Syncretism and Segregation in Early Chri

Studies in
Iconography
38
Copyright 2017 by the Board of Trustees of Western Michigan University
Studies in Iconography is supported and administered by the

Index of Christian Art, Princeton University.
For further details see <http://ica.princeton.edu/>.
ISSN 0148-1029
Composed by Kathy Bond Borie
Cover photo: Fall of the rebel angels. Très riches heures, before 1416; Chantilly, Musée Condé, MS 65,
fol. 64v. (Photo: Art Resource, NY, © RMN-Grand Palais.)
Syncretism and Segregation in Early Christian Art
Robert Couzin
T he front of a late fourth-century sarcophagus conserved in the Musée de l’Arles Antique

(Fig. 1) echoes an earlier Roman design (Fig. 2): five twisted columns establish four niches; a
standing couple appears twice in the center, once in the handshake motif or dextrarum iunctio and
again in a scene perhaps of parting; the outer arcades contain naked Dioscuri grasping the reins
of their horses.1 The short sides of the antecedent chests (when preserved) add further traditional
Roman motifs—Medusa, Sol, and Luna, or a victimarius with his ax leading a steer to sacrifice—but
in Arles the lateral decoration is Christian: on the left (Fig. 3), Jesus multiplying loaves and fishes; on
the right (Fig. 4), Peter reading from a bookroll.
Themes and motifs from Greco-Roman mythology and religion have persisted in the visual
culture of Christian Europe, reaching a high-water mark in the Renaissance.2 The stakes were, of
course, quite different in the later Roman Empire when the Arles sarcophagus was produced. During
this transitional period, Christian number, power, authority, and discourse rose from insignificance
to dominance.3 A religious order still establishing its demographic majority, spiritual ascendancy, and
political control might be expected to resist the visual and material culture of its established rival. The
archaeological record nonetheless confirms that at least some Christians, in some contexts, overcame
any scruples in this regard and welcomed the display of traditional imagery on their monuments and
possessions.
There exists no inventory of instances where pagan imagery is combined with secure Christian
provenance or ownership, to update and expand Janet Huskinson’s seminal, but explicitly incomplete
Fig. 1. Dioscuri sarcophagus (front). Musée de l’Arles Antique, Inv. FAN.92.00.2482. (Photo: J. Böhringer,
Neg. D-DAI-ROM-60.1709.)
SYNCRETISM AND SEGREGATION IN EARLY CHRISTIAN ART 19
Fig. 2. Dioscuri sarcophagus (front). Musée National, Parc Trémaux, Tipasa (Algeria). (Photo:
H. Sichtermann, Neg. D-DAI-ROM-75.477.)
Fig. 3. Dioscuri sarcophagus (left side). Musée de l’Arles Antique, Inv.

FAN.92.00.2482. (Photo: J. Böhringer, Neg. D-DAI-ROM-60.1710.)
20 ROBERT COUZIN
Fig. 4. Dioscuri sarcophagus (right side). Musée de l’Arles Antique, Inv.

FAN.92.00.2482. (Photo: J. Böhringer, Neg. D-DAI-ROM-60.1711.)
1974 article, “Some Pagan Mythological Figures and their Significance in early Christian Art.”4 The
current study does not respond directly to that challenge. It aims, rather, to produce a kind of
negative catalogue, highlighting not the prevalence of such monuments but their relatively modest
number, and a deployment that is selective and contextually determined rather than casual and
ubiquitous. Particular attention will be devoted to instances of juxtaposition of Christian and non-
Christian themes, figures, or motifs because such objects would constitute the best and most enticing
evidence of something like “visual syncretism.”
This project is centered on Rome. Examples from elsewhere are occasionally cited to supplement
the dearth of metropolitan material or suggest a potential geographical divergence. The chronological
span is roughly from 300 to 450 CE. These dates are neither fixed by historical milestones nor
completely arbitrary. No terminus post quem can be laid down for the monuments themselves since
Christian consumers could and did own “antiques,” but the phenomenon under examination cannot
be detected much before 300 because in earlier centuries there were too few Christians to have left
a significant trail. The demographic, social, cultural, and political “Christianization” of Rome each
proceeded at its own pace, and the process was not linear, uniform, or orderly. However, by no
later than the middle of the fifth century, Christians had monopolized the wealth and power that
determined the form and content of most surviving artifacts, and considerations governing the use of
non-Christian (and, for that matter, Christian) imagery might no longer be the same. The resulting
chronological bracket is not meant to suggest a century and a half of homogeneity. Circumstances in
450 evidently differed markedly from those in 300.
The nomenclature of early Christian art is fraught with unexpressed connotations prone to
misunderstanding. A brief glossary is therefore offered for the purposes of this discussion:
• “Christian,” when it refers to ownership or reception, contemplates an object that professes to be
such through inscription, sign, or imagery, with no implied assertion about the character, depth,
or consistency of the religious commitment of the owner or viewer. The contentious subject of
religious identity in fourth-century Rome is touched upon only very briefly below.
• “Christian imagery” means pictorial representations drawn from or based upon the Old or New
Testament, apocryphal sources, popular legends, or dogmatic polemics. The definition side-steps
thorny questions about the ontological and semantic status of “Christian art.”5
• Similarly, “pagan imagery” means scenes, themes, and motifs from Greco-Roman mythology and
religion, the compendium of stories, legends, and cultic practices associated with the traditional
heroes and gods. Like “Christian imagery” the expression is positivistic shorthand, a purely
descriptive category without implications about how the images were experienced. The word
“pagan” has been criticized for its uncertain boundaries, origins in Christian polemic, antipathetic
connotations, and offense to twenty-first-century sensibilities. Yet, so long as its limitations and
origins are recognized, “pagan” remains the simplest and most widely accepted expression to
describe that which is neither Christian nor Jewish in the Roman Empire.6
• Many verbs have been employed to refer to the use of pagan imagery by Christians, including
“borrow,” “appropriate,” “adopt,” “accept,” “assimilate,” and “reuse.” These words can evoke spe-
cific theorizations like acculturation, continuity, triumph, accommodation, and spolia, depending
on the intentions of the writer and the predilections of the reader. The preferred term here is the
less loaded “use,” and the occasional appearance of other words should be read as a matter of style
rather than theoretical intent.
• The important (for this study) term “juxtaposition” is a purely spatial or compositional description.
• Labels attached to particular forms of representation may prejudge the character of the imagery.
Kriophoros, or ram bearer, is used by historians of Greek and Roman art, with some antique au-
thority, to describe a male figure bearing a sheep or ram across his shoulders. “Good Shepherd”
(especially with initial capital letters) asserts an associated allusion to Christ’s self-description as
pastor bonus in John 10:11 and the parable of Luke 15:4, which ends with Jesus laying the lost
sheep, precisely, upon his shoulders. The transliterated Greek term is used here without intending
to take a position on either the distinction or its historiography.7 On the other hand, the literature
conventionally calls little naked figures “erotes,” a term that could be criticized as too evocative of
a pagan deity. Amores, or the anglicized “amors,” is arguably more appropriate in the context of
the Latin West, but this term also projects content that might or might not have been intended or
experienced. In this article the use of alternative terms, including “cupids” or “putti,” is meant to
underscore the purely descriptive function of the labels.8
Three Theories of “Visual Syncretism”

Non-Christian motifs are sometimes called “neutral.” This word posits semantic consistency across
the gamut of viewers regardless of religious affiliation. An image may always have been neutral, that
is, never invested with significant religious content. More often, neutrality is an acquired character-
istic, the old cultic associations of the image having been stripped away with the passage of time.9
22 ROBERT COUZIN
In either case the neutral figure or motif is situated within the common cultural heritage of Romans,
since the instruction of Christians and non-Christians alike, or at least of those wealthy enough to
have had the benefit of a formal education, included the recitation of traditional mythological texts.10
Occasionally, the shared meaning of a neutral image is spiritual, as when Hercules is regarded
as an ecumenical metaphor for triumph over death.11 More often it is profane or decorative, especially
in the case of “light” motifs like cupids or frolicking sea creatures that, notwithstanding their reli-
gious roots, had acquired a dominantly secular value for high-status urbanites long before the fourth
century. Perhaps a few viewers understood erotes as pluralized and infantilized figures of Eros, but for
most, little naked boys holding a tabula or making wine were not, in their own right, redolent with
religious connotations. Neutrality has been applied to interpret the Christian use of a wide range of
pagan and classical imagery beyond amors or marine figures, including orants and shepherds (with
or without rams or sheep on their shoulders), demi-gods like Orpheus, and even some fully fledged
divinities.
A second and opposing interpretive strategy posits that Christian and non-Christian observers
shared a particular image while ascribing it different meanings. On this view, such traditional figures
as Orpheus or the ram-bearing shepherd embodied distinct connotations depending on the religious
persuasion of the viewer.12 This rationalization has ancient precedents. Eusebius, for example, labeled
as “good shepherds” sheep-bearing figures placed at fountains in Constantinople that were probably
pagan antiquities.13 Images reinterpreted as Christian, through a so-called interpretatio christiana,
are far from neutral, even if that term is sometimes loosely applied to them. New meanings poured
into old images transform the visual experience, complementing, distorting, or replacing classical
associations.14
Common to both neutrality and reinterpretation is the extraction of any polytheistic religious
content from the old images: neutrality imposes a single, shared meaning; interpretatio christiana
bifurcates the meaning into Christian and non-Christian significations. A third alternative permits
the mythological or religious figures to retain traditional associations even when used by Christians.15
The word “syncretism” is sometimes used interchangeably for neutrality or Christian reinterpretation
but it bears its strict dictionary definition only under this third approach: “attempted union of or rec-
onciliation of diverse or opposite tenets or practices, esp. in philosophy or religion” (Oxford English
Dictionary).16 Visual or material syncretism stricto sensu is premised on an equivalently eclectic mental
state. It posits that many early Christians maintained a respectably orthodox faith while simultane-
ously appreciating elements of traditional Roman religion. This accumulation of beliefs could, but
need not, have been accompanied by syncretistic cult practices, something that may actually have
been more common among the pagans. A well-known anecdote from the Historia Augusta describes
the morning ritual sacrifice of the Emperor Alexander Severus (r. 222–35) in the presence of portraits
of ancestors and images of divinized emperors and “holy souls” (animi sanctiores), this last category
comprising Apollonius, Christ, Abraham, Orpheus, and other like figures (et huiusmodi ceteros).17
The story is almost certainly apocryphal but the text is enlightening as evidence of attitudes late in
the fourth century when it was written.
The art historical argument for authentic visual syncretism neatly dovetails with recent models
of religious affiliation in this period.18 Some scholars propose a gradient, situating between “real”
Christians and pagans a group of incerti (Kahlos), or “center-Christians” and “center-pagans” (Cam-
eron, Jones). Under a pluralistic model (Rebillard), the individual’s declared religion may coexist
with other membership categories. The claim that many early Christians were not merely imperfect,
inconsistent, or vacillating in their beliefs and practices but truly syncretistic is not new; early patris-
tic writers had struggled with defining the boundaries of “Christian” in a world marked by variable
commitment and comprehension.19 Imperial sanctions against Christians who engaged in idolatry
and sacrifice implicitly confirm the existence of such practices.20
These three theorizations of the early Christian use of pagan imagery—neutrality, reinterpreta-
tion, and cohabiting belief systems—are neither mutually exclusive nor collectively exhaustive. They
are better regarded as interpretive nodes than fixed and discrete theories. At the extreme, the cate-
gories of neutrality and reinterpretation self-destruct: if Christian viewers attributed to a particular
motif precisely the same meaning as non-Christians, or invested it with an exclusive new religious
significance, then calling the image “pagan” is historically correct but experientially misleading. The
fuzzier cases are both richer and more realistic.
Competition between theories should be grounded in evidence. The following survey of the
archaeological record is intended to provide a factual baseline for this lively scholarly debate.
The Liturgical Realm

Paul Zanker proposed that to appreciate the perspective of the Roman viewer, one must consider
the “pictorial spaces” (Bildräume) in which images were encountered.21 Similar considerations apply
to Christian monuments and objects of the later Roman Empire. A number of these, of course,
straddle the spatial boundaries—a villa with a family chapel, a mausoleum in which the Eucharist
was performed, domestic silver plate donated to a church—and the viewing experience was not fully
dictated by the functional context; nonetheless, this distinction between pictorial spaces has both
organizational advantages and heuristic value. Supplementing the usual Roman categories of public,
private, and funerary, let us begin with the Christian liturgical realm.
Although early Church decoration is poorly preserved, the surviving remnants suggest that
Christian ritual was not widely performed in the visual presence of the old gods. Even “innocent”
motifs like cupids, marine genre scenes, and river personifications are only occasionally encountered.
The most notable example is the church of Santa Costanza on Via Nomentana, built as a mausoleum
for the burial of Constantine’s daughter Constantina.22 Here, axial apse mosaics depicting a traditio
legis and a traditio clavium survive from the fourth-century Christian decoration (biblical imagery,
now lost, once occupied the cupola), while the vaulting in the ambulatory presents wine-making
cupids and similar classical motifs (Fig. 5). This qualifies as juxtaposition of Christian and non-Chris-
tian imagery, although the non-Christian elements are of the lighter sort, with no deities or mytholog-
ical actors.23 These classical themes may be comfortably regarded as neutral, secular motifs employed
for a decorative end, perhaps including an element of Christian reinterpretation with respect to the
depictions of grape harvesting and wine making, often regarded as Eucharistic metaphors. A river
personification in Torriti’s 1295 apse mosaic in Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome, might, or might not,
preserve an element from the original fifth-century program.24 The deployment of such traditional
motifs is more striking in a handful of extra-Roman buildings. Erotes and marine scenes are inter-
laced with a Jonah cycle in early fourth-century pavement mosaics in the basilica of Aquileia;25 the
central dome mosaics in the Neonian Baptistery of Ravenna (449–75) and its so-called Arian succes-
sor (493–526) include personifications of the River Jordan, in the one case looking up at the baptised
24 ROBERT COUZIN
Fig. 5. Vault mosaic. Santa Costanza, Rome. (Photo: Author.)
Christ with deferential covered hands (Fig. 6), in the other seated majestically making an ambiguous
gesture with his left hand toward the youthful Lord.26
These few instances do not include any depictions of popular mythological themes. The
avoidance of such imagery in spaces newly built for Christian cultic use is predictable, since these
structures were controlled by, or at least subject to the significant influence of, clerics. Notwithstanding
their own classical tastes, most church officials would have found pagan imagery in the church
inappropriate, unsettling, or distracting. Inertia could have permitted the preservation of pre-existing
decoration in repurposed public and private buildings, but, if so, few traces can be found.27 The
earliest surviving example of such a conversion provides an important if isolated and limited instance
of visual continuity. A basilica that had been erected by Junius Bassus on his Roman estate in 331 was
acquired by a certain Valila, who bequeathed it in the 470s to Pope Simplicius (468–83) to be made
over into a church dedicated to the apostle Andrew. The building has been destroyed, but on the basis
of late fifteenth-century drawings and a few surviving opus sectile panels, it appears that at least some
of its earlier decoration survived the conversion, including a depiction of the Rape of Hylas.28 Valila’s
dedicatory inscription refers to the building, but not to its decoration.29
One might speculate that such pagan imagery could have persisted in other structures so
adapted to Christian cultic use, although there are few extant examples and some indication that,
Fig. 6. Baptism of Christ, dome mosaic. Neonian (Orthodox)

Baptistery, Ravenna. (Photo: Author.)
when this occurred, secular and sacred areas were often kept separate. Thus, when a Christian shrine
was inserted into a Roman house late in the fifth century (now situated beneath the Basilica of SS.
Giovanni e Paolo), some nearby but distinct chambers retained their pre-existing fresco decora-
tion, which included ambiguous female personifications, perhaps Venus or Isis, along with marine
themes.30 A similar example appears in a villa at Lullingstone, Kent.31 Two central rooms contain
mythological mosaics, Europa on the bull and Bellerophon amid roundels of the Seasons, while
traces of other pagan motifs appear on nearby walls. At one end of the building, Christian wall paint-
ings were added late in the fourth century to create what was likely a house church; the best preserved
are chi–rho signs and a row of orant figures. The spatial segregation between pre-existing pagan
imagery and the Christian chapel in these Roman and provincial examples might reflect a wariness
of performing holy rituals in profane spaces, the result of what Kim Bowes described as the “widely
held notion that a room accumulated layers of moral detritus through its various functions.”32 A
more relaxed attitude toward the retention of mythological decoration upon the Christianization of
other buildings in later centuries would be consistent with a reduced, if still lingering, concern over
backsliding and apostasy.
Mythological representations could also have entered the church through the donation of
domestic wares for liturgical use. Inscriptions demonstrate that wealthy Christians in Roman Britain
made such ecclesiastical gifts, but the imagery tends to be restricted to secular themes. One possible
26 ROBERT COUZIN
exception could be the Risley Park Lanx, on which, among the depictions of the hunt, is a small tem-
ple. This seems, however, more a feature of the pastoral landscape than an allusion to pagan religious
praxis.33 The practice of incorporating Roman gems, cameos, and other precious carvings into medi-
eval implements and reliquaries is a later phenomenon.34 Mary Charles-Murray interpreted the claim
attributed to Epiphanius of Salamis that he tore down a figured curtain in a Palestinian church as
referring to a textile with pagan, rather than Christian, images (against the more common reading of
this passage), suggesting that luxury materials of such design might often have been provided by local
Christian donors.35 The conjecture seems theoretically plausible, but its textual basis in Epiphanius is
problematic,36 and there is no physical evidence for the hypothesized practice.
The dearth of pagan images in churches cannot be attributed to iconoclasm. While there may
have been some initial pictorial reticence among Christians and more demonstrably among some of
their theologians, it was not rigorous, pervasive, or lasting.37 Lavish and imposing Christian works,
whether surviving, like the apse mosaic in Santa Pudenziana, Rome (402–17),38 or known from liter-
ary sources, like the sculptures of the Lateran Fastigium,39 contain no pagan images, either decorative
or divine. This is not to say that the Christian programs evoked no traditional connotations through
the attributes, costumes, colors, materials, or postures of their figures.40 But there was no icono-
graphical confusion. Christian theological, spiritual, and dogmatic requirements mostly precluded
identifiably pagan images, their purported neutrality or Christian reinterpretation notwithstanding.
The Public Realm

Although significantly depleted, often recycled into walls or buildings as a matter of economic exi-
gency, pagan sculpture remained ostentatiously present in the urban landscape.41 Reflecting the
growth in Christian number and confidence, some of these statues were defaced with the incision
of a cross. The gesture might be apotropaic or exorcistic—a defense against demons either before or
after the fact—but also, in some cases or for some observers, a mark of appropriation, a signal of
the forced conversion of the material object.42 The Christian use of unmarked pagan statuary in the
public realm may occasionally be demonstrated by its patronage, as in Constantine’s deployment of
mythological figures, whether freshly carved or imported, in his new imperial capital. Best known
(alas, by documentary rather than archaeological, evidence) is the appearance of Apollo, Aphrodite,
Herakles, and Trojan heroes in the Baths of Zeuxippos.43 Yet, it is noteworthy that the custom of
depicting emperors accompanied by, or even dressed up as, the gods was abandoned. The Tetrarchs
still appear with Jupiter’s eagle, Mars, and Sol Invictus on the Decennalia column base in Rome (303
CE),44 but their Christian successors generally avoided the visual company of traditional divinities.45
The preservation of pagan sculpture in civic spaces and public buildings was partly the work
of a still strong population of high-status, wealthy pagans. They and their dwindling cohort of
co-religionists continued to appreciate these works, perhaps with either wistful nostalgia or deepened
significance in a period of shifting demographics and power; yet, as the cities became predominantly
populated and politically controlled by Christians, the persistence of the urban sculptural patrimony,
including explicitly mythological representations, is testimony to the enduring acceptability of such
imagery in this space by the broader population.46 Indeed, it was also not merely tolerated but even
extolled by leading Christian residents. Prudentius, writing just after 400, lauded pagan sculptures
as the “works of great artists,” “our country’s fairest ornaments,” only expressing his dismay lest they
be polluted by the blood of sacrifice.47 An imperial decree from 382 invoked similar grounds for the
public viewing of temple statuary, so long as no sacrifices were performed; these images “must be
measured by the value of their art rather than by their divinity.”48 Such aesthetic sentiments, joined
with the abiding acceptability of stock scenes that portrayed imperial virtues, explain the insouciance
of early Christian viewers confronting representations of sacrifice on Hadrianic and Aurelian medal-
lions recut and redeployed on the Arch of Constantine.49
The many Christians who enjoyed the sight of such pagan images may properly be said to have
adopted or assimilated them, and aesthetic or political motivations would suggest neutrality as the
principal rationalization. However, a vocal minority of rejectionists regarded these figures and motifs
as offensive to Christian beliefs and sensibilities. Far from protecting such images from opprobrium,
their beauty may well have exacerbated the adverse reactions. So Bishop Theodoret of Cyrus (ca. 393–
ca. 453) remarked the reputed magnificence of the temple of Serapis in Alexandria only to revel in
the report of its huge idol being cut to pieces (in 391).50 He railed against the public display of myth-
ological statuary, especially in the nude: Aphrodite, whose posture was “more disgraceful than that of
any call girl standing in a brothel;” a “lithesome and effeminate” Dionysus; Zeus attacking Ganymede
or copulating with Leda; and the explicit depiction of male and female genitalia.51 The treatment of
pagan imagery in the Sebasteion of Aphrodisias is instructive. Many representations of the gods were
spared, some destroyed, and others partially and carefully defaced. The choice seems to reflect a scale
of perceived offensiveness corresponding to the cultic intensity of a particular image, but one constant
was the elimination of sex organs, something of which Theodoret would no doubt have approved.52
The chronological development of such attitudes and their material expression—the preserva-
tion or the destruction of publicly visible pagan imagery—discloses conflicting trends. In the tran-
sitional period before Christian civic hegemony was firmly established, the dominant position of
accommodation and assimilation generally favored the status quo, while clerical polemic and dog-
matism often preferred elimination of the repugnant decoration. Contrary tendencies persisted but
for different reasons as Christian authority became more confident and less tolerant, notably in the
Theodosian period. In any case, the public realm remained a place where Christians could observe
and admire representations of the gods.
There is little sign of a Christian visual counter-offensive. Public monuments erected by or
in honor of Christian emperors eschewed the display of imagery particular to their religion. Chris-
tograms appear on coinage of Constantine and his successors, but not explicitly Christian figural
representations; and if the inscription on his eponymous arch might have accommodated a Christian
reading, there is no equivalent ambiguity in its relief decoration.53 This restraint was only slightly
relaxed when Arcadius erected his historiated column in Constantinople almost a century later
(ca. 402–3). It includes a couple of Christian symbols, but no Christian images.54
Churches also largely dispensed with exterior figural decoration. Richard Krautheimer pro-
posed that the peripheral situation of the buildings was meant to assuage pagan sensibilities, and one
might similarly seek to explain their undecorated facades.55 But if such an inference was ever sup-
portable, it cannot survive the succession of Christian emperors, the enhanced temporal authority of
the bishops, and the demographic tide of Christian inhabitants. Indeed, it seems that churches were
progressively located precisely with a view to making them more, rather than less, conspicuous;56 yet,
there is little (surviving) indication of explicitly Christian expression on their exteriors. The wide-
spread appearance of sculptural or mosaic pictorial representation, notably at liminal portals, is a later
28 ROBERT COUZIN
medieval development. The significant known exception in Rome is the elaborate Christian program
of the wooden doors of Santa Sabina (422–32), although even in this case the imagery would not
have been visible to a passer-by who did not enter the atrium.57
Another potential venue for the public display of Christian imagery might have been popular
or liturgical processions. But while the portable cross was in general use in the sixth century, and
is attested as early as ca. 400 in Constantinople,58 there is no documentary evidence of images on
parade until much later. The first notice in Rome was the institution by Pope Stephen II (752–57) of
the famous August 15 Assumption procession, when the icon of Christ left the Sancta Sanctorum to
meet the icon of the Virgin at Santa Maria Maggiore.59 Perhaps during an earlier stage in the devel-
opment of Christian visual discourse images of Christ, the Virgin, or saints were regarded as rooted
to their physical sites.60 In any event, there is no indication that processional practice in the fourth or
fifth centuries included the display of Christian images.
The reservation of the streets, forums, and baths of “public Rome” for mythological but not
Christian imagery suggests that these urban spaces were regarded by influential and educated inhab-
itants, pagan and Christian alike, as proper places for the expression of shared aesthetic and cultural
values. The result is an inversion of the ecclesiastical space, where an exclusive and totalizing Chris-
tian discourse generally excluded the appearance of pagan themes and motifs. The sacred and the
public spaces did, however, have one thing in common. Neither welcomed a juxtaposition of the two
sources of imagery.
The Funerary Realm

Identifying instances of the Christian funerary use of pagan imagery is complicated by the chal-
lenge of establishing the religious provenance of the monuments. Archaeological context is of little
assistance. Information regarding the original placement of sarcophagi is almost always unknown,
unreliable, or incomplete, while evidence for the Christian dedication of particular cemetery spaces is
controversial.61 Epigraphy is only slightly more promising. Most sarcophagi (and almost all catacomb
paintings) bear no inscription, and most inscriptions are mute or ambiguous regarding religious affil-
iation. Such terms as in pace or, especially, depositus may have been more commonly used by Chris-
tians, but they were not exclusive, just as dis manibus, the invocation of the gods of the underworld,
was not restricted to pagan monuments.62 The discovery of chests carved with traditional motifs
and inscribed with explicitly and unmistakably Christian formulae (whether contemporaneous with
the reliefs or not) confirms that Christians were buried in such sarcophagi, but their number is lim-
ited and includes very few examples with mythological imagery. The exceptions are mostly late and
extra-metropolitan, like a chest from south-western Gaul with Meleager and the Calydonian boar
flanked by the Dioscuri on its front and a chi–rho monogram between cupids on the lid.63 When a
third-century Endymion sarcophagus was reused for Christian burial in the fifth or sixth century it
was turned around, with a Christian inscription placed on what had been the back so that the myth-
ological imagery was hidden from the viewer.64
Apart from find-spots and inscriptions, another basis for attributing Christian use or owner-
ship to a funerary monument bearing pagan imagery is, precisely, the co-presence of Christian visual
themes (as on the Arles Dioscuri sarcophagus). The scholarly default position in such cases, only
occasionally questioned, is to assert a Christian provenance on the presumption that Christians were
more likely to adopt pagan themes than vice versa: “while ‘pagan’ sarcophagi might continue to be
commissioned by the traditionalist Christians, no pagan is likely to have ordered the scenes from
the Bible that decorate so many Christian sarcophagi.”65 To the extent that the reverse phenomenon
exists, the conventional approach necessarily overestimates the Christian use of pagan imagery. Even
some widely accepted instances of Christian attribution may be open to challenge. For example, the
sun god in his chariot depicted on the vault of Mausoleum M in the Vatican Necropolis is commonly
identified as Christ because of a Jonah cycle on the walls. This attribution presupposes that Christians
comfortably attached pagan attributes to their God but that non-Christian decoration would never
incorporate a popular Old Testament theme.66
The most important putative pagan/Christian conflation in the funerary context is not Sol but
Orpheus.67 He appears in five catacomb paintings alongside Christian scenes or themes.68 The domi-
nant scholarly explanation for these programs is a complete Christian reinterpretation: Orpheus was
transmogrified into a figure of Christ, subjected, in the phrase of Mary Charles-Murray, to a “Chris-
tian annexation.”69 The Christ-as-Orpheus theory relies heavily on a few texts, whose interpretation
is debatable and whose familiarity among lay Roman Christians questionable.70 Be that as it may, the
appearance of Orpheus within an otherwise Christian visual program in some catacombs is a striking
and unusual example of the incorporation of pagan, or what once was pagan, imagery. The same
cannot be said about half a dozen strigilated sarcophagi each with Orpheus in the central field and, at
the corners, a kriophoros, figures of the deceased and spouse, lions, or a stylized hunt. The Christian
attribution of most of these chests is suspect; it relies, at best, on uncertain epigraphic formulae.71
None of them displays any exclusively Christian iconography.
Many other catacombs contain both Christian and pagan imagery but, unlike the Orpheus
examples, not intermingled. One intriguing case is cubiculum O of the Via Latina catacomb, likely
decorated in the third quarter of the fourth century.72 Its program of Old and New Testament scenes
is closely preceded (topographically and likely chronologically) by classical motifs and mytholog-
ical figures: the labors of Hercules (with an appearance by Minerva) in cubiculum N, Ceres and
Proserpina in the connecting corridor. The proximity of these disparate images has been variously
explained. Cubicula N and O may be read together; in this case, Hercules is either neutered, sub-
jected to Christian reinterpretation, or conjoined with the biblical themes in “a syncretism of overtly
pagan and Christian subjects.”73 Alternatively, the two chambers may not represent any such com-
bination of pagan and Christian imagery but instead index the different religious affiliations of two
or more deceased, whether members of a single family or just chance neighbors in death.74 No such
ambiguity affects the coexistence of Christian imagery and wine-making putti in the previously men-
tioned mausoleum Santa Costanza (Fig. 5), although the imperial character of that monument may
demand that it be treated as a special case.
Sarcophagi provide the best laboratory for assessing the prevalence of pagan imagery in the
Christian funerary context because they are abundant and physically discrete. The impression that
Christian chests welcomed non-Christian imagery is mainly due to the presence of putti, most com-
monly as a pair holding an inscribed tabula, clypeus, or parapetasma, or, unusually, engaged in wine
making and harvesting on the short sides of the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus in St. Peter’s.75 As
already remarked, notwithstanding their ancient spiritual roots, these erotes had been absorbed into
the prevailing culture of the well-to-do metropolitan population. Moreover, even these “innocent”
30 ROBERT COUZIN
classical motifs are less common on sarcophagi with Christian imagery than one might suppose,
found on perhaps 10 percent of the total corpus.
A different type of pagan theme that might have been used by Christians consists of allusions
to traditional religious praxis. It is not surprising that representations of sacrifice, libation, or cultic
instruments are never found together with Christian imagery, since these motifs had already fallen
out of favor among non-Christians.76 Yet, even depictions of funerary equipment like garlands
and torches, which did continue into the fourth century, appear only exceptionally on chests with
indications of Christian use, and never along with unequivocally Christian imagery.77 The traditional
funerary meal is pictured on Christian sarcophagi and catacomb paintings, but this is less an
inherited image than an inherited practice, since the commemorative banquet survived the mutation
of religion.78 The same might be said of the orant. This figure was certainly used by Christians,
sometimes alongside explicit Christian iconography.79 However, while initially alluding to cult ritual,
by the third century the orant had acquired independent status as a symbol of pietas, sometimes
a reference to the deceased, and the standing pose with arms outstretched and open palms was
conventionally recommended for Christian prayer.80
One traditional ritual form that remained popular on sarcophagi is the handshake motif
between husband and wife, to the extent that it still referred to the actual ceremony rather than to
the state of matrimony. Non-Christian examples normally include a presiding figure of Juno pronuba
or Concordia, often the marriage god Hymenaeus, and sometimes a sacrificial offering.81 The marital
dextrarum iunctio also appears on some Christian sarcophagi, although this religious attribution is
not secure for all the instances cited in the literature.82 The clearest and most dramatic example is the
Pronuba Sarcophagus in the Museo Pio Cristiano, on which a senatorial couple is depicted with Juno
or Concordia.83 The pagan resonance is underscored by metaphorical figures of Amor and Psyche
along with a small tableau of amores, fighting cocks, and a tripod with trophies signaling the patron’s
virtues. Biblical images appear on the two-register corner panels: the creation of Eve and the healing
of the blind man on the left; the raising of Lazarus and Peter drawing water from a rock on the right.
The fragmentary remains of two other sarcophagi also suggest the juxtaposition of the marital dextra-
rum iunctio and presiding Concordia with Christian scenes.84
On all the other surviving examples, however, the handshake motif has been purified of overtly
pagan motifs. The Arles Dioscuri chest referred to in the opening paragraph (Fig. 1) includes no
Juno/Concordia, no Hymenaeus, no torch or altar. Nor do such figures or attributes appear on three
finely carved, monumental Christian sarcophagi dated to the late fourth century, all of which are
decorated on four sides with the dextrarum iunctio placed discreetly on the back.85 Giuseppe Bovini
thought to recognize on one other, fragmentary, chest a fully Christianized version of the scene: a
man who reaches out his right hand for what was presumably his now-missing spouse while presiding
above them, where one might expect Concordia, is a figure that seems to be Christ. Bovini called it,
not entirely without justification, Christus pronubus.86 It is noteworthy that the handshake motif was
adopted outside the marital context for such other Christian “couples” as Adam and Eve and Peter
and Paul, further attenuating any pagan ritual connotations.87
Classical personifications expressing ancient metaphors of nature and eternal return—
fruitfulness, water, sky, day and night—occasionally appear on Christian sarcophagi. The reclining
figure of river or sea pours out the Red Sea under Pharaoh’s troops on about half a dozen sarcophagi,88
Fig. 7. Sarcophagus (front). Santa Maria Antiqua, Rome. (Photo: J. Böhringer, Neg. D-DAI-ROM-59.421.)
and perhaps most famously appears around the left side of the Santa Maria Antiqua sarcophagus
(Figs. 7 and 8), where the waters from his jar become the sea upon which the ship of Jonah founders.89
Caelus holds the billowing cloak of the heavens below a seated Christ on some eight chests.90 Sun
and moon are found, usually paired as acroteria, on fewer than half a dozen Christian sarcophagi.91
The corpus of sarcophagi juxtaposing Christian themes and such classical motifs thus com-
prises a reasonable number of putti, several personifications, and a few handshake motifs generally
shorn of pagan trappings. The trail, already narrow, pretty much ends here. The pagan divinities or
semi-divine heroes who people Greco-Ro-
man mythology are almost never found:
two secure examples of Amor and Psyche
(the Pronuba Sarcophagus and another
in the Villa Medici, Rome);92 a horse that
could be Pegasus on the short side of a
sarcophagus in San Crisogono, Rome,
that may or may not be Christian;93 the
Dioscuri, of course, in Arles (Fig. 1). This
modest collection notably omits the myth-
ological repertoire that dominated earlier
Roman funerary art, the poignant stories of
Adonis, Endymion, Hippolytus, Meleager,
and Persephone. Admittedly, this partly
reflects the “demythologization” of Roman
sarcophagi in general that had begun early
in the third century. But this imagery did
not entirely disappear, and there was even
something of a limited revival in the Tetrar-
chic and early Constantinian periods.94 Fig. 8. Sarcophagus (left side). Santa Maria Antiqua,
Not, however, on Christian sarcophagi. Rome. (Photo: J. Böhringer, Neg. D-DAI-ROM-59.423.)
32 ROBERT COUZIN
Indeed, Christians seem to have been almost equally chary of the themes and motifs that
largely displaced mythology on pagan monuments, imagery commonly catalogued as vita romana
or vita privata.95 Evocations of intellectual or occupational activity, bucolic repose, battles, and lion
hunts presented no obvious conflict with Christian beliefs or doctrines; their appropriation might
seem to be religiously unexceptionable, and some “everyday life” sarcophagi were certainly bought
and occupied by Christians (albeit fewer than are so classified based on inscriptions or find-spots
in the older literature). However, the inclusion of these new themes alongside Christian imagery is
surprisingly unusual.
Thus, the seated “philosopher” engaged with a book, a staple of the non-Christian reper-
toire, appears on the early Santa Maria Antiqua sarcophagus (Fig. 7) and perhaps only two oth-
ers.96 Johannes Deckers argued that the progressive preferment of the figure of Christ displaced the
deceased from his central position as a thinker to a subsidiary role as supplicant.97 This hypothesis
might provide a rationalization for the philosopher’s demotion but not his disappearance. Further-
more, the deficit is part of a broader trend. Another favorite theme, the hunt, was given equally
short shrift. A few reused chests have suggestive inscriptions,98 and one hunting sarcophagus was
found, apparently in its original archaeological context, in proximity to others that display extensive
and elaborate Christian imagery.99 But only a single clear instance of the juxtaposition of explicit
Christian themes with a full hunting scene survives, and this assumes that the lid (bearing an Ado-
ration of the Magi, Peter’s water miracle, Noah, and Jonah) belongs to the chest (with the hunt),
which is likely but not certain.100 Less fulsome hunts appear on two other fourth-century Roman
sarcophagi with Christian imagery,101 and in a unique arrangement—with an awkwardly inserted,
off-center traditio legis—on a chest in Lamta, Tunisia, that may or may not be of metropolitan
manufacture.102 The hunt is juxtaposed with Christian imagery on a few later, locally produced
monuments in southwestern Gaul.103
The paucity of thinkers and hunters is striking. Roman Christians rich enough to purchase
figural marble sarcophagi must have been just as interested in the pursuit of intellectual pleasure and
wild game, both in real life and in their allegorical significations, as their non-Christian neighbors.
Other categories of vita romana and vita privata representations are also rare or missing in the cor-
pus of visually Christian sarcophagi, like the “curriculum vitae” of the child, athletic competitions,
and occupational scenes.104 Some Christians held high military rank, but they were not deposited
in sarcophagi depicting battles or victorious commanders.105 Unsurprisingly, the usual rules did not
apply to the imperial family: a monumental porphyry sarcophagus richly carved with representations
of mounted soldiers and cringing barbarians is conventionally thought to have been first used for
Constantine’s mother, Helena, having been designed for the emperor himself.106
The vita romana category most often cited as a common motif on Christian sarcophagi is the
bucolic idyll,107 although a significant proportion of the examples, perhaps even most of them, are
probably not actually Christian. And while the pastoral theme certainly did feature in Christian
funerary art, the instances in which it is coupled with explicitly Christian imagery number only
around two dozen (excluding later, provincial monuments), over half of which also include the Jonah
theme.108 The correlation between shepherds or sheep and Jonah could be meaningful and specific to
this biblical theme, or it may merely reflect the fact that Jonah sarcophagi were common in the early
period to which the pastoral images are also primarily confined.
The apparent Christian reluctance to incorporate either mythology or its “everyday life” succes-
sors into lapidary funerary monuments highlights a historical discontinuity in the discourse of death.
Both pagan and Christian visual culture were meant to console surviving family and friends, but the
register in which this practical function sounded was different. Mythological themes were not only
a source of solace but also a celebration of life, of the terrestrial accomplishments and experiences of
the deceased and his or her survivors. Christian iconography emphasized, in Panofsky’s phrase, “not
what the deceased had been or done but what would happen to him on account of his faith.”109 The
new programs were rooted in the Christian conception of death as an element in the economy of
salvation. In rhetorical terms, pagan monuments were eulogistic, a visual panegyric, whereas their
Christian successors also evidenced novel elements that may be characterized as polemical and con-
fessional.110 The distinct imaginaire of Christian death was constructed without recourse to familiar
mythological motifs, and the extension of this reticence to themes of everyday life is consistent with,
and perhaps to some extent corroborates, the view that these latter themes continued the old pagan
funerary allegories and metaphors.111
The significance of this Christian turn in sarcophagus design is underscored by its commercial
inefficiency. Already during the first decades of the fourth century, when the proportion of Chris-
tian customers was very small, workshops were forced to respond to an uncompromising demand
for novel imagery.112 Yet, only in the earliest examples did the producers economize by inserting
Christian motifs into pre-existing, non-Christian models, as exemplified by the previously remarked
Santa Maria Antiqua sarcophagus (Fig. 7) and a child’s sarcophagus in Ravenna (Fig. 9).113 Work-
shops cut the occasional corner by redeploying stock forms, most notably the reclining “sleeper” that
had been used to represent Ariadne, Dionysus, and especially Endymion, now recycled as a model
for Jonah at rest. But these shortcuts were atypical. For the most part sculptors were compelled to
invent new forms and compositions, rejecting not only classical motifs and mythology but even
vita romana and vita privata representations in order to meet the requirements of a growing and
obstinate Christian clientele.
Fig. 9. Child’s sarcophagus. Museo Nazionale di Ravenna. (Photo: M. Gütschow, Neg. D-DAI-
ROM-33.1275.)
34 ROBERT COUZIN
The Domestic Realm

The pictorial space most widely cited as a locus for the Christian adoption of non-Christian imagery
is the home.114 Jaś Elsner observed that “the evidence of material culture shows us pagan and Chris-
tian images juxtaposed with flagrant panache in the domestic setting of the boudoir,” citing as exem-
plary the silver Projecta Casket from the Esquiline treasure, now in the British Museum (Fig. 10).115
The front face of its lid depicts the naked Venus seated demurely on the half-shell holding articles of
her toilette (a pin and mirror) presented by fantastic sea-centaurs and winged erotes; an inscription
along the rim below reads: SECVNDE ET PROIECTA VIVATIS IN CHRI[STO] (Secundus and
Projecta, may you live in Christ). The (or at least a) richly attired couple appears directly above, on
the top of the box, in a clypeus held by two more putti. Elsewhere on the casket are sea creatures,
male and female, amors, dolphins, and a female figure with attendants. This coupling of pagan
images and Christian text has been characterized as an epitome of syncretism116 or “devoid of reli-
gious significance;”117 but in either case, the casket does demonstrate that one fourth-century Roman
family not only owned a silver box depicting a Roman divinity and various classical motifs, but also
dared to embellish it with a Christian hortatory inscription. It does not, however, juxtapose pagan
and Christian images. The visual program evokes a parallel between an elite mortal woman and a
goddess, but the Christian expression is composed solely of words, not pictures.118
Moreover, the Projecta Casket is exceptional. Silver wares from the fourth or fifth century that
display mythological imagery almost never present such an explicit Christian declaration. And when
they do, it inevitably appears on a different object of the collection, physically separated from these
images. For example, the Sevso treasure includes among its fourteen surviving silver pieces eight that
display a profusion of mythological themes and motifs; one plate bears an inscription invoking the
name of Christ (using the chi–rho abbreviation), while its imagery is entirely devoted to the hunt,
including its fulfillment in cooking and eating.119 The Christian presence in a couple of other hoards
that include pagan imagery is limited to small objects with no figural decoration: a few spoons in
Mildenhall, a toothpick or ear scoop in Kaiseraugst.120 One might question in these cases whether
such meager Christian intrusions are iron-clad proof that the whole treasure belonged to a Christian
home, but that inference seems secure where the proportions are reversed, as in the Hoxne hoard
from Sussex, now in the British Museum. In this case, several items bear Christian signa while one
spoon depicts Pegasus and a pepper pot is surmounted by a statuette of Hercules and Antaeus.121
Taking these collections together, it does appear that some wealthy Christians enjoyed pagan imagery
on their household silver, perhaps incorporating family antiques among more recent purchases. Yet,
the presence of Christian signs only on separate items highlights a continuing wariness of overt and
proximate combination, even when the Christian element was not pictorial.
Christian imagery in silver hoards that include pagan motifs is rarer still. One possible but
ambiguous example is the Traprain Law treasure in the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh. It
consists of a number of silver fragments, the original objects having been cut to pieces before burial
in a remote location across the imperial frontier. Some of these bits hint at mythological motifs and
Roman divinities (a Nereid, Venus, Hercules, Bacchic heads, possibly Jupiter or Neptune) while
others, reconstructed into a single ewer, coalesce into biblical scenes (the water miracle of Moses,
Adoration of the Magi, the Fall, perhaps the betrayal of Jesus).122 The collection was likely cobbled
together from a variety of sources, perhaps by pirates. It thus provides only weak evidence that a single
Fig. 10. Projecta Casket. British Museum, Inv. 1866,1229.1. (Photo: © Trustees of the British Museum.
All rights reserved.)
Christian home accommodated both the pagan and Christian images, and there is no suggestion of
any juxtaposition of these two sources on a single object. For that, the evidence seems limited to two
caskets from Pannonia, of uncertain date and function (they could but need not be reliquaries), that
display traditional Roman divinities alongside Old and New Testament scenes, albeit embossed on
separate bronze plaques.123
Mutating from metal to ivory, one finds a number of carvings depicting traditional divinities,
but without any Christian imagery, inscription, or sign, and others with Christian narratives, but
no pagan motifs.124 Consular diptychs, which lie at the interstice between the public and domestic
realms, are almost always secular and honorific. A curious and singular exception is the diptych of
Anicius Petronius Probus (406 CE; Fig. 11).125 Here, the habitual consul has been replaced by two
militant portraits of the Emperor Honorius (r. 393–423), and an emphatically Christian inscription
of Constantinian inspiration appears on a labarum surmounted by a chi–rho: “in the name of Christ
may you always conquer.” Alan Cameron connects the iconography to a recent Roman victory over
the pagan Goths of Radagaisus, which triumph is signaled by a diminutive, winged Victoria offer-
ing a wreath.126 The Probus diptych thus combines Christian text and a traditional personification,
although without any Christian images. However, just such a juxtaposition does appear in several
sixth-century plaques depicting the baptism of Christ that reprise the motif of the Ravenna baptis-
teries by including a personification of the River Jordan.127
Artifacts of personal adornment provide another locus for the Christian use of pagan imagery.
Many gems datable to the relevant period are carved with mythological motifs or divinities and
scholars generally assume that some of these must have been owned by Christians. This conjecture
36 ROBERT COUZIN
Fig. 11. Diptych of Probus. Tesoro del Duomo Aosta, Italy. (Photo: Gianni Dagli Orti/The Art Archive
at Art Resource, NY.)
is supported by a few examples that add the name of Christ or a saint, the anagram IXΘΥC, or a
staurogram.128 Such objects testify to the unconcern of some members of the community in the face
of clerical injunctions against wearing images of idols,129 but it is difficult to know whether they point
to a statistically important or widespread practice, and, as in the case of silver plate, the Christian
element is inevitably restricted to a text or sign. The absence of any pictorial juxtaposition cannot
be entirely attributed to an avoidance of Christian imagery in this medium130 nor, given the evident
skill of the artisans at miniaturization, the restricted carving surface. The potential for iconographical
juxtaposition is illustrated by one extraordinary gemstone, formerly in Berlin and now lost, bearing
the hybrid image of a crucified Orpheus; this artifact is probably a modern forgery.131
Books in Christian households could have contained pagan imagery. Scholars often make the
self-fulfilling assumption that late antique manuscripts with such illustrations must have been com-
missioned by non-Christians; realistically, their true ownership and patronage is generally unknown
and unknowable.132 One interesting case is the famous Codex-Calendar of 354.133 The first of its
two parts was illuminated with classical themes, mostly of limited spiritual significance—seasons,
months, imperial figures, and city tyches—but also a few explicitly religious images, including a
bloodless sacrifice. The second part contains only text, both secular and Christian: a cycle of civic
holidays is followed by a calendrical list of bishops and martyrs. The dedication on the frontispiece
points to the Christian affiliation of the book’s owner (“Valentine, may you flourish in God”—floreas
in deo). It also displays a tabula held by two winged amors, but without any properly mythological
representations. The Codex-Calendar survives only in Renaissance copies of a ninth-century man-
uscript, but provided that its putative fourth-century antecedent did comprise both parts, and that
the Renaissance drawings faithfully reproduce the subject matter if not the style of the original illus-
trations, then this book is an example of the Christian acceptance of pagan visual themes, although
again without any juxtaposition of imagery.
Statuary is yet another potential source of mythological forms in the Christian home. Wealthy
Romans collected antique Greek sculpture or Roman emulations to ornament their city and country
residences.134 Given that domestic mythological statuary persisted into the fifth century and even
later, one must conclude that some Christians welcomed it, although direct confirmation in the
archaeological record is sparse. The juxtaposition of pagan and Christian statuary must have been
unlikely, given the extreme rarity of the latter.135 A quasi-exception might be the ruins of the domus
of the Valerii in Rome. Along with a fourth-century boat-shaped bronze lamp bearing images of
Peter and Paul and a Christian legend inscribed on the sail, the site has also yielded a second-century
statuette representing the embracing figures of Amor and Psyche.136
Finally, in addition to domestic and personal chattels—silver, jewelry, books, sculpture—
consideration should be given to the fixed decoration of the house itself. Pavement mosaics preserved
in villas across the Empire, most famously at Piazza Armerina in Sicily (where a statue of Hercules
was also found), present divinities and mythological motifs interlaced with boisterous marine,
hunting, and athletic scenes.137 These villas, however, generally provide no indications of Christian
ownership, visual or otherwise, with the possible exception of three in Roman Britain. Two floor
mosaics discovered in Dorset present Bellerophon riding Pegasus and slaying the Chimaera along
with a chi–rho monogram. One of these, from Hinton St Mary, also includes the face of a beardless
man commonly identified as Christ superimposed on a Christogram, surrounded by hunting scenes
and personified winds (Fig. 12).138 This pavement program is often cited as evidence for either
38 ROBERT COUZIN
Fig. 12. Hinton St Mary floor mosaic. British Museum, Inv. P&EE 19654-9.1. (Photo © Trustees
of the British Museum. All rights reserved.)
domestic syncretism or interpretatio christiana.139 Whatever the proper theorization, it is an instance
of domestic iconographical juxtaposition, provided that the male figure is correctly identified as
Christ, a claim not universally accepted.140 Another mythological mosaic appears in the previously
noted villa at Lullingstone, Kent, with Europa on the bull and, once again, Bellerophon. In this case,
later Christian ownership is indicated by the addition of Christian wall paintings in other rooms.141
The failure to discover more domestic mosaics with both Christian and pagan imagery is at
least partly attributable to the rarity of Christian scenes in this medium.142 With respect specifically
to pavements, it is sometimes suggested that this reflects qualms, out of either respect or fear, about
placing holy images where they would be trodden upon. An imperial decree of 427 has been cited
in support of this conjecture, although that rather tardy injunction refers specifically to the cross,
or perhaps the Christogram (signum salvatoris Christi), not narrative images.143 If Christians were
squeamish about religious pictures on the floor, this scruple does not seem to have been shared by
their Jewish compatriots.144
An unusual, perhaps unique, surviving example of Christian domestic mosaic work in situ,
on a wall rather than a floor, is in a chamber of the Via Livenza hypogeum in Rome that most likely
served as a private nymphaeum.145 On the side walls are some fragmentary images, one of which can
be identified as Peter drawing water from a rock. This Christian subject complements traditional
themes in the wall paintings: marine motifs and putti below the mosaic, and representations of Diana
on either side of an apse with a font. Even if the (Christian) mosaic was not precisely contemporary
with the (pagan) painting, a matter impossible to determine with precision, such a pairing of imagery
remains remarkable.
To recapitulate, evidence for the use of pagan imagery in the Christian home—not merely
the “soft” paganism of erotes and marine scenes but also mythological figures and divinities—is
limited but robust. It does not justify the generalization that all Christians succumbed (as the
clerics might have put it) to the lure of such decoration, but some clearly did, occasionally declaring
simultaneously their religious affiliation through the apposition of a sign or inscription. However,
few objects or monuments juxtapose Christian and pagan images. The exceptions are mainly limited
to classical motifs like river personifications. The rare mythological examples tend to be located at
the imperial periphery. This state of affairs partly reflects the modest quantity of Christian imagery
in certain media, but that is not a complete explanation. For although the crucifix as a common
bedroom ornament still lay far in the future, Christian themes and motifs were certainly present
in the domestic setting. Their near-perfect segregation from non-Christian imagery suggests that
consumers remained uncomfortable with iconographical juxtaposition.
Some Conclusions
The archaeological record substantiates the Christian use of pagan, including mythological, imag-
ery. The secure instances are fewer than might have been expected. Additional such objects that fail
explicitly to declare any Christian connection presumably also belonged to self-identified Christians,
but it would be unjustified and imprudent to assume they were especially numerous. As for examples
that display both pagan and Christian imagery, these are exceptional. There could have been others,
since more early Christian art was produced than survives, but there is no reason to suppose that the
lost objects were systematically different from those that have been preserved.
The four pictorial realms into which the evidence has been divided in this study are not her-
metically sealed compartments. The function of some spaces is unclear; some objects were viewed
in ambiguous or multiple contexts. Nonetheless, the spatial categories are helpful in spotting macro
trends. Thus, with the odd exception, pagan imagery was successfully kept out of liturgical spaces
while its persistence in the public realm suggests several potential lines of future inquiry: Should
the presence of these images in a progressively Christianized environment be theorized as Christian
“use”? Did the civic character of the urban space trump the very conception of “pagan imagery”?
What explains the rather late development of exterior Christian imagery?
A survey of the funerary realm, conducted without preconceptions or agendas, undermines
any claim that Christians in this period were generally unconcerned with the use of pagan imagery in
the emotionally and spiritually charged space of the tomb. Not only are mythological figures as well
as motifs evocative of Roman religious praxis almost completely absent, but even the vita romana
and vita privata replacement images are uncommon. It seems that their allegories were not generally
regarded as appropriate and meaningful by Christians.
40 ROBERT COUZIN
Finally, evidence for the acceptance of pagan imagery in the decoration of Christian homes
and the adornment of Christian bodies, while incontrovertible, is limited. It is not wrong to infer
that some silver, rings, or mosaics bearing pagan but not Christian imagery might have belonged to
Christians, extrapolating from other similar objects marked with a chi–rho or Christian inscription.
However, the small number of such instances hardly justifies a sweeping conjecture that Christian
decorative preferences were indistinguishable from those of similarly situated non-Christians.
Taking the evidence as a whole, it seems likely that only a minority of Christians, perhaps but
not necessarily a sizable minority, were favorably disposed ‘toward the use of pagan imagery, almost
exclusively in the public and domestic realms. And something about the nature and source of this
Christian iconographical hesitation can be inferred from the stringent separation, maintained in all
pictorial spaces, between the two sources of imagery. This reluctance points to a competition between
visual discourses that, in the fourth and early fifth centuries, was as yet unresolved.
Notes
I thank Dale Kinney and Jaś Elsner for their suggestions, observations, and encouragement in response to
an earlier draft of this article. Two anonymous reviewers also provided comments that helped me to improve
the essay.
1
Arles Dioscuri sarcophagus: MAA Inv. FAN.92.00.2482; Brigitte Christern-Briesenick, Repertorium der
christlich-antiken Sarkophage III. Frankreich, Algerien, Tunesien (Mainz: von Zabern, 2003), no. 51; Vassiliki
Gaggadis-Robin, Les sarcophages païens du musée de l’Arles antique (Arles: Éditions du musée de l’Arles et de
la Provence antiques, 2005), 124–30 (cat. 29); Carola Reinsberg, Die Sarkophage mit Darstellungen aus dem
Menschenleben: Vita romana, ASR I.3 (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 2006), 191–92 (cat. 3); discussed by Jaś Elsner,
“Decorative Imperatives between Concealment and Display: The Form of Sarcophagi,” RES 61/62 (2012):
193–95. The earlier example, Figure 2, is from the Musée National, Parc Trémaux, Tipasa (Algeria): Reinsberg,
Vita romana, 233–34 (cat. 140), fig. 28.4, 30.1–2; Wrede, Senatorische Sarkophage Roms: der Beitrag des Sena-
torenstandes zur römischen Kunst der hohen und späten Kaiserzeit (Mainz: von Zabern, 2001), 116–17 (cat. A.1),
pl. 11.1, who dates it ca. 190. Other, similar Dioscuri sarcophagi are discussed in the entry by Gaggadis-Robin
and by Wrede at pages 76–77, illustrations on his pl. 10.1, 11.112.1, 21.2.
2
Not only in visual culture. See Jean Seznec, La survivance des dieux antiques: essai sur le rôle de la tradition
mythologique dans l’humanisme et dans l’art de la Renaissance (London: Warburg Institute, 1939) (published as
The Survival of the Pagan Gods: The Mythological Tradition and its Place in Renaissance Art and Humanism, trans.
Barbara F. Sessions (New York: Pantheon, 1953)).
3
On Christian and pagan discourse in texts see Averil Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire:
The Development of Christian Discourse (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). The idioms and the
experiences of images and texts are not, however, identical, so their discourses may not develop in lock-step.
4
Papers of the British School at Rome 42 (1974): 68–97. See also: Mary-Anne Zagdoin, “De quelques thèmes
et motifs traditionnels ou païens sur les sarcophages paléochrétiens,” Semitica et classica 2 (2009): 157–66.
5
Compare Jaś Elsner, “Archaeologies and Agendas: Reflections on Late Ancient Jewish Art and Early Chris-
tian Art,” The Journal of Roman Studies 93 (2003): 114. See Robert Couzin, “‘Early’ ‘Christian’ ‘Art’,” in The
Routledge Handbook of Early Christian Art, ed. Robin M. Jensen and Mark D. Ellison (New York: Routledge,
forthcoming).
6
Alan Cameron, The Last Pagans of Rome (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 14–32; John A.
North, “Pagans, Polytheists and the Pendulum,” in The Spread of Christianity in the First Four Centuries: Essays
in Explanation, ed. William V. Harris (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 134–37; and Christopher P. Jones, “The Fuzziness
of ‘Paganism,’” Common Knowledge 18 (2012): 249–54.
7
See Alice Taylor, “The Problem of Labels: Three Marble Shepherds in Nineteenth-Century Rome,” Mem-
oirs of the American Academy in Rome, Supplementary Volume 1 (2002): 47–59. A great deal has been written
on the transformation of the ancient kriophoros into the Good Shepherd; see, for example, Walter Nikolaus
Schumacher, Hirt und “Guter Hirt”: Studien zum Hirtenbild in der römischen Kunst vom zweiten bis zum Anfang
des vierten Jahrhunderts unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Mosaiken in der Südhalle von Aquileja (Freiburg:
Herder, 1977); Nikolaus Himmelmann, Über Hirten-Genre in der antiken Kunst (Opladen: Westdeutscher Ver-
lag, 1980), 138–48; and Arnold Provoost, “Pastor or Pastor Bonus? The Interpretation and Evolution of Pastoral
Scenes in the Late Antiquity,” Church History and Religious Culture 84 (2004): 1–36.
8
See Thomas G. Rosenmeyer, “Eros – Erotes,” Phoenix 5 (1951): 11–22. The figures display variations,
including the presence or absence of wings, which might have had significance to especially knowledgeable or
perspicacious viewers, although the monuments do not suggest a consistent and meaningful distinction.
9
On certain mythological imagery as neutral see Gisela Cantino Wataghin, “I primi cristiani, tra imagines,
historiae e pictura: spunti di riflessione,” Antiquité Tardive 19 (2011): 21–24; and Cameron, Last Pagans of Rome,
698–706. On mythological representation as an expression of a shared classical education and culture see Ruth
E. Leader-Newby, Silver and Society in Late Antiquity (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 123–71; and Arnaldo Mar-
cone, “Alla ricerca di un’identità. Tradizioni classiche nella prima iconografia Cristiana,” in Using Images in Late
Antiquity, ed. Stine Birk, Troels Myrup Kristensen, and Birte Poulsen (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2014), 253–67.
10
Henri-Irénée Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity, trans. George Lamb (London: Sheed and
Ward, 1956), 318–26; Wolf Liebeschuetz, “Pagan Mythology in the Christian Empire,” International Journal
of the Classical Tradition 2 (1995): 194–95; and Mary Ann Beavis, “‘Pluck the Rose but Shun the Thorns’:
The Ancient School and Christian Origins,” Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 29 (2000): 411–23. On the
circulation of mythological texts in Rome see Alan Cameron, Greek Mythography in the Roman World (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2004), 219–20.
11
Beverly Berg, “Alcestes and Hercules in the Catacomb of via Latina,” Vigiliae Christianae 48 (1994): 219–
34; and Jean Guyon, “Les représentations du cimetière ‘Aux deux lauriers’,” in La Mort, les morts et l’au-delà
dans le monde romain: actes du colloque de Caen, 20–22 novembre 1985, ed. François Hinard (Caen: Université
de Caen, 1987), 303.
12
The reinterpretation theory dominated early twentieth-century literature. More recent examples include
Mary Charles-Murray, Rebirth and Afterlife: A Study of the Transmutation of some Pagan Imagery in Early
Christian Funerary Art (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1981), 36–63 (Orpheus); Martine Dulaey,
L’initiation chrétienne et la Bible (1er – VIe siècles): ‘Des forêts de symboles’ (Paris: Librairie Générale Française,
2001), 61–74 (kriophoros); and Robin Margaret Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art (London: Routledge,
2000), 37–44 (both).
13
“You would see at the fountains set in the middle of the squares the emblems of the Good Shepherd,
evident signs to those who start from the divine oracles,” Eusebius, Life of Constantine, trans. Averil Cameron
and Stuart George Hall (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 140 (3.49). As a second historical example,
Clement of Alexandria, Christ the Educator [Paedagogus], trans. Simon P. Wood (Washington: Catholic Univer-
sity of America, 1954), 246, countenanced non-Christian images on sealing rings if they could bear a Christian
meaning, like the fisherman as an apostle.
14
On the theoretical conception of Christian reinterpretation see Dale Kinney, “Interpretatio Christiana,”
in Maxima Debetur Magistro Reverentia: Essays on Rome and the Roman Tradition in Honor of Russell T. Scott, ed.
Paul B. Harvey Jr. and Catherine Conybeare (Como: New Press Edizioni, 2009), 117–25.
15
See, for example: Jaś Elsner, “Art and Architecture,” in The Late Empire, A.D. 337–425, ed. Averil Cam-
eron and Peter Garnsey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 744–51; Elsner, Art and the Roman
Viewer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 255–80; and Peter Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle:
Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350–550 AD (Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 2012), 204–207.
42 ROBERT COUZIN
16
The operational concept is, of course, far more subtle than conveyed by such a concise definition.
Compare Yukako Suzawa, The Genesis of Early Christian Art: Syncretic Juxtaposition in the Roman World, BAR
International Series 1892 (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2008), 13–53.
17
Historia Augusta, life of Alexander Severus, 29.2, Histoire Auguste, trans. André Chastagnol (Paris: Laf-
font, 1994), 594.
18
Maijastina Kahlos, Debate and Dialogue: Christian and Pagan Cultures c. 360–430 (Aldershot: Ashgate,
2007); Cameron, Last Pagans of Rome, 176–77; Christopher P. Jones, Between Pagan and Christian (Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 7; and Éric Rebillard, Christians and Their Many Identities in
Late Antiquity, North Africa, 200–450 CE (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012), 1–8. See also Peter Brown,
“Christianization and Religious Conflict,” in Cameron and Garnsey, The Late Empire, 632–64.
19
On patristic views see Jean-Marie Salamito, “Ambivalence de la christianisation, frontières de l’Église,
identité chrétienne,” in Le problème de la christianisation du monde antique, ed. Hervé Inglebert, Sylvain
Destephen, and Bruno Dumézil (Paris: Picard, 2010), 63–75. For an earlier modern elaboration of Christian
syncretism see Charles Guignebert, “Les demi-chrétiens et leur place dans l’Église,” Revue de l’histoire des religions
88 (1923): 65–102. Adolf Harnack, The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries,
trans. James Moffatt, 2nd ed. (New York: Putnam, 1908), 1.24–35, attributed syncretism rather to the pagans,
allowing for greater purity of belief among Christians.
20
Several such decrees appear in book 16, chap. 7, of the Codex Theodosianus (CTh): Theodosiani libri XVI
cum constituionibus Sirmondianis et Leges novella ad Theodosianum pertinentes, ed. T. Mommsen and P. M.
Meyer (Berlin: Weismann, 1905).
21
Paul Zanker, “Bild-Räume und Betrachter im kaiserzeitlichen Rom: Fragen und Anregungen für Inter-
preten,” in Klassische Archäologie: eine Einführung, ed. Adolf H. Borbein, Tonio Hölscher, and Paul Zanker
(Berlin: D. Reimer, 2000), 205–26.
22
Jürgen J. Rasch and Achim Arbeiter, Das Mausoleum der Constantina in Rom (Mainz: von Zabern, 2007).
23
A comparable, extra-metropolitan example is a structure at Centcelles, Catalonia. It is probably, although
not certainly, a mausoleum; some believe it was of imperial patronage. In this case biblical imagery is juxta-
posed with purely secular motifs, like horse racing. See Javier Arce, ed., Centcelles el monumento tardorromano.
iconografía y arquitectura (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2002).
24
In favor see Walter Oakeshott, The Mosaics of Rome, from the Third to the Fourteenth Centuries (Greenwich:
New York Graphic Society, 1967), 94–95; and H. Henkels, “Remarks on the Late 13th-Century Apse Decoration
in S. Maria Maggiore,” Simiolus 4 (1971): 136–37. Against see Beat Brenk, Die frühchristlichen Mosaiken in S.
Maria Maggiore zu Rom (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1975), 3–4; and Marina Righetti Tosti-Croce, “La basilica
tra Due e Trecento,” in Santa Maria Maggiore a Roma, ed. Carol Pietrangeli (Rome: Nardini, 1988), 138–47.
25
Gabriele Pelizzari, Il pastore ad Aquileia: La trascrizione musiva della catechesi catecumenale nella cattedrale
di Teodoro (San Daniele del Friuli: Edizions Glesie Furlane, 2010).
26
Centro Internazionale di Documentazione sul Mosaico, Mosaicoravenna.it: i mosaici dei monumenti Une-
sco di Ravenna e Parenzo (Ravenna: Museo d’arte della città di Ravenna, 2007), 131 (ID247), 166 (ID221).
Note the reappearance of this personification on ivories, below.
27
The conversion of pagan temples is mainly an Eastern and later phenomenon, the first case in Rome
being the Pantheon in the seventh century. See Bryan Ward-Perkins, “Reconfiguring Sacred Space: From Pagan
Shrines to Christian Churches,” in Die spätantike Stadt und ihre Christianisierung: Symposion vom 14. Bis 16.
Februar 2000 in Halle/Saale, ed. Gunnar Brands and Hans-Georg Severin (Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2003),
285–90; and Ine Jacobs, “Temples and Civic Representation in the Theodosian Period,” in Birk, Kristensen,
and Poulsen, Using Images in Late Antiquity, 132–49. For extensive bibliographic references across the Empire
see Michael Mulryan, “‘Paganism’ in Late Antiquity: Regional Studies and Material Culture,” in The Archaeol-
ogy of Late Antique Paganism, ed. Luke Lavan and Michael Mulryan (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 41–88.
28
Conserved in the Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo, together with another representing Bassus
as charioteer. A third panel, a tiger attacking its prey, is in the Musei Capitolini. The drawings, the accuracy of
which is impossible to determine, also show a Delphic tripod. On the basilica see Thomas Ashby and Giuseppe
Lugli, “La basilica di Giunio Basso sull’Esquilinio,” Rivista di Archaeologia Cristiana 9 (1932): 221–55; and
Marina Sapelli, “La Basilica di Giunio Basso,” in Aurea Roma. Dalla città pagana alla città Cristiana, ed. Serena
Ensoli and Eugenio La Rocca (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2000), 137–39. For a recent consideration of the
implications of the preserved imagery see Gregor Kalas, “Architecture and Élite Identity in Late Antique Rome:
Appropriating the Past at Sant’Andrea Catabarbara,” Papers of the British School at Rome 81 (2013): 279–302.
29
ILCV, 1785. Reproduced and translated in Kalas, “Architecture and Élite Identity,” 293.
30
Beat Brenk, Die Christianisierung der spätrömischen Welt: Stadt, Land, Haus, Kirche und Kloster in
frühchristlicher Zeit (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2003), 82–113; and Kim Bowes, Private Worship, Public Values, and
Religious Change in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 88–92.
31
For mosaics see G. W. Meates, The Roman Villa at Lullingstone, Kent, vol. I (Kent: Kent Archaeological
Society, 1979), 75–82, pl. XV–XVII; J. M. C. Toynbee, Art in Britain under the Romans (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1964), 226–27, 262–65; and Huskinson, “Pagan Mythological Figures,” 75–76. For non-Christian wall
paintings see G. W. Meates, The Roman Villa at Lullingstone, Kent, vol. II (Kent: Kent Archaeological Society,
1987), 5–11. For Christian wall paintings see Meates, Roman Villa, II.11–40. The orant panel is in the British
Museum, P&EE 1967 4–7 1.
32
Bowes, Private Worship, 54. For conversion of domestic buildings into churches see Michael Mulryan,
Spatial “Christianisation” in Context: Strategic Intramural Building in Rome from the 4th–7th c. AD (Oxford:
Archaeopress, 2014). For Eastern examples see Ine Jacobs, Aesthetic Maintenance of Civic Space: The “Classical”
City from the 4th to the 7th c. AD (Leuven: Peeters, 2013), 283 (table 4.1).
33
First reported and described by William Stukeley, An account of a large silver plate, of antique basso relievo,
Roman workmanship, found in Derbyshire, 1729. Read before the Antiquarian Society of London, 8 April, 1736
(London: G. Vander Gucht, 1736). The dish was considered lost until its purported rediscovery in 1991. There
was some doubt whether this object, now in the British Museum (P&E 1992.6-1.1), was the original lanx.
One proposal was that it was a copy combining accurate casts of the original plus some added bits, probably
made in the nineteenth century: Catherine Johns and Kenneth Painter, “The Risley Park Lanx ‘Rediscovered,’”
Minerva 2 no. 6 (1991): 6–13 (this portion by Painter). It has since been determined instead to be a recent
forgery made in the 1980s based on the earlier descriptions: Tom Hardwick, “‘The Sophisticated Answer’: A
Recent Display of Forgeries Held at the Victoria and Albert,” The Burlington Magazine 152 (2010): 406–408.
Silver treasures that present no evidence of having been in a liturgical setting are discussed under the heading
of the domestic realm, below.
34
Probably not before the seventh century; see Gemma Sena Chiesa, “Myth Revisited: The Reuse of
Mythological Cameos and Intaglios in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages,” in “Gems of Heaven”:
Recent Research on Engraved Gemstones in Late Antiquity, c. AD 200–600, ed. Chris Entwistle and Noël Adams
(London: British Museum, 2011), 229–38. A Roman sardonyx vase bearing funerary scenes with Aphrodite
incorporated into a late antique vase is situated in the late fifth or early sixth century by Élisabeth Antoine-
König, Le trésor de l’abbaye de Saint-Maurice d’Agaune (Paris: Éditions du Musée du Louvre, 2013), 48–51 (cat.
8); however, a Carolingian date may be more defensible.
35
Mary Charles-Murray, “Art and the Early Church,” Journal of Theological Studies 28 (1977): 337–40. The
document is a letter to John, bishop of Jerusalem; see Cyril Mango, The Art of the Byzantine Empire 312–1453:
Sources and Documents (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), 42–43.
36
The authenticity of fragments given to Epiphanius has often been challenged; see Leslie Brubaker and
John Haldon, Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era, c. 680–850: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2011), 44–50. Moreover, in another fragment the same author explicitly refers to curtains and walls painted
44 ROBERT COUZIN
with images of Christ, apostles, and Old Testament prophets; reproduced in Charles Barber, Figure and Like-
ness: On the Limits of Representation in Byzantine Iconoclasm (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002),
86–87.
37
On the impact of the biblical injunctions and their limitations see Charles-Murray, Rebirth and Afterlife,
13–36; Robin Margaret Jensen, Face to Face: Portraits of the Divine in Early Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress
Press, 2005), 1–34; and Jaś Elsner, “Inventing Christian Rome: The Role of Early Christian Art,” in Rome the
Cosmopolis, ed. Catharine Edwards and Greg Woolf (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 71, with
a review of the literature in 71n1.
38
On the apse mosaic see Maria Andaloro, ed., L’orizzonte tardoantico e le nuove immagini: 312–468 (Milan:
Jaca, 2006), 114–24 (cat. 8, entry by Andaloro); and Martine Dulaey, “Dominus conseruator ecclesiae Pudenti-
anae: le Christ et l’église romaine de Sainte-Pudentienne,” Annuaire de l’École Pratique des Hautes Études, Section
des sciences religieuses 115 (2008): 223–30.
39
Reported to have been donated by Constantine: The Book of Pontiffs (Liber Pontificalis): The Ancient
Biographies of the First Ninety Roman Bishops to AD 715, trans. and ed. Raymond Davis, 2nd ed. (Liverpool: Liv-
erpool University Press, 2000), 16 (Life of Silvester). See Sible de Blaauw, “Imperial Connotations in Roman
Church Interiors: The Significance and Effect of the Lateran Fastigium,” in Imperial Art as Christian Art—
Christian Art as Imperial Art: Expression and Meaning in Art and Architecture from Constantine to Justinian, ed.
J. Rasmus Brandt and Olaf Steen, Acta ad Archaeologiam et Artium Historiam Pertinentia 15 (Rome: Bardi
Editore, 2001), 137–48.
40
See Dale Kinney, “Instances of Appropriation in Late Roman and Early Christian Art,” Essays in Medieval
Studies 28 (2012): 11–16.
41
Robert Coates-Stephens, “The Reuse of Ancient Statuary in Late Antique Rome,” in Statuen in der
Spätantike, ed. Franz Alto Bauer and Christian Witschel (Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2007), 171–87; Ine
Jacobs, “Production to Destruction? Pagan and Mythological Statuary in Asia Minor,” American Journal of
Archaeology 114 (2010): 270–86, with a catalogue of examples; and Jacobs, Aesthetic Maintenance, 395–445
(examples are from the East).
42
For a sensitive analysis of the implications of marking with a cross see R. R. R. Smith, “Defacing the Gods
at Aphrodisias,” in Historical and Religious Memory in the Ancient World, ed. Beate Dignas and R. R. R. Smith
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 296–98. See also: Troels Myrup Kristensen, “Miraculous Bodies:
Christian Viewers and the Transformation of ‘Pagan’ Sculpture in Late Antiquity,” in Patrons and Viewers in
Late Antiquity, ed. Stine Birk and Birte Poulsen (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2012), 31–66; and Cyril
Mango, “Antique Statuary and the Byzantine Beholder,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 17 (1963): 53–75.
43
Mango, “Antique Statuary,” 56–59; and Sarah Bassett, The Urban Image of Late Antique Constantinople
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 51–58. On archaeological evidence for similar bath decora-
tion erected or surviving in other locations in Late Antiquity see Lea Stirling, “Patrons, Viewers, and Statues in
Late Antique Baths,” in Birk and Poulsen, Patrons and Viewers, 67–81.
44
Diane E. E. Kleiner, Roman Sculpture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 413–17.
45
One possible exception might be a relief carving in Ephesus regarded by some as representing Theodosius
I (r. 379–95) and his family alongside the locally popular Artemis and Pallas Athena. See Franz Miltner, Ephesos,
Stadt der Artemis und des Johannes (Vienna: F. Deuticke, 1958), 104–5; Jacobs, “Temples,” 138, plate 18; and
Jacobs, Aesthetic Maintenance, 577. Not only is this frieze situated in a very different geographical and cultural
context from Rome, but also its connection to Theodosius has been challenged; see Ursula Quatember, “The
‘Temple of Hadrian’ on Curetes Street in Ephesus: New Research into its Building History,” Journal of Roman
Archaeology 23 (2010): 382, 393. Quatember will elaborate the argument for a Hadrianic date (indicated
in a private communication) in her forthcoming monograph, Der sog: Hadrianstempel an der Kuretenstraße,
Forschungen in Ephesos.
46
On both pagan and Christian patronage see Carlos Machado, “Religion as Antiquarianism: Pagan Dedi-
cations in Late Antique Rome,” in Dediche sacre nel mondo greco-romano: diffusione, funzioni, tipologie (Religious
Dedications in the Greco-Roman World: Distribution, Typology, Use), Institutum Romanum Finlandiae, American
Academy in Rome, 19–20 aprile, 2006, ed. John Bodel and Mika Kajava (Rome: Institutum Romanum Fin-
landiae, 2009), 331–54.
47
“[A]rtificum magnorum opera: haec pulcherrima nostrae ornamenta fuant patriae”: Prudentius, Contra
Symmachum, in Prudentius, trans. H. J. Thomson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949), 388
(1.501–5).
48
“[S]imulacra feruntur posita artis pretio quam divinitate metienda”: CTh 16.10.8. Translated by Clyde
Pharr with Theresa Sherrer Davidson and Mary Brown Pharr, The Theodosian Code and Novels and the Sirmon-
dian Constitutions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952). See also, for example, CTh 15.1.14 (dated
365, moving statues to ornament cities), and 16.10.15 (dated 399, ordering the preservation of “public works”).
On the other hand, statues that have functioned in pagan rites should be removed: for example, CTh 16.10.19
(dated 407–408). On the motivations for preserving antique statues see John Curran, “Moving Statues in
Late Antique Rome: Problems of Perspective,” Art History 17 (1994): 46–58; and Helen Saradi-Mendelovici,
“Christian Attitudes Towards Pagan Monuments in Late Antiquity and Their Legacy in Later Byzantine Cen-
turies,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 44 (1990): 47–61.
49
For the arch and its medallions see Kleiner, Roman Sculpture, 444–54. According to Jaś Elsner, “From
the Culture of Spolia to the Cult of Relics: The Arch of Constantine and the Genesis of Late Antique Forms,”
Papers of the British School at Rome 68 (2000): 149–84, these images evoked “canonical, even a normative,
activity associated with emperorship” (at 165).
50
Theodoret of Cyrus, Histoire Ecclésiastique, trans. Pierre Canivet, vol. 2, Sources Chrétiennes, no. 530
(Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2009), 434–35 (V.23.3–4).
51
Theodoret of Cyrus, A Cure for Pagan Maladies, trans. Thomas Halton (New York: Newman Press, 2013),
86–87 (discourse 3, para. 79–84).
52
Smith, “Defacing the Gods.”
53
A few words in the inscription arguably, and if so subtly, refer to Constantine’s recently declared religious
affiliation; see Timothy Barnes, Constantine: Dynasty, Religion and Power in the Later Roman Empire (Chichester:
Wiley Blackwell, 2014), 18–20. On the potentially ambivalent contemporary interpretation of this inscription
see Mark Wilson Jones, “Genesis and Mimesis: The Design of the Arch of Constantine in Rome,” Journal of the
Society of Architectural Historians 59 (2000): 70.
54
Giovanni Becatti, La Colonna coclide istoriata. Problemi storici iconografici stilistici (Rome: “L’Erma” di
Bretschneider, 1960), 190–92, interpreted two statuary figures on pedestals carved on a lower register of the
spiral relief as the archangel Gabriel and the Virgin, but it seems unlikely that many contemporary viewers
would have perceived an Annunciation amidst the scenes of battle and imperial triumph.
55
Richard Krautheimer, Rome: Profile of a City 312-1308 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980),
312–13 and 24, specifically citing the Lateran Basilica. For an opposing view see Olof Brandt, “Constantine,
the Lateran, and Early Church Building Policy,” in Brandt and Steen, Imperial Art as Christian Art, 109–14.
56
Mulryan, Spatial “Christianisation.”
57
For the doors see Gisela Jeremias, Die Holztür der Basilika S. Sabina in Rom (Tübingen: Ernst Was-
muth, 1980). Compare the appearance of Christian signa over the entries into the Basilica Nova in Cimitile
as described by Paulinus of Nola, visible only to worshippers who entered the complex; see Tomas Lehmann,
Paulinus Nolanus und die Basilica Nova in Cimitile/Nola: Studien zu einem zentralen Denkmal der spätantik-früh-
christlichen Architektur (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2004), 173–74 (epigram D of Ep. 32) and Tafel 20, Abb. 27.
58
In a procession of the pro-Nicene faction organized by John Chrysostom as reported by Socrates, Church
History, trans. A. C. Zenos, in A Select Library of Nicene and post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church,
46 ROBERT COUZIN
ed. Henry Wace and Philip Schaff, vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1890), 144 (VI.8). Note also the epitaph
of “John the Cross-Carrier” (Iohannis stauroforis): ICUR-02, 04844 = ILCV 01299. The date of this inscription
is uncertain, as is the location where he exercised his profession—in the open air or within a church. Sible de
Blaauw, “Following the Crosses: The Processional Cross and the Typology of Processions in Medieval Rome,”
in Christian Feast and Festival: The Dynamics of Western Liturgy and Culture, ed. Paulus Gijsbertus Johannes
Post (Sterling, VA: Peeters, 2001), 319, dates it to the fifth or sixth century and assumes the function to have
been exercised out of doors.
59
The Lives of the Eighth-Century Popes (Liber Pontificalis): The Ancient Biographies of Nine Popes from AD
715 to AD 817, trans. and ed. Raymond Davis (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1992), 57. On Stephen’s
innovation see Enrico Parlato, “Le icone in processione,” in Arte e iconografia a Roma: da Costantino a Cola
di Rienzo, ed. Maria Andaloro and Serena Romano (Milan: Jaca, 2000), 74; Sible de Blaauw, Cultus et decor:
liturgia e architettura nella Roma tardoantica e medievale: Basilica Salvatoris, Sanctae Mariae, Sancti Petri (Vati-
can City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1994), 1:438.
60
Compare Gerhard Wolf, “Icons and Sites: Cult Images of the Virgin in Mediaeval Rome,” in Images of
the Mother of God: Perceptions of the Theotokos in Byzantium, ed. Maria Vasilakē (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 25.
61
On the lost archaeological context for sarcophagi see Jaś Elsner, “Introduction,” in Life, Death and Rep-
resentation: Some New Work on Roman Sarcophagi, ed. Jaś Elsner and Janet Huskinson (Berlin: De Gruyter,
2011), 11. On problematic catacomb documentation see Éric Rebillard, Religion et sépulture: l’église, les vivants
et les morts dans l’antiquité tardive (Paris: Éditions de l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales, 2003).
62
On the unreliability of depositus as a signal of Christian attribution see Carlo Carletti, “Dies mortis-depo-
sitio: un modulo ‘profano’ nell’epigrafia tardoantica,” Vetera Christianorum 41 (2004): 21–48. For depositus
in pagan epitaphs see D. Dante Balboni, “Natale Petri de Cathedra: festi originis investigatio,” Ephemerides
Liturgicae 68 (1954): 101. For depositus in Jewish inscriptions see Jewish Inscriptions of Western Europe, ed.
David Noy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993–95), 1.27 (Naples), CIL 10.3303 = JIWE 1.36
(Pozzuoli). On the Christian use of dis manibus see Maria Letizia Caldelli, “Nota su D(is) M(anibus) et D(is)
M(anibus) S(acrum) nelle iscrizioni cristiane di Roma,” in Le iscrizioni dei cristiani in Vaticano: materiali e con-
tributi scientifici per una mostra epigrafica, ed. Ivan Di Stefano Manzella (Vatican City: Monumenti, Musei e
Gallerie Pontificie, 1997), 185–87.
63
Christern-Briesenick, Repertorium III, no. 520. A sarcophagus from Ostia, known only by an engraving,
has a Dionysian front and an inscription on the lid describing the deceased as ancilla dei que dormit in pace;
see Giuseppe Bovini and Hugo Brandenburg, Repertorium der christlich-antiken Sarkophage I. Rom und Ostia
(Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1967), no. 972. The Repertorium notice suggests that the lid was likely added to a pagan
chest early in the fourth century. For other examples see Guntram Koch, Frühchristliche Sarkophage (Munich:
C. H. Beck, 2000), 7–14; Vassiliki Gaggadis-Robin, “Le remploi des sarcophages païens en milieu chrétien,” in
D’un monde à l’autre: Naissance d’une Chrétienté en Provence IVe-VIe siècle: Catalogue de l’exposition 15 septembre
2001–6 janvier 2002, ed. Jean Guyon and Marc Heijmans, 2nd ed. (Arles: Musée de l’Arles antique, 2002),
69–71; and Gaggadis-Robin, Les sarcophages païens, 65–71 (cat. 13).
64
Jutta Dresken-Weiland, Repertorium der christlich-antiken Sarkophage II: Italien mit einem Nachtrag Rom
und Ostia, Dalmatien, Museen der Welt (Mainz: von Zabern, 1998), no. 295.
65
Cameron, Last Pagans of Rome, 183. Scholars who contemplate this rejected possibility include Cantino
Wataghin, “I primi cristiani,” 29–33; and Elsner, “Archaeologies and Agendas,” 125–28. Elsner also queries
a possible Jewish provenance for works with Old Testament imagery (see also Elsner, “Introduction,” 9n35).
66
The conventional view is provocatively questioned by Steven Hijmans, “Language, Metaphor, and the
Semiotics of Roman Art: Some Thoughts on Reading the Mosaics of Mausoleum M in the Vatican Necropolis,”
BABESCH 75 (2000): 147–64. On Mausoleum M see Antonio Paolucci, ed., Petros eni—Pietro è qui: Catalogo
della Mostra. Città del Vaticano, Braccio di Carlo Magno, 11 ottobre 2006–8 marzo 2007 (Rome: Edindustria,
2006), 188–90 (cat. IV.6, notice by Maria Cristina Carlo-Stella); and Paolo Liverani and Giandomenico
Spinola, The Vatican Necropoles: Rome’s City of the Dead, trans. Saskia Stevens and Victoria Noel-Johnson
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), 114–19.
67
On the popularity of Orpheus among non-Christians see Enrique R. Panyagua, “La figura de Orfeo en
el arte griego y romano,” Helmantica 18 (1967): 173–239; and Panyagua, “Catálogo de representaciones de
Orfeo en el arte antiguo,” Helmantica 23 (1972): 83–135, 393–416; and 24 (1973): 433–98.
68
Henri Stern, “Orphée dans l’art paléochrétien,” Cahiers archéologiques 23 (1974): 2–6. No additional
examples are cited by Laurence Viellefon, La figure d’Orphée dans l’antiquité tardive: les mutations d’un mythe:
du héros païen au chantre chrétien (Paris: De Broccard, 2003).
69
Charles-Murray, Rebirth and Afterlife, 36–63, 114–21. See also Fabrizio Bisconti, “Il mito e la Bibbia: due
volti della rivoluzione dell’immaginario iconografico nella tarda antichità,” in La rivoluzione dell’immagine, ed.
Fabrizio Bisconti and Giovanni Gentili (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2007), 45. Compare the nuanced analysis of
Jean-Michel Spieser, Images du Christ: des catacombes aux lendemains de l’iconoclasme (Geneva: Droz, 2015), 83–93.
70
Notably Clement of Alexandria, The Exhortation to the Greeks (Protreptikos), trans. G. W. Butterworth
(London: W. Heinemann, 1919), 1.3–6; and Eusebius, “Oration in Praise of Constantine,” trans. Ernest Cush-
ing Richardson, in A Select Library of Nicene and post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series,
ed. Henry Wace and Philip Schaff, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1905), 603 (XIV.5). See Stern,
“Orphée,” 9; and Charles-Murray, Rebirth and Afterlife, 46–52, 152n38 and 154n50. On the patristic treat-
ment of Orpheus see Mario Naldini, “I miti di Orfeo e di Eracle nell’interpretazione patristica,” Civiltà classica
e cristiana 14 (1993): 331–43. Eusebius post-dates most of the relevant images, and while Western theologians
may have known Clement’s writings, the earliest reference seems to be Jerome, Ep. 70.4.15–17. The first known
Latin translation is from the sixth century and does not include the Protreptikos.
71
Viellefon, La figure d’Orphée, 81–82, 192–93, accepts six of these sarcophagi as Christian, more than
Charles-Murray, Rebirth and Afterlife, 38–41, Stern, “Orphée,” 6–8, or Koch, Frühchristliche Sarkophage, 23.
Only two of the six appear in the Repertorium (Bovini and Brandenburg, Repertorium I, no. 70 and 1022),
classified as Christian by reason of the inscribed formulae anima sancta (interestingly, the same expression
attributed to Emperor Alexander Severus in the Historia Augusta, see n. 17 above) and dormit in pace and the
name Quiriacus, which had strong although not exclusively Christian associations. These inscriptions were
likely added later, perhaps much later; see Huskinson, “Pagan Mythological Figures,” 87 (no. 14); Bisconti, “Il
mito e la Bibbia,” 38; and Ensoli and La Rocca, Aurea Roma, 618–19 (cat. 322, entry by Romoli). An Orpheus
sarcophagus in Sardinia, with no inscription, is also regarded as Christian by most commentators, including
Stern and Charles-Murray, although it is not included in the Repertorium. Others not so classified include
a chest from the Campo Verano, Rome, and another in Boston (both listed by Viellefon). Yet another was
remarked in the nineteenth century, now apparently lost and absent from the later literature; see Friedrich Matz
and Friedrich Karl von Duhn, Antike Bildwerke in Rom. II. Sarkophagreliefs (Leipzig: von Breitkopf & Härtel,
1881), no. 2906. For doubts concerning the Christian attribution of the Orpheus sarcophagi generally see
Björn Christian Ewald, Der Philosoph als Leitbild: ikonographische Untersuchungen an römischen Sarkophagreliefs
(Mainz: Von Zabern, 1999), 69n368; and Himmelmann, Über Hirten-Genre, 150–51.
72
William Tronzo, The Via Latina Catacomb: Imitation and Discontinuity in Fourth-Century Roman Painting
(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1986).
73
Elsner, “Inventing Christian Rome,” 76; see also, Elsner, Art and the Roman Viewer, 271–80.
74
On the “mixed marriage” hypothesis see Bisconti, “Il mito e la Bibbia,” 47. On shared tomb spaces see Rebil-
lard, Religion et sépulture, 40–49 (based on texts); John Bodel, “From Columbaria to Catacombs: Collective Burial
in Pagan and Christian Rome,” in Commemorating the Dead: Texts and Artifacts in Context: Studies of Roman,
Jewish, and Christian Burials, ed. Laurie Brink and Deborah A. Green (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2008),
183–85 (based primarily on Christian number); and Mark Joseph Johnson, “Pagan-Christian Burial Practices of
the Fourth Century: Shared Tombs?” Journal of Early Christian Studies 5 (1997): 37–59 (relying on both).
48 ROBERT COUZIN
75
Bovini and Brandenburg, Repertorium I, no. 680. The wine-harvesting motif also appears on an imperial
porphyry sarcophagus formerly in Santa Costanza; see Bovini and Brandenburg, Repertorium I, no. 174.
76
Inez Scott Ryberg, “Rites of the State Religion in Roman Art,” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome
22 (1955): 163–73; and Helga Herdejürgen, “Sarkophage mit Darstellungen von Kultgeräten,” in Symposium
über die antiken Sarkophage: Pisa 5–12 September 1982, ed. Bernard Andreae (Marburg: Kunstgeschichtlichen
Seminars, 1984), 7–17.
77
For garlands see Dresken-Weiland, Repertorium II, no. 294 (in Cagliari, attributed to a local workshop
and reused in the sixth century). For the torch see Dresken-Weiland, Repertorium II, no. 244 (Ostia), 297
(Split, of Salonikan manufacture). The first two have Christian inscriptions but not images; the only purported
Christian connection of the third is its find-spot.
78
Robin Margaret Jensen, “Dining with the Dead: From the Mensa to the Altar in Late Antique Christi-
anity,” in Brink and Green, Commemorating the Dead, 107–43; Éric Rebillard, “The Cult of the Dead in Late
Antiquity: Towards a New Definition of the Relation between the Living and the Dead,” in Rome AD 300–800:
Power and Symbol—Image and Reality, ed. J. Rasmus Brandt, Olaf Steen, Siri Sande, and Lasse Hodne (Rome:
Bardi Editore, 2003), 47–55; and Paul-Albert Février, “La tombe chrétienne et l’au-delà,” in Le Temps chré-
tien de la fin de l’Antiquité au Moyen Âge: IIIe–XIIIe siècles, ed. Jean-Marie Leroux (Paris: Éditions du Centre
national de la recherche scientifique, 1984), 166–67.
79
On the religious classification of orants see Koch, Frühchristliche Sarkophage, 15–28; and Christern-Briese-
nick, Repertorium III, xvi. Ulrike Lange, Ikonographisches Register für das Repertorium der christlich-antiken Sar-
kophage, Bd. 1 (Rom und Ostia) (Dettelbach: J. H. Röll, 1996), 75–80, lists about 150 orants in Bovini and
Brandenburg, Repertorium I. About half of the sixty-four examples that are sufficiently complete to judge other
elements of the iconography include identifiably Christian representations; the remainder are with one or more
shepherds or unaccompanied.
80
For example, Origen, Prayer, trans. John J. O’Meara (New York: Newman Press, 1954), 131–32 (ch. 31.2–3).
Some other patristic sources invoke an analogy to the crucified Christ; see Jensen, Early Christian Art, 36.
81
Karen K. Hersch, The Roman Wedding: Ritual and Meaning in Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2010), esp. 199–212; Reinsberg, Vita romana, 75–85; and Glenys Davies, “The Significance of
the Handshake Motif in Classical Funerary Art,” American Journal of Archaeology 89 (1985): 627–40. For those
including a sacrifice see Guntram Koch and Hellmut Sichtermann, Römische Sarkophage (Munich: C. H. Beck,
1982), 97–106; Ryberg, “Rites of the State Religion,” 163–67 (figs. 90–95); and Reinsberg, Vita romana, cat.
12, 15, 29, and 33.
82
Giuseppe Bovini, “Le scene della ‘dextrarum iunctio’ nell’arte cristiana,” Bulletino della Commissione
archeologica comunale di Roma 72 (1946–48): 103–17; Fabrizio Bisconti, “I sarcofagi del paradiso,” in Sar-
cofagi tardoantichi, paleocristiani e altomedievali: Atti della giornata tematica dei Seminari di archeologia cristi-
ana (École française de Rome—8 maggio 2002), ed. Fabrizio Bisconti and Hugo Brandenburg (Vatican City:
Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 2004), 53–74; and Carola Reinsberg, “Concordia,” in Spätantike
und frühes Christentum: Ausstellung im Liebieghaus, Museum alter Plastik, Frankfurt am Main: 16. Dezember
1983 bis 11. März 1984, ed. Herbert Beck and Peter Bol (Frankfurt am Main: Das Liebieghaus, 1983),
312–17. For examples of insecure Christian attribution see (i) Bovini and Brandenburg, Repertorium I, no.
853 (classification based on a kriophoros; compare a similar monument in San Salvatore, Vescovio classed as
pagan by Wrede, Senatorische Sarkophage Roms, 129–30, cat. 25, and not listed in the Repertorium or Koch,
Frühchristliche Sarkophage); (ii) Bovini and Brandenburg, Repertorium I, no. 918 (classification based on
inscription with depossio, though coupled with what is likely a Dis Manibus dedication; accepted as Christian
by Wrede, Senatorische Sarkophage Roms, 121–22, cat. 10; see also Reinsberg, Vita romana, 227, cat. 121);
(iii) Bovini and Brandenburg, Repertorium I, no. 688 (classification based on inscription with deposita and in
pace, known only from Bosio’s engraving).
83
Bovini and Brandenburg, Repertorium I, no. 86; Wrede, Senatorische Sarkophage Roms, 130 (cat. 26); and
Reinsberg, Vita romana, 227 (cat. 157).
84
Bovini and Brandenburg, Repertorium I, no. 952; Wrede, Senatorische Sarkophage Roms, 129 (cat. 24);
Manuela Studer-Karlen, Verstorbenendarstellungen auf frühchristlichen Sarkophagen (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012),
108–10; and Dresken-Weiland, Repertorium II, no. 245.
85
Respectively conserved in St. Peter’s (Bovini and Brandenburg, Repertorium I, no. 678), Tolentino, and
Ancona (Dresken-Weiland, Repertorium II, nos. 148, 149).
86
Bovini, “Dextrarum iunctio,” 114–15; and Bovini and Brandenburg, Repertorium I, no. 922. Paulinus
of Nola provides literary support for Bovini’s label when he describes the ideal marriage as one to which Jesus
comes as miraculous assistant—“Jesus pronubus”: Carmina 25.151–52, CSEL 30.243.
87
For Adam and Eve see Dresken-Weiland, Repertorium II, no. 242; for Peter and Paul see Christern-Briese-
nick, Repertorium III, no. 262.
88
Clementina Rizzardi, I sarcofagi paleocristiani con rappresentazione del passaggio del Mar Rosso (Faenza:
Fratelli Lega, 1970); and Jaś Elsner, “‘Pharaoh’s Army Got Drownded’: Some Reflections on Jewish and Roman
Genealogies in Early Christian Art,” in Judaism and Christian Art: Aesthetic Anxieties from the Catacombs to
Colonialism, ed. Herbert L. Kessler and David Nirenberg (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
2011), 10–44.
89
Bovini and Brandenburg, Repertorium I, no. 747. The figure is sometimes identified as Neptune or
Poseidon because of its trident; see Huskinson, “Pagan Mythological Figures,” 91n2; and Arnold Provoost, De
vroegchristelijke funeraire beeldtaal: Met chronologisch repertorium van de catacombenschilderingen in Rome en van
de vroegchristelijke sarcofagen (Leuven: Onderzoekseenheid Archeologie K. U. Leuven, 2011), 2.14 (cat. S9).
However, the trident is not an exclusive attribute, since it may also be held by dolphins; see Bovini and Bran-
denburg, Repertorium I, no. 683. For other “river god” examples see Christern-Briesenick, Repertorium III, no.
25 (on a reused lid placed atop a chest with Christian imagery); and Bovini and Brandenburg, Repertorium I,
no. 972 (Christian inscription, no Christian imagery).
90
Bovini and Brandenburg, Repertorium I, no. 193, 680; Dresken-Weiland, Repertorium II, no. 123, 248;
and Christern-Briesenick, Repertorium III, no. 71, 249, 387, 593. Caelus also appears below a double portrait
on a sarcophagus in the Collegiate Church of Covarrubias, Spain which has been classed as Christian although
there is no explicitly Christian imagery and no inscription; see Provoost, De vroegchrihrstelijke funeraire beeld-
taal, 2.209 (cat. S912).
91
Bovini and Brandenburg, Repertorium I, no. 49, 165, 625; Dresken-Weiland, Repertorium II, no. 102;
and Provoost, De vroegchristelijke funeraire beeldtaal, 2.154 (cat. S577). Sol also appears on a sarcophagus in La
Gayole, in southeastern France, the Christian provenance of which is no longer generally accepted; see Chris-
tern-Briesenick, Repertorium III, no. 197. The opinions on classification are canvassed by Arnold Provoost,
“The Apostolic World of Thought in Early Christian Iconography,” in The Apostolic Age in Patristic Thought, ed.
Anthony Hilhorst (Boston: Brill, 2004), 169–72. Studer-Karlen, Verstorbenendarstellungen, 133, notes that the
Christian inscription was likely added only in the sixth century.
92
Bovini and Brandenburg, Repertorium I, no. 86 and 985. Daniela Gofredo, “Miti classici,” in Temi di
iconografia paleocristiana, ed. Fabrizio Bisconti (Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di Archeologica Cristiana,
2000), 219, cites two others (Bovini and Brandenburg, Repertorium I, no. 29 and 381), neither with any
explicitly Christian imagery. The former, the so-called Three Shepherds Sarcophagus, is generally regarded
as non-Christian; see Koch, Frühchristliche Sarkophage, 17; and Hugo Brandenburg, “Das Ende der antiken
Sarkophagkunst in Rom: Pagane und christliche Sarkophage in Rom,” in Akten des Symposiums “Frühchristliche
Sarkophage”: Marburg, 30.6.-4.7.1999, ed. Guntram Koch (Mainz: von Zabern, 2002), 32–33.
93
Bovini and Brandenburg, Repertorium I, no. 744. The classification depends solely on a kriophoros.
50 ROBERT COUZIN
94
Paul Zanker and Björn Christian Ewald, Mit Mythen leben: Die Bilderwelt der römischen Sarkophage
(Munich: Hirmer, 2004), 255–61; published as Living With Myths: The Imagery of Roman Sarcophagi, trans.
Julia Slater (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 254–60; and Paul Zanker, “Ikonographie und Mentalität:
Zur Veränderung mythologischer Bildthemen auf den kaiserzeitlichen Sarkophagen aus der Stadt Rom,” in
Lebenswelten: Bilder und Räume in der römischen Stadt der Kaiserzeit, ed. Richard Neudecker and Paul Zanker
(Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert, 2005), 246–50 and fig. 2. See now Barbara Borg, “Rhetoric and Art in
Third-Century AD Rome,” in Art and Rhetoric in Roman Culture, ed. Jaś Elsner and Michael Meyer (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 235–55.
95
Reinsberg, Vita romana; and Rita Amedick, Die Sarkophage mit Darstellungen aus dem Menschenleben:
Vita privata, ASR I.4 (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1991).
96
Bovini and Brandenburg, Repertorium I, no. 811; and Dresken-Weiland, Repertorium II, no. 242 (of
local manufacture). The Christian attribution of a few other examples (Bovini and Brandenburg, Repertorium
I, no. 912; Christern-Briesenick, Repertorium III, no. 23 and 197) is doubtful precisely because they bear no
unequivocally Christian imagery. No Christian examples are cited in the brief survey by Koch and Sichter-
mann, Römische Sarkophage, 208, or in the catalogue by Ewald, Der Philosoph als Leitbild. The seated Christ on
the Polychrome Fragments in the Museo Nazionale Romano (Bovini and Brandenburg, Repertorium I, no. 773)
and other such figures may bear some generic formal connection to the traditional “philosopher” but cannot
be regarded as Christian assimilations of the non-Christian motif.
97
Johannes G. Deckers, “Vom Denker zum Diener: Bemerkungen zu den Folgen der konstantinischen
Wende im Spiegel der Sarkophagplastik,” in Innovation in der Spätantike: Kolloquium Basel 6. und 7. Mai 1994,
ed. Beat Brenk (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1996), 137–84.
98
Bernard Andreae, Die Sarkophage mit Darstellungen aus dem Menschenleben: Die römischen Jagdsarkophage,
ASR I.2 (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1980), 127–28, 158–59 (cat. 78).
99
At Trinquetaille, near Arles, in 1974 (I thank Jaś Elsner for bringing this instance to my attention). For
the hunting sarcophagus see Gaggadis-Robin, Les sarcophages païens, 108–14 (cat. 26). For Christian chests see,
notably, Christern-Briesenick, Repertorium III, no. 37 and 38, as well as 45 and 87.
100
Dresken-Weiland, Repertorium II, no. 185. The two pieces could have been joined upon a sixteenth-
century martyrial rededication. The opposing views are discussed by Andreae, Jagdsarkophage, 123, 123n568,
153–54 (cat. 59), who opts for an original arrangement.
101
Bovini and Brandenburg, Repertorium I, no. 6, 188.
102
Christern-Briesenick, Repertorium III, no. 642; and Fathi Bejaoui, “Le sarcophage de Lemta,” in Koch,
Akten des Symposiums 1999, 13–18.
103
Christern-Briesenick, Repertorium III, no. 220, 456, 519, and 520, all dated late fifth century.
104
See Amedick, Vita privata, for these and other categories. See also the chronological table in Reinsberg,
Vita romana, 268–73. The poorly preserved lid of the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus (Bovini and Branden-
burg, Repertorium I, no. 680), exceptional in other respects, appears to have depicted scenes of domestic life,
including a female musician and a boy with a dog; see Nikolaus Himmelmann, Typologische Untersuchungen
an römischen Sarkophagreliefs des 3. Und 4. Jahrhunderts n. Chr. (Mainz am Rhein: Zabern, 1973), 15–28; and
Alice T. Christ, “The Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus: Patron, Workshop, and Program” (PhD diss., University
of Chicago, 1992), 438–56.
105
Four sarcophagi in Bovini and Brandenburg, Repertorium I, bear epigraphic indications of military
function, three of which include Christian imagery: no. 303 (miracle at Cana), 778 (Jonah), and 831 (Jonah).
On the inscriptions see Jutta Dresken-Weiland, Sarkophagbestattungen des 4.–6. Jahrhunderts im Westen des
römischen Reiches (Rome: Herder, 2003), 35.
106
Museo Pio Clementio, Vatican Museums, Inv. 238; Bovini and Brandenburg, Repertorium I, no. 173;
and Koch, Frühchristliche Sarkophage, 427–29. Hypotheses regarding the identity of the actual or intended
occupant are less secure than the association of the chest, given its material and size, with the imperial family.
107
In the first volume of the Repertorium Lange, Ikonographisches Register, 20–21 (“Bukolische Szene”) and
43–48 (“Hirt” and “Hirtengenre”), identifies 175 instances of pastoral imagery. Provoost, De vroegchristelijke
funeraire beeldtaal, 1.31, lists 277 in total for all sarcophagi generously classified by him as Christian. These
figures include the kriophoros or “good shepherd.”
108
For examples with Jonah see Bovini and Brandenburg, Repertorium I, no. 46, 590, 747, 756, 958; and
Dresken-Weiland, Repertorium II, no. 6, 7, 90, 91, 241, 419. For other themes see Bovini and Brandenburg,
Repertorium I, no. 85, 560, 689, 811; Dresken-Weiland, Repertorium II, no. 97, 98, 113, 148, 164; and Chris-
tern-Briesenick, Repertorium III, no. 18, 109, 601 (limited to likely metropolitan examples). The shepherd
bears a ram on his shoulders on nine of these; the second most popular bucolic scene is the milking shepherd.
One could include a few pastoral allegories; see Bovini and Brandenburg, Repertorium I, no. 30; Dresken-
Weiland, Repertorium II, no. 162; and Christern-Briesenick, Repertorium III, no. 311. Catacomb painting adds
to the funerary repertoire of shepherds, with similar concerns about some over-attribution to Christians.
109
Erwin Panofsky, Tomb Sculpture: Four Lectures on its Changing Aspects from Ancient Egypt to Bernini (New
York: Abrams, 1964), 39 and 39–44.
110
Jaś Elsner, “Rational, Passionate and Appetitive: The Psychology of Rhetoric and the Transformation of
Visual Culture from Non-Christian to Christian Sarcophagi in the Roman World,” in Elsner and Meyer, Art
and Rhetoric, 316–49.
111
On continuity from mythology to the new themes see Michael Koortbojian, “The Mythology of Every-
day Life,” in Iconographie funéraire romaine et société: Corpus antique, approches nouvelles? ed. Martin Galinier
and François Baratte (Perpignan: Presses Universitaires de Perpignan, 2013), 147–69; and Zanker, “Ikonogra-
phie und Mentalität,” 247–51. Compare Björn Christian Ewald, “Paradigms of Personhood and Regimes of
Representation: Some Notes on the Transformation of Roman Sarcophagi,” RES 61/62 (2012): 60–64.
112
On Christian number see Robert Couzin, “The Christian Sarcophagus Population of Rome,” Journal of
Roman Archaeology 27 (2014): 275–303. On challenges facing the workshops see Bruno Klein, “Christliche
Ikonographie und künstlerische Tradition in der Sarkophagplastik der ersten Hälfte des 4. Jahrhunderts,” in
Koch, Akten des Symposiums 1999, 145–52.
113
Museo Nazionale di Ravenna, Inv. 411; see Janet Huskinson, Roman Children’s Sarcophagi: Their Decora-
tion and its Social Significance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 69 (cat. 10.3). Huskinson classified
the sarcophagus as Christian, presumably because of the orant and good shepherd.
114
See the discussion and references in Cantino Wataghin, “I primi cristiani,” 21–27.
115
Elsner, “Inventing Christian Rome,” 76. For the Projecta Casket see Kathleen J. Shelton, The Esquiline
Treasure (London: British Museum Publications, 1981), 72–75; and Jaś Elsner, “Visualising Women in Late
Antique Rome: The Projecta Casket,” in Through a Glass Brightly: Studies in Byzantine and Medieval Art and
Archaeology Presented to David Buckton, ed. Chris Entwhistle (Oxford: Oxbow, 2003), 22–36. There is some
debate regarding the casket’s date (mid-century or after 380) and patronage (two Christian spouses or only
one); see Alan Cameron, “The Date and the Owners of the Esquiline Treasure,” American Journal of Archaeology
89 (1985): 135–45; and Kathleen J. Shelton, “The Esquiline Treasure: The Nature of the Evidence,” American
Journal of Archaeology 89 (1985): 147–55. Venus also appears on a patera from this treasure conserved in the
Petit Palais, Paris (Inv. ADUT00171).
116
Elsner, “Art and Architecture,” 746; and Elsner, Art and the Roman Viewer, 251–55.
117
Krautheimer, Rome, 46.
118
A simpler and less luxurious example is an African red slip ware lanx on which the Dioscuri are accom-
panied by a Christian inscription. See Annewies van den Hoek, “Divine Twins or Saintly Twins: The Dioscuri
in an Early Christian Context,” in Pottery, Pavements, and Paradise: Iconographic and Textual Studies on Late
Antiquity, ed. Annewies van den Hoek and John J. Herrmann, Jr. (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2013), 271–78.
52 ROBERT COUZIN
119
Marlia Mundell Mango and Anna Bennett, The Sevso Treasure: Part I, JRA Supp. Ser. 12.1 (Ann Arbor:
Journal of Roman Archaeology, 1994). The chi–rho inscription appears on the Hunting Plate (55–97, cat. 1);
it is illustrated and transcribed on 77.
120
For Mildenhall see British Museum, P&E 1946, 10-7, 1-34; and Kenneth S. Painter, The Mildenhall
Treasure: Roman Silver from East Anglia (London: The Trustees of the British Museum, 1977). Painter also
notes, but questions, the possible Christian interpretation of inscriptions on two other spoons (19). For Kai-
seraugst see Herbert A. Cahn and Annemarie Kaufmann-Heinimann, eds., Der spätrömische Silberschatz von
Kaiseraugst (Derendingen, CH: Habegger Verlag, 1984), cat. 39 (Christian toothpick), 61, 63, 64 (Ariadne and
Achilles platters, Venus statuette).
121
The Hoxne Late Roman Treasure: Gold Jewellery and Silver Plate, ed. Catherine Johns (London: The Brit-
ish Museum Press, 2010). Cat. 4, 31, 52–59, 89, 91–100 and 118–19 are jewellery, spoons, and ladles with a
chi–rho or other Christian sign; cat. 34 is the pepper pot.
122
National Museum of Scotland, Inv. GVA 1 (the ewer) to GVA 152D; see Toynbee, Art in Britain,
312–14; Constantine the Great: York’s Emperor, ed. Elizabeth Hartley, Jane Hawkes, and Martin Henig with
Frances Mee (Marygate: York Museums and Gallery Trust, 2006), 229–46 (cat. 234–66, notice by K. S.
Painter); and Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art, ed. Jeffrey Spier (Fort Worth: The Kimbell Art
Museum, 2007), 253–55 (cat. 75, the ewer). This ewer could have been an ecclesiastical vessel but is gener-
ally regarded as domestic; see Painter in Hartley et al., Constantine the Great, 232; and David Buckton, ed.,
Byzantium: Treasures of Byzantine Art and Culture (London: British Museum Press, 1994), 51 (cat. 35, notice
by Maria Mundell Mango).
123
Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum, Budapest, Inv. Nr. 64/1903–19, 20, 21, 24, 25 and 20.1902, 2–3; see
Helmut Buschhausen, Die spätrömischen Metallscrinia und frühchristlichen Reliquiare (Vienna: Österreichische
Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1971), 132–36 (no. A65, ill. Plates A79–82) and 140–44 (no. A69, ill. Plates
A86–89). The second casket is noted by Huskinson, “Pagan Mythological Figures,” 78, 90 (cat. 32).
124
For examples of pagan imagery see Wolfgang Fritz Volbach, Elfenbeinarbeiten der Spätantike und des
frühen Mittelalters, 3rd ed. (Mainz am Rhein: Philipp von Zabern, 1976), 64–65, cat. 84, 85, pl. 46 (Asclepius),
69, cat. 89, pl. 49 (Apollo and Marsyas), 72–73, cat. 98, pl. 53 (Venus and Adonis), and 73, cat. 99, pl. 53
(Artemis and Actaeon). Christian images occupy pp. 77–128, cat. 102–216.
125
Volbach, Elfenbeinarbeiten, 29–30, cat. 1, pl. 1.
126
Alan Cameron, “The Probus Diptych and Christian Apologetic,” in From Rome to Constantinople: Studies
in Honour of Averil Cameron, ed. Hagit Amirav and Bas ter Haar Romeny (Leuven: Peeters, 2007), 191–202.
The inscription: IN NOMINE X̅ RĪ VINCAS SEMPER (Alan Cameron’s translation).
127
See Spieser, Images du Christ, 132–33 (fig. 34), 147–50 (fig. 39).
128
For examples see Jeffrey Spier, Late Antique and Early Christian Gems (Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert,
2007), 37–38 (cat. 180, 184, 185 and 186) and 39n51. See also Maria Grazia Lancellotti and Ennio Sanzi,
“Soggetti cristiani,” in Sylloge Gemmarum Gnosticarum, ed. Attilio Mastrocinque (Rome: Istituto Poligrafico
e Zecca dello Stato, Libreria dello Stato, 2003), cat. 265 (310–11). An Orpheus signet ring in the British
Museum, AF.225, refers to “John the crowned saint.”
129
Clement of Alexandria (see n. 13 above) states: “No representation of an idol may be impressed on the
ring, for we are forbidden to possess such an image.”
130
For Christian imagery see Spier, Picturing the Bible, 188 (cat. 17, 18—Adam and Eve, Jonah), 247 (cat.
69—Peter and Paul); and Beck and Bol, Spätantike und frühes Christentum, 664–65 (cat. 240—Adoration of
the Magi). On their rarity see Lancellotti and Sanzi, “Soggetti cristiani,” 309.
131
Cited as an instance of syncretism by Elsner, “Art and Architecture,” 746, who, however, raises the ques-
tion of its authenticity (746n41). It is classed as a modern fake by Viellefon, La figure d’Orphée, 83; and Spier,
Late Antique Gems, 178.
132
For example, see David H. Wright, The Vatican Vergil: A Masterpiece of Late Antique Art (Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1993), 101–102, and for an opposing view, Cameron, Last Pagans of Rome, 706–12.
133
On the codex see Michele Renee Salzman, On Roman Time: The Codex-Calendar of 354 and the Rhythms
of Urban Life in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).
134
Lea Margaret Stirling, The Learned Collector: Mythological Statuettes and Classical Taste in Late Antique
Gaul (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), 165–69; Bassett, Urban Image, 37–78; and Niels Han-
nestad, “Late Antique Mythological Sculpture: In Search of a Chronology,” in Bauer and Witschel, Statuen in
der Spätantike, 292–98.
135
A lonely exception is the group of five miniatures known as the Cleveland marbles, comprising a Jonah
cycle and a kriophoros. They are datable to the second half of the third century and are from Asia Minor. See
Wolfgang Wischmeyer, “Die vorkonstantinische christliche Kunst in neuem Lichte: die Cleveland-Statuetten,”
Vigiliae Christianae 35 (1981): 253–87; and Spier, Picturing the Bible, 191–92 (cat. 21).
136
The boat lamp is in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Florence no. 1671. See Spier, Picturing the Bible,
249 (cat. 72). The inscription, referencing the image known as traditio legis, reads: DOMINUS LEGEM DAT
VALERIO SEVERO EVTROPI VIVAS. For the statuette see Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Inv. 339. On the objects
from this site see Beat Brenk, “La cristianizzazione della Domus dei Valerii sul Celio,” in The Transformations
of Vrbs Roma in Late Antiquity, ed. William V. Harris (Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 1999),
69–84. Compare the Roman house under the Basilica of SS. Giovanni e Paolo (n. 30 above) and the mytho-
logical mosaics and Christian wall paintings in a villa at Lullingstone, Kent (n. 31 above).
137
On the Villa Casale see R. J. A. Wilson, Piazza Armerina (London: Granada, 1983); and Francesco
Saverio Brancato and Rosalba Mingoia, Piazza Armerina: Apud Thermas, Apud Hennam. La cosiddetta villa
romana del casale (Comiso: Documenta, 2002). Brancato and Mingoia conclude that the villa was not a private
residence, but rather a military public building (p. 289). Neither study considers the religious affiliation of the
owners or users. On the Hercules statue see Hannestad, “Late Antique Mythological Sculpture,” 291.
138
Katherine M. D. Dunbabin, Mosaics of the Greek and Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1999), 95–96 (Frampton and Hinton St Mary). The Hinton St Mary mosaic is now in the British
Museum, BM 1965.0409.1.
139
For syncretism see Elsner, “Art and Architecture,” 746. For Interpretatio christiana see Dunbabin, Mosa-
ics, 96; and Hartley et al., Constantine the Great, 204–6 (cat. 190, notice by Martin Henig: “Bellerophon is a
Metaphor of Christ”).
140
See Susan Pearce, “The Hinton St Mary Mosaic Pavement: Christ Or Emperor?” Brittania 39 (2008):
193–218. Adam Levine, “Does the Hinton St. Mary Mosaic Depict Christ?” in The Art of Empire: Christian Art
in its Imperial Context, ed. Lee M. Jefferson and Robin M. Jensen (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), 307–49,
proposes a syncretistic interpretation that assumes some viewers saw the figure as Christ and others did not.
141
See the discussion under the “liturgical” heading and n. 31 above. Roger Ling, “Inscriptions on Roma-
no-British Mosaics and Wall Paintings,” Brittania 38 (2007), 78–79, remarks and rejects the unconvincing
suggestion that a mosaic inscription with the Europa panel contains a hidden, encoded Christian message.
142
Niels Hannestad, “How Did Rising Christianity Cope with Pagan Sculpture?” in East and West: Modes
of Communication, ed. Evangelos Chrysos and Ian Wood (Leiden: Brill, 1999), asserts that from the fourth
through the sixth centuries “no indisputable Christian mosaic seems to have been laid in a private house”
(p. 193).
143
Codex Iustinianus, ed. P. Krüger (Berlin: Weidmann, 1877), 261 (1.8.1). On the inference of Christian
reluctance see Dunbabin, Mosaics, 95; Ferdinand Lot, The End of the Ancient World, trans. Philip Leon and
Mariette Leon (London: Routledge, 1931), 145; and Claude Lepelley, “The Use of Secularized Latin Pagan
Culture by Christians,” in Religious Diversity in Late Antiquity, ed. David Gwynn and Susanne Bangert (Leiden:
Brill, 2010), 480.
54 ROBERT COUZIN
144
Rachel Hachlili, Ancient Mosaic Pavements: Themes, Issues, and Trends (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 64. The Jewish
instances of biblical imagery in pavement mosaics are in synagogues, rather than homes, but the cultic space can
hardly have been of less concern than the domestic. Christians also avoided religious pavement imagery in litur-
gical buildings, an extra-metropolitan exception being the previously remarked basilica in Aquileia (above, n. 25).
145
Andaloro, L’orizzonte tardoantico, 253–58, with bibliography (notice by Jérôme Croisier); Cantino
Wataghin, “I primi cristiani,” 30; and Beat Brenk, The Apse, the Image and the Icon: An Historical Perspective
of the Apse as a Space for Images (Wiesbaden: Richert Verlag, 2010), 16–17. It is possible that this hypogeum
initially had or later developed a cultic function, perhaps for baptism, in which case the example would belong
in the liturgical realm.

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Composed by Kathy Bond Borie

T he front of a late fourth-century sarcophagus conserved in the Musée de l’Arles Antique

Fig. 3. Dioscuri sarcophagus (left side). Musée de l’Arles Antique, Inv.

Fig. 4. Dioscuri sarcophagus (right side). Musée de l’Arles Antique, Inv.

Three Theories of “Visual Syncretism”

The Liturgical Realm

Fig. 5. Vault mosaic. Santa Costanza, Rome. (Photo: Author.)

Fig. 6. Baptism of Christ, dome mosaic. Neonian (Orthodox)

The Public Realm

The Funerary Realm

The Domestic Realm

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