Art and Religion in Ancient Greece and Rome

Art and Religion in Ancient Greece and Rome
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion

Robin Osborne and Caroline Vout
Subject: Ancient Religion, Religion and Art Online Publication Date: May 2016
DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.013.81
Summary and Keywords
One of the challenges shared across cultures and faiths is the intangible, ineffable nature
of the divine. One problematic, yet theologically productive, solution to this problem is to
embody the divine in sculpture and painting; another is to seek divine aid and attest to
divine presence by making votive offerings. In the absence of a sacred text, it was
sculptural and graphic representation of the divine that made sanctuaries and temples in
Greece and Rome theologically active places. But the need to experience god was not
confined to these centers. Greek and Roman gods were everywhereon coins, gems,
drinking vessels, domestic wall paintings. Even when they were not there, their power
could be felt in the representation of those who had felt their power. They were as
pervasive as they were all seeing.
This article examines how this material culture worked to bring gods and mortals into
contact. It does so by tackling three major issues: first, it discusses how a wide range of
artifacts, monumental and modest, shaped sanctuary space and guided and recorded the
worshippers interaction with the divine; second, it looks at images of gods themselves
and how these affected epiphany, while maintaining a critical gap and insisting on their
strangeness; and third, it uses art to rethink the relationship of religion and myth.
Although there are some continuities between cultures, the rise of Hellenistic and Roman
ruler cults created a new subcategory of gods, creating additional representational
challenges. Out of this came Christ, who was god incarnate. We briefly explore how early
Christian artists used the problems of anthropomorphism to their spiritual advantage.
Keywords: gods, cult, ritual, votives, statues, sculpture, sanctuaries, painting, mythology
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date: 23 July 2017

The Materiality of Greek and Roman Gods

The Greeks and Romans recognized not one supernatural power, but many supernatural
powersmany gods and other beings able to exercise some sort of supernatural
influence. Acknowledging this influence meant communing with these beings, and to do
that, the Greeks and Romans had to know what they looked like, and where to find them.
Picturing supernatural powers and creating spaces for them is both precondition and
consequence of religious thinking.
The picture that the Greeks and Romans formed was primarily created by texts. In a
famous statement, the 5th-century historian Herodotus (2.53) maintained that it was the
epic poets Homer and Hesiod, whom he places 400 years before his own time, who gave
the Greeks their gods, ascribing them genealogies, epithets, honors and skill-sets. And
indeed much Greek discourse on the gods, including justifications of why sculptors
shaped gods in the way that they did, refers back to epic poetry.1 But justification and
stimulation are not the same thing, and it was sculptures and paintings of the gods in
temples and in sanctuaries, but also on the walls of houses and tombs and on pottery
vessels in everyday use, that imposed themselves most frequently, vividly, and
subconsciously upon the inhabitants of the Greek and Roman world. It was through visual
images that the many potential forms of the godsanthropomorphic, theriomorphic, or
even as shapeless stones or pieces of woodbecame daily life, confirmed as matter as
well as theory.
In cult, Greeks and Romans routinely invoked, and thus attested to the existence of, the
gods through sacrifices of animals, libations, prayers, and hymns, but their actions, and
the addressees of their actions, were reinforced by pictorial or figurative representation.
Hymns were sung in the presence of statues of the gods as though in the presence of the
gods themselves; statues of those making offerings accompanied and commemorated
votive offerings; representations of processions in honor of a god greeted and guided
processions; representations of sacrificial beasts encouraged and celebrated sacrifice;
and scenes of sacrificial activity were shown on reliefs and on pottery used in the vicinity
of at least minimal acts of worship.2
In this article we ask what the visual arts contributed to Greek and Roman religion, and
explore how that contribution changed over time. We look first at how the imagery with
which worshippers were surrounded in sanctuaries readied them for worship, forming
and reinforcing theological assumptions and channeling individual devotion and group
behavior. We examine the images of the gods themselves and the ways in which
anthropomorphism was both problem and solutiona problem so theologically productive
that even early Christian artists could not resist giving Christ a body. We then zoom out
from the sanctuary, and build on the realization that the gods were not confined to
religious spaces, but were everywhere, to think about experiencing the divine more
broadly, in the home for example, where household shrines and mythological scenes,
some of them the violent results of displeasing the gods rather than images of the gods
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themselves, allowed for a more intimate and sometimes irreverent or uneasy relationship.
We have not attempted to give a history of images related to the gods, nor to discuss
the whole chronological, geographical, or generic range of relevant material. Instead we
have taken some particular examples that allow what the visual arts do to be seen in
context and in action.
Art in Sanctuaries and on Temples

Greek and Roman gods both were, and were not, like humans. One side-effect of this is
that archaeologists recognize sanctuaries of the gods because they are marked by
different material assemblages from human dwellings. Although pots and other more or
less everyday items were given to the gods, and although statuettes and other images of
gods are found in ancient houses, what is found in sanctuaries is distinguished from
domestic deposits in both quality and quantity. Gods deserved the most, and the most
exquisite, artifacts.
Greek and Roman sanctuaries came to be crowded with statues and other objects
dedicated to the gods.3 The very density and chaos of this crowding produced not simply
an image of divine superabundance but the sense that human endeavor could never do
more than approximate meeting the needs of the god. The god always needed bigger and
better.
Unfortunately for us, classical Greek statues were primarily made of bronze and have
thus been melted down: only rarely do they survive in a sanctuary context (even the
Delphi Charioteer is only part of what would have once been an impressive sculptural
group).
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Rather, our best hope of

seeing what a sanctuary
would have looked like is
to turn back to the Archaic
period, when most statues
were of limestone or
marble. Particularly well
preserved, because they
were buried in a pit after
they had been
systematically knocked
down by Persian invaders
in 480 BCE, are the Archaic
marble statues from the
Click to view larger
Athenian Acropolis.4
Figure 1. Delphi Charioteer, 470s BCE. The Delphi

The sculptural assemblage
Archaeological Museum, Delphi, Greece.
on the Archaic Athenian
Photograph by Adam Carr, Courtesy of Wikimedia
Commons. Acropolis was dominated
by figures known to
modern scholars as korai (maidens)figures of young women standing with legs
together and staring forward but with one arm extended holding an offering.
Fragments from almost

300 korai have been found
on the Athenian acropolis,
ranging in date from the
second quarter of the 6th
century to the first quarter
of the 5th century BCE.5
Scholars debate whether
these maidens are
intended as images of a
worshipper or of a
goddess. Finds of korai in
sanctuaries devoted to
male deities suggest that
such figures did not always
stand in for goddesses;
Figure 2. The Peplos Kore, c. 540 BCE. The Acropolis
Museum, Athens, Greece. finds of korai that were
Photograph by Marsyas, licensed under CC BY-SA dedicated by men suggest
2.5. that they did not always
stand for the dedicator.
The statues lack any of the attributes that distinguish Athena (the breastplate known as
the aegis, a spear, helmet, or shield) and are perhaps best seen as personifying the very
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act of giving to the gods by showing girls of marriageable age (wearing their dowry in
their fine dresses and jewels, in preparation to be given away to their husbands)
eternally reaching out to the immortals. Their similarity to one another creates a visual
rhythm that speaks to the repetition that is ritual activity. But, just as strikingly, no two
are identical: their variety creates a further divine gift in the form of a dramatic fashion
parade.
Punctuating the display of Acropolis korai were various male counterpartsa small
number of kouroi (youths), shown naked and frontal, with one foot advanced and their
hands by their sides, and a lonely, clothed kouros, whose pose mirrors that of a kore.6
What kind of figure is he? Is his dressing up an attempt to reclaim for the men the crucial
role that women played in Greek ritual practice? In the case of the others, as for various
male figures on horseback, and a statue of a bearded man carrying a calf on his shoulders
(the implication being that he was on his way to sacrifice it), the message is more
straightforward: instead of gifts, they offer templates to worshippers for their own
behavior and aspirations, encouraging both competitive generosity toward the goddess,
and competitive display of god-given resources, whether in the brawn of their bodies or in
their ownership of horses.
Also buried on the Athenian acropolis after the Persian sack were limestone and marble
sculptures from various Archaic temples destroyed by the Persians as well.7 This
architectural sculpture paraded something more primordialsupernatural power. Lions
attack bulls, a triple-bodied (and triple-headed) monster with a snaky tail inhabits the
corner of a pediment, Athena dominates the center of a pediment exhibiting her martial
prowess against giants, and Heracles appears both fighting against the Hydra and Triton
and receiving the reward for his labors as he enters the gods company on Olympus. In
these encounters, we see why human beings need the gods on their side: the world is
inhabited by beings other than humans and gods, and without the aid of the gods,
humans would not survive.
Sculptures from the center of pediments survive less well than those from the corners,
but evidence from other archaic sanctuaries suggests that both the most threatening of
monsters (e.g., the Gorgon whose gaze petrified any human) and the gods themselves,
sometimes riding toward the viewer in a chariot, tended to be positioned central stage,
often staring straight out from that commanding position over the worshippers at the
altar that normally stood in front of the temple. Those gathered for sacrifice had to face
up to divine power by affirming their place in the hierarchy: they sacrificed domesticated
animals in recognition of the gods role in making productive farming possible and of the
supernatural help required to suppress the wild.
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Sculptures were not the

only form of figurative
representation on the
archaic Athenian
Acropolis. Finely
decorated ceramics have
also been found, in the
form of plaques and
painted pots, some of them
large.8 We cannot be sure
that the pots were made
Click to view larger specially for dedication,
Figure 3. The Gorgon as depicted on the western though some seem to have
pediment from the Temple of Artemis at Corcyra, c.
580 BCE. The Archaeological Museum of Corfu, been, but there is no doubt
Greece. that the plaques were. It is
Photograph by Dr.K., licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. remarkable, therefore,
that of the few that
survive, one shows an image of humans having sex, an activity explicitly banned in
sanctuaries, and one for which myth presented Athena, the virgin goddess, as having
little empathy. Here, the image is not about giving or instilling good practice; it is the
ultimate agalma or delightful gift in that it unashamedly advocates pleasure.
Although there is little left of the Classical statuary on the Athenian Acropolis, beyond a
few bases, we are fortunate that the Roman traveler Pausanias, who visited Athens in the
second half of the 2nd century CE, gives an account of the sculptures that he saw there
(Pausanias Periegesis 1.22.828.2). Where the archaic Acropolis invited comparison
between similar votives, the Classical Acropolis offered an immensely varied array of
statues, recalling episodes from myth (e.g., a Perseus who has just slain Medusa) and
from Athenian history (e.g., the general Dieitrephes, shown pierced with arrows, and
Pericles), as well as representing Athena (many times) and other gods (e.g., Hygieia,
Artemis, Zeus). There was much more here to stimulate memories of particular events
and to acknowledge Athenas presence through her active and ongoing care for her city.
Unlike the korai, but like the pediments and metopes, these were sculptures that begged
the telling of a story, raising issues about what actually happened, and about the gods
role in those events. Where the archaic temple sculpture alluded to a mythical past and
the archaic statues asked for Athenas protection in daily domestic activities, these
Classical votives credited her with more political influence, writing a multi-faceted
biography of the citys patron deity.
Athenss political history was at the same time assimilated to the mythical past in the
sculptures that adorned the citys Classical temples.9 Both pediments of the Parthenon
put Athena at the center (showing her birth on the East and her battle with Poseidon to
win Attica on the West) in something of the archaic fashion. The metopes of the
Parthenon presented the great mythological struggles against Amazons, Centaurs, and
Giants, along with scenes from the sacking of Troy, encouraging, by their episodic format
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and absence of closure, the sense that these were still current battles; that Athenss fight
against Persia was similarly epic. The unprecedented Parthenon frieze, inside the
colonnade around the top of the cellas exterior, represents a procession of people and
animals, culminating in the handing over of a robe or peplos in the company of the
gods. Such a procession, with a spectacular cavalry element which here takes up most of
the length, was the central feature of Athenss major festival of Athena, the Panathenaia.
Rather as the archaic korai stood as perpetual votaries, the frieze converts an occasional
ritual into a timeless ritual and Athenss citizens into heroes.
Even more insistent on advertising Athenas on-going role in contemporary politics were
the sculptures on and around the tiny temple of Athena Nike, viewed by visitors as they
approached the Acropolis gateway. Here a balustrade showed Nike sacrificing a bull on
the eve of battle as well as (un)tying her sandal as she moved between the world of war
and the world of the sanctuary. Even goddesses of victory had to observe sanctuary
regulations. Yet she was not the star, but attendant on Athenaone of a procession of
Nikai who quoted the Parthenon, and the long lost korai, by bringing offerings to the
goddess. The frieze of the temple figured a series of battles, including the historical battle
against the Persians at Marathon some seventy years earlier. The Athena worshipped in
this place was the source of Athenss glorious military successes, deserving worship for
the triumph of Athens and its empire, and demanding continued offerings of sacrifice if
Athens was to maintain her military and political pre-eminence. Nikes manifest sexual
attractions here signal to the Athenians, before they even enter the gateway of the
Acropolis, that if they want to continue to win what they desire they must continue also to
(ob)serve Athena.
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To visit the Athenian

Acropolis in the 4th
century BCE was to come to
worship an Athena quite
different from the Athena
whom 6th-century
Athenians had
encountered there. The
archaic world of domestic
encounters with a goddess
of mythical prowess had
been replaced by a
Classical world dominated
by politics in which Athena
was firmly implicated. To
Figure 4. Nike (un)tying her sandal from the Nike
such an extent was Athena
Parapet, c. 420 BCE. The Acropolis Museum, Athens, turned into a political
Greece. goddess that she became a
Photograph by Marsyas, licensed under CC BY-SA necessary ally not only for
2.5.
Athenians but for other
Greeks, as various
Hellenistic kings recognized in making dedications there. One of the most impressive of
these was on the south side of the Acropolis, where, probably in 200 BCE, King Attalos I of
Pergamum in Asia Minor erected more than 100 statues, some of them representative of
Pergamums own victory over the Gauls. In plotting this victory on the Acropoliss
battleground next to conflicts of gods with giants, and Greeks with Amazons and
Persians, Attalos extended Athenas diplomatic remit, cultivating her as a symbol of
international affairs.10
The Athenian Acropolis offers us a rich glimpse of a Greek sanctuary, but only a glimpse.
Not only did the Athenians present a different Athena operating in different ways in
different worlds through the architectural and free-standing sculpture and other votives
on display at different periods, but other sanctuaries gave other gods, and indeed Athena
herself, very different divine charismas. On the slopes of the Athenian Acropolis itself, the
sanctuary of Asklepios, through its display of votive body-parts, now known only from the
textual lists in the inventories for the sanctuary, presented a god whose concern for the
human body itself was more intimate and immediately interventionist than that of
Athena.11 This was a sanctuary in which the sculptures and other gifts plausibly spoke
only of the god as healer. But this was also a sanctuary without a temple; if the individual
in need of healing were instead in Asklepioss sanctuary at Epidauros, they would find a
temple whose gold and ivory cult statue showed Asklepios as a figure of power, seated
and wielding a scepter like Olympian Zeus. At Epidauros, pediments showing the sack of
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Troy by the Greeks and battles of Greeks against Amazons put the emphasis on Asklepios
as son of Apollo and on his civic power rather than his concern with the individual body.12
Although there is no such thing as a typical Greek or Roman temple, there is much
more conformity between them than between statues, or other objects. The sculptures on
Greek temples at any period had quite a lot in common with each otherand even across
the centuries, the moustached face that dominates the temple-pediment of Sulis Minerva
at Bath (Roman Aquae Sulis), while drawing on a Celtic as well as Classical artistic
heritage, shares in the confrontational stare of the Gorgon who dominates the early 6th-
century BCE temple of Artemis at Corfu. But when it comes to smaller votives the variety is
immense.
As the example of the

Athenian Acropolis and the
sanctuary of Asklepios on
its slopes has already
suggested, the variety of
votives represents less the
diverse regions of the
Greek and Roman world,
or the longevity of that
world, than the diversity of
the polytheistic pantheon.
Figure 5. Pediment of the Temple of Sulis Minerva,
Not only were there many
Aquae Sulis (Bath), c. 70 CE. Roman Baths Museum,
Bath, England. gods (the twelve
Photograph by Mike Peel, licensed under CC-BY- Olympian gods were only
SA-4.0. the start), but each of
those gods had many
different guises (Athena Polias, Athena of the city, was only one of Athenas faces; we
also find e.g., Athena Ergane [working Athena], Athena Chalkioikos [of the bronze
house], Athena Phratria [of the phratry], and many others). A pilgrim who travelled
across both space and time would find no two sanctuaries alike, even sanctuaries of the
same deity. But since deities impressed themselves on their worshippers precisely
through the image created by the material environment of their sanctuary, this material
variety produced, as well as reflected, polytheism.
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Images of Gods
Herodotus might give the lead to Homer and Hesiod, butas we have already begun to
appreciatesculptors and painters too had long given shape to the gods, imbuing them
with individual character and divine charisma. Their creations were not illustrations of
epic poetry, but substantiations of the divine, interventions in a world in which seeing
not affirming some creedwas believing. They were concrete: whereas the Iliad can
conjure Zeuss power in his dark eyebrows and the movement of his ambrosial hair
(1.52830), leaving the audience to fill in the gaps, makers of material objects have to
embed those eyebrows in a fixed face (how dark is dark? what do ambrosial locks look
like?), on a static body (how big, buff, beautiful?).13 In committing to particular choices,
they constrain their shape-shifting, timeless subject, tying him (for his gender is also now
more marked) to one form and one moment foreveruntil such time as that form should
be damaged or destroyed. Suddenly, Zeus seems dangerously vulnerable, and the
dramatic device that is anthropomorphism, both enslaving and arbitrary. And yet visual
images of the gods were the greatest proof of their existence. Some of them were
worshipped. Although early Christians mocked the images of pagan deities and felt the
need to destroy them, particularly their faces, they also needed an image of Christthe
problems it raised were theologically productive, and divisive.14
Not all of the gods worshipped in ancient Greece and Rome were anthropomorphic: non-
figural representations of divinity such as stones and logs were natural in cultures that
saw woods and streams as sacred: any object could stand for a god or goddess.15 Indeed
some of the most sacred images of all were those, like the statue of Athena Polias on
the Acropolis at Athens, that were said to have fallen from the sky.16 They were not man-
made, but organically spawned, beyond time and understanding. But for millennia,
humans have made sense of their world by making figurative sculpture and paintings.
The earliest of these forms are often, optimistically, identified as deities.
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Even in the Greek world of

the 7th century BC, when
gods are clearly definable
for the first time, there is
little to distinguish them
from non-deities, beyond
their attributes and display
or narrative context.
Commensurability was key,
and the making of gods in
mans image part of
exploring what it was to be
human. A century later
and images of gods and
goddesses and funerary
Figure 6. Snake Goddess. Archaeological Museum
markers assumed similar
of Heraklion, Greece, c. 1600 BCE. shape: scholars are still
Photograph by C messier, licensed under CC BY-SA undecided about whether
4.0. the Peplos kore from the
Acropolis is a
marriageable maiden, priestess, or Artemis.
From the mid-6th century into the 5th century, competition between craftsman and
between individual patrons and poleis, and shifts in self-expression more broadly (from
the rhapsodic singing of the Iliad to the staging of Greek Tragedy, and from pre-Socratic
philosophy to Platonic dialogue) made figurative art more dramatic, and increasingly self-
conscious of its relationship with the viewer.17 Figures broke free of the frontal or profile
frame and began to move, replacing the statements made by the Peplos kore and her
sisters and brothers (this body is a man or woman, and man in the image of god) with a
like-to-life quality intense enough to turn statements into questions (What kind of man
or woman am I? What kind of male or female deity? What is the relationship between
flesh and marble, mortal flesh and divinity?). Though still man-shaped, gods bodies had
to find new ways to signal their difference; that they were beyond the rules of human
society. By the middle of the 4th century, Aphrodite had shed her clothes), and Dionysus
swapped his bearded paunchy shape for a lithe, sexy body, so androgynous as, in some
cases, to appear almost hermaphroditic.18
Images of the gods appeared in every sort of material, from humble terracotta to precious
metals and stones and in every contexton domestic drinking vessels, gems and coins, as
well as in sanctuaries and tombs.19 By the 2nd century BCE, even those in sanctuaries had
been transplanted from their cultic setting, taken as booty after Romes imperial
expansion into Greece, and re-homed in porticoes and temples in Italy.20 There,
admiration led to reproduction, adaptation, and art-appreciation, and a world in which
statues of Aphrodite and Dionysus were turned from embodiments of the divine, to
markers of good taste in elite homes and gardens and in bathhouses. Yet even next to the
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plunge pool or in the peristyle, they were still gods, one of them (Dionysus, or Bacchus as
he becomes) so exotic as to turn any space into an Arcadia, and the other, Venus, the
mother of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, which would itself engender new gods in the shape
of the divine Julius Caesar, Augustus, and Claudius. Back in the 2nd century BCE,
Dionysiac cult had been repressed by the Senate. Two hundred years later, his images
popularity was proof of a personal religious and aesthetic experience.21
From the very beginning, some representations of gods were accorded more obvious,
public or official worship than others, not least those accorded pride of place inside
temples. As soon as permanent, monumental structures were built in the 8th century BCE
to house the god and his gifts, statues on bases seem to have served as the focal point of
cult activity. Archaeological evidence for these is rather scanty, but the height of three
geometric figures from the Temple of Apollo at Dreros on Crete, the tallest of them,
presumably Apollo himself, almost a meter tall, and all of them made of bronze sheets
hammered over a wooden core, makes them likely candidates.22 Size remained one of the
chief ways of distinguishing gods from mortals: in the 5th century BCE, the sculptor
Pheidias pushed this distinction to breaking point, making statues consisting of a wooden
framework but covered in gold, with ivory for the exposed flesh, and making them on a
scale never seen before, for the cellae of the Parthenon and the Temple of Zeus at
Olympiatoo big to be carved from single tree trunks or from sections of the largest
elephant tusks.23
The feats of construction

involved were super-
human, never mind the
finished products, which
were too big and shiny to
be taken in at a glance, so
big in Zeuss case that,
although he was
represented seated, he
nigh on broke through the
ceiling. Strabo (8.3.30)
writes: The artist seems
to have failed to take into
account the question of
proportion. But what
would it mean for even the
Figure 7. Column of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia,
Greece, c. 470456 BCE. Courtesy of Wikimedia most skilled sculptor to
Commons. have captured the measure
Photograph by Bgabel, licensed under GNU FDL. of god? Ancient authors
are obsessed with how he
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knew what Zeus looked like. But theologically speaking, Pheidias has to fall short, just as
his statue has to exceed the limits of human construction.
Traditionally, statues such as these are known as cult statues (the implication being
that those inside the temple were the focus of cultic activity at the site). But what is the
Greek or Latin for cult statue, and how do words such as xoanon or agalma, or, in
Latin, simulacrum, differ from other statue words, and all of these map onto what was
happening in the sanctuary space?24 Statues in temples might be referred to as
agalmata, but the word had started life referring to anything that might delight a god
or goddess, and continued to be used to refer to dedications, representing Zeus, Athena,
or some other deity. Who is to say which statue was most sacred, most affecting, and
most capable of capturing or conjuring divine presence or religious feeling? Everything in
the sanctuary belonged to the gods.
On the Athenian Acropolis, the situation was particularly complicated: the charisma of
Pheidiass Parthenon statue was rivaled by that of the ancient olivewood Athena, the
heaven-sent Athena Polias, which most scholars think was the statue that was dressed in
the woven robe during the Panathenaia pictured on the Parthenon frieze.25 But in all
sanctuaries, experience of the divine depended on something more than the potential of
glimpsing the god inside; it started as the worshipper encountered, and probably failed to
take in, the seas of dedications on the approach road, on the steps and around altars, of
different sizes, materials, styles, periods. Athena had many bodies, none of them quite
feminine (think of the tree trunk beneath Pheidiass gold).26 She inhabited each and every
image, and the gaps between them. In this way, she was eternal, rather than of the
moment.
This world of gods was further swollen by representations of semi-divine figures and
heroes such as Hercules.27 A red-figure column-krater, now in the Metropolitan Museum
in New York, represents gods of the traditional Greek pantheon, in familiar poses with
familiar attributes, and the hero Hercules wandering in, complete with lion-skin and club,
to see himself being immortalized as a statue.28 As the artist adds the finishing touches to
the image, Hercules raises his right hand to his face in a gesture of surprise. But at
almost the same time as the pot was being painted, Alexander the Great was being
associated with Hercules in images on coins; and after his death, Hellenistic dynasts and
Roman emperors would continue to cultivate new gods, and cast themselves in gods
image.29 Perhaps the biggest challenge to the aura and authority of the divine image came
in the Principate when the deification of good emperors and their sisters and mothers
created a subset of immortals, not dei or di (gods like Zeus/Jupiter were gods), but
divi (divinities). Throughout the empire, altars and temples were built to Rome and
Augustus as well as to Mars, Jupiter, and so on.30 What did these divi look like, and what
did the answer do to the age-old tensions between mortal flesh and divinity?
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This is a question writ

large in an anecdote about
the emperor Caligula
seeking to replace the
head of Pheidiass Zeus
with his own (Suet. Cal.
22.2), but it is raised by
every line-free portrait of
Augustus, every image of
Drusilla as Aphrodite and
of Nero in a radiate crown
(previously associated with
the sun-god).31
By the 2nd century CE, the

emperor Hadrian could be
Figure 8. Statue of Roman Emperor Claudius as
Jupiter to a new
Jupiter from Lanuvium, Vatican Museum, 42 CE.
Ganymede. This new
Photograph by Montarde, licensed under CC BY-SA
3.0. Ganymede was Hadrians
young male lover,
Antinous, his premature death in the River Nile initiatory of a cult that honored him as
hero and god through the length and breadth of the empire.32 Rather than being brawny
like Hercules, Antinous was sometimes represented as Apolline, sometimes closer to
Dionysus or Osiris, his youthful torso, down-turned head and sulky features, summative of
a god whose power lay in being passive, and heart-meltingly beautiful. In the sexy shape
of a boy from Asia Minor who rose from the dead to be the friendly face of Roman rule,
the relationship between flesh and the divine was again revised. More statues have been
identified as Antinous than any other person from classical antiquity bar Augustus and
Hadrian himself. People worshipped Antinous and asked for his protection; but they also
identified with him, imagining what it might be like to be intimate with the emperor. He
was god, and intermediary between divus Hadrian and his subjects. Unsurprisingly,
perhaps, when Christians attacked polytheism, Antinous became the pin-up of pagan
idolatry. He still is (see the Temple of Antinous).
Antinous was also a template for Christ. With Christ, monotheism triumphed and, with it,
the need for one god to be all things to all men, father, son and Holy Spirit. Christ
was not simply man-shaped; he was born of woman, a genesis that made the issue of his
anthropomorphism even more tense than it had been for a god like Hermes, who simply
chose to adopt human guise, appearing as a pillar with head and penis one moment, and
as a young, active traveler the next.
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What should Christ look

like? Interestingly, given
Judaisms longstanding
suspicion of figurative
images, early Christianity
did give him a body, and a
beautiful one at that. How
could it not, when
incarnation, that is
embodiment, played such
a central role in Christian
doctrine? Christs lowly
origins, humility and self-
sacrifice made the image
of Antinous as good a
paradigm as any, as good
Figure 9. Herm of Hermes, second half of 1st
century CE. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Villa as the active images of
Collection, Malibu, California. Romes emperors, whose
Digital image courtesy of the Gettys Open Content authority Christ
Program.
challenged, and whose
equestrian statues were
downsized to picture Jesus on a donkey.33 In catacombs, on sarcophagi, and in
freestanding sculpture, he was often represented young, soft-featured, and long-haired,
feminine even, preferring a beard when he was enthroned in splendor as a substitute for
Jupiter in the apse mosaics of Christian churches. Despite early opposition to the use of
Christs image, and periods of official iconoclasm, churches are still adorned with images
of him and his family. The problems of picturing god in relation to humanity remain
productive intellectual puzzles.
Bringing Home the Gods

The world was full of gods,34 and prayer might be made to any of them in many
circumstances. Scholars have sometimes been inclined to present the gods of literature
as different from the gods of everyday experience and worship. But this is too reductive.
When Plato and his fellow philosophers worry about the immorality of the gods, they
point the finger of blame at Homer, but this does not mean that sculptors and painters
were immune to these charges. Their works were shaped by the stories told in text and
stimulated further storiesstories that gave them theological content. The gods of epic
poetry were not a different species from the gods to whom prayer was made.
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There is no better place to see this in action than at Pompeii.35 There we have a wide
range of temples of gods and goddesses, including temples dedicated to Roman
emperors, with accompanying statues of the god or goddess in question. And we also
have gems, wall-paintings and other small finds that show these gods and goddesses in
more relaxed settings. A brief survey highlights some of the manifold ways in which the
divine was made manifest.
Some statues of gods found inside Pompeian houses had a more obvious cultic function
than others. Foremost among these were the household gods or Lares, small bronze
statues dressed in tunics and carrying horns of plenty, sheaves of wheat, wine-buckets
and so on. With origins in the Etruscan world and without any real equivalent in ancient
Greece, these deities populated a special shrine or Lararium which they sometimes
shared with other gods, both Olympians and non-Olympians (including Harpocrates, son
of Isis and Serapis). But the gods did not confine their domestic influence to household
shrines nor to bronzewe have, for example, a terracotta figure of Bes, the Egyptian god
associated with the dance, from the garden of a house just outside the Herculaneum gate,
an ivory figure of the Indian goddess Lakshmi apparently found in a wooden chest and a
small marble Venus removing her sandal while supporting herself on the ithyphallic god
Priapus, a sculpture variously reckoned to have stood on a base, visible even from the
street, or to have been hidden away in a corner cupboard.36 In a sense, this uncertainty is
entirely appropriate: is this Venus coy or asking to be looked at? In her ornate jewelry
and gold bikini, she is as exotic as Bes and Lakshmi.
Venus appeared in multiple

guises at Pompeii, some of
them more Roman than
others.37 The painting at
the entrance of the Shop of
Verecundus (IX, 7, 57) is
one such example, her
mural crown and scepter
indicative of her role as
Venus Pompeiana, the
citys patron deity. Riding
in a boat-shaped chariot,
pulled by elephants, she is
closer to a triumphing
general than to the bikini-
clad statueprotector of
Figure 10. Statuette of Venus from the House of
Venus in a Bikini, Pompeii. Now in the Naples Pompeiis sailors and of
Archaeological Museum. trade-routes.38 Not that
Photograph by ho visto nina volare, licensed under scantily clad Venuses were
CC BY-SA 2.0.
not equally on show. The
House of Venus in a Shell
(II, 3, 3) is named after its garden painting of the birth of Venus, a fresco that shows the
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goddess, again adorned with jewelry, reclining on a shell in the water, attended by
Cupids. This Venus has been referred to as a large painted pin-up,39 but we should not
be too quick to drain her of any religious importance. In a separate frame on the left, a
statue of Mars is represented, naked except for his helmet and cloak. What is the
relationship between him and the goddess, between her flesh and his marble? The story
of their affair was well told by Virgil and Ovid. Despite if not because of this, they were
key figures in Augustan image-making. As the father of Romulus and Remus and the
mother of Aeneas, Mars and Venus gave Rome a myth of origins and a Julian future.40
This link between divine sex and divine power figured large, in a very literal sense in the
House of the Vettii (VI, 15, 1), where those entering the house were greeted in the
entrance-way by a large painting of Priapus, his huge penis projecting from his short
garment and resting in one scale pan of a balance. In the other pan there is a substantial
money-bag, and, in front of him, a basket overflowing with fruit. On entering the inner
courtyard of this house visitors came across Priapus again, now as a fountain figure.41
This doubling was certainly intended to be arresting, if not also funny, but it also asked
for, and advertised, the divine favor that gave and sustained the fortune on which this
house was built. Less wealthy households made the same point with terracotta lamps
whose wick drew attention to Priapuss sexual fertility.
Visual attestations of the

power of the gods need not
figure the gods at all. The
wall-paintings from
Pompeii illustrate this very
effectively. Take the so-
called House of Jason (IX,
5, 18). This house is
named from a scene
painted on one wall of the
dining room which shows
the arrival of Jason at
Iolkos and his recognition
by Pelias. The scene is set
at a festivalthere is a
temple in the background
Figure 11. Wall painting of Priapus from House of
Vettii, Pompeii. and in the foreground an
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. ox is being prepared for
sacrifice. This setting
draws attention to the involvement of the gods in Jasons story; the daughters who
accompany Pelias here will end up sacrificing their father at Medeas instigation.
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A room in the corner of the

house, to one side of the
dining room, picks up the
story, by showing Medea
sitting, sword in her lap,
contemplating her
imminent murder of her
children in vengeance for
Jasons desertion of her.
That painting was one of
three scenes in that room
with matched
compositions, the other
two showing Pariss first
encounter with Helen,
where the story that will
Figure 12. Wall-painting of arrival of Jason at Iolkos,
House of Jason, Pompeii. unfold is signaled by the
Photography by Marie-Lan Nguyen. Courtesy of appearance of Eros in the
Wikimedia Commons. doorway between them,
and Phaedras plotting to
incriminate Hippolytus with a letter in which she will accuse him of sexual assault. Both
these stories point strongly to the part played by the gods in what happens in human
lives, and indeed encourage a similar reading of the story of Medea and Jason.42
Elsewhere in the same

house were paintings of
Achilles and Polyxena in
conversation beneath the
walls of Troy, of Hercules,
Deianeira and the centaur
Nessus, of Pan
encountering nymphs, of
Europa being carried away
by Zeus in the form of a
bull, of a maenad with a
thyrsus, and of busts of
Apollo and of Artemis. The
busts aside, the gods are,
at most, discreetly present
(Eros in the doorway, Zeus
Figure 13. Wall-painting of Medea contemplating
murdering her children, House of Jason, Pompeii. as a bull) but no less
Photograph by Sailko, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. powerful for that. Some of
the stories to which the
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date: 23 July 2017

images refer are stories known to have figured in Greek tragedy, but in all cases, the
paintings, like Greek tragedy, invite questions about the part played by the gods in
stimulating human action.
Pompeii is unusual because of the preservation of house walls, but the constant presence
of the question of gods intervention in human life through allusion to myth was universal.
We see it in other parts of the Roman world largely through the iconography of mosaics,
where even in the province of Britain scenes of Europa and the bull (at Lullingstone),
Orpheus (at Woodchester), Dido and Aeneas (at Low Ham), and so on, feature, and where
images of the gods themselves (e.g., Venus at Low Ham and in the villa at Rudston, or
Ocean at Verulamium) are also found.43
But in addition to these

scenes of myth, Pompeian
wall-paintings also offer
scenes of cult. One
painting from a Lararium
(I, 13, 2) shows a crowd of
worshippers gathered in
front of a large Lar.
Another Lararium picture
(from IX, 13, 13) shows
two large Lares looking on
Click to view larger at a scene of sacrifice at
Figure 14. [left] Orpheus mosaic found in the Roman an altar around which an
villa at Woodchester, c. 325 CE, courtesy of Wikimedia
Commons. [right] Mosaic of Ocean, 160190 CE,
unnaturally large snake is
Verulamium Museum, St. Albans. coiled. But scenes of
Photograph by Carole Raddato, courtesy of sacrifice are found too
Wikimedia Commons. outside the context of the
Lararium. They can even
be found hidden away among what look, at first sight, to be simply ornamental figures, as
in the decoration of the dining room of the House of the Vettii, where a scene of a
priestess with a double-headed axe about to slaughter a sacrificial ox in front of the
figures of Apollo and Diana can be found in an ornate border.
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The most famous scene of

cult at Pompeii comes in
the frieze after which the
Villa of the Mysteries is
named. This is a frieze of
near life-size figures that
mixes scenes of ritual (a
priestess preparing for
sacrifice, a kneeling
woman unveiling an
object, a bride prepared
for marriage) with
supernatural scenes
(Dionysus and Ariadne,
Silenus playing the lyre or
holding a bowl, a half-
Figure 15. Wall-painting showing two large Lares
from the House of Iulius Polybius (IX, 13.3). naked winged female
Photograph by WolfgangRieger, courtesy of figure wielding a whip) so
Wikimedia Commons. that it is hard to know
whether some figures are
mythical or real-life (the half-naked figure being flagellated, the naked woman dancing
with cymbals).44 What exactly the significance of the frieze as a whole is, and how it
related to the activities that went on in the room it decorated, remain unclear, but there is
no more vivid demonstration of the close presence of the gods to the local people.
At different periods and in

different places the visual
arts made present the
gods to the Greeks and
Romans in different ways.
Click to view larger What appears on the walls
Figure 16. Part of the painted frieze from the Villa of at Pompeii, for example, in
the Mysteries, Pompeii.
the 1st century CE can be
Photograph by WolfgangRieger, courtesy of
Wikimedia Commons.
variously paralleled by
what appears on Athenian
painted pottery in the 6th and 5th centuries BCE. It was the privilege of the visual arts to
bring the natural and the supernatural world into contact, and to effect, as well as reflect,
relations between the two. It is through the visual arts that we can come to understand
most clearly the theology of daily life.
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Review of the Literature

Historians of Greek and Roman art have not been much interested in religion, and
scholars studying Greek and Roman religion have not been much interested in art. This
has partly been because the ancient model that lies behind modern histories of ancient
art, Plinys Natural History, organizes its account according to materials (stone, metals,
etc.), and is interested in the objects in their own right rather than in context (although
some of the anecdotes told by Pliny give useful contextual information); it has also been
because, since Winckelmanns influence became dominant, historians of ancient art have
been primarily interested in the history of style rather than in what artists have
represented, while historians of Greek and Roman religion have been reluctant to engage
with theological issues and have concentrated on what actually happened in rituals. This
situation has only recently begun to change (see, e.g., Eidinow and Kindts new handbook
of ancient Greek religion).45
Early antiquarian studies both of Greek and Roman art and of Greek religion were more
prepared to take an interest in each other. In the late 18th and early 19th century the
representation of esoteric rites in painting and sculpture attracted much antiquarian
attention, of which Richard Payne Knights A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus of
1786, and An Enquiry into the Symbolical Language of Ancient Art and Mythology of 1818
are representative.46 But such works had the effect of making ancient art seem relevant
only to the more esoteric aspects of religionthe underbelly of classical civilization. The
works of Jane Ellen Harrison (Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion; Themis: A
Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion) continue to be marked by extensive use of
the evidence of Greek art, and particularly of Greek painted pottery, just as they are
marked by a determination to rescue real chthonic religion from the official Olympian
cults.47
From the First World War to the 1980s, even this esoteric interest ceased. There was, for
instance, no significant study of Greek votives between W. H. D. Rouses Greek Votive
Offerings: An Essay in the History of Greek Religion and Folker van Stratens substantial
gifts for the gods paper in 1982.48 Nor was the situation in Roman studies significantly
different except for the appearance of I. Scott Rybergs Rites of the State Religion in
Roman Art in 1955.49
Although there had been pioneer explorations of some elements of religious iconography
before thatnotably E. Simon, Opfernde Gtter, H. Metzger, Recherches sur limagerie
athnienne , which was entirely devoted to religious topics, and C. Brard, Anodoi: essai
sur limagerie des passages chthoniensit was only in the 1980s that the situation began
seriously to change, both among historians of art and historians of religion.50 The French
scholars around J.-P. Vernant and P. Vidal-Naquet (who formed the Centre Louis Gernet
in Paris) became increasingly interested in Greek pottery, linking with the Swiss scholar
Brard and his colleagues to produce a photographic exhibition and a book under the title
La cit des images: religion et socit en Grce antique.51 The iconography of religious
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rituals returned to the center of attention, not only in Francophone scholarship but more
generally, as witnessed by van Stratens examination of the iconography of sacrifice in
Hiera Kala and a slew of articles on Dionysiac imagery.52 More attention is also now given
to images of the gods themselves, in particular in Lapatins work on gold and ivory
statues, Platts work on the epiphanic experience and Gaifmans book on aniconism.53
In the study of the Roman world the focus of scholarship on art and religion has been
somewhat different, and more highly theorized. Richard Gordons classic article The
Real and the Imaginary: Art and Religion in the Greco-Roman World in Art History was
an important turning point here, reinforced by Gordons various papers on art and
Mithras, collected in Image and Value in the Graeco-Roman World.54 But the crucial figure
has been Jas Elsner who, from his paper on Pausanias in Past and Present (1992) onward
(see PRIMARY SOURCES), has stressed the constant inter-play between art, ritual, and religion,
the development of a distinctive visuality in the Greco-Roman world, and the relationship
between Greco-Roman religion, Christianity, and Judaism.55 As far as early Christianity is
concerned, T. F. Mathewss Clash of Gods, written in response to Andr Grabars Christian
Iconography: A Study of its Origins, has done much to invigorate the questions asked of
images of Jesus Christ in particular.56
Increasingly, issues of visuality are being brought into dialog with other sense-
perceptions such as sound, touch, and smell as scholars of religion try to inject emotional
engagement and experience back into cultic practice and ritual (N. Cusumano, V.
Gasparini, A. Mastrocinque and J. Rpke, eds. Memory and Religious Experience in the
Greco-Roman World, especially Mastrocinques chapter on Dionysiac sarcophagi, and M.
Gaifman, Timelessness, Fluidity and Apollos Libation).57 At the same time, art
historians are revisiting the statuary and coinage of Romes imperial family (J. Pollini,
From Republic to Empire: Rhetoric, Religion, and Power in the Visual Culture of Ancient
Rome; M. Koortbojian, The Divinization of Caesar and Augustus: Precedents,
Consequences, Implications) to stack religion and divinization against propaganda.58
Scholars are now better placed than ever to think visually and spatially about Greek and
Roman religion. The massive project to chart the iconography of Greek and Roman
mythology, LIMC, which began publishing its results in the 1980s, and its successor
project, ThesCRA, provide a substantial basis for the investigation of religious art (see
below, Primary Sources), and there are crucial volumes on visual data connected to
Egyptian deities in the Greek and Roman world in Brills tudes prliminaires aux
religions orientales dans lEmpire romain (EPRO) series.
Primary Sources
The literary texts relevant to ancient sculpture and painting are collected, with German
translation, in S. Kansteiner, K. Hallof, L. Lehmann, B. Seidensticker, and K. Stemmer,
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date: 23 July 2017

eds., Der neue Overbeck (DNO): die antiken Schriftquellen zu den bildenden Knsten der
Griechen, 5 vols.59 More convenient are J.J. Pollitt, The Art of Ancient Greece: Sources
and Documents and J.J. Pollitt, The Art of Rome: Sources and Documents.60
Representations of the gods and of mythological scenes are collected in the Lexicon
Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC), Zurich, 19812009. Representations of
rituals and cult activities are collected in Thesaurus Cultus et Rituum Antiquorum
(ThesCRA), Los Angeles 20042014.
The most interesting ancient text for the relationship of art and religion is Pausaniass
Periegesis. Pausaniass travel guide is particularly interested in cult sites and in
describing the monuments, both architectural and sculptural, to be found there. The
fullest English commentary on Pausanias, with translation and capacious index is J. G.
Frazers Pausaniass Description of Greece, Translated with a Commentary, 6 vols.a
work whose importance for the study of art and religion has tended to be neglected
because of its commentary format.61 The crucial modern account of Pausaniass religious
viewing is J. Elsner, Pausanias. A Greek Pilgrim in the Roman World, updated in Elsner,
Roman Eyes.62 See also W. Hutton, Describing Greece. Landscape and Literature in the
Periegesis of Pausanias; M. Pretzler, Pausanias: Travel Writing in Ancient Greece; and V.
Pirenne-Delforge, Retour la source: Pausanias et la religion grecque; and the
discussions in Platt, Facing the Gods.63
Discussion of images of gods can be traced in the work of Greek philosophers from
Heraclitus and Xenophanes onward. Herodas Mimiamboi 4, from the Hellenistic period,
gives a vivid description of the reaction of two women worshippers to the sculptures they
see in a sanctuary. The deification of Roman emperors brought further attention to what
gods might look like, and there are important Roman discussions running from the
satirical commentary in Senecas Apocolocyntosis (Pumpkinification of Claudius)
through Dio Chrysostoms Olympian Oration (12) to Philostratus and the Christian
polemicists. A different aspect of the relationship between gods and the body is
highlighted by Aelius Aristides, whose work is centrally concerned with the healing
functions of Asklepios and well studied by A. Petsalis-Diomidis in Truly Beyond Wonders;
Aelius Aristides and the Cult of Asklepios.64
Links to Digital Materials

Male Statues from the Acropolis, The Acropolis Museum, Athens, Greece.
The marble Gigantomachy pediment from the Archaic Temple of Athena Polias, The
Acropolis Museum, Athens, Greece.
Limestone and terracotta sections of smaller buildings on the Archaic Acropolis, The
Acropolis Museum, Athens, Greece.
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The Temple of Athena Nike on the Acropolis in Athens, The Classical Art Research
Centre and the Beazley Archive, University of Oxford, England.
Athena and Perseus defeat Medusa and her sisters on the belly of the Eleusis
Amphora, located at the Eleusis Archeological Museum, courtesy of Classical Art
Research Centre and the Beazley Archive, University of Oxford, England.
Painted cast of the Peplos Kore, Museum of Classical Archaeology, Cambridge, U.K.
Roman versions of the first free-standing female nude, the Aphrodite of Knidos.
Roman version of a statue of Dionysus, Hellenistic in style, The British Museum,
London.
Bronze figures from the Temple of Apollo at Dreros, National Archaeological
Museum, Athens, Greece.
Cast of the Varvakeion Athena, a marble statuette of the chryselephantine Athena
Parthenos, Museum of Classical Archaeology, Cambridge, U.K.
The folding of Athenas sacred robe? Central scene, slab V, east frieze of the
Parthenon, The British Museum, England.
Terracotta votive figurines from the open-air sanctuary of Ayia Irini, Cyprus.
South Italian red-figure column-krater (bowl for mixing wine and water), showing a
sculptor painting a statue of Hercules, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,
NY.
Tetradrachm of Alexander the Great as Hercules, The Fitzwilliam Museum,
Cambridge, U.K.
Over life-size head of the first Roman emperor Augustus, The Metropolitan Museum
of Art, New York, NY.
Bust of Antinous, the British Museum, London, England.
Bronze equestrian statue of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, Musei Capitolini,
Rome, Italy.
Section of the Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus, showing Jesuss entrance into
Jerusalem on a donkey, Vatican Museums, gettyimages.
Christ seated from Civita Latina, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, Rome, Italy,
gettyimages.
Statuette of the Egyptian deity Bes found in one of the domestic contexts in Pompeii,
Eva Mol, University of Leiden.
House of the Indian Statuette, Pompeii, where the ivory of statuette of Lakshmi was
found.
House of Venus in a Bikini, Pompeii.
House of Venus in the Shell, Pompeii.
House of Vettii, Pompeii.
House of Jason, Pompeii.
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Lullingstone Villa: triclinium mosaic, photo by David S. Neal, The Association for the
Study and Preservation of Roman Mosaics.
Mosaic showing Dido and Aeneas, from the Roman Villa at Low Ham Somerset,
United Kingdom, The Museum of Somerset.
Mosaic with image of Venus from the Roman Villa at Rudston, Yorkshire, United
Kingdom, Hull Museum.
Domus of Sutoria Primigenia or Casa del grande triclinio, Pompeii.
House of C. Julius Polybius, Pompeii.
House of the Vettii, Pompeii.
Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii.
Further Reading
Eidinow, E., and J. Kindt, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Greek Religion. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2015.
Elsner, J.Roman Eyes: Visuality and Subjectivity in Art and Text. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2007.
Gaifman, M.Aniconism in Greek Antiquity. Oxford Studies in Ancient Culture and

Representation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Lapatin, K.Chryselephantine Statuary in the Ancient Mediterranean World. Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 2001.
Patera, I.Offrir en Grce ancienne: gestes et contexts. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag,
2012.
Platt, V.J.Facing the Gods: Epiphany and Representation in Graeco-Roman Art, Literature
and Religion. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Scheer, T.Die Gottheit und ihr Bild: Untersuchungen zur Funktion griechischer Kultbilder
in Religion und Politik. Munich: C. H. Beck, 2000.
Scott-Ryberg, I.Rites of the State Religion in Roman Art (Memoirs of the American
Academy in Rome; vol. 22), Rome: American Academy in Rome, 1955.
van Straten, F. Gifts for the Gods. In Faith, Hope and Worship: Aspects of Religious
Mentality in the Ancient World. Edited by H. S. Versnel, 65151. Leiden, The Netherlands:
Brill, 1981.
van Straten, F. Hier kal: Images of Animal Sacrifice in Archaic and Classical Greece.
Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1995.
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date: 23 July 2017

Notes:
(1.) Herodotos and the gods: T. Harrison, Divinity and History: the Religion of Herodotus
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); sculptors and Homer: Strabo, Geography, 8.3.30.
(2.) On cult action under the eyes of statues, see M. de Cesare, Le statue in immagine.
Studi sulle raffigurazione di statue nella pittura vascolare Greca (Rome: L'Erma di
Bretschneider, 1997); for processions greeting processions, see ThesCRA (I. 919, 2132,
3358); for statues of beasts commemorating sacrifices, see F. van Straten, Gifts for the
Gods, in Faith, Hope and Worship: Aspects of Religious Mentality in the Ancient World,
edited by H. Versnel, 87 (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1981); for images of sacrifice on
Greek painted pottery, see F. van Straten, Hier kal: Images of Animal Sacrifice in
Archaic and Classical Greece (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1995).
(3.) For the Greek world, see generally I. Patera, Offrir en Grce ancienne: gestes et
contexts (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2012); for the Roman world, J. Rpke, Religion
of the Romans (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 2007), 154161.
(4.) See especially A. E. Raubitschek, Dedications from the Athenian Acropolis

(Cambridge, MA: Archaeological Institute of America, 1949); H. G. Payne and G. M.
Young, The Archaic Marble Sculpture from the Acropolis (London: the Cresset Press,
1936); and C. Keesling, The Votive Statues of the Athenian Acropolis (Cambridge, U.K.:
Cambridge University Press, 2003).
(5.) K. Karakasi, Archaic Korai (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003), 115141; for
the number, see 115n. 1.
(6.) Payne and Young, Archaic Marble Sculpture from the Acropolis, pl. 102 (Acr. 633).
(7.) J. Hurwit, The Athenian Acropolis (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press,
1999), 105116.
(8.) B. Graef and E. Langlotz, Die antiken Vasen von der Akropolis zu Athen (Berlin: de
Gruyter, 19251933).
(9.) Hurwit, Athenian Acropolis; F. Brommer, The Sculptures of the Parthenon (London:
Thames and Hudson, 1979); and J. Boardman, The Parthenon and its Sculptures (London:
Thames and Hudson, 1985).
(10.) A. Stewart, Attalos, Athens and the Akropolis: The Pergamene Little Barbarians
and their Roman and Renaissance Legacy (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press,
2004).
(11.) S. Aleshire, The Athenian Asklepieion: the People, their Dedications, and the
Inventories (Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 1989), 3751.
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(12.) R.A. Tomlinson, Epidauros (London: Granada, 1983).
(13.) These issues are explored in Dio Chrysostoms Olympian Oration (12).
(14.) For Christian attacks on the limitations of images, see Eusebius, Life of Constantine,
3.54, In Praise of Constantine, 8; for the destruction of images by Christians, see T. M.
Kristensen, Making and Breaking the Gods: Christian Responses to Pagan Sculpture in
Late Antiquity (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2013). Also interesting on the problems
of divine embodiment in Rome, pagan and Christian, is C. Ando, The Matter of the Gods:
Religion and the Roman Empire (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California
Press, 2008), 2142.
(15.) M. Gaifman, Aniconism in Greek Antiquity. Oxford Studies in Ancient Culture and
Representation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
(16.) Pausanias, Periegesis, 1.26.6; and J. H. Kroll, The Ancient Image of Athena Polias,
Hesperia Supplements, vol. 20, Studies in Athenian Architecture, Sculpture and
Topography. Presented to Homer A. Thompson (Princeton, NJ: American School of
Classical Studies, 1982), 6576; see more generally A. Donohue, Xoana and the Origins of
Greek Sculpture (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988).
(17.) J. Elsner, Reflections on the Greek Revolution: From Changes in Viewing to the
Transformation of Subjectivity, in Rethinking Revolutions Through Ancient Greece,
edited by S. Goldhill and R. Osborne (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press,
2006), 6895; and C. Vout, The End of the Greek Revolution? Perspective: la Revue de
lINHA 2 (2014): 246252.
(18.) C. Vout, Sex on Show: Seeing the Erotic in Greece and Rome, 128167 (London:
British Museum Press, 2013).
(19.) For the theological significance of terracotta statuettes in domestic contexts see C.
E. Barrett, Egyptianizing Figurines from Delos: A Study in Hellenistic Religion (Leiden,
The Netherlands: Brill, 2011).
(20.) M. Miles, Art as Plunder: The Ancient Origins of Debate about Cultural Property
(Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2008); and S. Dillon and K. E. Welch,
Representations of War in Ancient Rome (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press,
2006).
(21.) M. Beard, J. North, and S. R. F. Price, Religions of Rome, vol. 1, A History

(Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 9596 and 161164.
(22.) R. Osborne, Greece in the Making 1200479 BC, second edition (Abingdon:
Routledge, 2009), 8286; and C. C. Mattusch, Greek Bronze Statuary: From the
Beginnings Through the Fifth Century (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), 4244.
Page 27 of 32
date: 23 July 2017

(23.) K. D. S. Lapatin, Chryselephantine Statuary in the Ancient Mediterranean World

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 6195.
(24.) V. C. Platt, Cult Image, Greek, The Encyclopedia of Ancient History (Malden:
Wiley-Blackwell, 2012); S. Estienne, Simulacra deorum versus ornamenta aedium. The
status of divine images in the temples of Rome, in Divine Images and Human
Imaginations in Ancient Greece and Rome. Religions in the Graeco-Roman World 170,
edited by I. Mylonopoulos, 273287 (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2010); and S.
Bettinetti, La statua di culto nella pratica rituale greca (Bari: Levante, 2001).
(25.) T. S. Scheer, Art and Imagery, in The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Greek Religion,
edited by E. Eidinow and J. Kindt, 168169 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
(26.) Lucian, Gallus, 24.
(27.) On heroes, see G. Ekroth, Heroes Living or Dead? in The Oxford Handbook of
Ancient Greek Religion, edited by E. Eidinow and J. Kindt, 383396 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2015); and C. Jones, New Heroes in Antiquity: From Achilles to Antinoos
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).
(28.) C. Marconi, The Birth of an Image. The Painting of a Statue of Herakles and
Theories of Representation in Classical Greek Culture, Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics
5960 (2011): 145167.
(29.) A. Stewart, Faces of Power: Alexanders Image and Hellenistic Politics (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1993).
(30.) I. Gradel, Emperor Worship and Roman Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2002).
(31.) On the image of Augustus, Paul Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus.
Trans. A. Shapiro (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1988); E. La Rocca, C. Parisi
Presicce, A. Lo Monaco, C. Giroire, and Daniel Roger, eds., Augusto (Milan: Electa, 2013);
for Drusilla, S. E. Wood, Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 B.C.A.D. 68
(Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1999); and for the image of Nero, M. Bergmann, Die
Strahlen der Herrscher. Theomorphes Herrscherbild und politische Symbolik im
Hellenismus und in der rmischen Kaiserseit (Mainz: von Zabern, 1998); and Portraits of
an Emperor Nero, the Sun, and Roman Otium, in A Companion to the Neronian Age,
edited by E. Buckley and M. T. Dinter, 332362 (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013).
(32.) C. Vout, Power and Eroticism in Imperial Rome (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge
University Press, 2007); and R. Lambert, Beloved and God: The Story of Hadrian and
Antinous (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1984).
(33.) Andr Grabar, Christian Iconography: A Study of its Origins (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1968), and, in response to the idea that Christian art derived
Page 28 of 32
date: 23 July 2017

from imperial models, T. F. Mathews, The Clash of the Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early
Christian Art (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), and the review by P.
Brown, Art Bulletin 77 (1995): 499502.
(34.) K. Hopkins, A World Full of Gods: The Strange Triumph of Christianity (London:
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2000).
(35.) For religion at Pompeii, see J. B. Ward-Perkins and A. Claridge, eds., Pompeii AD 79
(Bristol: Imperial Tobacco Ltd, 1976), catalog nos. 186226; M. Beard, Pompeii: the Life of
a Roman Town (London: Profile, 2008), 276308; and J. Berry, The Complete Pompeii
(London: Thames and Hudson, 2007), 186209. See more generally J. Clarke, Art in the
Lives of Ordinary Romans: Visual Representation and Non-Elite Viewers in Italy, 100 B.C.
A.D. 315 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), chapter 3: Everyman,
Everywoman, and the Gods.
(36.) Ward-Perkins and Claridge, Pompeii AD 79, nos. 191, 214, 218, 222226; Berry, The
Complete Pompeii, chapter 7; Beard, Pompeii, chapter 9. For the dispute about the Venus
(known as Venus in a Bikini) compare Berry The Complete Pompeii, 195; and Beard,
Pompeii, 9091.
(37.) The complete record of the paintings and mosaics excavated in Pompeii is available
in G. Pugliese Carratelli, ed., Pompei: pitture e mosaici, 10 vols (Rome: Istituto della
Enciclopedia Italiana, 19901999).
(38.) J. Clarke, Art in the Lives of Ordinary Romans: Visual Representation and Non-Elite
Viewers in Italy, 100 B.C.A.D. 315 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 105
112.
(39.) Beard, Pompeii, 276.
(40.) See Zanker, The Power of Images, 195201.
(41.) J. Clarke, The Houses of Roman Italy, 100 B.CA.D. 200 (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1991), 211214.
(42.) B. Bergmann, The Pregnant Moment: Tragic Wives in the Roman Interior, in
Sexuality in Ancient Art, edited by N. Kampen, 199218 (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge
University Press, 1996).
(43.) K. Dunbabin, Mosaics of the Greek and Roman World (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge
University Press, 1999); and D. S. Neal and S. R. Cosh, Roman Mosaics of Britain
(London: Illuminata, 20022010).
(44.) J. Henderson, Footnote: Representation in the Villa of the Mysteries, in Art and
Text in Roman Culture, edited by J. Elsner, 234276 (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge
Page 29 of 32
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(45.) E. Eidinow and J. Kindt, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Greek Religion
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
(46.) R. Payne Knight, A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus (London: privately

published, 1786); and R. Payne Knight, An Enquiry into the Symbolical Language of
Ancient Art and Mythology (London: privately published, 1818).
(47.) J.E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (Cambridge, U.K.:
Cambridge University Press, 1903); and J.E. Harrison, Themis: A Study of the Social
Origins of Greek Religion (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1912).
(48.) W. H. D. Rouse, Greek Votive Offerings: An Essay in the History of Greek Religion
(Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1902); and F. van Straten, Gifts for the
Gods. In Faith, Hope and Worship: Aspects of Religious Mentality in the Ancient World.
Edited by H. S. Versnel (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1981), 65151.
(49.) I. Scott-Ryberg, Rites of the State Religion in Roman Art (Rome: American Academy
in Rome, 1955).
(50.) E. Simon, Opfernde Gtter (Berlin: Mann, 1953); H. Metzger, Recherches sur
limagerie athnienne (Paris: de Boccard, 1965); and C. Brard, Anodoi: essai sur
limagerie des passages chthoniens (Rome: Institut suisse de Rome, 1974).
(51.) C. Brard, J.-P. Vernant, et al. La cit des images: religion et socit en Grce antique
(Paris: Nathan, 1984), translated as C. Brard et al. A City of Images: Iconography and
Society in Ancient Greece translated by D. Lyons (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1989).
(52.) F. van Straten, Hier kal: Images of Animal Sacrifice in Archaic and Classical
Greece (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1995).
(53.) K. Lapatin, Chryselephantine Statuary in the Ancient Mediterranean World; V.J.

Platt, Facing the Gods: Epiphany and Representation in Graeco-Roman Art, Literature and
Religion (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2011); and M. Gaifman,
Aniconism in Greek Antiquity.
(54.) R. Gordon, The Real and the Imaginary: Art and Religion in the Greco-Roman
World, Art History 2 (1979): 534; and R. Gordon, Image and Value in the Graeco-Roman
World (Brookfield, VT: Variorum, 1996).
(55.) J. Elsner, Roman Eyes: Visuality and Subjectivity in Art and Text (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2007).
(56.) T. Mathews, Clash of the Gods (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993); and
A. Grabar, Christian Iconography: A Study of its Origins (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
Page 30 of 32
date: 23 July 2017

(57.) N. Cusumano, V. Gasparini, A. Mastrocinque, and J. Rpke, eds., Memory and

Religious Experience in the Greco-Roman World (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2013); and M.
Gaifman, Timelessness, Fluidity and Apollos Libation, Res 63/64 (2013): 3952.
(58.) J. Pollini, From Republic to Empire: Rhetoric, Religion, and Power in the Visual
Culture of Ancient Rome (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012); and M.
Koortbojian, The Divinization of Caesar and Augustus: Precedents, Consequences,
Implications (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013).
(59.) S. Kansteiner, K. Hallof, L. Lehmann, B. Seidensticker, and K. Stemmer, eds., Der

neue Overbeck (DNO): die antiken Schriftquellen zu den bildenden Knsten der Griechen.
5 vols. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014).
(60.) J.J. Pollitt, The Art of Ancient Greece: Sources and Documents (Cambridge, U.K.:
Cambridge University Press, 1990); and J.J. Pollitt, The Art of Rome: Sources and
Documents (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
(61.) J. G. Frazer, Pausaniass Description of Greece, Translated with a Commentary. 6

vols. (London: Macmillan, 1898).
(62.) J. R. Elsner, Pausanias. A Greek Pilgrim in the Roman World, Past and Present 135
(1992): 329; updated in J. R. Elsner, Roman Eyes: Visuality and Subjectivity in Art and
Text (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007).
(63.) W. Hutton, Describing Greece. Landscape and Literature in the Periegesis of

Pausanias (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2005); M. Pretzler, Pausanias:
Travel Writing in Ancient Greece (London: Duckworth, 2007); V. Pirenne-Delforge, Retour
la source: Pausanias et la religion grecque (Lige: Centre International d'tude de la
Religion Grecque Antique, 2008); and V.J. Platt, Facing the Gods: Epiphany and
Representation in Graeco-Roman Art, Literature and Religion.
(64.) A. Petsalis-Diomidis, Truly Beyond Wonders; Aelius Aristides and the Cult of
Asklepios (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
Robin Osborne
University of Cambridge
Caroline Vout
University of Cambridge
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Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion

Summary and Keywords

date: 23 July 2017

The Materiality of Greek and Roman Gods

date: 23 July 2017

Art in Sanctuaries and on Temples

date: 23 July 2017

Rather, our best hope of

Figure 1. Delphi Charioteer, 470s BCE. The Delphi

Fragments from almost

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Sculptures were not the

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To visit the Athenian

date: 23 July 2017

As the example of the

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Even in the Greek world of

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The feats of construction

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This is a question writ

By the 2nd century CE, the

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What should Christ look

Bringing Home the Gods

date: 23 July 2017

Venus appeared in multiple

date: 23 July 2017

Visual attestations of the

date: 23 July 2017

A room in the corner of the

Elsewhere in the same

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But in addition to these

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The most famous scene of

At different periods and in

date: 23 July 2017

Review of the Literature

date: 23 July 2017

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Links to Digital Materials

date: 23 July 2017

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Gaifman, M.Aniconism in Greek Antiquity. Oxford Studies in Ancient Culture and

Lapatin, K.Chryselephantine Statuary in the Ancient Mediterranean World. Oxford:

date: 23 July 2017

(4.) See especially A. E. Raubitschek, Dedications from the Athenian Acropolis

date: 23 July 2017

(12.) R.A. Tomlinson, Epidauros (London: Granada, 1983).

(21.) M. Beard, J. North, and S. R. F. Price, Religions of Rome, vol. 1, A History

date: 23 July 2017

(23.) K. D. S. Lapatin, Chryselephantine Statuary in the Ancient Mediterranean World

(26.) Lucian, Gallus, 24.

date: 23 July 2017

(39.) Beard, Pompeii, 276.

(40.) See Zanker, The Power of Images, 195201.