Roman Images of Diana Bettina Bergmann Mount Holyoke College
! "! A Double Triple Play: Roman Images of Diana Bettina Bergmann Mount Holyoke College John Miller’s study of Augustan Apollo inspired me to return to Paul Zanker’s The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (1988), a book that demonstrated the immense potential of an interdisciplinary approach rather than exclusive focus on any one artistic mode. Nearly a quarter of a century later, this session continues to grapple with the challenges of interdisciplinarity and assessment of the Augustan era. Miller’s subtle analysis of poets’ intricate language invites a renewed consideration of the relationships among texts, sites, and images. The operations that he describes -- conflating, juxtaposing, allusion, correspondence, association – can be related directly to the analysis of topography and monuments as well. I also would like to extend his recommendation to “analyze variations in light of one another” and consider visual images of an elusive figure in his book, the divine twin Diana. The goddess appears, often as an afterthought, literally placed in parentheses after a mention of Apollo, until she assumes prominence in Miller’s insightful treatment of the saecular games (Chapter Five). As I will argue, however, in the visual environment of Augustan Rome, she would have been impossible to bracket out. While the goddess, fiercely independent, often appeared alone, in the second half of the first century B.C.E. she became a faithful companion of Apollo. Diva triformis The late republic and early empire saw an explosion of images of the divine sister, who, like Apollo, evolved into a dynamic, shape-shifting deity, slipping from one identity to another: Hecate, Trivia, Luna, Selene, even Juno Lucina.
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