Sebasteion

• Begun in 20 AD under Tiberius and completed in 60 AD under Claudius
• Temple at Aphrodisias dedicated to Aphrodite/Venus and the Julio-Claudian Emperors
• Organised around a long processional road from an eastern monumental gate to its west edge where a temple dedicated to Aphrodite stood
• Two separate 90mx12m colonnades flank the road each with an upper and lower sculptural
• 200 reliefs arranged thematically with only 80 recovered
• Sebastos

  Hellenised form of Augustus
• Aphrodisias 


  Prosperous city in Hellenised Asia Minor
• Hellenised Asia Minor is in

  Modern day Turkey
• Aphrodisias - Citizens had unswerving loyalty to the Principate so were immune from imperial taxation, took the money and poured it back into cultural and intellectual activities for which they became famous
• Aphrodisias - temple dedicated to Aphrodite and was established as a place of pilgrimage by the time the Romans annexed it as a province
• Aphrodisias - Romans welcomed the growing reputation of the goddesses and celebrated their link to the ruling Julian clan
• The Southern Colonnade

  • Upper storey reliefs depicting the imperial family + the goddess Roma alone
  • Lower register reliefs of gods, heroes from Greek myth and 3 panels to the Aeneas myth
• The Northen Colonnade

  Not much survives, but Gonul believes the middle storey had reliefs with anthropological depictions of Roman provinces e.g. Egypt and Ethiopia, and believes each was a single statuesque female personification standing on an inscribed base that identified her
• Upper Storey of the Southern Colonnade

  • Augustus with Nike
  • Livia offering a sacrifice to Aphrodite
  • Claudius and Brittania
  • Claudius (or Augustus - Malik) ruler over the world
  • Agrippina crowning Nero
  • Nero with captive and trophy
  • Nero subdues Armenia
  • Goddess Roma with Captive
  • Goddess with military trophy
• Upper Storey of the Southern Colonnade - emphasises the successful campaigns waged by the emperors
• Augustus with Nike

  A) Heroic/divine nude - after his deification

  B) trophy

  C) eagle

  D) bound captive

  E) winged nike

  F) contrapposto pose

  G) oak wreath - cornoa civica

  H) spear

  I) raising hand to crown the trophy

  
• Livia offering a sacrifice to Aphrodite

  A) Livia -principal figure

  B) Female attendant