The use of mythological subjects in fourth- and fifth-century visual culture has attracted considerable scholarly interest in recent years. It has always been accepted that gods and classical myths were commonly represented on late antique mosaics and silverware; the manufacture of statues and statuettes was, however, believed to have died out in the later third century. Recent studies by Niels Hannestad and Marianne Bergmann have demonstrated that small-scale statuettes—if not life-size sculptures—of gods and classical heroes were still produced in the fourth century (Hannestad, Tradition in Late Antique Sculpture: Conservation, Modernization, Production. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1994; and Bergmann, Chiragan, Aphrodisias, Konstantinopel. Zur mythologischen Skulptur der Spätantike. Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1999). Given the highly specialized and technical nature of this topic, Lea Stirling’s attempt to contextualize fourth- and fifth-century mythological statuettes within the domestic architecture of late antiquity provides a welcome and highly accessible survey of the evidence.

Stirling builds her narrative around a group of mostly fragmentary statuettes that adorned unusually large late-antique villas in Aquitaine. Two introductory chapters outline the methodological difficulties of contextualizing statues within domestic architecture: sculptures are rarely found in situ but rather as disconnected fragments scattered over mostly ill-documented sites. It cannot be taken for granted that the statues found on a villa-site were originally displayed there (15–19). Also the precise location of the sculptural décor must be discussed on the basis of informed guesses (19–22). Stirling’s approach toward the ancient reception of the statuettes is framed by the issue of Christian hostility against statues representing deities and mythological characters (22–28). In fact, many fourth century “pagan” statuettes and statues used to be dated to the middle imperial period because “classical” statuary was believed to have died out with the Christianization of the Empire. Stirling’s careful presentation of the evidence from Gaul (29–90) and her adept discussion in the chapter entitled “Issues of Style Chronology and Origins” (91–137) demonstrate that some of the richest late-antique Aquitainian villas sported contemporary mythological statuettes that must have been imported to Gaul and were possibly manufactured in Asia Minor.

The popularity of mythological subjects in late-Roman villas and houses is explained by the importance of classical paideia for the contemporary aristocracy, which compelled “patrons . . . to express their status, education, distinguished background, and leisured pursuits” through “mythological statuary” (227). This argument is fleshed out in a chapter on “paideia and the world of Ausonius of Bordeaux” (138–164), who is presented as the paradigmatic “learned collector” praising artwork in his poetry. On the basis of the supposedly close connection between learning and ancient art “collecting,” sculptural assemblages from all over the Roman World are expertly described in the chapter “Learned Collectors across the Empire” (165–227). This is followed by a short summary of the book’s main results (228–232): mythological statuettes were still manufactured in the fourth and fifth centuries, mostly fulfilling a “decorative role.” As “religiously neutral” items, even prominent Christians used them mainly as a means of demonstrating their paideia—occasional worship of and Christian violence against such statues notwithstanding.

This way of neutralizing “paganism” by emphasizing paideia mirrors the early Christian debate on the place of non-Christian literature in education and society, and is surely more sensible than insisting on the religious connotations of mythological images. Nevertheless, the connection between learning and the display of classical imagery in rich townhouses and villas does not emerge as obviously from the evidence as Stirling suggests. Despite the book’s title, not a single sculptural assemblage under discussion is aptly labeled a “collection.” Unfortunately, Stirling defines neither the term “collector” nor “collection,” and only implicitly refers to her model of statue acquisition. Pre-fourth-century century pieces found together with late antique material are frequently labeled “heirlooms,” suggesting that they were inherited by an owner who then supplemented this “collection” with contemporary pieces. In support of this model, all sources quoted suggest that older statues had indeed either belonged to the owner’s family for a long time or were received as gifts. The existence of an “antiques market” occasionally alluded to is not established by evidence. Only such an institution would, however, allow for the building up of what has been often, and misleadingly, called a collection: bringing together already well-known “works of art” like the statues and paintings that victorious generals and emperors such as Vespasian looted abroad and brought to Rome, ostentatiously displaying them in public buildings such as the Porticus Metelli and the Templum Pacis, or which notorious officials like the fifth-century Constantinopolitan courtier Lausos placed in front of their luxurious townhouses. These items were displayed for political reasons and carefully scrutinized as individual objects because they had acquired meaning through a primarily political narrative that was triggered by their fame in a previous context and later translated itself into aesthetic appreciation.

Commissioning copies of popular Classical and Hellenistic statues for the décor of a townhouse or villa is a different matter. They were part of a decorative system in which the individual object did not matter much and was often not even meaningfully staged. Naturally, one could call every sculptural assemblage a collection, but this does not explain the place of statues in the rich visual world of the Roman house. As Stirling stresses, “Late mythological statuettes were one element in a rich landscape of sculpture, mosaic, marble, and textile” (227). Recent archaeological studies have focused on the overall atmosphere conjured by domestic décor (Paul Zanker, Pompeji. Stadtbild und Wohngeschmack. Mainz am Rhein: P. von Zabern, 1995). Isolating statues as collector’s items seems to disentangle them from this discourse, as does the focus on aristocratic paideia.

Not all wealthy houses in late antiquity were necessarily owned by aristocrats, and not all men of means must have “shared in paideia.” Even if this had been the case, it is problematic to assume that Ausonius’ poetry provides the key for understanding the cultural significance of late-mythological statuary. Ausonius wrote his poems in the spirit of ecphrasis, which as a literary genre was not primarily concerned with the images themselves. The description of paintings and sculpture in literature was a matter of poetic imagination. Actual visual experience was irrelevant and autopsy of the praised object unnecessary. Callimachus (Iamb. 6, fr. 196ff.) ironically provided an acquaintance departing for Olympia with the precise measurements of Pheidias’ Zeus, ridiculing actual sightseeing. The poems quoted by Stirling do not, in fact, display a sense of art-historical connoisseurship. Ausonius’ mixobarbaron [outlandish medley] commemorating, in his words, “‘a marble statue, located in my villa, of Liber Pater with attributes of all the gods,’” merely lists barbarian names for Liber Pater (148). An actual statue representing all these deities, even by just holding their attributes, is hard to imagine. The literary nature of praising Greek masterpieces is illustrated by Symmachus’ complaint to Ausonius that a large portion of the people admiring them were in reality ignorant of them. Stirling takes this highly rhetorical statement at face value and argues that “educated persons were still expected to and did appreciate statuary” (149), not taking into consideration the fact that Ausonius himself never saw the statues in question and could only have been familiar with the conventions regarding their praise.

Tellingly, most of the statuettes surveyed are only vaguely (if at all) reminiscent of famous classical types and were possibly carved by craftsmen who had been trained primarily as relief-sculptors, incapable of producing statues that were satisfactory from more than one point of view (108). Any “learned collector” brought up with genuine works of Phidias as a yardstick against which to measure contemporary works would have been horrified. Indeed, very few fourth- and fifth-century statues and statuettes reproduce classical “masterpieces” such as the Doryphoros, which could, with greater justification, be seen as genuine evocations of Greek life and culture. In comparison to the classicizing taste of the early and high empire, which saw the deliberate return to the styles and motives of the fifth- and fourth-centuries BC, the popularity of the hunting Diana in the décor of country houses or that of Venus in bath buildings rather bluntly evokes the activities taking place there. Statues of well-known gods and heroes do not necessarily testify to the learning of their owner. Recent studies on late-antique mosaics have emphasized the actualization of mythological scenes by using contemporary clothing and hairstyles for mythological characters (Wulf Raeck, Modernisierte Mythen. Zum Umgang der Spätantike mit klassischen Bildthemen. Stuttgart: Steiner, 1992); they also point to the gap between the episodes chosen for representation and the telling of the same myths in the canonical works of literature (Susanne Muth, Erleben von Raum, Leben im Raum. Zur Funktion mythologischer Mosaikbilder in der römisch-kaiserzeitlichen Wohnarchitektur. Heidelberg: Verlag Archäologie und Geschichte, 1998)—the intimate knowledge of which was at the very heart of paideia. Like most mythological sarcophagi, these images show an interest in expressing emotions and conjuring up an atmosphere that was not a topic of contemporary literary production (Paul Zanker and Björn Christian Ewald, Mit Mythen Leben. Die Bilderwelt der römischen Sarkophage. Munich: Hirmer, 2004). Naturally, it is also possible that educated men used these images as a starting point of a learned discourse—or a religious debate—on an ad hoc basis. Unlike portraits of philosophers, mythological statuettes, however, probably came with many un-intellectual connotations, evoking concepts such as love and physical beauty (cf., Andreas Grüner, “Cato und die Nymphen. Die Bronzeporträts der Maison de la Vénus in Volubilis als hermeneutischer Problemfall,“ Gymnasium 111, no. 6 (2004): 529–55, for the methodological implications of assuming several distinct viewers).

In conclusion, Stirling should be credited for an impressive and technically proficient survey of late-antique mythological statues in their respective contexts, even though her focus on the educational background of their patrons is somewhat under-theorized.