The Emperor Titus Vespasianus Augustus - I

Titus portrayed as a Roman general. The portrait of Titus was probably created after Vespasian's accession to power and before the Olympiad of the year 73 AD. The torso can be dated to the Neronian period.

Nereids riding sea horses, dolphins and a “gorgoneion” decorate the cuirass of the Roman emperor, a relief derived from earlier Greek creations and skillfully adapted to various uses and reproduced again and again on Roman products. The choice of this relief emphasizes the power of the new dynasty and garners respect from the Greeks.

The German archaeologist Renate Bol, who has dealt with the Metroon sculptures extensively, and closely studied the cuirassed statue of Titus, found that the portrait head was not original to the torso, but instead, it belonged to an armored statue that initially depicted Nero. This reconstruction is based primarily on the uneven proportions of the statue’s head and body and on the fact that the statues of Claudius and the headless armored torsos have ribbons lying conspicuously on their shoulders. Since such ribbons are absent from the statue of Titus, Bol concluded that the original statue did not wear a wreath, and that this was best explained by the fact that it was a representation of the young Nero. Others scholars agree that there are signs of re-use, but do not agree with the assumption that the original statue represented Nero. In 2004 Varner includes the head as an example of an image of Titus that was re-cut from an existing image of Nero.

 

Source: arachne.dainst.org

 

Marble statue

Height 208 cm

Flavian, 1st century AD

From Olympia, Metroon

Olympia Archaeological Museum, Inv. No. Λ 126

 

 

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