Sculpture in Roman Cyprus

Apollo, July, 2003 by Jane Fejfer

When Cyprus was annexed by Rome and made a province in 58 BC, it was neither the first or the last time the island suffered invasion by a foreign power. Because of its economically and politically pivotal location between Orient and Occident, Cyprus has been subjected to a steady stream of visitors, immigrants and invaders from prehistoric to recent times. (1) During antiquity the island was also important for its natural resources, in particular copper and timber, and it was inevitable that the Romans, who had incorporated most of the Near East into their empire during the first century BC, would finally also take possession of Cyprus. Cyprus had been ruled by the Ptolemies since 294 BC, with the result that the island was already well supplied with urban and religious centres, harbours and road systems. (2) It needed only a few Roman officials, with a proconsul at their head, to govern this senatorial province; moreover, to judge from the epigraphic sources, very few Roman citizens were tempted to settle there. (3) Nevertheless, during the course of Roman rule, public and private spaces changed dramatically and came to display a typically Roman character. Sculptural programmes played a significant role in this change. It is possible to chart the way in which metropolitan and provincial Roman styles and iconographies made an impact on sculptural programmes, while at the same time noting how traditional local habits persisted and survived in the sculptural tradition well into Late Antiquity, in particular in rural sanctuaries, and how eventually Christianity made its unmistakable impact.

The Roman sculptures derive from four main contexts: public buildings in the large urban centres; old sanctuaries, many of which have isolated locations in the countryside; tombs; and private houses.

Bearing these four main contexts in mind, it is important to stress the fact that understanding and interpretation of Roman sculpture is necessarily determined by the current state of knowledge of the archaeology of the island. Even though Cyprus is relatively well explored, there are still significant lacunae. Evidence of the architectural and sculptural furnishing of public spaces is in essence confined to Salamis and Curium, because the public spaces of, for example, the Hellenistic/Roman capital Nea Paphos, still remain largely unexplored. Similarly, since no villas and only relatively few ostentatious private houses have been excavated, primarily in Nea Paphos and Curium, sculpture in private contexts is restricted to these sites.

The majority of the sculptures on Cyprus dating from the Roman period were carved of local limestone, just as they had been in the earlier Archaic to Hellenistic periods. (4) Bronze, prone to recycling, was also a much-used material for statues, as is testified by the survival of the bases which once supported them. These were probably produced locally, but only a few such monumental bronze statues have survived (Fig. 1). While limestone was extracted from a number of quarries along the coast (Fig. 2), and also in the Mesaoria plain, both white marble and any coloured marble had to be imported. Marble sculpture is extremely rare in the Archaic and Classical periods, but from the late Hellenistic period there is some evidence of its use. Typically, these Hellenistic sculptures are on a small scale, and the fact that they were originally pieced together from several bits of marble, and subsequently carefully repaired several times, demonstrates that the use of marble represented a significant financial outlay during the Hellenistic period. (5) The vast majority of the marble sculptures on Cyprus, however, date to the Roman period. (6) Clearly, the use of imported marble for the architectural and sculptural decor of public spaces was an important part of the assertion of romanitas on the island. Evidence concerning marble sculptures in Roman Cyprus shows clear patterns of distribution. There are only a select number of locations where marble sculptures have been found at all, but the sites where such pieces have been found in abundance are all cities of political and economic significance within easy range of such ports as Amathous, Citium, Curium, Nea Paphos, Salamis, and Soli (Fig. 3). By contrast, inland rural sanctuary sites, such as Arsos, Golgoi, Idalion, Phasoula and Voni--sanctuaries in which there were age-old traditions of setting up literally hundreds of limestone sculptures interpreted as votaries from the Archaic into the Hellenistic/Roman periods - are devoid of marble sculpture. (7) During the Roman period, Salamis, Nea Paphos, Soli, Curium and Amathous were cities fully equipped with the usual public spaces of agora, theatre, nymphaea, baths, sanctuaries, colonnaded streets, and private residences, and would have stood comparison with any major city in the Eastern Mediterranean. Public and private spaces in these cities with aspirations to imperial grandeur were in the main furnished with sculptural decoration of imported white marble. Both white marble and sculptures made of it seem to have been readily available from the first century AD onwards, and extremely extensively from the second century. During the course of the late third or early fourth century AD, re-use of marble statuary, rather than new production or new acquisitions sets in. As only a few isotopic or other scientific analyses have been undertaken on marble sculptures from Cyprus, there is no point in attempting to discuss the origins of these marbles in any depth. (8) Most of the white marble probably came from quarries in Asia Minor, while granite and green, grey and red marbles used for architectural veneering came from other part of the empire. The only coloured marble known to have been used for sculpture is a grey/black stone, perhaps nero antico (Fig. 4). However, this black marble was rarely used for sculpture, and then always in combination with white marble used for the extremities--heads, feet and hands--creating, of course, a stunningly contrasted visual effect. The inspiration may have come from Italy, but arguably Asia Minor--and in particular the cities of Perge and Aphrodisias which also boasted stunning black and white marble sculptures--is a more obvious source of inspiration, or even centre of production, for the Cypriot examples. Whatever the origins of these sculptures, it is important to recognise that the use of coloured marble was associated with the imperial splendour of the capital cities throughout the Empire. (9) In Cyprus the extensive use of marble was something new in the Roman period: it altered the character of both public and private spaces, and gave them a distinctively Roman appearance. We have no evidence of how the marble trade was organised on the island. It is also unclear whether some or all the sculptures were produced on the island, or rather imported as prefabricated or finished products. The existence of two collections of several sculptures which share the same style, dimensions, and apparently marble--one from the House of Theseus in Nea Paphos, the other from the House of the Gladiators in Curium--suggest that such collections were specially commissioned. It is impossible to say, however, whether they were ordered from abroad or selected from a stock of imported sculptures--available, for example, in Nea Paphos--or made in workshops on the island itself. Evidence from pottery shows that Cyprus was part of a lively trade network in the eastern Mediterranean, with imports from Africa Proconsularis, Asia Minor, Egypt and the west including Rome as well. (10)