Sculpture in Roman Cyprus

Apollo, July, 2003 by Jane Fejfer

[FIGURES 11-13 OMITTED]

Floor mosaics and wall paintings were standard fixtures of the private spaces of grand houses and villas across the Empire, (29) while sculpture collections are often the only remaining evidence concerning their movable fittings. Although the purely decorative aspect of such items played a not insignificant role, a fine collection of sculpture and a generally opulent appearance also underlined the prosperity of a house's owner, while at the same time helping to foster the impression that he was a man of taste and reflecting his concerns. (30) In the House of Theseus, a huge seaside residential palace within the city walls of the Roman capital Nea Paphos, the visitor was met with sculpture right at the entrance (Fig. 14). (31) The doorway giving access from the entrance hall to the centre of the house was flanked by niches for life-size statues. The statue of an Armed Aphrodite found in the house would have been an appropriate choice, alluding as it did to the long androgynous tradition of Aphrodite in Cyprus and to imperial iconography (Fig. 15). (32) In a storage room of the house were fragments of nineteen statuettes (Fig. 16), which may have been placed there for repair or simply because their pagan subjects had gone out of fashion by the time the house was destroyed by a devastating earthquake in 365 AD. Eight of the statuettes, depicting Diana, Asclepius, Hygieia, Hercules, Bacchus, Silvanus, a Satyr and a Muse, stand out as a uniform group in terms of their size, style, and marble, and were probably commissioned en bloc as a collection. (33) Whether acquired when the first part of the house was constructed during the late second century, or during the late third century, when the house received its final lay-out around a peristyle court--an eminently suitable place for their display--remains to be established. (34) At least four of the eight statuettes had been repaired before they were put in storage. A trapezophoron (table leg) showing a drunken Hercules surrounded by erotes, which was found not far from the house and had deliberately been mutilated, indicates that some sculptures at least were reused, probably in a Christian context (Fig. 17). (35) A similar phenomenon can also be observed in the House of Gladiators in Curium. Several sculptures, found in the bath complex in the east wing or around the peristyle court, adorned this house, which was built during the late third century and partly reconstructed after the 365 earthquake referred to above, which also struck Curium. (36) The gladiatorial scenes of the mosaics around the peristyle probably allude to the fact that the owner was a proud benefactor of gladiatorial shows in the nearby theatre, while the sculptural decor was intended to emphasise his wealth. The two best preserved statues, one of Mercury, with a ram seated at his side, and the other showing Asclepius (Figs. 18-19), are two-thirds life-size, and exhibit the same somewhat squat proportions and highly polished surface on their fronts. Both were found in secondary contexts in the baths and the Asclepius has been altered by cutting away the staff at his right side, probably to transform it into a figure of Christ. Mercury was left unaltered, perhaps because it required no modification to serve as a representation of the Good Shepherd.