Scenes from the life of a general

From the 2nd century CE, inhumation in stone sarcophagi became customary for those inhabitants of Rome who could afford it. Most of the sarcophagi bear elaborate relief decoration on the front side, while the sides are in flat relief and the back, which was usually pushed against the wall of the tomb chamber, remained unworked. The narrative reliefs depict themes from the lives, public and private, of the Roman upper classes, hunting and battle scenes. A large amount of space is dedicated to depictions of Greek myths, with certain aspects deliberately highlighted to refer to the deceased through allusion. The relief decoration on this sarcophagus created for a military officer is a rare example in which images of the public stature and patriotic virtues of the deceased are linked with a Greek myth, a combination hardly ever found on other sarcophagi. The front is divided into two by a pillar. Similar pillars can be found on the outer edges of the sides so that the various depictions are contained in an overarching architectural structure. The left section contains conventional depictions of the virtues of the deceased that would have been instantly recognisable to the viewer in antiquity. Wearing a toga, the official dress of the Roman citizen, he is seen reaching out his hand to his wife. It is the symbolic gesture of marriage, the concordia, meaning ‘harmony’. As an officer (and a high-ranking one at that, judging from his clothing), we then see him consummating the sacrifice of a bull. Two men, victimarii, are about to slaughter the animal while the deceased, holding the bowl, offers a prayer to the gods as an expression of his pietas (piety) towards them. Concordia and pietas, embodied by beautiful young women, stand in the background beside the deceased. The scene with many figures on the right is taken up with the Greek legend of the beautiful hunter Adonis, who was maimed by a boar sent by Mars in a wrath of jealousy, but who was subsequently allowed to return to Aphrodite on earth for half the year. Adonis was a symbol of death and renewal in nature, his allegorical significance as regards the deceased thus becomes clear. The two parts of the decoration are distinct from one another in terms of the composition of the figures. In the left section the figures are arranged in a dense, frieze-like succession, which is reminiscent of the processional compositions on public memorials. In the mythological scene on the right, however, the figures are more loosely positioned in the tradition of Hellenistic reliefs. Above the curving arch of the hollow, Adonis’ fellow hunters appear set back from the action taking place in the foreground, and are joined by the Dioscuri, entering on horseback from the left. The Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, also represent an alternating cycle of mortality and immortality. The elegant figures with their elongated proportions and the brittle, finely delineated folds on the robes help date the sarcophagus to around 200 CE. Alterations were made to the original portraits at a later date. Since its discovery (probably in the mid-16th century), the sarcophagus has frequently been drawn as the subject of antiquarian interest. In 1727 it passed into the possession of the Rinuccini family from Florence, before being sold to the USA in the early 20th century.