Copies of Ancient Greek Art in Roman Art

As the Greeks and Romans live near each other, separated only by the Ionian Sea, it is not surprising that they are well aware of their mutual existence. Their societies follow similar paths. According to legend, Rome was founded in 753 BC. At that time, Greece had already made the transition from the Mycenaean kingdoms to small cities (poleis) that would characterize its political organization during the archaic and classical periods (Wallace-Hadfull, 79). Both Athens and Rome changed their mode of government at the beginning of the sixth century, when the Romans abolishing the monarchy and establishing a republic, the Athenians removing their tyrant from power and establishing a democracy.

In the third century, Roman expansion in southern Italy and Sicily caused conflicts between the two powers, because it was dangerous on the Greek colonies established in these regions. The Greeks are well accustomed to hostilities, and according to the account of the siege of Milo that Thucydides leaves us, they can be brutal in the war, although this is not the rule. When the Greeks win a victory, they often leave the vanquished to leave the field without pursuing them (Potts, 151). The Romans make things differently, being able to be as wild as possible. For instance, they wrecked Corinth to the point where it will take 100 years to restore it partially, and other cities will never be rebuilt. Over a period of two or three centuries, Rome engulfed the Greek world, behaving generously to those who willingly yield to his advances and ruthlessly to those who resist.

Although Rome wins the battles, one could safely say that Greece wins the war. Horace, a Roman poet, characterizes the relationship between Greece and Rome in his most famous verse (Horace, Epistles, II, 1, 156-157): “Graecia capta ferrum victorem cepit and artist intuit agresti Latio” (Thus, when Rome militarily conquered Greece, Rome itself was metaphorically conquered by Greece's civilization or artes, as Horace calls it.). The arts arrive in Rome partly as a spoil of battle taken from the defeated Greek cities. The victorious commanders’ parade through the streets of Rome spreading the spoils, encouraged by the cheers and applause of the crowd. General Fulvius Nobilior won at Rome more than a thousand bronze or marble statues, which he showed to the multitude of admirers (Bieber, 103). One of these triumphal parades stretches from dawn to dusk.

The wealthy Romans hastened to acquire such works of art for their villas, and if they cannot obtain originals, the Greek and Roman craftsmen produce copies without being asked. The educated Romans who already admire the Greek language and culture begin to hire Greek tutors, and many of them master Greek to the point of being able to read and write it. Rome is introduced to Greek theater, and epic and dramatic plays serve as models for Roman writers. Greek texts are translated into Latin for those who do not know the new language.

As the Greeks have long mastered the art of rhetoric, the members of the Roman nobility are eager to consult them, eager to climb the social or political hierarchy. Vitruvius, the architect and Roman engineer, writes De Architectura, an exhaustive analysis of ancient architecture that deals with Greek models and orders (Cheeke, 7). This book reaches a wide audience and inspires many young architects, who now also have access to important Greek libraries that have been captured by Sulla, Paullus, Lucullus, and other Roman generals. Also, Pompeii had an impressive collection of medical books. The loot includes not only scholarly books but also practitioners. Some wealthy families acquire a Greek doctor, as well as teachers and craftsmen. With time, the Roman deities are associated with those of Greece. The temples and theaters of the latter are adapted according to the taste of the Romans. Athletic events designed on Greek models are becoming popular. The emperors Nero, Hadrian, and Marc Aurelius, fervent philhellenes, support various initiatives of Greek inspiration. The Roman ruling class is sensitive to the merits of the arts and ideas of Greece.

The question of Roman ‘copies’ of Greek works raises a series of problems related to artistic imitation, quotation, and emulation, but also to the construction of history and criticism of Roman and Greek Art. A reflection is proposed from ancient literary sources around painting and sculpture. The ambiguity of the attitude of the Romans is put forward: imitative practices, far from being negative, are presented as being at the heart of artistic creation, while the notion of ‘original’ fades away. Naturally, our ambition in this article is not to formulate a new history of Roman art, but to reflect on the so-called phenomenon of ‘copies’ of Greek art from ancient literary sources, while taking into account the latest considerations of art.

The issues raised by the reading of the Roman painting as a possible reflection of the great Greek painting will be our starting point. By applying them to other visual arts, we will show how the principles of imitation, quotation and appropriation rhyme with emulation unveil Rome as a specific cultural entity. Contrary to the unfavorable judgment that Horace expressed, we do not exactly know the ecstasy felt in the Greek art of which knowledge from many ancient and modern writings before the Roman art. Thus, the Greek art we know, or its memory, is an invention of the Romans. To mention Roman paintings, it, first of all, should be confronted with the question of the links with the great Greek painting, mostly disappeared, but imagined thanks to the literary documentation and the Campanian paintings (Figures 1-29. Then, to the difficulties posed by the classification of Roman painting in four styles which is proposed by August Mau in 1882 from the Pompeian frescoes (Figure 3), still governs all too often the works on Roman painting (Margolis, 107).

These questions depend respectively on the definition of separated Roman painting and Greek painting -if it is possible- as well as the problem of originals and models. In fact, the corpus of Greek paintings, which has progressed significantly thanks to the discoveries of the Macedonian tombs (Figure 4) and Hellenistic funerary paintings, especially in Alexandria (Figure 5), provides an invaluable light on the quality of this art of court and its derivatives. However, it can only partially suggest the 'great painting' of the fifth and fourth centuries, especially the easel works of the greatest names such as Polygnot or Zeuxis. On the other hand, the Roman corpus is subject to the disproportion of the Pompeian frescoes, unequaled reservoir of motifs and decorative mechanisms implemented in the houses and villas.

Since then, the main and most used source to try to understand the relationship between the painting of the Greek and Roman worlds is essentially textual, at the forefront of which is the Book XXXV of Pliny. So that, alternating from one extreme to the other, Roman painting has been considered sometimes as an avatar of the great Greek painting, and sometimes as a dichotomous art divided between ‘Roman painting of the direct Hellenistic tradition’ and ‘Roman painting’, which is born as triumphal art about historical events. Starting from literary sources, links have been established with Pompeian paintings which are presenting several series of paintings. Mary Beard and Bettina Bergman very effectively summarize the limits of any attempt to trace the theoretical circuit of ‘copies’ of lost originals.

They also mention often the impossibility of establishing a real connection with a brief notice. Nevertheless, the ‘copy’ (in the broad sense of the term, the ancient conception of which we will try to apprehend) of Greek paintings, especially Athenian, is a phenomenon well attested in Rome. However, the motivations and the practices of such an approach are varied, on the part of artists as sponsors, and often revealing of cultural behavior, which evolves chronologically around the definitions of two principal notions, that of archaism and that of Greece. In this respect, the question is variated between the ‘copy’ of works of ‘masters’, widely quoted by the texts, and the reproduction of anonymous models borrowed from the Greek world, which is observed on the walls of Roman houses. A quick survey of the vocabulary of the ‘copy’ and the study of some famous examples of reproductions of Greek works in Rome makes it possible to trace the contours of this phenomenon at the end of the Republic and at the beginning of the Empire.

Concerning the painting of the Demon of Temesa described by Pausanias, of which he says he saw a ‘copy’, Agnès Rouveret analyzed the uses of μίμημα and related terms in the work of the chieftain, an analysis which reveals that this term means either ‘copy’, either ‘imitation’ or ‘representation’; the distinction does not seem relevant to this author, although the etymology of the word tends to the second meaning, and that it is indeed in this case an imitation and not a copy stricto sensu, if we follow the interpretation of Mario Torelli. On the other hand, it appears that the authority of the character ἀρχαῖος of the original painting, is opposite to the term in the same corpus to παλαιός. Here, the μίμησις seems to preserve, in the eyes of Pausanias, the virtues of the authenticity of the original. Luciaen plays more on words when he depicts the ‘copy’ of the Centaurs of Zeuxis:

“From this painting… As for the original, Sylla, the Roman general, would have sent it to Italy with all his spoil of battle, but the ship perished, I think, not far from Cape Malea and, with him, all his charge, including the painting. However, since I have seen the image of this image, I will in my turn, in words, describe it to you as best I can. (Zeuxis 2, 45)”

In this passage, the original Zeuxis is called εἰκών, ἀρχέτυπον, and γραφή. As for the ‘copy’, the expressions used to define it are ἀντίγραφον and εἰκὼν (τῆς εἰκόνος). Thus, the vocabulary is answered term by term: the generic γραφ is balanced by the ἀντίγραφον, in traditional opposition to the ἀρχέτυπον - which undoubtedly covers again the values of ἀρχαῖος previously mentioned. But it is the expression εἰκὼν τῆς εἰκόνος that brings the most interesting lighting: ‘original’ and ‘copy’ are qualified by the same term, the second appearing as the exact reflection of the first, thanks to the essential quality with which it was realized, the ἀκρίβεια τῇ στάθμῃ, 'the exactitude with the cord'; yet the ἀκρίβεια, the technical precision of the craftsman, is also one of the criteria of perfection of an original painting, itself a reflection of the perceptible reality.

The nature of the ‘copy’ thus appears to be perfectly identical to that of the original painting, in Pausanias as in Luciaen's texts. And from the moment it is recognized as the exact reproduction of the original, it can be used without reserve of support to the literary imitation that constitutes an ekphrastic description.

Considering that the greatest artists cannot be equaled, but even imitated, no ‘copy’ is considered worthy of mention for itself. As we have seen, one of the motivations of the ‘copy’ in the broad sense can be the restoration, another the competition between artists. Another design concerns preparatory works which become an object of study for anonymous artists, especially in neo-Attic workshops. Thus, the sketches of ParrhasiusParrhesias serve as models, :

There are also many sketches of his hand on tablets and sheets of parchment, which are said that artists make their profit. In the same way, the painting testifying to the competition between ProtogeneProtogenes and Apellee on the finest line is the object of the admiration of all, but 'especially artists' (Pollitt, 155). However, the interest of Pliny does not relate to these phases of training artists who had to practice recopying the famous paintings.

There is no question of tackling here all the issues raised by Roman sculptures that ‘imitate’ Greek sculptures and transforming them into other materials or in other sizes or dissect all literary sources, such as pictorial works, proposed by some. The purpose of this assignment, is rather to reflect on the validity of the theories present in the last Anglo-American publications from a few precise ancient texts. But let's start by looking briefly at the question of ‘copies’ and ‘originals’ in museums. Any modern visitor has seen in recent years the change of sculpture groups in European museums. Although the statues are named as Greek Period even with a chronological order, it is supposed that the original ones are from the Archaic, the Classical’ or the ‘Hellenistic’ period, but actually it should be the section of Roman ‘copies’. Thus, in the Louvre Museum, Roman dating is proposed in parallel to that of the ‘model’, which is a revolution. This means that the research initiated by Gisela Richter, Margarete Bieber and Brunilde Ridgway have finally made their way.

Nevertheless, the fact of presenting these sculptures in the Greek department, adjoining a fragment of the Parthenon frieze (Figure 6) and the Venus de Milo (Figure 7), proves the Winckelmann's theories to build a history of Greek art from Roman copies. Nowadays, in German museums, there is a structural movement to present the collections in an accurate way. Probably because of art historians like Paul Zanker and Tonio Hölscher, while being attentive to the 'Greek' traits, as much as possible, the contextualization of the sculptures. These two museum presentation options are in fact indicative for the complex and ambiguous behavior of the Romans had with Greek art and their own art.

The investigation conducted in some literary sources led to a paradox: on the one hand, the copies as we imagined, only remain creations among which works of painters and older Greek sculptors are put on a pedestal; on the other, copies, imitations or replicas exist, but they have a value equivalent to the original, and consequently, the notion of the original disappears. ‘Authentic’ Greek Art or Roman Art, serve in fact to define the ambiguous and ambivalent relations of the Romans with the Greeks: the ‘otherness’ included space, public and private, was induced by the invasion of art Greek, allows the Romans to define what Roman art versus Greek art is.

The new contextualization of Greek works in the Roman world make objects both Greek and Roman. The Greek claim is a mark of culture, but in a way, it is the Romans who invented what Greek art should be. In fact, the situation is even more complex. For it is not only a question of defining Roman art, but also Greek art. Roman art is described as eclectic, constantly culling (formal, stylistic, thematic) quotations from past works.

But, if we look closely at Greek art, we see these practices of imitation and there is also eclecticism and the Roman craftsmen probably have nothing to envy of the Greek 'artists' as to their status in society. Art is neither more nor less difficult to define in Rome than in the Greek world. The question of original and copy has no more reason to be in Rome than in Greece. So, we could conclude: what if had some Greek craftsmen in Roman timess had invented ‘'Greco-Roman’' arts?