Replication, Authenticity, and Plunder in Republican Rome (20 min)

Presenters

Madeline P. Newquist, Case Western Reserve University

Abstract

In the wake of Marcus Claudius Marcellus’s triumph over Syracuse in 211 B.C.E., the private homes of many Roman elites quickly filled with the statues, paintings, and textiles from the conquered region. Much scholarship on the domestic display of plunder in Rome has focused on luxury goods such as statues and paintings, which Romans called praeda. The earliest displays of Roman war booty were not, however, composed of these types of art objects. Instead, arms and armor—spolia—decorated the homes of Roman generals, a practice that continued in the Republican period even when private displays of looted goods became popular in the second century. Although scholars often conflate these two types of plunder, the decorum surrounding spolia and praeda differed significantly, as indicated by regulations governing their display, replication, and mobility. Combining historical visual analysis of statues, reliefs, and wall paintings with close reading of Latin texts, this paper explores the language around plundered goods and the relationship between plunder and replication in the Roman republic. I demonstrate that while objects categorized as spolia were heavily regulated and almost never copied or moved, those deemed praeda were reproduced, resold, and relocated with little resistance. Though both categories of objects were considered plunder, I conclude that their method of acquisition and the social roles they fulfilled endowed them with different types of authenticity, one of which could be conveyed and maintained through replications and one of which could not. While spolia objects communicated the military prowess of individual generals, praeda were used to signal social relationships and political affiliations. Ultimately, I argue, Romans—rather than disregarding authenticity in the modern sense, as some scholars have recently proposed—valued authenticity highly. That authenticity, however, depended on an object’s functionality and the rules of decorum that consequently governed its use and display.