Pedestals of Honor: Statues, Metaphors, and the Politics of Commemoration in Imperial Greece

The political culture of the imperial Graeco-Roman East employed a series of written and visual media so as to articulate group power and individual distinctiveness. Commissioned by and for local elites, publicly decreed statues, and their inscribed bases, served as lynchpins of elite supremacy. These monuments did not merely commemorate the sitters behind them. Ubiquitous in the urban landscape as they were, they transformed personal biography (bios) into civic virtue, embedding elite narratives into the public domain. [1] Although Roman-period decrees appear formulaic, heavily indebted to Classical and Hellenistic conventions no less, a closer reading reveals a dynamic metaphor-laden rhetoric.

This report explores the political function of metaphor in imperial-period honorific inscriptions, with a focus on its contribution to self-presentation practices. Drawing on epigraphic and visual evidence, I argue that metaphorical language served as a key rhetorical accoutrement, translating personal ethos into a shared vocabulary of civic honors. This practice built upon a long-standing tradition: throughout Greek history, associations between prominent individuals and gods or heroes were part and parcel of civic dialogue. [2] Figurative language carried significant symbolic and political currency, situating public leaders in history and within complex contemporary power dynamics.

Honorific inscriptions need not be seen as isolated entities that stood apart from the urban landscape onto which they had been imposed. Instead, they generated meaning and significance through their interplay with display context, audience expectations, and accompanying sculptural assemblages. [3] Within the performative culture of the imperial Greek polis, text and image fed off each other to advertise civic, intellectual, and social qualities. [4] Set up in highly visible spaces – e.g., agorae, theatres, and gymnasia – statues, rendered in familiar formats and postures, allowed the honorands to proclaim membership in a group with a shared cultural sensibility. In this sense, public honorific statues functioned as lieux de mémoire: physical sites where elite agendas were enacted and emotionally experienced. Public portraits put on programmatic display a repertoire of civic virtues meant to be seen and memorized by the community.

This theoretical framework underpinned my recent work as a CHS fellow, in which I applied these ideas to a corpus of marble portraits from the Greek mainland that survive with their inscribed bases and are tied to specific setting contexts. Through stylistic and epigraphical analysis, I investigated the ways in which mythological metaphor informed the language of public honors. The primary aim was to demonstrate how locally inflected moral and civic values were embedded in honorific formulae through the pairing of image and text. By unpacking the relationship between specific statuary types and honorific titles, this report demonstrates how portraits buttressed conduits of power and privilege, thereby addressing cultural memory and civic identity in Roman-period Greece. 

A striking group of inscriptions attests to the honorific title Hestia Poleōs (Hearth of the City) conferred on distinguished women. [5] It appears that the title in question had a distinctly local hue. The vast majority of the inscriptions that record the title Hestia Poleōs, 15 in total, have been discovered in the Peloponnese, bar two inscriptions from Asia Minor. [6] Ten of the inscriptions, subsumed into this corpus, stem from Laconia and can be dated between the second and third centuries AD. Based on prosopographical details, we deduce that this title was bestowed on prominent women born into leading local families. While most inscribed bases survive without their statues, a rare example from Messene offers insight into the honorific title in question.

Two statue bases, discovered in the lower storey of the local theatre, bear a decree honouring Tiberius Claudius Saethidas Caelianus II, who financed the edifice’s refurbishment sometime in the second century AD. [7] The text regulates, inter alia, the dedication of statues for his kin, including his mother, Claudia Fronteina, hailed as “Hearth of the City.” [8] Her statue, uncovered near the theatre’s eastern side entrance, falls into the widely used “Large Herculaneum Woman” scheme. This type was particularly favoured in the second century AD for bodying forth notions of female power and civic virtue. [9] When combined with the honorific title, Fronteina’s image projected stability and continuity, not only for her own elite household but also for the entire city of Messene.

The so-called kosmetai corpus illustrates the vivid interplay between text and image in Roman-period portraiture. These portraits, 33 in number, were incorporated into the Post-Herulian Wall near Athens’ Roman Agora and uncovered alongside several gymnasium-related inscriptions. The sculptures in question most likely graced the gymnasium of Diogenes, from which they were later removed and repurposed as spolia. Four can be securely matched to inscribed hermaic bases, which explicitly identify the subjects as kosmetai – that is, office-holders charged with supervising and educating the ephebes. [10]

One herm depicts Heliodoros of Piraeus in starkly realistic fashion: he is shown bald, clean-shaven, wrinkled and with wrestler’s “cauliflower” ears. [11] Dated to AD 115/116, the monument’s inscription identifies it as both a schēma (figure) of Hermes and an eikōn (image/portrait) of Heliodoros. The text records that the arrow-carrying ephebes “jointly attributed this figure of Hermes and the portrait [or image] of Heliodoros to this sculpture; on the one hand to him [Hermes], because he is a god and pleasing to young ephebes; on the other, to him [Heliodoros], because he obtained [or achieved] the mightiest glory of the kosmetai.” [12] By conjuring up the primeval function of the herm format, the honorific inscription likens the kosmetes to the gymnasium’s patron god, conferring a semi-sacrosanct status upon him.

The portrait herm of Onasos from Pallene follows suit. [13] Here, the Athenian kosmetes is portrayed as a mature, bearded man. His dignified physiognomy recalls Classical portraits of civic leaders and intellectuals, conveying an impression of gravitas and composed demeanour. The accompanying honorific decree, dated to the late Hadrianic or early Antonine period, reads as follows: “The people made this Onasos a magistrate of the ephebes after giving him an honour equal to Hermes.” [14] Onasos’ assimilation to the god of the gymnasium, combined with the ostentatious use of the Homeric word kudēnas – a past participle derived from the word kudainō (give honour/glory) – casts him in the mould of illustrious ancestors, linking his public service to the ideals of heroic civic virtue.

The practice of assimilating gymnasium subjects to Hermes extended beyond the close confines of Athens. In Sparta, the herm of the prematurely deceased ephebe Damokrates is a case in point. An inscription informs us that he was commemorated with two herm portraits in the palaestrae of the gymnasium and hailed as “New Hermes” – a title that signaled his idealized youth and early death. [15] But why was the herm format favored for commemorating such subjects? Within the context of imperial Greece, herms delineated Hellenic identity and paideia in a most emphatic manner. In Athens, in particular, herms were loaded with significance tied to local history and politics: since Hipparchos’ sixth-century installations and the infamous 415 BC mutilation incident, herms came to express strength, tradition, and civic guardianship. [16] Thus, imperial-period herm portraits tapped into a long-running cultural script of civic masculinity anchored in Athenian democratic ideals and ritualized memory.

Similar visual strategies informed the self-representation of imperial-period matrons. Mythological/allegorical personifications and historically charged statuary types cast female honorands in powerful, evocative postures that underscored both their civic credentials and feminine virtues. In the second century AD, the “Nemesis” type, in particular, was co-opted into the portrayal of elite women who sought to present themselves in an awe-inspiring, if hoary, fashion. [17] A compelling example is the statue of Annia Regilla which was dedicated by her husband Herodes Attikos in Corinth between AD 143 and 160. Erected in front of the Tychaion and installed by the city council, the base inscription identifies Regilla as the city’s Tychē (Good Fortune). [18] Most strikingly, the statue base has been plausibly associated with a fragmented Nemesis torso discovered nearby on the southwest side of the forum, the implication being that Regilla was depicted in the guise of Nemesis, a goddess cultically associated with Fortune and civic order. [19]

This report sketched out the contours of my 2024/2025 CHS research. Situated at the intersection of emotion, aesthetics, and local politics, honorific statues operated as culturally specific performative devices. The extant material begs the question: can we discern a tangible connection between contemporary self-presentation strategies and specific honorific titles?  While Greek elites were often portrayed in widely circulated statuary types – such as the iteration from Messene – certain case studies, albeit few and far in between, do denote a conscious attempt to visualize civic virtues by means of sculpture. As exemplified by hermaic portraits and the image of Regilla, evidence from mainland Greece indicates that historically charged statuary types were particularly preferred for bringing to vigorous life specific civic qualities. Refracting and reinforcing this visual agenda, mythological metaphors gained renewed currency across the Greek mainland, owing to the universal appeal of its cultural landscape – a trend that culminated in the second century AD. Against this backdrop, honorific portraits served as active agents in sustaining cultural memory and affirming civic ideals over the course of the imperial period.