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Author Topic: What is Jupiter's headgear?  (Read 5078 times)

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Offline Heliodromus

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What is Jupiter's headgear?
« on: April 12, 2007, 01:35:41 pm »
On late roman coins showing Jupiter he is normally shown with what looks like a thick braid around his head, and this seems to be an identifying attribute.

Can someone please enlighten me as to what this braid-like thing actually is?

Ben

Offline Jochen

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Re: What is Jupiter's headgear?
« Reply #1 on: April 12, 2007, 02:35:54 pm »
You are right, sometimes it looks very strange. But I think it's not a headgear, cap or hood, but only the flowing curls of his scalp hairs.

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Offline slokind

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Re: What is Jupiter's headgear?
« Reply #2 on: April 12, 2007, 02:51:48 pm »
"looks like a thick braid around his head": If that is what it looks like, truly, it may refer to a neo-Severe or neo-Archaic image of Jupiter in Rome.  The Cape Artemision statue, whether Zeus or Poseidon, would be the kind of art that inspired such an image. 
The same hairstyle, but with fluffier front hair, was used, e.g. for Apollo.  See the Leontinoi coins of the 2nd quarter of the 5th century.  Pat L.

Offline Heliodromus

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Re: What is Jupiter's headgear?
« Reply #3 on: April 12, 2007, 03:07:13 pm »
Thanks, guys..

Here's an example to be clearer what I'm talking about. It's much clearer here than it often is.

Ben

Offline Heliodromus

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Re: What is Jupiter's headgear?
« Reply #4 on: April 13, 2007, 08:22:39 am »
Pat,

Thanks for adding that picture - it does look as if that is what it probably is, just exaggerated on the coins as necessary to make it visible as such a small scale.

Here's another couple of coins of mine where it is quite clear. The second one is what I really had in mind when I asked the question - Diocletian has the head of Jupiter on his breast (RIC's choice of word - I guess finessing the issue of what if anything it is actually meant to be on). It's really only this braid that positively IDs the head as that of Jupiter; the type also exists with head of Sol who is identified by his radiate crown.

Ben

Offline slokind

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Re: What is Jupiter's headgear?
« Reply #5 on: April 13, 2007, 02:33:34 pm »
For 'on the breast', see https://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=36719.0 , Reply #2.  I am not sure the profile head 'on the breast' of Diocletian has to be Jupiter; Serapis and Hercules also come to mind.  I have never studied the iconography of Diocletian, though, so only can say that different emperors do have distinctive 'programs' on their "parade armor" (metal corselets).  I posted it in the other thread, because it is tangential here.  But, FWIW.
As for the wrapped braids: in the decades between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, as Thucydides remarked, it began to be thought unmanly to wear long hair.  At first, some rolled up or braided their hair (see the Blond Ephebe and the Kritian Youth from the Acropolis, then the Apollo in the West Pediment at Olympia: mortal males began to wear short hair, but deities often had the compromise; some, like Athena, even might have a sort of pigtail (not plaited) actually in fashion ca. 580 BCE).  The point is, it might be any male deity that wore the braids, and some think the Cape Artemision statue is Zeus, others argue Poseidon.
Pat L.

Offline Heliodromus

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Re: What is Jupiter's headgear?
« Reply #6 on: April 13, 2007, 03:44:22 pm »
Thanks, Pat - very interesting!

I hadn't realized that these heads "on the breast" might be actually real! This particular coin is a bit odd in that it was issued by Maximinus II c. 311 for Diocletian who had already been retired for 6 years at that point, so it's not obvious whether in this circumstance it is depicting something that he once did actually wear or not (it could just be Maximinus's own religio-political propaganda). The RIC identification of the head as Jupiter is likely correct due to his belonging to the eastern house of Jupiter, but it's useful to know that this was a more general custom, and the reason for it.

Ben

Offline Jochen

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Re: What is Jupiter's headgear?
« Reply #7 on: April 13, 2007, 04:01:36 pm »
Hi!

Back to the head-gear of Jupiter! We have had a similar thread about the head-gear of Serapis https://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=28085.0
Here is the opinion of Curtis Clay:
In my opinion the coin shows, apart from the kalathos, nothing but Serapis' hair, combed downwards from the top and gathered in a thick roll around the bottom.

I think it looks very similar to Jupiter's hair!

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Offline slokind

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Re: What is Jupiter's headgear?
« Reply #8 on: April 13, 2007, 04:24:36 pm »
Indeed, and there are Hellenistic head types of all of them with the same thick curls/waves around the face.  If that is what, much reduced, looks like a braid, then it isn't one.  The adult male deities Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, and Serapis, whose image is a conflation of theirs, adding the kalathos, all are much alike at any given date.**  And the Imperial ones are essentially based on the Hellenistic ones and, like the Hellenistic images, sometimes incorporate archaizing elements (on the very old, very holy principle or just for fancy).  That is why the source material that makes Jupiter likeliest for Diocletian might be decisive. 
**Where the Cape Artemision god, above, Early Classical, probably c. 460 BCE, has only bangs, the Hellenistic ones have those fluffy waves or curls.  In either case, this is the front hair; it was the rest that had been plaited or rolled up.
Pat L.
P. S. See R. R. R. Smith, Hellenistic Sculpture.  The first chapter is Hellenistic deity images.  The book is available everywhere in several languages, but here is his page of Zeus.  Finding profile views is hard, so Smith shows a coin, which I think you'll find interesting.

Offline Heliodromus

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Re: What is Jupiter's headgear?
« Reply #9 on: April 14, 2007, 06:07:00 am »
Jochen,
I somehow missed that other thread. That Marcianopolis Serapis does look like it may be the same thing - it better matches the bulk of hair in the "braid" on the examples I posted. The clear depiction on that coin is interesting since the hair at the top of the head is straight as well as non-bulky, so it seems the hair must be long and rolled/wrapped around at the bottom (as Curtis said) to achieve that effect. Is this based on the same tradition that Pat was referring to - not wanting hair to appear long (even though it was)?

Ben

P.S. I won't be able to reply for  few days


Offline slokind

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Re: What is Jupiter's headgear?
« Reply #10 on: April 14, 2007, 04:10:41 pm »
The radiating stripes for hair combed from the crown of the head on the mature major deities, as we see it frequently as late and as far from Alexandria or Olympia as the Danubians, is a simplified schematic rendering, whichever deity we see it on.  Naturally, where a simple bust is repeated merely in lieu of an empress, it is especially apt to be schematic.
It is not, however, a distinct hairstyle.
The attached is only a tiny hemidrachm with a head of Zeus, but it is Greek, Olympia, Achaean League, and, though Late Hellenistic images are rather remote from Phidias it is not schematic but a skillful shorthand rendering (for a coin only 17mm in diameter) for the hair combed from the crown of the head.
You can perceive how the radiating stripes devolved from such as this, perhaps even more easily on a Serapis, which was farther from naturalism to begin with.
BTW, an Asklepios or a Herakles (but not most Herakles) image might also have hair shown as combed from the crown of the head.  Whether a particular head has back hair rolled up, or curls down to the nape of the neck (as on the attached), or even hair bound up in what we would call a snood, would depend on what the sculptor or the tenders of the cult wanted to have.
Pat L.
P.S. and a common Poseidon, an early acquisition, to keep Zeus company:
26 X 00  AE1Syracuse, time of Hieron.  Sear GCV 1223, but this coin is no more than 18.5mm and his listing is AE22.  Head of Poseidon, wearing taenia, to l.; rev., elaborate trident, flanked by dolphins.  Legend also differently divided: here it is IERO  NOS, with the omicron Sear mentions below the omega of his name.
Pat L.

Offline slokind

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Re: What is Jupiter's headgear?
« Reply #11 on: April 17, 2007, 01:32:01 am »
Kwafür Om.  Divine Hair For Men.
• The Kassel Apollo gives us a good copy (one of many) of hair for a standing Apollo of about 450 BCE, perceptibly more plastic in its renderings than the Cape Artemision statue.
• The "Heroic King", rather out of fashion now, in Munich either is a late Hellenistic emulation of this period (or perhaps of the 440s to 430s) or else it is a rather up-tight copy of a real original of that period, as A. Furtwängler's generation thought.
• The late Domitianic Cancelleria Relief (detail of Genius here) shows us, in the lush style that paved the way for most 2nd c. CE Roman art, how the style of the Kassel Apollo type was adopted to create a most charming Genius Populi Romani (it was E. Schmidt in Antike Plastik V who pointed out the debt and emphasized the statue's popularity).  We call it the "Kassel Apollo" because we cannot agree, quite, on what he ought to be called.  One can find several attributions.
These deities, whatever the artist devises for their back hair, never have the tousled, short athlete's hair that we often see on Herakles and Hermes, for example.  Poseidon may eventually have wild hair, but when he has it is that of an ancient mariner.
Pat L.
And see Replies nos. 3 and 4 here: https://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=36841.0

Offline slokind

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Re: What is Jupiter's headgear?
« Reply #12 on: April 24, 2007, 10:20:29 pm »
For Alexandria's 'portrait' (or at least one of them) of its own god, Serapis, with lovely Classical hair combed simply from the crown of the head, see now: https://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=37001.0
Pat L.

 

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