IMAGO
IMAGO Imago was the ordinary Latin word used to signify the
copy or likeness of anything ( “Imago ab
imitatione dicta,” Festus, p. 112); and, as applied to
copies of nature, it includes pictures, statues, busts, or any mode of
artistic representation. More particularly, however,
imago was used to denote the ancestral likenesses which were
exhibited in the more public parts of a Roman noble's dwelling. In the
houses of the nobility the
imagines of the
forefathers of the head of the household were placed in the
alae, the two wings which opened out of the hinder
part of the
atrium, or central hall, one on
either side (Marquardt,
Privatleben der Römer, i. p.
233;
Vitr. 6.3,
6,
“Imagines ad latitudinem alarum sint constitutae:” cf.
Juv. 8.19). These imagines were
portrait-masks in wax (
expressi cera vultus,
Plin. Nat. 35.6); and the origin of these
waxen masks is to be sought, not in the idea of immortalising the features
of the dead for the benefit of posterity, but in the ancient beliefs
connected with burial and with the life of the dead. That the primary use of
the imago was for the purposes of funeral ceremonies is stated by Pliny (
l.c.,
“expressi cera vultus--ut essent imagines quae comitarentur gentilicia
funera” ) and the original part it played in these ceremonies is
shown by the close analogies that we meet with in most of the civilised
nations of the ancient world. Benndorf has shown the close resemblance that
the Roman imagines bear to the portrait-masks for covering the faces of the
dead, which are found in a great many ancient civilisations; they are
analogous to the portrait-heads of the Egyptian mummies, and the light masks
of gold, silver, bronze, iron, or tin, which are found used for this purpose
in Nineveh, Phoenicia, Carthage, and by Schliemann at Mycenae in Greece
(Benndorf,
Antike Gesichtshelme und Sepulcralmasken in the
Denkschriften der Kaiserlichen Academie der
Wissenschaften, xxviii. pp. 302 ff.). The original use of the Roman
portrait-masks must similarly have been for covering the faces of the dead.
The custom at Rome was to lay out the dead before burial, and in funerals of
special distinction this lying in state lasted for seven days (
Serv. ad Aen. 5.64). For this purpose the
services of an embalmer (
pollinctor) were
required; and it is a probable supposition that the services of the
pollinctor did not end with preparing the body for
burial, but that he also fashioned the mask that was to be buried with it.
This was done by taking a mould of the face from nature. From this mould he
would proceed “to take a cast in wax, to put the finishing touches
(
emendare) and colouring on this waxen
image, which was then laid either on the dead man's face or on his
effigy” (Benndorf,
l.c. p. 371). The
imagines were then waxen casts from moulds, which were taken from nature;
they were faces in relief (
expressi cera
vultus) which received the colours and touches of nature (Lessing,
Sämmtl. Schrift. x. p. 290). The original mask
which was made from the mould was no doubt burnt or buried with the body
(Marquardt,
l.c. p. 236): but a fresh mask might be
made from this mould, which was the imago placed in the atrium of a Roman
house ; and which was used on the occasion of the death of a member of the
household, when the imagines of the ancestors formed a part of the funeral
procession. Marquardt thinks that the masks might be renewed from time to
time, and that on the occasion of such funerals it was not in every case the
“fumosae imagines” (Senec.
Ep. 44, 5;
Juv. 8.8) that were brought to light. The imagines
as used in funerals were merely masks which were fitted on to the faces of
the actors who represented the dead man's ancestors; but the imagines as
kept in the atrium were probably masks fitted on busts. This is the
conjecture of Quatremère de Quincy, whose account of the combined
uses of these masks, for funeral purposes and for exhibition in the atrium,
is extremely probable. He says, “Nothing prevents us from believing
that the family portraits in coloured wax had attached to them busts,
with the whole head, the neck, the breast, and the commencement of the
drapery; but that, for their use in funeral ceremonies, the front part
of the head which constituted the face was detached to serve as a
mask” (De Quincy,
Le Jupiter Olympien, p. 37) In the
ceremonies of the apotheosis of a deceased emperor described by Herodian, it
is not clear whether the imago was a waxen model of the whole form, or a
waxen mask fitted on to a statue (
Hdt. 4.2,
2,
κηροῦ δὲ
πλασάμενο<*> εἰκόνα, πάντα ὁμοίαν τῷ
τετελευτηκότι, ἐπὶ μεγίστης ἐλεφαντίνης κλίνης εἰς ὕψος
ἀρθείσης προστιθέασιν); but we have here probably described
a masked statue resembling the masked busts in the atrium. These busts were
placed along the walls of the
alae in small,
shrine-like recesses (
armaria,
Plin. Nat. 35.6;
ξύλινα ναΐδια,
Plb. 6.53), and under each imago was an
inscription (
titulus) giving the name and deeds
of the person represented by it. Such inscriptions were called
tituli (
Liv. 10.7,
11), or
indices
(
Tib. 4.30, “nec quaeris quid quaque
index sub imagine dicat” ), or
elogia; having this last name, Mommsen says, because they were
regarded as
excerpts from the fuller
commentarii gentilicii (Mommsen,
C. I.
L. p. 277,
elogium
from
eligere). They were brief records of the
person's history written in prose, although Atticus, we are told, made a new
departure in the composition of tituli by writing. them in pointed verse
(
Corn. Nep. Attic. 18).
They were in many cases not trustworthy,
[p. 1.993]family
pride sometimes leading to their forgery or falsification (
Liv. 4.16;
7.40). The
imagines were arranged in such an order that. when connected by lines drawn
upon the wall, they showed the
stemma or family
tree (
Plin. Nat. 35.6, “stemmata
vero lineis discurrebant ad imagines pictas” ), and the immense
length of some of these
gentilia stemmata
(
Suet. Nero 37) shows the great antiquity
of the practice of preserving the imagines of ancestors; although the fact
that some of these pedigrees were traced to a mythical ancestor (Suet.
Galba, 2) shows that some of these
portraits were imaginary representations; that is, if we suppose every link
in the chain of descent represented in the atrium of a noble house to have
had an imago corresponding to it. On festal days the recesses in which these
imagines were kept were thrown open, and the busts crowned with laurel
(
Cic. pro Muren. 41,
§ 88). The triumphators of a family were regarded with especial
pride; there seem to have been two portraits of them in the houses that
could boast of this distinction: for we find that, while they had a statue
in the vestibule (
Juv. 7.125, “hujus enim
stat currus aeneus alti, Quadrijuges in vestibulis” ), there was
also a full-length portrait of them in the atrium, standing on the triumphal
car (
Juv. 8.2, “stantes in curribus
Aemilianos” ). In this latter passage of Juvenal the portrait is
spoken of in connexion with the
stemma and the
picti vultus majorum, which shows that this
second representation of a triumphator in the atrium was made to bring him
into connexion with the table of descent. Whether these full-length
portraits to any degree replaced the older waxen masks, or were only used in
the case of triumphators, is doubtful. A passage in Martial (
2.90,
6,
“atriaque immodicis artat imaginibus” ) and one of
Vitruvius (
6.3,
6,
“imagines cum suis ornamentis” ) seem to point to the fact
that such full-length portraits were somewhat generally used in later times
to represent the more distinguished members of the family (Mommsen,
Staatsr. i.2 p. 429, n. 1).
A complete alteration in the fashion of the imagines was caused, during the
Empire, through the decreasing number of ancient and noble families, and the
rise of new families, who had no imagines, and yet wished to decorate the
atrium with portraits. The old waxen masks were now replaced by
clipeatae imagines, bronze or silver medallions,
such as had been long used for the decoration of temples and public places
(
Plin. Nat. 35.6). The senate-house
during the Empire was decorated with the medallions (
clipei) of famous orators (
Tac. Ann.
2.37,
83); and at Pompeii the
walls of the
alae in private houses are adorned
with portrait-medallions of this kind (Marquardt,
l.c. p. 239). These medallions sometimes represented the emperors and
other prominent persons unconnected with the family; but they also replaced
the waxen masks as portraits of ancestors (Just. Cod. 5.37, 22), to such an
extent indeed that Pliny tells us that in his time the older form of the
imago had wholly disappeared (Pliny,
Plin. Nat.
35.6, “Imaginum quidem pictura in totum exolevit” ).
By this is meant only that the custom of forming such waxen masks as
portraits had ceased, for the older imagines kept in the
armaria are found as late as the year 276 A.D. (Vopiscus,
Florian. 6, in which the expression “imagines
aperirent” shows that the passage refers to the older waxen
masks; Marquardt,
l.c. p. 239, n. 3).
As has been stated above, the first use assigned to the imagines at Rome was
their exhibition in public funerals. This leads to the consideration of the
Jus imaginum, or the conditions that had to
be satisfied by a man before his imago could be exhibited in the funeral
processions of any of his descendants. The right was confined to those who
had filled the offices of dictator, consul, censor, praetor, and curule
aedile: it coexists with the right of the
toga
praetexta and the
sella curulis
(
Cic. in Verr. 5.14, 36,
“togam praetextam, sellam curulem, Jus imaginis ad memoriam
posteritatemque prodendae” ), and coincides nearly with the
possession of curule office, although the interrex, a curule magistrate,
does not seem to have been included (Mommsen,
Staatsr. i.2 p. 427, n. 2). We find that the actors at such
funerals who wore the imagines of the dead were adorned with the insignia of
the offices these had, filled in life, with the toga praetexta of the consul
or praetor, the purple robe of the censor, or the toga picta of the
triumphator, and sat on curule chairs to listen to the laudatio of the
member of the race, whose funeral they attended, and to the mention of their
own past deeds (
Plb. 6.53). The
Jus imaginum must originally have been a sole
patrician right, when the patricians filled all the highest offices, and
were indeed the only true members of a gens, with which the funeral imagines
were intimately connected (Plin.
l.c.
“ut essent imagines quae comitarentur gentilicia funera” ); but
on the growth of the new nobility of office, which followed on the
equalisation of the two orders, it became a privilege of the noble plebeians
as well; and the distinction between those who had the
Jus imaginum and those who had not was equivalent to the
distinction between
nobiles and
novi homines. This right might, however, be lost
after death by one who satisfied the conditions of having held curule
office. If it was affirmed by the ruling powers at Rome that a man had not
died in the full possession of citizen rights, he lost the privilege of
having his imago exhibited, as we see in the case of Brutus and Cassius, the
exhibition of whose masks at the funerals of their race was not permitted
(
Tac. Ann. 3.76,
5); and we find the extinction of this right made part of a
penal sentence on a man who had anticipated condemnation by suicide on a
charge of
majestas (
Tac. Ann. 2.32,
2,
“
ne imago Libonis exsequias
posterorum comitaretur” ). But, as it was possible to fall below
this right, so it was possible to rise above it. The representation of the
imago was a human privilege; and consequently the deified emperor might not
be borne in the procession at the funeral of a member of his race (
D. C. 47.19).
Connected with the
Jus imaginum is the question
what restrictions were laid down by the state on the exhibition in public of
statues, medallions, or other representations of individual citizens.
Mommsen thinks that in the older times at Rome it was forbidden to set up
the statue or bust of a living man in a public place, or even in a public
part of the house, such as
[p. 1.994]the atrium. In the last
two centuries of the Republic this restriction seems to have been removed or
neglected; for we find M. Claudius Marcellus, consul in 152 B.C., placing his own statue in the temple of
Honos and Virtus founded by his grandfather (Ascon.
in
Pison. p. 12), and L. Fabius Maximus, as curule aedile in 56
B.C., erecting on the Fabian archway a statue
of himself (
C. I. L. i. p. 278; Mommsen,
l.c. 434, 435). The setting up of the busts and statues of one's
forefathers in public seems never to have been forbidden; Pliny, in tracing
the origin of the
clipei, tells us that Appius
Claudius, consul in 307 B.C., set up medallions of
his ancestors in the temple of Bellona which he had built, with the
tituli honorum beneath them (
Plin. Nat. 35.6), and in the second century
B.C. we find the portraits of ancestors taking their place on Roman coins
(Mommsen,
Römisches Münzwesen, p. 462). It
is probable that an exhibition of this sort was held by the same standing
right as the exhibition in the atrium of those who satisfied the conditions
of the
Jus imaginum; and that therefore it did
not require the consent of the state. But the community or the senate might
order the setting up of a statue of those who had filled no magistracy, but
had done some signal service to the state. Such statues were granted to
Horatius Cocles and Cloelia (
Liv. 2.10;
2.13); and to the boy Aemilius Lepidus by a decree
of the senate (
V. Max. 3.1,
1). Under the Empire, the
princeps has a standing right of having his statue set up in
any public place during his lifetime, and of granting a similar privilege to
any officer or magistrate, as Tiberius granted it to Sejanus (
Tac. Ann. 4.2,
4;
74,
3). To the emperor's statue, and even to his head on coins, a
peculiar sanctity attached; to clasp his imago was equivalent to taking
sanctuary, and this right of asylum led to abuses which claimed legal
restraint (
Tac. Ann. 3.36,
1 ; Furneaux's note, Gai.
Inst.
1.53; Mommsen,
Staatsr. ii.2 p. 737, n.
1). The right of individuals to have statues during their lifetime was also
extended under the early principate. Augustus ordained that with the honour
of a triumph or triumphal ornaments should be joined the erection of a
bronze statue of the triumphator (
D. C. 55.10);
while Claudius permitted the same honour to those who had built or restored
a public building at their own cost (
lb. 60.25).
But, since the permission to have the triumphal insignia as well as to erect
buildings for public uses had to be gained from the senate, the permission
to have a statue practically depended on the will of this body, or rather on
the will of some member of the ruling house who guided their decisions
(Mommsen,
Staatsr. i2 p. 438).
(Marquardt,
Privatl. der Römer, i. pp. 235-239, 243;
O. Benndorf,
Antike Gesichtshelme und Sepulcralmasken in the
Denkschriften der Kaiserlichen Academie der
Wissenschaften, xxviii.; Eichstädt,
De
imaginibus Romanorum dissertationes duae;
Quatremère de Quincy,
Le Jupiter Olympien, pp. 36,
37. On the
Jus imaginum, Mommsen,
Römisches Staatsrecht, i.2
pp. 426
sqq.)
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