This pair of most admirable coins also conveys what makes my blood run cold in Tetrarchic art. The art speaks. All art speaks.
Style is the
man himself (Buffon), and this
style is Diocletian's. It is exact, competent, detailed, and anti-humane, anti-personal. It recalls to me the cold death that much of Third Reich art imposed on a superficial interpretation of the Early Classical strenge Stil of Greek art. It uses nude figures and does not exclude the thingy, but twists and distorts everything so that it cannot be seen organically or tectonically. Sure, some linebackers have
bull necks, but this art flattens the extremely thick neck and removes all the muscles from it. The
Hercules is a quotation of the famous Weary
Herakles of Lysippos, but needlessly reduces the club and the rock that he leans on to a row of dots (and this on one of the better coins). The
Jupiter, also, is a well known
type, but all the sense of strength and dignity is removed. This is not incompetent; this in not unintentional; this is not because the artists were a bunch of Siscians or Pannonians (their own traditions were quite different). This is a deliberately, nay brilliantly, devised
style to propagate the policies of
Diocletian. Books say that
Diocletian implemented important reforms, but it was too late. It was important to make reforms, and it may have been too late, but the Imperial
style of propaganda shows that more than lateness was amiss. This is
Diocletian just as the
Ara Pacis Augustae is
Augustus! And so I have to agree with Joe. This art makes my blood run cold. I love Thessaloniki, and perhaps Galerius's art is not so hard and inhuman. But perhaps not. Anyway, I think it is significant that
Constantine the Great turned
his back on this art and instead tried to re-create an Augustan classicist
style. It WAS too late for that;
the Tetrarchy had broken the back of Greco-Roman art in the
West. But he tried.
Pat Lawrence.
P.S. Less than a century earlier, and itself no masterpiece considered for the
sculpture, I attach one of the same kind of
Herakles for
Diadumenian at Nicopolis.
P.P.S. With apologies for haste: for 'Bacchus':
14 I 00
AE26
Moesia Inferior,
Nicopolis ad Istrum. Diadoumenian, bareheaded
bust to right.
Obv. legend, --]MENIANOS KAI remains (the KAI
complete).
Rev. Weary
Herakles to right (for the rock, see Argos copy of Lysippos's Weary
Herakles and Charles
Edwards, in Personal Styles in Greek
Sculpture (ed. Palagia and Pollitt), and fig. 88 there. The magistrate's name is Longinus, and most of the city name is preserved.
When I got the coin, I didn't even own
AMNG! So now I add:
AMNG I, 1, p. 470, no. 1857. Pick's specimen, [M OPELLI] DIADOV MENIANOS KAI,
Bust with cloak and armor to r.
Rev. VP STA LONGINOV NICOPOLITÔN PROS [IC]. The
reverse die,
Pick reports, = 1759, but the letters lacking on specimen 1 (
Munich) are taken from 2 (
Mus. Arigoni 1). No. 1759 is Macrinus's twin coin, which has a laureate
head to r.
Pick knew 5 specimens for
Macrinus.
Also for 'Bacchus':
11 04 03 AE 27+
Nicopolis ad Istrum. Issued by Longinus.
Macrinus, laureate,
head to r. [AV] K M
OPEL SEV MAKREINOS (same as nos. 1723, 1737, 1741, also with heads).
Rev., nude, bearded
Herakles stg. r.,
his right hand on
his hip,
his left, with the lion-skin-draped club in
his armpit and thus resting on a
stone (the pose of the
Hercules Farnese). VP STA LONGINOV NIKOPOLITON PROS IS. Trait for trait and letter for letter,
Pick AMNG I, 1, no. 1759 and
Varbanov I, no. 2699; judging from
Pick, only the
Sofia ex. has equal detail and
complete legend, and Varbanov's is similarly struck to this one but more worn.
