The End of an Era: Reinterpreting the Herakles and Athena Acroteria (ca. 540 - 530 B.C.E.) (20 min)

Presenters

Allia Benner, University of Oxford

Abstract

In the second half of the sixth century B.C.E. (ca. 540–530 B.C.E.), dozens of monumental religious structures in central Italy were constructed by elite families and were covered with standardized, mold-made terracotta roofs. The crowning feature of several of these roofs was a central acroterion in the form of Heracles and Athena, standing together at the apex of the pediment. These images of the hero with his divine protectress conform to the typical iconography of scenes of Heracles’s apotheosis. For the last fifty years, many scholars have argued for political interpretations of the statues, while others have interpreted the acroteria as evidence of a cult of Heracles or the Etruscan god Hercle, despite methodological pitfalls and contradictory votive and epigraphic evidence.

In order to construct a more precise, nuanced interpretation of the acroteria as central components that belong to a larger syntax of roof decoration, this paper situates the statues within the long-term sociopolitical, ideological, and iconographic contexts of central Italy in the Orientalizing and Archaic periods. This contextualization allows for a reading of the acroteria not as isolated images specific to a particular cult or political figure, but as the culmination of over a century of elite ideology and iconography that were thematically centered around the ancestry, fertility, and continuation of the elite families responsible for building the structures atop which Heracles and Athena stood. By embodying three key thematic elements shared by earlier roofs of the Orientalizing and Archaic periods—the Mistress and Master of Animals; elite ancestors; and the elite couple—the Heracles and Athena acroteria represented the continuation and distillation of an elite ideology that was inherently bound with conceptions of the divine and with ritual authority.

  AIA-3H