Sarcophagus with a Marine Thiasos and Lid with Horai

Roman art

The front of this sarcophagus is decorated with a marine thiasos comprising four pairs of Tritons and Nereids playing different musical instruments and arranged symmetrically on either side of the head of Oceanus. Two sea creatures, a panther and a griffin, are carved in bas-relief on the sides. The lid is decorated with a continuous frieze of Horai, personifications of the seasons, each shown with their respective fruit. Two the sides, there are two tragic, acroterial masks with heavy ringlets of hair piled up high on top of the head. The sculpture is shown, without the lid, in the Lake Enclosure in a late eighteenth-century drawing by Percier. In 1827, it was among the works selected for restoration by Massimiliano Laboureur and, in 1832, it was recorded in its current location.

The iconographic motifs of the marine thiasos and the Horai became popular in Roman funerary art, and specifically sarcophagus decoration, in the late Antonine period. Percier’s drawing raises doubts as to whether the lid was original to the sarcophagus, but both pieces in any case date to the second century CE.

Object details

Commentary

This sarcophagus, which is entirely preserved, is decorated with a symmetrically arranged marine thiasos, in the middle of which there is a bearded head of Oceanus from which the waves that form the base of the image depart. To either side, there are two Tritons. The one to the right holds a helm in his right hand and a horn, held out and ready to play, in his left. The Triton on the left has a long beard and is playing the lyre. There is a Nereid on each of the Tritons’ tails, with their heads turned toward them. The female figures have hair gathered in a chignon and crowned with a ring. They are nude, except for a length of drapery, which creates a velificatio behind the head of the goddess on the left, who holds it with her right hand. These pairs are followed by two other couples of Tritons and Nereids. In the one to the right, the Triton is beardless and playing a horn, and the Nereid’s drapery is again arched over her head. In the one on the left, the Triton is bearded and holds an anchor in his left hand, while the Nereid holds a cithara. They are the only two figures that do not turn towards the middle of the relief, looking instead at a winged Eros behind them. Another winged Eros, standing on the tail of the last Triton on the right, closes the right-hand side of the relief.

The composition is particularly dense and the figures, which are heavily restored, occupy the entire surface of the panel. The sides are decorated with a bas-relief with scratched outlines, depicting a sea panther on the left side and a griffin on the right.

The theme of the sea procession was fully developed in funerary sculpture starting in the second quarter of the second century CE, at first continuously on the front of the sarcophagi and later, during the second half of the century, with the addition of a central motif. This motif was initially a head of Oceanus, with the members of the procession arranged symmetrically on either side of it. But already in the third century it was all but permanently replaced by a clypeus, often in the shape of a seashell, enclosing the image of the deceased (Zanker, Ewald 2004, pp. 117–134, 325–331).

As for the meaning of the theme of the marine thiasos in funerary monuments, Buonarroti was the first, in 1698, to interpret the figures as a procession of mythological figures accompanying the soul of the deceased to the Island of the Blessed: ‘many sarcophagi are sculpted with marine spirits to accompany the souls who were going to Elysium’ (p. 44). This theory was revived in 1942 by Cumont, according to whom ‘plus transparent est le symbole de la navigation des âmes vers le Iles Fortunées, où une antique tradition plaçait le séjour des hèroes. Cette traversée a été choisie comme motif de décoration de nombreaux monuments funéraires’ (p. 166). Rumf diverged from this interpretation, seeing in these mythological scenes sophisticated allegories of hope for life after death. He acknowledged, however, the absence of literary and epigraphical documentation in support of this theory, as well as the use of the iconographic theme in non-funerary contexts (1939 pp. 131–132). According to other scholars, the subject was steeped in hedonistic messages, visually circulated through images of joy, nudity and eroticism, arguing that the presence of the Meerwesen on the sarcophagi alludes to the atemporal blessedness of the afterworld (Sichtermann 1970a, pp. 214–215; Sichtermann 1970b, pp. 236–238; Zanker, Ewald 2004, pp. 117–119, 132–134).

Barringer attributed the Nereids with benevolent value, arguing that they provided protection during voyages, in the literal sense by sea and the metaphorical one towards the afterlife (1995, pp. 54–55).

The theme of the marine thiasos on sarcophagi is likely an evocation of the various meanings of the netherworld, both as an allusion to the idyllic condition of the deceased and as the soul’s symbolic journey to the Islands of the Blessed (Sichtermann 1963, p. 422; Zanker, Ewald 2004, p. 133). 

The lid of the sarcophagus is decorated with facing pairs of reclining Horai, who personify the four seasons: spring opposite summer, and autumn opposite winter. Two of the female figures wear a high-girdled chiton and a type of mantle called a himation that is draped over the belly and blowing up over the head to form an arch called a velificatio, ending under the supporting elbow. The divinity to the far right is also wearing a chiton and a himation, but the latter is spread over her pelvis. The long garment, which reveals their feet, adheres to the figures’ bodies, showing their generous forms. One of the four, representing summer, is only wearing the mantle, which, as in the other cases, is swelling up to form an arch. The figures are all shown in the same pose, with one leg bent and resting on the ground and the other bent over it. Their oval-shaped faces are framed with long hair, parted in the middle and gathered into a low chignon. Each woman holds a basket in her outstretched arm, full of seasonal fruit and resting on their knees, and each pair is facing a kantharos, set on the ground and overflowing with the harvest.  There are two acroterial theatre masks on the sides of the lid, each with a lofty όnkos, a hairstyle in which the hair is piled high on top of the head in a semicircle cascading down in parallel curls. There are two horizontal torches on the sides.

In the funerary sphere, this iconographic theme was widespread, with numerous variants, between the second and third centuries CE. (Matz 1958, pp. 33–41; Kranz 1984, p. 24).

Turcan and Zanker interpreted the seasons as an evocation of fecund, generous nature, ensuring humankind a rich, peaceful life in the eternal alternation of the seasons (Turcan 1999, pp. 122–129; Zanker, Ewald 2004, pp. 167–169).

A drawing of the Borghese sarcophagus, without the lid, was made by Percier at the end of the eighteenth century, showing it against the wall of the Lake Enclosure (Di Gaddo 1997, p. 118). In 1827, it was mentioned as having come from that location in a letter from Minister Evasio Gozzani to Prince Camillo Borghese listing the works entrusted to the sculptor Massimiliano Laboureur for restoration (Moreno, Sforzini, 1897, p. 355). In 1832, it was recorded in its current location, in Room II, by Nibby, who, comparing it to a similar one in the Museo Pio Clementino, described it as of ‘inferior workmanship’ (p. 74).

The organisation of the narrative based on a precise symmetrical scheme, the delicate rendering of the drapery and the strong physiognomic characterisation of the Tritons share strong similarities with a relief of the same subject in the Louvre and another in the Aldobrandini Collection, both dated to the end of the second century CE (Rumf 1939, pp. 13–15, nos 38, 40).

And the composition of a continuous frieze with two pairs of facing women and the two in the middle back-to-back is found in a sculpture from the Antonine period in the Museo Nazionale Romano (Dayan, Musso 1981, pp. 153-155) and on a sarcophagus with a relief of the myth of Orestes in the Cleveland Museum of Art (Hanfmann 1951, p. 170, no. 385). 

Percier’s drawing casts doubt on whether the lid originally belonged to the sarcophagus. In any case, both would seem to date to the middle of the second century CE.

Giulia Ciccarello