Moonmoth: I have wondered about that
Apollo Moneta of
Commodus pose ever since first seeing it on
Doug Smith's AGRC site. The question is, why is it Apollonian to have the hand on the
head that way? There are some variants, on coins and in marble, where
Apollo is pulling an arrow from a quiver, but more usually it's just the hand on
head—what Sir Kenneth
Clark called, not without reason, 'pathetic'. Here 'pathetic' means 'passive', the opposite to 'active' or 'positive', rather than pitiable. In Greek, the Passive Voice is called
pathetikos. It could mean sexually feminine, but I don't think it does for
Apollo, no matter what folks think of
his hairdo, etc. Frankly, I think you have it dead right: it stretches out the body beautifully, compositionally as well as physically beautifully. Thing is, Praxiteles loved doing that. And, evidently, everyone (well, almost everyone) liked the effect. I have posted before the Louvre
Dionysos with
his arm up this way (wearing only the filmiest of garments). There is a fragment in the
Athens NAM with a different kind of
head and the opposite hand resting on the top of the
head. And if the Emperor likes it, you can be sure he can have the 'extended' motif for a
Rome statue of
Apollo Moneta. At some point, I suspect, both the crossed legs and the hand on
head ceased to have specific implied meanings.
Pat L.
