Written in stone

About this book

My aim in the present study is to offer a close analysis of the ways in which statues function in the literature of the Roman Empire from the Augustan period to the highpoint of the Second Sophistic in the late 2 nd and early 3 rd centuries CE. In their presentation of the literary statue, Roman authors manipulate the defining criteria of the sculpted medium--fixity, materiality and silence. My analysis of the strategies employed by Imperial authors in 'writing' the statue reassesses the presentation of art in a literary context and how the sculpted medium challenges simple description. I have structured my dissertation as a series of case studies that analyze the unique features of the statue and their translation from a visual to a literary medium. In particular, I investigate the sculptural medium's negotiable relationship to an original source or model; the consequences of resemblance to and approximation of life; and the challenge posed to the primacy of text with regard to fixing permanence and effectively representing 'reality.' These areas of inquiry also include a consideration of the sculptor as a creator-figure, especially in the case of religious or cult images as well as the use of statues as a metaphorical field in the sexualized description of female beauty. I begin my inquiry with an analysis of the statue in Ovid's Metamorphoses as a methodological introduction. I then turn to a consideration of several related themes: resemblance and the portrait statue (Pliny the Younger), the issues of replication and substitution (Histories of Tacitus; Favorinus' Corinthian Oration ), canonical artists and the sculpting of the divine (Propertius 4.2), the perspective that integrates viewing and reading as parallel and interrelated processes--something I term 'epigrammatic viewing' ( Silvae 1.1 and 4.6), and finally, the metaphorical complex that writes women as statues and how that affects the text through reciprocality (Petronius' Satyricon 126-132). In my conclusion, I analyze a fictional letter by Alciphron that puts on display the portrait statue, divine images, and the confrontation between model and image, as well as the relationship between artist, model and statue.