined the civilized in purely philhellenic terms had embraced a religion at odds with many, if not all, of the fundamental precepts of Greco- Roman tradition. The problem was thus one of reconciling these two opposing cultures.

The Lausos collection could have achieved this reconciliation in two ways. First, the emphasis on the selection and

display of truly ancient monuments of bona fide Greek

pedigree may well have established an antiquarian context for this religious and potentially volatile discussion that estab-

lished a break between the pagan past and the Christian

present. Not one of the named cult statues on display was less than seven hundred years old, and some of them, such as the Samian Hera, must have approached one thousand. All of them were famous, but in the context of contemporary religious practice it is clear that, for all their venerability, cult statues other than these would have evoked far more powerful devotional responses on the part of contemporary pagan worshipers.119 Thus, this religious policy statement could have been interpreted in a context removed from the pricklier issues of contemporary religious piety to a stage in the

recognizable but distant past. Second, to the distance established between past and

present by the actual antiquity of the sculpture, the collection added the emphasis on aesthetic issues. This appeal for aesthetic appreciation is interesting in that it implies an




8 Theodosian obelisk base, Hippodrome, Istanbul (photo: Art Resource)

awareness of and sensitivity to form that we do not usually associate with late antiquity and the early Middle Ages.120 In all likelihood intended to defuse any sense or experience of the holy, this emphasis proposed a way of looking at and

thinking about statuary that implicitly acknowledged and

explicitly built on an idea of art as mimetic illusionism. As we have seen, this realist canon was familiar to contemporaries from all manner of literary contexts. It was not, however, a mode of representation that was in the vanguard with respect to contemporary official production, be it sacred or secular. The Theodosian obelisk base (ca. 390 C.E.) offers a much better sense of what this late fourth- and early fifth-century official art was about. Carved on four sides with reliefs

depicting members of the imperial house in attendance at the circus games, the base embodies the abstract, hieratic form that had become the norm in official works of art by the end of the fourth century. Each relief is conceived as a symmetri- cally arranged composition in two registers. The south side of the obelisk base (Fig. 8) shows the emperor Theodosios I at the center of the upper register with his sons Arkadios arid Honorios beside him and courtiers behind. Theodosios is the

largest figure in the group. An architectural enframement

designed to suggest the setting of the imperial box sets this central group off from a double rank of courtiers left and

right. In the lower register two rows of smaller spectators stare out from the composition, while the still smaller figures of dancers and musicians cavort at the feet of the spectators behind a low balustrade. Here, symmetry and frontality in the

composition, together with the manipulation of proportion to describe social hierarchies, have become the norm.

Given the gap between the aesthetic values espoused in late

imperial official art and the Lausos gathering's emphasis on

naturalism, what might a contemporary viewer have been

expected to take away from an experience of the collection? I doubt seriously that the gathering was ever intended as a lesson touting the virtues of mimetic form. Instead, I would like to suggest that the illusionistic development outlined in the selection of sculpture was intended to encourage a

distinction between the abstract forms contemporaries used to express the official and the sacred and the mimetic forms used to achieve the same goals in earlier centuries.121 Linked to the actual antiquity of the statues, this emphasis on different formal values could further have underscored the break between past and present, and in so doing encouraged an understanding of these images as art.

The emphasis on illusionism also might have had signifi- cance in terms of meaning. Christian iconoclastic writing rails

mercilessly against the idea of sacred images, noting that for all their illusionistic qualities they remain nothing other than

"earth, stones, matter, and futile craftsmanship."122 Funda- mental to this objection was the belief that art could and should express a kind of truth and that naturalistic imitation was at odds with this notion of truth telling.123 Thus, an

emphasis on illusionistic tradition in the cult images of pagan antiquity may have been a way to underscore the philosophi- cally hollow, indeed, false, premises by which pagan worshipers were introduced to the divine.

That such a distinction could have been made is suggested by the fact that the subject matter and style of pagan antiquity's visual traditions survived in the late fourth and fifth centuries not so much in the official and sacred spheres for which they were evolved, but rather in the realm of the

private. The late fourth-century Parabiagio plate (Fig. 9) is but one example of this phenomenon. In a tondo composition, the figures of Kybele and Attis ride in triumphal procession, drawn by a quadriga of surging lions and accom-

panied by the twirling figures of ecstatic revelers. Figures of

plenty recline in the exurge below, while divine chariots and

torch-bearing victories traverse the sky above. Evidence of the

palace of Marina referred to above indicates that the survival of such imagery was not confined to the context of small-scale

luxury goods, but that the forms and subject matter of pagan antiquity survived in monumental domestic settings as well.

Further, as the Christian patronage of Marina suggests, the notion that pagan traditions be legitimized through the veil of art appears to have been taken to heart.




9 Silver plate with Kybele and Attis (Parabiagio plate). Milan, Museo del Brera (photo: Scala/Art Resource)

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the collection is interesting precisely because of the status it accords the idea of art. In the Lausos ensemble some of the most venerable images of the pagan past were legitimized and redeemed for no other reason than that of artistic merit. At the root of this proposal is the sense of art as a mediating force. In the Lausos collection and for the Theodosian court, art became a balm that offered a way around the impasse between the iconoclastic demands of Christianity and the high regard with which the empire's ruling elite held the traditions of classical culture. Here, in the healing realm of the aesthetic, pagan and Christian were invited to meet and to set aside their most fundamental differences in the joint appreciation of beauty.

Sarah Guberti Bassett is assistant professor at Wayne State University, where she teaches the history of medieval art and architecture. She is

preparing a book on the urban decoration of Constantinople in late antiquity, a study that concentrates on the reuse of antiquities in public collections [Department of Art and Art History, Wayne State University, Detroit, Mich. 48202].

Frequently Cited Sources

Corso, Antonio, Prassitele: Fonti epigrafiche e letterarie; Vita e opere, vol. 3 (Rome: Leonardo-DeLuca, 1991).

Donohue, Alice, Xoana and the Origins of Greek Sculpture (Athens, Ga.: Scolar Press, 1988).

Elsner, Jas, Art and the Roman Viewer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

Guberti Bassett, Sarah, "Antiquities in the Hippodrome at Constantinople," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 45 (1991).

Johnson, Francis P., Lysippos (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1927). Mango, Cyril, Michael Vickers, and E. D. Francis, "The Palace of Lausos at

Constantinople and Its Collection of Ancient Statues," Journal of the History of Collections 4 (1992): 89-98.

Notes This article has profited from the constructive criticism of Mary-Lyon Dolezal, Brian Madigan, Ann Steiner, and Stephen Zwirn, to whom my thanks are due. I am also grateful for the generous and helpful comments of the anonymous Art Bulletin readers.

Unless otherwise indicated, translations are mine. 1. This article draws on subject matter in my Ph.D. dissertation, "Paene

Omnium Urbium Nuditate: The Reuse of Antiquities in Constantinople, Fourth




through Sixth Centuries," Bryn Mawr College, 1985. Some of the ideas discussed here were presented at the 17th International Byzantine Congress. See The 17th International Byzantine Congress: Abstracts of Short Papers, Dumbarton Oaks, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. (n.p., 1986).

On the Constantinopolitan reuse of antiquities, see Gottfried Christian

Heyne, "Priscae artis operae quae Constantinopoli extisse memorantur," Comnientationes Scientiarium Gottingensis 2 (1790-91): 3-38; R. M. Dawkins, "Ancient Statues in Medieval Constantinople," Folklore 35 (1924): 209-48; and

Cyril Mango, "Antique Statuary and the Byzantine Beholder," Dumbarton Oaks

Papers 17 (1963): 55-75. For the discussion of individual collections and the implications of reuse,

see Guberti Bassett, 87-96; idem, "Historiae custos: Sculpture and Tradition in the Baths of Zeuxippos," American Journal of Archaeology 100 (1996): 491-506; and Reinhold Stupperich, "Das Statuenprogramm in den Zeuxippos- Thermen: Uberlegungen zur Beschreibung der Christodorus von Koptos," Istanbuler Mitteilungen 32 (1982): 210-35.

2. The earliest mention is by Pierre Gilles (Petrus Gyllius). See his De

topographia Constantinopoleos et de illius antiquitatibus libri quattuor (Lyons: Guillaume Rovillium, 1561; reprint, Athens: Vivliopoleion Note Karavia, 1967), 129-32. For the English version, see The Four Books of the Antiquities of Constantinople, trans.John Ball (London, 1729; reprint, NewYork: Italica Press, 1988), 121-24. Gilles's discussion is essentially a recapitulation of the 11th-

century inventory given by George Kedrenos. Other references to the collection proceed in the same spirit and include A. Nagl, "Lausos," in Paulys Real-Encyclopiidie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft (Stuttgart: JB Metzlersche, 1940), supp. 7, 365-66 (hereafter referred to as RE); Rodolphe Guilland, "Etudes sur la topographie de Constantinople byzantine: Le Palais de Lausos," Helleniki 17 (1962): 95-104; idem, Etudes de topographie de Constanti-

nople byzantine, vol. 2 (Berlin: Akademie, 1969), 32; and Mango (as in n. 1). C. M. Bowra, "Palladas and the Converted Olympians," Byzantinische Zeitschrift 53 (1960): 1-7, associates the collection with the Palatine Anthology 9.528, and the late 4th-century struggle between paganism and Christianity.

3. Corso, 128-42. 4. Mango et al. 5. On Kedrenos and Zonaras, see Herbert Hunger, Die hochsprachliche profane

Literatur derByzantiner, vol. 1 (Munich: Beck, 1978), 393-94, 416-18. 6. George Kedrenos, Synopsis historian, trans. Cyril Mango, in Mango et al.,

91; Georgius Cedrenus, Historiarum Compendium, ed. I. Bekker (Bonn: Weber, 1838-39), vol. 1, 564: "&r'L v TroZs Aaibxrov u eav OKOLKIpTT

'ratWFoLOKLXhO KLt, tEvoSiXE&i TL v, 'r0ov 4 4)LX6Evos 1XoP•YEL T6 ?8p, vOa TiaXE T-q KVXja(Lv.

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pOLOVOKi•WTES KQtt TCYPL•8• KQ YI&WES r' ( KaP K qXo'rrap86LXEL1; TOPEXhiS; TE a Kat KiravpOL Kt Have'S;." 7. George Kedrenos, Synopsis historian, trans. Cyril Mango, in Mango et al.,

91; Georgius Cedrenus (as in n. 6), 616: "Troirouv 80 Av•yopEvOTv0ros

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pl•sY ov Kovcravrvov."

8.Johannes Zonaras, Epitomae Historiarum, ed. Theodorus Biittner-Wobst (Bonn: Weber, 1897), vol. 3, 131: "Oi

Kpa7rofv7ros EAPFpuprplS Ev

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) TE lqaphis Hp's K(XL 7rs Aiv&0cs 'AOlv&s KaiL 7T~s Kvitcs

'Aqpo&T7rls, Tr K(XT& "TyXVIIV 'trEpLP•6pqra d8p)LG

pa31(X'a, Ka( piJXP 70)0 'F6pov •'riSpapE."

9. Kedrenos's harshest critic has been Christian Blinkenberg, who scorned the notion of the collection's existence and characterized the relevant passage in the Synopsis as nothing less than "ein Gewebe von Fabeln" (a tissue of lies). See Blinkenberg, Knidia: Beitrage zur Kenntnis der praxitelischen Aphrodite (Copenhagen: Levin og Munksgaard, 1933), 32-34.

10. On Malchos, see Barry Baldwin, "Malchus of Philadelphia," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 31 (1977): 91-107; and R. C. Blockley, The Fragmentary Classicising Historians of the Later Roman Empire, 2 vols. (Liverpool: Francis Cairns, 1981-83), vol. 1, 71-85.

11. Suda Lexicon M120, quoted in Blockley (as in n. 10), vol. 2, 404-5. 12. Mango, in Mango et al., 91. 13. Ibid., 92. 14. Ibid. 15. On the Lindian Athena, see Martin Zucker, "Zur dltern griechischen

Kunstgeschichte I: Die angebliche Athenastatue des Dipoinos und Skyllis," Neue Jahrbiicher fiir Philologie und Paedagogik 135 (1887): 785-91; Christian

Blinkenberg, L'image d'Athana Lindia (Copenhagen: A. F. Host og Son, 1917-18); E. D. Francis and Michael Vickers, "Green Goddess: A Gift to Lindos from Amasis of Egypt," AmericanJournal ofArchaeology 88 (1984): 68-69; idem, "Amasis and Lindos," Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 31 (1984): 119-30; and Corso, 129-30.

16. Zucker (as in n. 15), 789-90; Francis and Vickers, "Green Goddess" (as in n. 15), 68. Corso, 129, believes that Amasis may have chosen the material as a way to make specific reference to Egypt.

17. Pliny, Historia naturalis 36.9, places their birth in the 50th Olympiad (580-577 B.C.E.).

18. Herodotus 1.30. Sesostris III (ca. 1860 B.C.E.) ruled in the 18th dynasty. See Mango et al., 93; and Corso, 129. Francis and Vickers, "Amasis and Lindos" (as in n. 15), 121, suggest that Kedrenos's earlier attribution to Sesostris is the result of confusion regarding Herodotus's descriptions of his

public works projects with those of Amasis. Alternatively, it might be possible that the statue was a deliberately archaizing one commissioned by Amasis, a New Kingdom ruler, to evoke the sense of Sesostris, the Middle Kingdom, and the past. A colossal sphinx in the Mus6e du Louvre, Paris, demonstrates a

similarly archaistic approach to patronage in the New Kingdom. See Biri Fay, "The Louvre Sphinx, A 23," in Kunst des Alten Reiches (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1995), 75-79.

19. Herodotus 2.82. See Zucker (as in n. 15), and Francis and Vickers, "Amasis and Lindos" (as in n. 15), 122-25, for discussion of these statues in the context of Egyptian diplomacy. Both articles propose that the two statues were of Athena and her Egyptian counterpart, the goddess Neith. Corso, 129-30, believes that one statue remained in situ until 392, when it was then removed to Constantinople.

20. See Blinkenberg (as in n. 15), 1-36. 21. For the material from Naukratis, see W. M. Flinders Petrie, Naukratis,

Part I, 1884-85 (London: Trfibner, 1886), 13, pl. 1.1. For the Kameiros statue, see Steffen Trolle, "An Egyptian Head from Camirus, Rhodes," Acta Archaeo-

logica 49 (1978): 139-50. 22. On the Knidia, see Blinkenberg (as in n. 15); and Christine Havelock,

The Athena of Knidos and Her Successors: A Historical Review of the Female Nude in Greek Art (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995). For a discussion of the Constantinopolitan history of the statue, see Corso, 130-31.

23. Corso, 131. 24. Pliny, Hist. Nat. 36.11. 25. A. Frickenhaus, "Der Eros von Myndos," Jahrbuch des kaiserlich Deutschen

Archaeologischen Instituts 30 (1915): 127-29. 26. Pausanias 4.30.6. 27. Ibid. 5.17. 28. Ibid. 7.4.5. 29. Corso, 131. 30. See Frickenhaus (as in n. 25); and Johnson, 115, who accepts the idea

unconditionally. 31. For the British Museum Eros and a list of other copies, see Johnson,

105-7. 32. Opinion on the exact date varies. Charles Picard, Manuel d'archiologie

grecque, vol. 4, La sculpture (Paris: A. Picard, 1963), 536; and Corso, 131, argue that the statue is the result of Lysippos's Asiatic voyages and associate it with Alexander the Great's siege of Myndos in 333 B.C.E. Johnson, 115, prefers a date of ca. 316.

33. On Myndos, see Richard Stillwell, ed., Princeton Encyclopaedia of Classical Sites (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 602.

34. On the Zeus, see generally Giovanni Becatti, Problemi fidiaci (Milan: Electa, 1951), 125-40; and Corso, 131-32. For coin evidence, see Gisela Richter, The Sculpture and Sculptors of the Greeks (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), figs. 647, 650. For primary sources, see Pausanias 5.9.1-5; and Strabo, Geography 8.3.30.

35. R. Pfeiffer, "The Measurements of the Zeus at Olympia," Journal of Hellenic Studies 61 (1941): 1-5.

36. Mango et al., 94-95. This claim derives from an observation in A.H.M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire, vol. 2 (1964; reprint, Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 92. See also Dieter Metzler, "Oekonomische Aspekte des Religonswandels in der Sp~itantike: Die Enteignung der Heidnischen Tempel Seit Konstantin," Hephaistos 3 (1981): 27-40.

37. On the Kairos, see Andrew F. Stewart, "Lysippan Studies I: The Only Creator of Beauty," American Journal ofArchaeology 82 (1978): 163-71;Johnson, 163-65; and A. B. Cook, Zeus, a Study in Ancient Religion, vol. 2, pt. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914), 859-68.

38. For the collected primary sources, seeJohnson, 280-87. 39. See Stewart (as in n. 37), 164 n. 3, for a list of reliefs and gems.




40. Doro Levi, "I1 kairos attraverso la letteratura Greca," Rendiconti della Real Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei: Classe di Scienze Morali, Storiche e Filologiche, 5th ser., 32 (1923): 260-80; idem, "Il concetto di kairos e la filosofia di Platone," Rendiconti della Real Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei: Classe di Scienze Morali, Storiche e Filologiche, 5th ser., 33 (1924): 7-117; Rudolph Wittkower, "Chance, Time and Virtue," Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937-38): 313-21; and Corso, 133.

41. Mango et al., 91. 42. Cosmas Indicopleustes, Topographie chritienne, ed. Wanda Wolska-Conus

(Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1968), 11.3. 43. Aelian, De natura animalium, 17.45. For its identification as the Cape

buffalo, see George Jennison, Animals for Show and Pleasure in Ancient Rome

(Manchester, Eng.: Manchester University Press, 1937), 36 n. 1. 44. Corso, 134-35, believed the animals to be models or embalmed

specimens displayed for their value as curiosities. This hypothesis seems

unlikely. 45. For examples of Hellenistic and Roman centaurs, see Martin Robertson,

A History of Greek Art, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 608; and Wolfgang Helbig, Fiihrer durch die oeffentlichen Sammlungen klassischer Altertumer in Rom, 4th ed., vol. 2 (Tilbingen: Ernst Wasmuth, 1963), 203-4.

46.J. R. Martindale, The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, vol. 2

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 660-61; Mango et al., 89, 93-94, 95; and Jonathan Bardill, "The Palace of Lausus and Nearby Monu- ments in Constantinople: A Topographical Study," AmericanJournal ofArchaeol- ogy 101 (1997): 67-68.

47. Palladios, Palladius: The Lausiac History, trans. Robert T. Meyer (London: Longmans, Green, 1965).

48. Ibid., 18. 49. Ibid., 19. 50. Vickers and Francis, in Mango et al., 95. Contrast Bowra (as in n. 2), 5-6,

who dates the formation of the collection to the 380s, and Corso, 129, who

places it after 392. 51. For historical summary and references, see Wolfgang Mfiller-Wiener,

Bildlexikon zur Topographie Istanbuls (Tfibingen: Ernst Wasmuth, 1977), 278. 52. Vickers and Francis, in Mango et al., 96. 53. See Guberti Bassett; idem, 1996 (as in n. 1); and Stupperich (as in n. 1). 54. Paul Magdalino, "The Bath of Leo the Wise," in Maistor: Classical,

Byzantine and Renaissance Studies for Robert Browning, ed. Ann Moffatt (Can- berra: Australian Association for Byzantine Studies, 1984), 225-40; idem, "The Bath of Leo the Wise and the 'Macedonian Renaissance' Revisited:

Topography, Iconography, Ceremonial, Ideology," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 42 (1988): 97-118; and Cyril Mango, "The Palace of Marina, the Poet Palladas and the Bath of Leo VI," Euphrosynon: Aphieroma ston Manole Chatzedake, vol. 1 (Athens: Ekdose tou Tameiou Archaiologikon Poron kai Apallotriose, 1991), 321-30.

55. Wittkower (as in n. 40) discusses Neoplatonic andJesuit interpretations of early Christian writings in the 16th and 17th centuries.

56. Bardill (as in n. 46). 57. Necati Dolunay and Rudolf Naumann, "Untersuchungen zwischen

Divan Yolu und Adalet Sarayi 1964, "Istanbul Arkeoloji Miizerleri Yiligi (Annual of the archaeological museums of Istanbul) 11-12 (1964): 136-40; and Rudolf Naumann, "Vorbericht fiber die Ausgrabungen zwischen Mese und Antiochus- Palast 1964 in Istanbul," IstanbulerMitteilungen 15 (1965): 136-48.

58. Naumann (as in n. 57). 59. Dolunay and Naumann (as in n. 57), 137. 60. Raymond Janin, "Notes de topographie et d'histoire," Revue des Etudes

Byzantines 23 (1965): 254-57. 61. See Mfiller-Wiener (as in n. 51) for commentary and bibliography. 62. Bardill (as in n. 46), 73. 63. Ibid., 73-75. 64. Ibid., 75-83. 65. Vickers and Francis, in Mango et al., 95-96. 66. Corso, 129. 67. Ibid. 68. Elsner, 214-15; and Karim W. Arafat, Pausanias' Greece (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1996), 11. 69. On Pausanias, see Christian Habicht, Pausanias' Guide to Ancient Greece

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); Elsner, 125-55, and Arafat (as in n. 68). On Egeria, see John Wilkinson, Itinerarium Egeriae: Egeria's Travels to the Holy Land (Warminster, Eng.: Aris and Phillips, 1981).

70. Pliny, Hist. nat. 36.9. 71. Ibid. 36.11. 72. Ibid. 36.20-23. 73. Ibid. 34.63. 74. On Pliny, see Jacob Isager, Pliny on Art and Society (London: Routledge,

1991). 75. The Constantinopolitan collection of antiquities must have numbered

in the hundreds. Sources specify the names of approximately 125 monuments. Hundreds of other statues are mentioned without name. Apart from the figures in the Lausos collection, only six other statues can be documented reliably as Greek. These works include a second statue of Athena from Lindos; the Herakles Trihesperos by Lysippos; the Muses of Helicon, and a Zeus from the sanctuary at Dodona. Other statues may also have been works of Greek manufacture, although the evidence is less clear. See esp. an Athena in the

Forum of Constantine that has been identified, although probably errone-

ously, with various Pheidian Athenas, the Parthenos, the Promachos and the Lemnia among them. See Andreas Linfert, "Athenen des Pheidias," Athenisches

Mitteilungen 97 (1982): 63-77; Anthony Cutler, "The De Signis of Nicetas Choniates: A Reappraisal," American Journal of Archaeology 72 (1968): 113-17; RomilyJenkins, "The Bronze Athena at Byzantium, "Journal of Hellenic Studies 67 (1947): 31-33; idem, "Further Evidence Regarding the Bronze Athena at

Byzantium," Annual of the British School at Athens 46 (1951): 72-74; W. Gurlitt, "Die grosse eherne Athena des Pheidias," in Analecta Graeciensia: Festschrift zur 42 Versammlung Deutscher Philologen und Schulmanner in Wien (Vienna, 1893), 99-121;J. Fuhrer, "Zur Geschichte des Elagabalius und der Athena Parthenos der Pheidias," Riimische Mitteilungen 7 (1892): 158-65; Otto Jahn, "Athene Parthenos, "Archaeologische Zeitung 6 (1848): 239.

A colossal head found during excavation of the Baths of Zeuxippos also has been identified as a work of 5th-century B.C.E. Athenian manufacture. See

Stanley Casson, "Les fouilles de l'hippodrome de Constantinople," Gazette des Beaux Arts 30 (1930): 215-42, esp. 236. All other statuary is certainly of Roman manufacture. See Guberti Bassett, 1996 (as in n. 1).

76. See W. Kroll, "Plinius, Nachleben," RE, vol. 40, 430-32; J. Sillig, "Uber das Ansehen der Naturgeschichte des Plinius im Mittelalter," Allegemeine Schulzeitung 9, nos. 52-53 (1833): 409-20; and F. E. Cranz and Paul Oscar Kristeller, Catalogus translationum et commentariorum: Medieval and Renaissance Latin Translations and Commentaries, vol. 4 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic Univer-

sity of America Press, 1980), 301-2. 77. Donohue, 195. 78. Pliny, Hist. nat. 35.15-16. 79. Athenagoras, Legatio 17, quoted in Donohue, 263. 80. Themistius, Oration 26.316 a-b, quoted in Donohue, 451. 81. For the range of Roman attitudes toward nature, see Mary Beagon,

Roman Nature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); and Richard Sorabji, Animal Minds and Human Morals, the Origins of Western Debate (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell

University Press, 1993). 82. Aristotle, Historia Animalium 6.5, 8.5, 9.12, remarks on the alien origins

of vultures as well as their mating habits and carnivorous nature. 83. See, for example, Aelian, De natura animalium 8.1, 17.45. 84. Christian Topography 11.7. 85. On pans, see W. H. Roscher, Ausfiihrliches Lexikon der griechischen und

rdmischen Mythologie (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1897-1902), vol. 3, pt. 1, s.v. "Pan," 1379-1406.52. For centaurs, see Bethe, "Kentauren," in RE (as in n. 1), vol. 21, 172-78; and "Kentauren," in Roscher, vol. 2, pt. 2, 1032-88.

86. See Jennison (as in n. 43); and Roland Auguet, Cruelty and Civilization: The Roman Games (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1972), 81-119.

87. Katherine Dunbabin, The Mosaics of Roman North Africa (Oxford: Claren- don Press, 1978), 76-77.

88. Auguet (as in n. 86), 112-13. 89. For Paphos, see Christine Kondoleon, Domestic and Divine: Roman

Mosaics in the House of Dionysos (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994).

For Piazza Armerina, see Andrea Carandini, Andreina Ricci, and Mariette de Vos, Filosofiana, la villa di Piazza Armerina: Immagine di un aristocratico romano al

tempo di Costantino (Palermo: S. F. Flaccovio, 1982); Dunbabin (as in n. 87), 196-212; and R.J.A. Wilson, Piazza Armerina (London: Granada, 1983). Auguet (as in n. 86), 115-19, discusses the hunt mosaics in terms of animal

acquisition. 90. The bibliography regarding the mosaic is vast and its dating is controver-

sial. Suggestions range from the 5th century to the 7th. For a summary of

arguments, see James Trilling, "The Soul of Empire: Style and Meaning in the Mosaic Pavement of the Byzantine Imperial Palace in Constantinople," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 43 (1989): 27-71. More recently, see the summary report on the exploration and preservation of the mosaic by Werner Jobst, Behcet Erdal, and Christian Gurtner, Istanbul: The Great Palace Mosaic (Istan- bul: Arkeoloji ve Sanat Yayinlari, 1997), in which the date is set between 485 and 550. Trilling interprets the mosaic's complex combination of natural images as a metaphor for the struggle between the civilized and the uncivilized.

91. On the use of animals as apotropaia, see Guberti Bassett, 89. On the hyena and its characteristics, see Aelian, De nat. an. 6.14, 7.22; O. Keller, Thiere des classischen Alterthums (Innsbruck: Wagner'sche Universitfits-Buchhandlung, 1887), 156-57; and idem, Die Antike Tierwelt, vol. 2 (Leipzig: W. Engelmann, 1909-13), 89-90.

92. Eusebius of Caesarea, Vita Constantini 3.54. 93. Athenagoras, Legatio 17, quoted in Donohue, 263. 94. See, for example, the remarks in Eusebius, Demonstratio evangelica 6.20,

as cited by Donohue, 306. 95. See, generally, Werner Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, trans.

Gilbert Highet (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1936); and Henri Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity (London: Duckworth, 1956), 95-100. On the role of education and the mastery of rhetoric in late antiquity, see R. A. Kaster, Guardians of Language: The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988); and Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), esp. 35-70.

96. On the equation between muteness, stupidity, and barbarism, see Donohue, 122-23. For ancient views regarding speech and animals, see Sorabji (as in n. 81), 7-16, 80-86. For remarks by Eusebius on dumb xoana and




irrational animals, see Praeparatio evangelica 1.4.12 a-c, as cited by Donohue, 308.

97. For the notion of a mediating Kairos, see Abstracts (as in n. 1); and

Mango et al. (as in n. 4). 98. Plutarch, "On Listening to Lectures," 45C, Plutarch's Moralia, trans. F. C.

Babbit, vol. 1 (London: W. Heinemann, 1927), 242-43. 99. Stewart (as in n. 37), 163, 171. 100. See Elizabeth Bartmann, "Decor et duplicatio: Pendants in Roman

Sculptural Display," American Journal of Archaeology 92 (1988): 211-25; idem, "Sculptural Collecting and Display in the Private Realm," in Roman Art in the Private Sphere, ed. Elaine Gazda (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991), 71-88.

101. See Guberti Bassett. 102. Bowra (as in n. 2), 4-7, first considered the collection in this context,

an approach taken up by Mango et al., 93-94, and Corso, 131. On the conflict between paganism and Christianity, see Johannes Geffcken, The Last Days of Greco-Roman Paganism, trans. Sabine MacCormack (Amsterdam: Elsevier/ North Holland, 1978); and Frank Trombley, Hellenic Religion and Christianiza- tion c. 370-529, 2 vols. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994).

103. For a translation, see Clyde Pharr, The Theodosian Code (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952).

104. Ibid., 16.10.8, 16.10.15, 16.10.18. 105. Ibid., 16.10.25. 106. On the role of sculpture in public settings, see George Hanfmann, From

Croesus to Constantine: The Cities of Western Asia Minor and Their Arts in Greek and Roman Times (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1975), 57-74.

107. Quoted in Pharr (as in n. 103). 108. On the Theodosian desire to safeguard the artistic patrimony of the

Roman Empire, see Claude Lepelley, "Le mus6e des statues divines: La volonte de sauvegarde le patrimoine artistique paien A l'6poque th6odosi- enne," Cahiers Archiologiques 42 (1994): 5-15. The pursuit of this policy in official sectors was not limited to sculpture. For a similar approach with respect to architecture, see Joseph Alchermes, "Spolia in Roman Cities of the Late

Empire: Legislative Rationales and Architectural Reuse," Dumbarton Oaks

Papers 48 (1994): 167-78. 109. Prudentius, Contra Symmachum 1. 499-505: "deponas iam festa velim

puerilia, ritus / ridiculos tantoque indigna sacraria regno. / marmora tabenti

respergine tincta lavate, / o procures: liceat statuas consistere puras, / artificum magnorum opera: haec pulcherrima nostrae / ornamenta fiant patriae, nec decolor usus / in vitium versae monumenta coinquinet artis." Translation quoted in Alchermes (as in n. 108), 171.

110. On Roman public collections and their display, see Giovanni Becatti, "Opere d'Arte Greca nella Roma di Tiberio," Archeologia Classica 25 (1973): 18-54; Donald Strong, "Roman Museums," in Archaeology in Theory and Practice

(New York: Seminar Press, 1973), 247-64; J. J. Pollitt, "The Impact of Greek Art on Rome," Transactions of the American Philological Association 108 (1978): 155-74.

111. For a topographical list of Greek statuary and other works of art on

display in Rome, see Pollitt (as in n. 110), 170-71; and Brunilde S. Ridgway, Roman Copies of Greek Sculpture (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984), 109-11.

112. On the Porticus Metelli itself, see J. J. Pollitt, Art of Greece 1400-31

(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965), 144, 146; idem, Art of Rome 753 B.C.-337 A.D. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1960), 45, 55, 74, 109; Ernest Nash, Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Rome, vol. 2 (New York: Frederick A.

Praeger, 1962), 254; L. Richardson Jr., A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 315, 317; and Diane Favro, The Urban Image of Augustan Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 100, 170-71.

113. Ridgway (as in n. 111), chaps. 4, 5, 6. The great and glaring exception to this rule is, of course, the example of the Knidia, which survives in over two hundred copies. Ridgway, 76, accounts for the selective phenomenon of

copying on the basis of subject matter, arguing that cult statues in public settings and especially gods such as Aphrodite/Venus, with state cults at Rome, were the images of choice. On the phenomenon of Knidia copying, see Havelock (as in n. 22).

114. Bowra (as in n. 2); and Mango et al. 115. See Marguerite Pape, Griechische Kunstwerke aus Kriegsbeute und ihre

offentliche Aufstellung in Rom-von der Eroberung von Syrakus bis in Augusteische Zeit, University of Hamburg, 1975.

116. On the removal of the Herakles, see Plutarch, Fabius Maximus 22.6. For text and translation, see Plutarch's Lives, vol. 3, trans. Bernadotte Perrin

(London: W. Heinemann, 1914-26). The statue was eventually taken to

Constantinople, where it was set up in the Hippodrome. See Guberti Bassett. 117. Elsner, 132-34, 144-50. 118. See the 4th- and 5th-century church historians Socrates Scholasticus,

Historia ecclesiastica 1.16, and Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 2.5.4. 119. For a general discussion, see Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians

(NewYork: Viking, 1986), 27-261. The notion of monolithic religious practice on the part of the pagan communities of the Roman Empire is not valid. Pagan religion was made up of a wide range of overlapping and coexisting cults and cult practices. There was no single creed or doctrine that constituted pagan religion. State cults existed at the imperial and civic level. Most cults were

purely regional and local, as in the case of Egypt and Syria. Others, such as the Mithras cult, had an international following but were essentially personal in nature and had no public manifestation. Nor were the cults static. New

practices were introduced and older ones changed with the passage of time. The vitality and variety of religious experience in the later Roman world thus made it likely that although viewers might agree on the antiquity and venerability of the Lausos cult images, they might also have a sense of detachment from them.

120. See, for example, Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the

Image before the Era ofArt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), in which the possibility for the formal and aesthetic appreciation of images in the

premodern period is dismissed. 121. For a discussion of style as an element of meaning in late antique art,

see Ernst Kitzinger, Byzantine Art in the Making (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard

University Press, 1977); and, most recently, Elsner. 122. Athenagoras (as in n. 93). 123. Elsner, 18.



Excellent Offerings": The Lausos Collection in Constantinople

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