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Greek Gods or Roman? The Corinthian Archaistic Blocks and Religion in Roman Corinth

July 2017 (121.3)
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Greek Gods or Roman? The Corinthian Archaistic Blocks and Religion in Roman Corinth

121.3
Barbette Spaeth
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This article reexamines two blocks with archaistic reliefs found southwest of the forum of Roman Corinth in the mid to late 1970s. These blocks are dated to the Augustan period by style and have three divinities represented on each. I propose that the figures represented on the reliefs should be identified as Roman gods, not Greek ones, as all previous scholarship has claimed. This proposal leads to new identifications of the figures represented on the reliefs: the Genius and Fortuna of the Colony, Ceres, Liber, Libera, and Minerva, who represent the tutelary gods of the Early Roman colony. I offer a new suggestion for the function and location of the monument to which these reliefs originally belonged: an open-air sanctuary of the gods of the colony, located to the north of the Long Rectangular Building. This new interpretation of the reliefs also suggests some correctives to the methodology of iconographic interpretation in classical art and the conception of the cultural and religious identity of Corinth in the Roman period.

More articles like this: 
Iconography
Religion/Cult
Roman Period
Sculpture
Greece > Peloponnese

Greek Gods or Roman? The Corinthian Archaistic Blocks and Religion in Roman Corinth

By Barbette Spaeth

American Journal of Archaeology Vol. 121, No. 3 (July 2017), pp. 397–423

DOI: 10.3764/aja.121.3.0397

© 2017 Archaeological Institute of America

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