Last Statues of Antiquity

Project Description:

Ancient towns were filled with life-size bronze and marble figures – by the third century important cities of the empire could have over a thousand such statues. The habit of erecting statues in public to rulers, and to other dignitaries and benefactors, was a defining characteristic of the ancient world. The dedication of statues expressed the relationship between rulers and ruled and articulated the benefaction-and-honour system of city politics. Statues also played a significant role in defining civic identity, and in forming and perpetuating a city’s collective memory. In the fourth to sixth centuries AD, statues continued to be erected in many parts of the empire – but already the uniform practices of earlier imperial times had broken down and become attenuated. By the mid-seventh century, the statue-habit, once ubiquitous, had completely disappeared from the Roman world. Not even in Constantinople were new statues set up. The ‘Last Statues of Antiquity’ is investigating all evidence for new statuary of the period circa 280–650, as well as the slow decline (and eventual death) of the ancient statue-habit. The project-team will produce a study of ‘The Last Statues of Antiquity’, in book form, supported by an illustrated and searchable on-line catalogue, freely available, of all the data for late antique statuary. This catalogue (which will not be available in print) will be the essential foundation for the book; but will also act as a free-standing resource usable by scholars, students, and the interested public. It will be available as a teaching and research tool, both for people with very broad interests (for example, in urban history and archaeology, in late Roman art history, or in the politics of the later Roman world), and for those engaged in more specialist projects, involving things such as costume-history, marble studies, and the development of letter-carving.