Roman Oscilla: An Assessment

Roman oscilla An assessment RABUN TAYLOR is an oscillum? What As it is used today, the term oscillum (oscilla in the plural) refers to two distinct but related things in the Roman world: in one case an artifact, in the other a to standard modern historical construct. According was an it in relief on of marble worked usage object sides, probably painted, and suspended by a hook from the architrave or ceiling of a colonnaded portico.1 It tends to take one of three forms: tondo (a thin disk), pinax (a framed rectangle), or pelta (a broad, lunate both shield). Small marble theater masks, usually hollowed out in the back, have sometimes been found in the oscilla, most famously at the company of conventional House of the Golden Cupids at Pompeii (fig. 1).All these objects are frequently depicted hanging from or garlands in Pompeian fictive colonnades frescoes. The reliefs appearing on oscilla are mostly typical Roman and theatrical genre scenes dominated by Dionysiac a themes; occasionally vignette will mythological in abbreviated form. appear highly Marble oscilla of the Roman west (a few have also been found inAthens) came into vogue only in the first in popularity after the mid century ce. and declined second century. Clearly their various forms were deemed by the time they began to interchangeable is But their eclecticism in materials. appear permanent not meaningless. Indeed, we should see their popularity 1. Marble are not the only plaques of definition the problem lays out de ce indiscrimin? Railler m?me en vient mot terme class of objects called oscilla. succinctly: "l'emploi le inconv?nients, quand de marbre du 1er s. ap. aux arbres dans de vieux comporte quelques des bas-reliefs ? d?signer ou J.-C, des masques poup?es suspendus de terre cuite du IVe s. av. J.-C. cultes italiques, de petits m?daillons trouv?s dans des tombes de Gr?ce ou de Sicile, ou m?me n'import ou bouclier d'Amazone tympanon int?gr? ? un d?cor quel masque, n. 5). Yet another class of oscilla, (Railler 1982:744, in Gaul have been found of terracotta, (Vertet 1975). This But with the possible is indeed unfortunate. confusion small terracotta of the Greek and Sicilian evidence?mostly architectural" these made typological exception is holes for suspension?it of many forms with single or double objects a continuum of not out of place to group the other definitions within with associated traditions on the Italian peninsula funerary rituals and Dionysiac cult. contexts as a commodif?cation in domestic of a variety of ritual traditions on the Italian peninsula which extended back for centuries, and which shared one common was feature: their meaning defined or by the act of suspension. is not robust, a the scholarship on oscilla Although number of article-length and a studies, a dissertation, short monograph have appeared on the topic.2 These as a not only with the oscillum have been concerned enhanced from material artifact, but with the Latin word oscillum term is derived?a which the modern word so obscure in late antiquity could only that literary commentators it. To distinguish between the never which is artifact, archaeological directly referenced in any ancient text, and the lexicographic one, Iwill in each the former roman, the designate by typeface: latter in italic. My intention is not to establish an about speculate but merely to place emphasis on absolute distinction, one or the other. Since the nineteenth designation century, there has been a strange gulf between art historians, who tend to sidestep the literary construct too quickly, and the students of religion such as Franz Altheim and Jean-Louis Voisin, who deal at length with the literary sources and the various claims to ritual the existence origins for oscilla but hardly acknowledge of a physical corpus of suspended objects, let alone the extant representations of them in a variety of media.3 The question of origins This article investigates a range of possible primary functions?most of them ritual in nature?that underlie the more overtly semantic and aesthetic secondary on Roman in archaeological found Vertet 1984-1987; 1975; Picard 1921. More articles substantive 1965; lacopi 1963:147-153; Lippold on meaning: Cain 1988; Pailler 1983, 1982; Dwyer 1981; Maurice 1881. Dissertation: 1982. Monograph: Corswandt Albert Loisy 1999. 2. contexts: Short articles Cain 1988; Antico oscilla Gallina See also Taylor 2003. 3. On the sacral origins of oscilla 1980; Voisin 1979; lacopi 1963:147-153; and oscillatio Saint-Denis see Mazzacane 1949; Ehlers 1942; Altheim 1931:65-91; Picard 1928; Lippold 1921; Maurice Albert 1881; Boetticher 1856:80-92. 84 RES 48 AUTUMN 2005 Figure 1. Restored peristyle garden of the House of the Gilded Cupids at Pompeii as itappeared the mid-twentieth century. Photo: Alinari 11994. functions of these objects. An oscillum signifies means of at least four properties: form, context, and iconography. To the extent that disposition, refers back iconography carried on an oscillum to themes that were oscillum itself, as opposed by the to the just as inmany other media, it does so only in the prevalent and most generalized way. The prevalence of Dionysiac theatrical themes may suggest a primordial connection between oscilla and the Dionysus cult, but this kind of across a is broad spectrum of imagery widespread Roman and ritual objects. My principal domestic iswith form, context, and disposition concern, therefore, to of oscilla: the shapes that they take, their confinement and their tendency the liminal space of the colonnade, to hang, and indeed, oscillate. M. Maurice Albert's early analysis of marble oscilla (1881) identified two possible paths by which they came into being. On the one hand, a passage of Vergil and the on it suggest that the cult ancient scholiasts commenting small effigies included a ritual of suspending of Dionysus in the form of masks from trees (Ceorgics 2.387-389). This is the only direct, unqualified usage of the term that in from the classical period of Latin literature: [the people of Italy] put on hideous faces carved "they from bark, invoking you, Bacchus, with glad refrain; and for you they hang soft oscilla from the lofty pine/'4 From term for the this passage was born the modern survives artifact, together with the unshakable archaeological conviction that it is related to Dionysiac rituals. the On the other hand, Maurice Albert observed, Romans had adopted from the Greeks the practice of or colonnades to suspending votive shields in temples shields such as celebrate military victories.5 Honorary the imago clipeata and the clipeus virtutis were granted and were to outstanding citizens, even to the deceased, he in Both practices, temples. displayed prominently reasoned, made their mark in the little marble epigones of the Roman imperial period. But he took his argument sumunt oraque corticibus carmina laeta, tibique (Georgics 2.387-89). 4. vocant pinu 5. Rausanias Historia horrenda / oscilla per naturalis 1.25.26, 35.4; 5.10; Aeschines, 35.10. Livy 25.39, cavatis, /et te, Bacche, ex alta suspendu nt mol Ha Ctesiphon 116; Pliny, Taylor: Roman oscilla no further, observing only that the old practices were over time.6 Some watered down and domesticated modern commentators have rejected any connection between oscilla and shields, preferring to follow around a hard kernel of ritual truth: the have developed or atonement for, the unburied dead. placation of, Since the nineteenth century, scholarship on oscilla has been preoccupied with the rituals of swinging and the more purely Dionysiac model (Railler1982; Lippold P?iller in particular 1921). Jean-Marie (1982:791-812) has proposed a reductive model. Believing many of the art and of Dionysiac appurtenances iconographie any reference to testimony to be fictions without historical practice, he contends that oscilla as a class are are a part of these mythologizing impedimenta. Others more inclined to see a broad variety of causes the phenomenon of oscilla (Loisy 1999; underlying 1981). While their claim of eclecticism may satisfying than P?iller's strict Icontend that it is correct in principle, reductionism, not always in detail. Dwyer less intellectually Meaningful mimetic suspension: if or amuletic? to one commentary according Italia,9 and which was appropriated cult because of that god's Dionysus in in them posthumously of these explanations "Qu'un sculpteur. remplace figures les t?tes s?v?res des vieux Romains tableaux; par de gracieux ... sa fantaisie et des des personnages que repr?sente capricieuse voil? des objets anciens sc?nes diverses, compl?tement 1881:136). (Maurice Albert m?tamorphos?s" iusta fieri ius non sit, suspensis 7. Varro ait, suspendiosis, quibus mortis parentari veluti per imitationem (Servius Auctus, oscillis, ad Aeneida 8. Numerous Erigone, who hanged 12.603). try to connect Vergil's herself when she discovered sources oscilla to the myth the murdered domain? corpse of her father, Icarius, the first human to be given the gift of see Hyginus, wine Fabulae Astron?mica 2.4; Hyginus, by Dionysus; Bern scholiast of ad Ge?rgica 130; Servius, Commentarius 2.389; of Statius, Thebaid Pseudo scholiast 11.644; 2.389; Vergil, Georgics Bibliotheca 3.192; Aelian, De natura animalium 7.28. see Mazzacane itwith 1915. Others associate 1980; Nilsson attached, and was found death of King Latinus, who disappeared the mysterious Servius, Brevis expositio (Festus, p. 212 L, s.v. "oscillantes"; hanging to or with Tarquinius ad Ge?rgica 2.389); Superbus, who responded et Commentarius into the Dionysiac On the Ai?ra, theAttic festival of the grape towhich thismyth is de Mania les affreuses in represents the souls and their restlessness. Altheim does not explain what this ritual ismeant to accomplish. Does it grant the souls a means of atonement by "airing as Servius suggests in his out" their imperfections, on the Georgics? Do the masks thereby commentary the souls and make them their own, initiating "capture" Apollodorus, . . frequens by the Liber identity as a the souls of the restless dead; represented Maskengott, were or shades transmuted they ghosts (larvae, maniae) into little mask-effigies of Dionysus and his followers, then attached to a tree. The oscillation of these masks late antiquity. Some of them justify the Dionysiac tradition of hanging oscilla by their physical analogy to bodies of the hanged, specifically mythological figures 6. was which the hanging of oscilla, as if through imitation of the death/'7 Neither this source nor the Vergil passage actually describes oscilla but each in its own way and 2) that they suggests 1 ) that they were suspended; were effigies of some sort. InVergil's case, they were Several for the purpose of explaining the ritual of hanging effigies from trees. Rather than represent humans, he proposes, they may have reflected some aspect of the gods, who themselves had arboreal sees two Rosanna Mazzacane conflated (1980) origins. rituals here: that of suspension, which represents the status of souls hovering between the earthly and which realms; and that of oscillation, heavenly a of for it restless spirit whatever represents the search an seeks. Altheim oscillum (1931) suggests that ritual, the only other surviving source to use before late antiquity comes from the pen of the antiquarian Varro?and only in a paraphrase from a late-antique scholiast who happens to be on the commenting Vergil passage: "Varro said offerings were made to those who had been of appeasement ritual, with hanged, who were unworthy of prescribed died by hanging.8 substitution for older rites of expiatory human sacrifice 1919:378-387; (Bayet 1975 [1922]:294-299; Carcopino Nilsson 1915). Charles Picard (1928:58) suggests that the various myths compiled may by the commentators obscure Besides Vergil, the term oscillum who hanging. Most have thought the act of hanging objects the ritual, to be a mimetic from trees, as Vergil describes act. Early in the twentieth century scholars favored of sacrificial effigies as a interpreting the development have been marshaled be inVarro's, perhaps the cork masks themselves; "imitations." undefined on the oscillum also survives Ancient speculation on the passage inVergil, most written commentaries 85 of to be nailed to an epidemic the bodies of hanging suicides by ordering crosses Commentarius adAeneida in punishment (Servius Auctus, were for invented as surrogates 12.603). Macrobius reports that oscilla to Dis, the underworld human heads offered 1.7.31). god {Saturnalia 2.385. 9. Probus, ad Ge?rgica 86 RES 48 AUTUMN 2005 The hypotheses ritual just surveyed favor an oscillum that is fundamentally but the reason for mimetic, mimesis is not always explained. A ritual must do more than simply signify; itmust acf. Another school of thought prefers to interpret the suspension of oscilla as to Plutarch, dangling baubles amuletic. According intent (Moralia 681 e). Some weaken malicious spirits' forms of Roman marble oscilla, most notably the masks, as well as a few tondi bearing gorgon masks or relief busts of Jupiter Ammon, preserve the vestiges of just such an apotropaic function (Dwyer 1981:250-251). Satyr faces, in particular, perhaps more because of their features than for any semantic reason, were grotesque favored too (fig. 2).10 Voisin (1979:449) detaches oscilla "ce n'est pas from their etiological trappings altogether: ou une comm?morer que pour remplacer pendaison or l'on suspend des oscilla [it is not to commemorate for a hanging that oscilla are suspended]." Instead, he argues, the ritual was strictly an appeasement of those spirits that had died unburied and hovered world. These restless shades about in the phenomenal were thought to congregate in ill-omened trees. substitute in Roman antiquity record that writing were kinds, or in certain circumstances, deemed either lucky or unlucky: arbor felix, arbor to one ancient source, such infelix. According were established by Tarquinius Priscus, one designations Antiquarians trees of certain in the form of a satyr mask discovered in Figure 2. Oscillum 1995 in the House of Diana at Cosa, Italy. Photo: R. Taylor. that trees of the mythical early kings of Rome. Declaring were under of the of the dead the tutelage gods placed that they must be burned of evil augury, he prescribed in order to deflect apparitions of the dead completely and morbid premonitions.11 Thus there is an express intention to turn away the spirits of those not properly buried by destroying the trees inwhich they congregate, or in some way counteracting their malice. Vergil brings to life at the gates of hell belief splendidly "an elm spreads wide her ancient where the ancient the Aeneid, 10. notes that nearly half of all known (1982:745-755) a mask motif. Of these, two thirds are satyric; that his wife Ariadne, satyrs, or similar represent Dionysus, Pailler relief oscilla have to say, they beings. The others 11. in ait enim are comic Veranius De or tragic. verbis pontifical ?bus: "felices is arbores esse ilex suberies aesculus sorbus, ficus quercus fagus corylus in vitis prunus cornus lotus." Tarquitius autem Priscus alba, pirus malus sic ait: "arbores quae inferum deorum Ostentarlo arborario in tutela sunt, eas infelices nominant: altern urn avertentiumque putantur boughs / opaque and huge; men say this is the home / of Foolish Dreams; they cling beneath each leaf."12 The shades of the restless dreams are unwanted visitations: dead, "lives unsubstanced, flitting empty shapes" (tenuis sine corpore vitas, 6.292) that addle Aeneas's mind, and its that habitually flit about the countryside haunting is thus For Voisin, the act of hanging oscilla denizens.13 a kind of exorcism.14 ficum atrum, quaeque bacam nigram nigrosque filicem, sanguinem rubum fructus ferunt, itemque acrifolium, pruscum pirum silvaticum, mala comburi iubere oportet" sentesque qui bus portenta prodigiaque (Macrobius, Saturnalia 3.20.2-3). in medio 12. ramos bracchia pandit/ulmus opaca, annosaque vana tenere ferunt, / sub Somnia foliisque ingens, quam vulgo translation. omnibus 6.282-284, haerent, Copley inVergil iswell established; of somni and manes 13. The conflation sedem see J?nsson and Roos 14. "Pour conjurer se prot?ger contre le lieu du crime purifier pour premi?re auquels disques 1996:24 and bibliography; lamal?diction Altheim 1931:86. ? la pendaison, subs?quente les larves malfaisantes des pendus, pour et pour rendre cet arbor infelix ? sa nature du mal en le fixant aux arbres & arbor felix, on se d?barrasse on accroche, de petits de petits masques, de petites poup?es, ou de petits ? l'image de ceux dont on veut se rectangles pr?server" (Voisin 1979:449). 87 Taylor: Roman oscilla a Figure 3. Fragment of a Tarentine crater representing pinakes suspended from tree. Raoul-Rochette 1836, plate VI. The oscillum as ex voto very few scholarly treatments of oscilla Astonishingly, as votive them objects. The tradition of hanging regard ex votos from trees is strong in the Greco-Roman for it can be found inmany tradition, and evidence sources from Homer up through major Latin authors. The best argument for this approach, almost completely in in the more recent literature, was made unheralded in conjunction with his 1836 by M. Raoul-Rochette of fragments of a painted Tarentine crater publication a 3: Raoul-Rochette 1836:403-412). Marshalling (fig. he demonstrated formidable array of literary evidence, with a votive objects?many that Greco-Roman were in flavor?not only hung temples, triumphal and sacred trees, but often took the form of sanctuaries, little paintings or inscriptions.15 Ovid, among others, to the votive nature of such attests unambiguously and the Fasti. In a in both the Metamorphoses objects sacred grove of Ceres grew a massive oak inwhose boughs were hung "diadems, tablets of remembrance, of those who had fulfilled their and festoons?tokens vows."16 And in the famous sanctuary of Diana at Nemi "threads hang thick as veils from the long hedgerows; many a tablet has been put there for the deserving a woman, her brow wreathed, carry goddess. Often will from the torches [there] City to make good her glowing votive plaques appear on a number vow."17 Suspended of Attic vases besides the one shown here.18 Imagery of 16. mediam 15. Pollux 8.112; s.v. "ttXcxtcxvoc"; Ovid, Hesychius 8.743-745. Metamorphoses Fasti 3.266 in his memoresque potentum 17. licia dependent saepes, longas velantia tabella deae. multa voti, frontem saepe potens / una nemus; vittae voti argumenta est meritae / etposita redimita coronis, lucentes port?t ab urbe faces, F. 3.266-267. on a volute crater in the Berlin Antikensammlung, For example, a laurel behind the figure two plaques hang from bearing figurai motifs a similar arrangement, as he kneels on an altar of Apollo; of Telephos femina 18. 267; Ovid, robore quercus, ingens annoso tabellae / sertaque cingebant, 8.743-745). {Metamorphoses stabat 88 RES 48 AUTUMN 2005 Figure 4. Fresco detail from large peristyle of Villa San Marco at Stabiae. Photo: R. Taylor. with ivy and carrying a thyrsus (fig. 6). The only that these plaques from known Roman distinguishes thing is that the latter favor a horizontal format. marble pinakes this kind is rare in the Roman repertoire, but precisely not unknown. A small fresco vignette in the grand at San Marco of the Villa Stabiae, though peristyle crowned somewhat still clearly represents several weathered, a tree including a diadem and from sacred objects hung a small pinax resembling the framed votive pictures often seen propped beside an altar in sacral-idyllic vignettes a (fig. 4). The image on the pinax is illegible. However, on a in of tomb fresco pair hanging pinakes appear Taranto, dating perhaps to the mid-second century or with other sacral later; these, along objects, are 5: Tin? Bertocchi from suspended garlands (fig. sketches reveal that the The 1964:71-79). documentary a in conventional Dionysiac figures pinakes depicted in one case a satyr, in the other a maenad (?) mode, in a Delphic environment, appears on a bell crater in the British again see Trendall and Webster 3:1:11. For a Scythian 1971:3:3:47, Museum; see Minns Even the famous "foundry 1913:312, fig. 223:3-4. example (inv. F2294) clearly shows several cup" in the Berlin Antikenmuseen in the background such plaques along with masks or suspended to be a pair of horns or a yoke. heads, from what appears a shrine, they are not necessarily products Being parts of workshop at http://www.perseus. the foundry itself. An online ?mage is available bronze tufts.edu/cgi-bin/image?lookup=1992.07.0286&type=vase of Trees Even today, in the west, the practice continues among and adherents of new-age neo-pagans religions. On a recent visit to the stone circle of Long Meg in Britain, for saw I from votives trees, many suspended example, ranging from clusters of flowers (fig. 7) to colored ribbons and a Tibetan prayer printed on cloth and ballasted with Chinese coins. The tradition of the Christmas tree itself once had a similar utility. Ifa certain tree is felix or infelix, then it is inherently If it carries votive powerful and implicitly apotropaic. as then those well, acquire objects by extension objects an amuletic property, either fair or foul. With this inmind, let us examine a rather cryptic proposition in the Natural passage History of Pliny the Elder. Pliny that the oldest recorded codification of Roman observes law seems to give special religious status to gardens. "For this reason a measure of sanctity attends them; only in a garden or a forum do we see satyric images Taylor: Roman oscilla Fig. 49. Fig. Taranto. 50. Taranto. Tomba Tomba 19. Sezione 19. P?rete d?lia di tomba fondo e p?rete Naples. (Disegno). (Disegno). Figure 5. Fresco from Roman Tomb 19 at Taranto. Tin? Bertocchi Macchiaroli, destra 1964. Courtesy of G. 89 90 RES 48 AUTUMN 2005 Figure 6. Detail of a fresco from Roman Tomb 19 at Taranto. Tine Bertocchi Courtesy of G. Macchiaroli, Naples. to combat the bewitchment dedicated of the envious."19 To the extent that the reference to "satyric images" (saturica signa) has drawn any attention at all, the term to refer to statues.20 is presumed Could these saturica signa have been oscillum-like objects instead?hung, perhaps, from sacred trees? The Greek tradition of affixing satyric images in sanctuaries appears to date back to about 600 b.c.e. In addition to satyr-head antefixes found in archaic sanctuaries around the Greek and Etrusco-ltalian domains, we also have a fragment of Aeschylus's Isthmiastai recording a scene in 19. quam ob rem comitata est et et foro religio quaedam, hortoque contra invidentium in remedio effascinationes dicari videmus tantum saturica 20. was natural signa (Pliny, Historia Near the ficus Ruminalis/ficus is 19.50). Navia in the Comitium 1964. which to (or satyrs affix painted effigies of themselves near) the temple of Poseidon at Isthmia?images which, the text makes clear, have ornamental, votive, and functions.21 That such a practice should have apotropaic to adorn other, quasi-sacral been generalized spaces comes as no surprise. Writing in the mid-first century ce., Pliny was catching the marble oscillum at the very peak of its popularity as a garden accessory. Most extant oscilla have been found in garden peristyles (Pailler in this respect, no other genre of 1982:771-772); Dionysiac imagery comports so satisfactorily with Pliny's comment. Few oscilla, however, have been found in fora or other public Ifwe are to suggest: Because spaces.22 were that Pliny suggests they displayed here too, then in Rome a statue of the satyr Marsyas which in the fora of inspired copies other colonies, including Raestum and Alba Fucens; see Servius, Commentarius ad Aeneida 3.20, 4.58; CIL 8.4219, 16417, 27771; LTURs.v. "Statua: Marsyas" Liberatore (F. Coarelli); 1995; Richardson s.v. "Ficus, Olea, Vitis"; "Statua Denti 1991; Coarelli Marsyae"; Small 1982:132-138; Torel Ii 1982: 1985:2:36-38, 91-100, 104-123; 1992 89-118). buckling But this statue, showing the short, pudgy satyr standing with over his shoulder, and a wineskin has little of the knees it. He has neither about apotropaic fearsome mask of the Gorgon. the rigid bearing of Priapus nor the 21. Oxyrhynchus Papyri, vol. 18:2162. On this fragment see Loeb edition of Aeschylus's 2004:211-212 fragments and Marconi the with bibliography. 22. A campana a continuous relief in the Louvre represents with a statue of Hercules in the center, the other intercolumniations and tondi. This has been hung with peltae colonnade interpreted as a public space, most likely a gymnasium or palaestra. See Pailler 1982:795; Lippold 1921:36; Rohden andWinnefeld 1911:4:1:144. Taylor: Roman oscilla 7. Figure R. Taylor. Long Meg and her Daughters, a stone they must have been of a different kind than the highly ones manufactured for the household. commodified in Scholars have long puzzled over the "votive wells" the Comitium of the Roman Forum, shallow stone-lined shafts set in parallel rows in Republican phases of the were over to These features carried pavement (fig. 8).23 circle near Cumbria Penrith, (UK). Archaic Comitium Photo: Republican Comitium towns in Roman Italy. In Rome their and imprecise but unmistakable irregular shapes that suggest they were not wells at all, but alignment trees. for apertures They seem to have been shaped in cross section to sheathe the trunks when the pavement was raised. From such trees private votives in the form of the fora of other have been oscilla?saturica signa?may votive The venerable other with objects. hung, along trees themselves would have conferred some amuletic those in the character upon the hangings; and when their function lost along with pavement apertures died,24 the their memory under later layers of pavement, like the Comitium with of practice adorning spaces small wooden 23. Carafa 1998:158-159, figs. 34, 49, 50, 64, 98; 1941. In Rome these shafts 1983:1:126-142; Gjerstad no votive objects were found sterile archaeologically; 1984). (Romanelli in the fire attending Clodius's 24. Perhaps funeral Augustan them. pavement overlying these shafts makes EFGBo* fi??K?. "Votive Wells" Coarelli were inside MNOP Lacus relatively them Curtius Os in 52 b.c. The no provisions for Figure Drawing: 8. Plan of R. Taylor. the Comitium area in the Forum Romanum. 91 92 RES 48 AUTUMN 2005 like temporary votives, probably of perishable materials Even after the apertures in wood, must have continued. we know that some the Roman Forum disappeared, to exist there.25 revered trees continued The case for complexity sacral art, an agglomeration of a in functions auspicious single object would reposed an advantage even if its power came at be considered In the realm of Roman the expense of clarity of definition. The modern desire to insistence on isolate essential strands of causality?the "A is derived from B but not from C" all the proposition a false dichotomy. The gradual too often establishes of sacral objects involved a complex of Some were and dilution meanings. amalgamation some half-remembered, well understood, others lost in in some the fog of history. But all were embedded, sense, in the artefact and may have had nothing to do its intended function or meaning. with They were commodification all the time. Thus laminations happened rosettes carved in relief often are from libation bowls because of the indistinguishable casual similarity in their forms. Likewise the rustic pedum, or shepherd's crook, and the short spiraled Such decorative augur's staff, the lituus; they were occasionally merged in Roman theatrical imagery into a sort of crozier, without any discernible practical function.26 The traditional swags of fruit and greenery on Hellenistic funerary reliefs in time came to be populated with birds a memento mor? picking at the fruit, thereby generating motif: A trope of the festive ritualof the dead (the fruited comes to substitute for the dead themselves, plucked untimely from the vine. In turn, this motif was laminated upon the distinct Totenmahl occasionally to the hand of the deceased theme. Now the bird moved at his meal, reclining funerary picking at the fruit in his festoon) hand.27 That final, casual lamination blurred the original traditions that came of the iconographie meanings new ones. old codes and before, scrambling generating But the totality was pleasing, and freighted with richness of received tradition. syncretisms of disparate forms, functions, and complex from many sources which contents, originating through had historical accident or the mere power of suggestion been laminated to form a new signifying whole. A the casual genealogies underlay the oscilla that in Roman So domestic porticoes. dangled innocently in form, iconography, and function, seemingly simple as they hide a dense tangle of clashing contingencies on Diana's thick as the votives hanging like cobwebs Similarly viewer may have been capable of sophisticated or latent meanings, but rich excavating activating was not an intended effect. polysemy hedgerows.28 25. notes Richardson the figure of Marsyas plinth, as if the tree that on stands the relief known itself were see Dionysius Festus 168-170 of Halicarnassus 3.71.5; naturalis and 15.77-78; 1913); Pliny, Historia in Richardson 1992 and LTUR. The stone-lined edition, entries in the very sanctuary venerable of equal survived stood as the Plutei Traiani of a fig tree on a the representation a statue. On trees in the Roman Forum beside by area that Coarelli of Vulcan identifies which (Lindsay the relevant apertures occur as the Volcanal, a small to Pliny was the site of two a genre as Roman marble oscilla may seem, one no contention that ritual their reject history underlies none of the four existence (1982:791-812). Except for the mask, 28. in its is area by Pliny, two are associated the other with dire events; it grew from a Ficus navia, which was sacra because the so-called was it had upset a removed because place struck by lightning. A third statue of Silvanus (Pliny, Historia naturalis 15.77). firmer ground when stand on much Loisy (1999:77) they propose are multivalent that Roman oscilla from an eclectic signifiers derived to identify it as the The tondo has no specific markers background. and of the hero the disappearance underground lightning strike and with a latter Curtius?and thereby with portal to the underworld?the in the seem more would likely. Indeed of at least four fig trees attested Forum Pailler's traditional forms of the oscillum has distinctly Dionysiac significance. both the tondo and the pinax bear too much Moreover, resemblance, to suspended in form and in context, in a variety objects represented Iwill discuss of other artistic traditions, which below. Dwyer (1981) grapevine its color). But in light of early usage the tree's gender changes with a zone associated near the Lacus Curtius, both with a position As artificial must according and a cypress trees, a lotos supposedly planted by Romulus, Both of these trees size (HN: Historia Naturalis 16.236). into the Imperial period. Just to the south, a self-sown fig an olive and a itwas accompanied the Lacus Curtius; by for shade (Pliny, Historia naturalis 15.78, 19.23; planted Life of Caesar 39; Cassius Dio 43.24.2). We are not told Suetonius, to Tarquinius's list whether this was a Ficus alba, which according would be an arbor felix; or a Ficus ater, a tree of ill omen (evidently PPM Disegnatori 165, fig. 29, 349, fig. 161. The same form is as a rein on a in a stucco relief of the Stabian Baths: dolphin PPM Disegnatori 650, 652, figs. 94, 97. is in the Harvard University 27. A fine example Art Museums, inv. 1977.216.1903. 26. used the tambourine of the cult of Dionysus, tympanum, though Pailler connection insists on an exclusive between the two. The rectangular of its resemblance shape, which Dwyer justifiably calls a pinax because to double-sided on small in relief panels supported pillars in wall their counterparts frescoes, represented in profile, ritual basket) the cista mystica (a cylindrical painted and gardens Pompeian hardly evokes as Pailler proposes; votives rectangular Roman culture. I have already demonstrated from cords were suspended that painted not unknown in 93 Taylor: Roman oscilla sources Seven possible for the oscillum A variety of traditions contributed in the in the Roman west emerged Some have often been cited in this hardly been investigated at all. Let survey of some artistic or aesthetic as it to the oscillum first century ce. context, others have us then make a brief traditions to partake of the phenomenon claim that have a of meaningful suspension. Italians hung little and Greek-influenced or as ex votos (Raoul trees from shrubs figurai pinakes Rochette 1836). Masks, too, may have been displayed is hard to confirm.29 the same way, but the practice Greeks 2. Suspended Dionysiac in imagery and Etruscans to itwere also "wreaths, fillets, thyrsi, and satyric, comic, and tragic diadems, tympana, masks/'30 The frontal attachment of a mask to the is found both in architrave over an intercolumniation south-Italian vase painting and on at least two engraved fruits"; attached 2002: fig. 2; Lohmann Etruscan mirrors (De Grummond 1979: taf. 9.2; Gerhard, K?rte, and Kl?gmann 1843 5:101). On a volute crater in Lecce a 1897:2:212, woman and a dog are shown standing in a characteristic shrine; from its architrave hangs a drinking cup and a comic mask. The better-known of the Etruscan mirrors 29. Specifically, (1999:10-12) is ambiguous a example, plaque of heads or masks from trees. depictions hanging collects visual evidence for this motif, though or of He cites, for provenance. questionable in Trier that seems to depict the stem of a vine a pair of heads in from a growing from Phrygian caps hanging the engraved As early as the 1720s, cantharus. gem was are hung four theater masks. featuring a tree from which published See 1722:1:2:252, pi. 163; Rich 1884, s.v. "oscillum." it seems suspiciously the authenticity of this gem; of Vergil's oscilla passage. visual etiology 30. Trepi?xEiTo 5' cc?Takon OKiac ?k kiogou koci aOuTT??ou Montfaucon cannot in Pompeii verify of the (6.7.8) depicts members a a in of litter the form roofed carpenters' guild carrying which houses of shrine, carpenters sawing and effigies a statue wood and (PPM 4:1:390 measuring making are entwined The of the shrine slender columns 391). are hung with with and the and architrave ivy pediment of dozens garlands, libation bowls, pitchers, thyrsi, and so on. 3. Suspended had a tradition of attaching theater masks and other Dionysiac imagery to the structures. The pre-Roman of colonnaded architraves inwidely for this, though scant, appears evidence are sources that together. In rarely discussed divergent Athenaeus's noted description of the Dionysiac of Ptolemy the cult II, the canopy protecting procession statue was hung with "ivy, grapevine, and the other The Greeks I like a Kai ttjc kekooutiuevti, TTpoo?ipTr|VTo ?e Kai GT?<f>avoi Kai XoiTrfi? oOm?pac Kai 0upaoi Kai TuuiTava Kai u?Tpai ttpogcottcxte Kai Taiviai aaxupiKa KcouiKa Kai TpayiK (Athenaeus 5.198d). of a bride in the stands a colonnade. The the action an old satyr wreathed the mask?of its beard propped on the architrave, the decorated fascia. In at least one Roman fresco a range of Dionysiac is deployed on a parade float similar to the one objects Athenaeus describes. A fresco in the Bottega del foreground. Behind head?or probably, in ivy appears to be dangling down over Profumiere 1. The tradition of votive pinakes Loisy some a scene of adornment represents drinking cups, shields The habit of suspending shields in stoas, basilicas, in structures is pervasive and other colonnaded temples, was Greco-Roman Maurice Albert antiquity. surely right to recognize this strand The connection between in the origins of the oscillum. oscilla (round or peltate) and in evidence, in Roman shields is everywhere particularly frescoes. Some, like a fresco in room 14 in the Roman villa at Oplontis, display circular shields not appended or attached to the to the wall behind the colonnade but hanging from the soffit of the themselves, in exactly the with architrave, along vegetal festoons, same way as theater masks, tympana, and other objects as inmany Roman frescoes.31 Understood displayed columns they are thank-offerings made by warriors, votive. Their suspension above the fundamentally generic 31. The famous cubiculum from the Villa of Publius Fannius now in the Museum of Art in Synistor at Boscoreale, Metropolitan as do New York, displays in the same configuration, shields and masks scenes depicting small roofed shrines (Ward Perkins and sacral-idyllic cat. 1978:24, of sacral-idyllic or pillars crowned by a Monuments of this kind Claridge number 855; 111; PPM Disegnatori scenes feature a syzygium fig. 24). A large (a pair of columns lintel) hung with disks and festoons. have votive weapons shields) (including In the House of the Hunt at with ribbons. often tied to their supports a is centered fresco (7.4.48), upon a small Pompeii megalographic in its intercolumniations round temple with shields hung prominently (PPM Disegnatori 242, fig. 6). The House of the Citharist (1.4.5, 25) a preserves temple hung with shields and a military images both of tent decorated in similar fashion (PPM 1.1.149-151, fig. 59; PPM Disegnatori nauseam. Roman shield could be cited 608-609, figs. 42, 43). Further examples It should be obvious that every carved tondo hung in a the subject matter portico, whatever at least as much as the tympanum. of its relief, evokes the ad 94 RES 48 AUTUMN 2005 ground (alternatively, they are often shown tied to but rarely on the ground) may reflect a need to columns, sequester the relics of battle from the pollution of the dead underfoot, especially when offered to celestial gods. Indeed the trophy (tropaion) may have originated as a a live sacred tree tree?perhaps initially, replaced later by a hewn stump?on which were hung the and armor of the defeated enemy. This ritual, weapons too, may betray the lamination of functions, combining an offering to the gods with a frightening anthropomorphic amulet to keep the ghosts of the dead at bay. 4. Suspended skulls of sacrificial animals the ubiquitous wall- or column-mounted Bucrania, ox-skulls that often collaborate with festoons of greenery to articulate repeated architectural motifs in sacral art, to the oscillum may have contributed obliquely tradition. Servius Auctus would appear to lend some to this derivation: credence "They are called oscilla either because heads and faces of sacrificial victims were affixed at the tops of poles [i.e., the [i.e., animals] os- in oscilla is derived from osf "bone"], or because the Oscans this game and spread reportedly often practiced it throughout ad Ge?rgica 2.389). Italy" (Commentarius 5. Suspended objects Etruscan evidence of personal of personal Tarquinia. Gerhard, K?rte, and Kl?gmann 1843-1897:4:421. adornment: Etruscan art suggests a practice of hanging objects of from trees. A fresco in the late personal adornment Tomba del la Caccia e Pesca at sixth-century-B.c.E. men two around a Tarquinia depicts dancing ecstatically tree a from which toilette box, stylized hang garlands, and a mirror (De Grummond 1982:170 and fig. 110), while a roughly contemporary incised mirror from the Tomba del Triclinio at Tarquinia, representing a kind of outdoor boudoir scene with a pair of lovers, shows the same kinds of from a rinceau of objects suspended intertwined oak and vine (fig. 9). The object to the woman's of a form right is a box mirror (Klappspiegel) that characteristically includes a loop for hanging is reminded of (Schwarzmaier 1942). One 1997; Z?chner Xerxes's worshipful adornment of a plane tree with similar objects (Herodotus 7.31; Aelian, Varia historia 2.14). 6. Suspended objects Italian evidence Figure 9. Archaic Etruscan mirror from the Tomba del Triclinio at adornment: South Similar objects suspended from a funerary shrine or in art. On Apulian vases in south-Italian canopy appear aedicular shrines (na?skoi) particular, the oft-appearing are habitually decorated the of deceased enclosing figures with a range of objects suspended from the ceiling, such as mirrors, diadems, balls, baskets, toilette garlands, is the topos that it boxes, and armor. So widespread one of the fundamental constitutes vocabularies the difficult iconography of the genre (Loisy underlying 1999:17, 76-77); yet rarely does it receive more than in discussions of Roman oscilla. passing attention Less common but certainly helpful in defining the essentially funerary character of this imagery are the fifth- and fourth-century-B.c.E. painted sarcophagi of Poseidonia reveal a similar fascination (Paestum), which with suspended articles. The most telling scene appears on the western gabled slab of Andriuolo Tomb 47, housing a female burial. One end-slab bears the well known image of the woman into a boat ferried stepping by a winged, gorgon-headed spirit. On the other (fig. is shown lying in state under 10), the deceased woman a canopy From its supported by four slender columns. ceiling hang two circular mirrors with handles, a wreath or diadem, and a the rectangular toilette box?exactly sorts of items suspended from the na?skoi shown on Taylor: Roman oscilla 95 Figure 10. End-slab of Tomb 47 from Andriuolo near Raestum. Paestum, Museo inv. 21509. Archeologico Nazionale, Apulian Etruscan vases or hanging from trees or vines on the mirrors. recent argument for the Following Stephen Wilk's architectural function of gorgon masks (Wilk original it could be said that such objects had a purely 2000), If the deceased function. apotropaic lay in state under such canopies, the dangling articles, flashing and in the wind, served to repel perhaps clattering birds. By analogy, the obtrusive objects scavenging could have been thought to repel malicious spirits from this symbolic house of the dead, just as the little phallic wind chimes (tintinnabula) displayed near Roman thresholds protected the space of the living. But this cannot be complete; why then were certain explanation most without any apparent apotropaic qualities, objects, chosen, and not gorgon masks or the like, which would seem naturally suited to such a task? Itwould seem that in south-Italian usage meaningful is it rather than metaphoric; suspension m?tonymie relies not on the noun, conjuring is what absent up or substitution, but evokes through resemblance life of the recalling the virtuous out carried with the agent help of these But its function extends the quotidian things. beyond to it is realm of signification. best interpret Perhaps these suspended objects as a means of holding at bay instead the verb, deceased the spirit of the temporarily unburied corpse. As long as its corporeal host lies above ground, the spirit is free to wander and haunt; but it is calmed by the objects of domesticity comforted 7. Mystic that hover before it, just as in them the grave. by Dionysiac itwill be disks scenes represent plain disks, hung Some Dionysiac from cords, with which human or divine figures seem to in Roman contexts, interact. These appear exclusively and thus merit special attention. Drawing attention to oscillum-like objects on reliefs representing scenes of initiation mysteries, Railler (1982:798-805) Dionysiac contends that they are fictive: they sprang up more or less autonomously and served as the models, rather than Roman Yet of marble oscilla. derivations, iconographie he does not claim that the activities being depicted are fictions. Why then should we presume that the material scenes in some is a fantasy concocted for these staging artist's workshop? In fact there are numerous instances inwhich the scenes are same in these kinds of disks very appearing and become of the from the part co?pted background activity itself. A stucco relief in the Stabian Baths at Pompeii, now destroyed, depicted an old satyr in a chlamys, gripping his open left hand extended a thyrsus (fig. 11 : Rostovtzeff A drawing by La Volpe 660, fig. 106. Disegnatori 32. from 1857 and his right 1927:75, fig. 2).32 appears in PPM 6.174; PPM 96 RES 48 AUTUMN 2005 amorino appears In each case it vignettes merit special attention. that one boy iswinged, the other not; each is a In one thematic of fabric. with swag draped the figure on the left dangles a disk from a cord incense while of a central altar heaped with the loosely cluster, in front figure on the right plays the double flute (fig. 13). A in similar poses; second vignette displays two amorini but this time, a goat's head adorns the altar and the extends with both arms a right-hand cherub purposefully one dangling from his to the disk slightly larger pendent partner's gaze hand (fig. 14). The figure on the left turns his away. If these disks were merely the ubiquitous Dionysiac tambourines (tympana), and nothing more, then their treatment here could only be regarded as bizarre. In both cases the left-hand amorino holds an elongated low to the ground; it has been taken to be a torch object or flute, but one authority has suggested that it is a stick with which is being beaten (TOGR the tympanum cannot This be right; tympana of 1989:241-243). ecstatic cults are always shown being struck by the bare hand. None of these disks is being struck, and two of from cords. All three are them are being suspended a manner. in ritualistic proffered The bough of immortality Figure 11. Detail of the stucco decoration from the peristyle fa?ade of the Stabian Baths at Pompeii, now lost. Rostovtzeff 1927:75, fig. 2. He stares intently at a disk hanging directly in front of his nose. To the right are the remains of the tree from it hangs. A marble relief from the Villa lovis on which now in the Naples Museum, Capri, depicts a plain round disk and a pedum (shepherd's crook) partly obscured by it hanging prominently from a tree branch in front of an altar and a herm of Priapus; a silen riding an ithyphallic donkey approaches the ensemble (fig. 12). Even more interesting is a silver libation bowl from now in the British Museum Thil (Haute-Garonne), (figs. no. 5;Walters 14: Martin and 13, 1988:67-69, Feug?re cat. 132). The rim of this vessel preserves a 1921:283, remarkable frieze of Dionysiac vignettes alternating between loosely heraldic pairs of amorini and These are separated by a traditional quadrupeds. ensemble of mask, altar, and thyrsus. Two of the three In both scenes the "stick" on the left could be from the nearby interpreted as a branch being detached tree. In one case the trunk of the tree may even reveal It is possible, the stump of its detached member. then, that the amorino is preparing to offer not only the disk, it hung. The magical but also the bough from which of the sacred significance bough in a wide range of ancient mystery 1927:202-210; cults iswell known (Seyrig 1944, Robert 1915). Drawn particularly from ?lex, evergreen plants (laurel, pine, ivy, pomegranate, etc.), which represented immortality, sprigs of greenery were used as offerings or even apotropaic in talismans a rites ritual death and rebirth. initiatory involving the interprets the most famous literary example, as to Aeneas offered Proserpina golden bough by as a ritual payment for his traversal of the underworld, akin to that of the Greek cult of Demeter and Kore, in which the mysteries, which involved a ritual journey were the achieved only when a underworld, through was to Kore ad offered (Servius, Commentarius bough Servius Aeneida 1927:204-205). (Some cults of was assimilated in those which he Dionysus, particularly seem to have embraced to a god of the underworld, this 6.136; Seyrig Taylor: Roman oscilla Figure 12. Marble 97 relief from the Villa lovis on Capri. Naples, Museo Nazionale, inv. 27712. tradition).33 The trees represented on the platter may represent some kind of conifer. Vergil specifies that oscilla were hung from the boughs of a pine Dionysiac tree, and Firmicus Maternus famously relates a ritual of "each year a pine tree is felled the Cybele cult inwhich and a simulacrum of a youth [Attis] is appended in the middle of the tree" (De errore 27.1 ). It [subligatur] inVergil's is also interesting that the type of oscillum bark of the passage was made of cork (cortex)?the quercus suber, an evergreen oak. Perhaps, then, we see a double dedication: two oscilla, their power to confer a kind of immortality augmented by the evergreen branch on which were they ritually suspended. In all likelihood, however, a majority of Roman viewers simply saw these "sticks" as torches? themselves perhaps derived from a pitchy evergreen such as a pine. We have already learned from Ovid to Pausanias called 33. According the Acharnians (1.31.6) Kissos (ivy) and a scholiast of Aristophanes {Equit?s 408) Dionysus asserts that "even the boughs that the mystai carry" were called in Suidas and entries for "?otKxoc" cf. the dictionary Bakchoi; Hesychius. that from strings and torches tablets (i.e., pinakes) suspended were common votive gifts to Diana Nemorensis, and in indeed torches are often seen among votive objects is to be visual parallel the pictorial record. A convincing found in an intarsia panel from Pompeii, now in the Naples Museum (fig. 15:Ward Perkins and Claridge 1978, 66:174; cat. 156). At the center is a syzygium, a structure common in simple gatelike post-and-lintel a satyr draped in an scenes. On the sacral-idyllic right, a thyrsus dances entranced, animal skin and wielding while an equally ecstatic maenad on the left approaches left hand is a from her extended the center. Dangling on the bowl suspended disk that looks just like those from Thil; in her right, she carries a flaming torch. The to be a tympanum; and disk is commonly presumed in Roman art of indeed there are many examples tympana hung from loops, their identities established by on their faces or by peripheral the painted decorations If this is a jingles or tassels, as on a tambourine.34 34. See, relief shows PPM Disegnatori for example, a virtually a maenad holding 647, fig. 90. This stucco identical disk, but decorated 98 RES 48 AUTUMN 2005 Figure 13. Silver patera from Thil (Haute-Garonne, Museum, inv. GR. France). Detail of figurai frieze on the rim. London, British 1824.4-89.70. it lacks those usual markers.35 Nor is there tympanum, a free hand with which to strike it; indeed, to our in eyes, it has no perceptible agency uncomprehending an or it is the maenad's Instead, ecstasy. incomplete incipient signifier; for ifwe are reading the maenad's in a vast array of cultic contexts.36 that are represented that they let us entertain the possibility Nevertheless, were understood, at least in part, as mirrors. They do not take the traditional forms of the handled Roman case in mirror or hinged Klappspiegel, but their deficiency it is evidently destined to be the central gesture correctly, (votive?) ornament of the syzygium. But what is it? is not entirely insurmountable. The formal definition most definitive visual representation of a disklike mirror is on a silver wine cup from the Dionysiac Nationale Berthouville treasure, now in the Biblioth?que The mirror angle in Paris (fig. 16: Balensiefen or to identify the meaning feels powerless function of these disks themselves. They are as as the round objects supported on pedestals ambiguous 1990:66-71; Van de Grift One some stand freely, others are Some are circular, some oviform; in a ribbon or garland. A plain oviform disk on a pedestal on an Etruscan mirror {ES 2.171). A silver stater o? Poseidonia 36. bound a standing inWard Perkins with misinterpreted a small mosaic from Pompeii figure. Cf. cat. 108. Its ?mage is and Claridge 1978:159, as a crab or spider; but in fact it is a tympanum with a robed human its periphery. An especially loop and looped thongs around in Pedrosa, appears on a late-antique mosaic interesting example Here the (Kiilerich 2001, hanging Spain again misinterpreted). take the same form with tympana looped thongs and are arranged For around the central panel, carrying portrait busts on their surfaces. hanging see PPM from the finger of a satyr or maenad suspended 15, 16, 675, 125, 706, 500-503, 12, fig. fig. 166. Disegnatori figs. Fine examples of Roman tombs depicting hanging Dionysiac tympana instruments have been discovered in Taranto (Tin? Bertocchi 1964: 61-77). alone on a 35. A similarly equipped this time depicted maenad, is in Naples Nazionale (inv. 9298) ground of black, now at the Museo in Pompeii. She carries a thyrsus from the House of the Ship (6.10.11) a flat disk from a short cord in her left. in her left hand and dangles appears with dedicatory which appears shows on its reverse a bull behind legend to Poseidon no. 683, 684, the disk on pedestal {SNG 2, Poseidonia In Dionysiac contexts: Pailler (1988: figs. 198, no. 658). pi. 19; ACGC shows disks illustrates a terra sigillata bowl at Vienne which 3-4) on scenes of initiation in positions between (oscillum propped pillars are also shown suspended the plain background); like objects against a Dionysiac in the Museo di Roma shows a Nazionale sarcophagus a disk on a low pillar bearded tympanum-Uke figure resting In Isiac contexts: Ven it 1982: fig. 230). (Koch and Sichtermann in stucco, as 2001:140-141, pi. 23. The motif appears occasionally in the the Achilles and Priam scene the border panel surrounding robed, of the Rancratii Tomb on the Via Latina (Delia Portella 2002: in 74-75). at the House of pool with the columns were decorated (2.2.2) at Pompeii, Quartio 86. The this imagery; see PPM 3.99-100, editors, interestingly, fig. as "colonne sormontate da oscilla." corinzie the decoration describe Along Octavius The the transverse appears on (so it is thought) form even inscribed sometimes called the "Nile" the pulpitum of the theater like a sundial. at Sabratha, Taylor: Roman oscilla 99 Figure 14. Detail of the frieze on the London patera. 93, no. 6). This represents, 1984; Babelon 1916:88-91, a cultic dense of array among images, a centauress a circular disk which in hands both her bearing enframes a contracted mirror image, in relief, of a in front of her. number of the figures and objects directly Like the amorino on the right of figure 14, she holds the disk by its edge; like that on the left, she turns her gaze imagery, the sharply away. Though rare in Dionysiac in both visual and mirror in various forms is embedded literary sources referring to the cult, and its presence has attracted the interest of art historians and theorists of and Vernant 1997; religion alike (Frontisi-Ducroux Gallistl 1995; J?nsson 1995; Balensiefen 1990; Simon it can be 1917). Like the ritual bough, 1962; Cumont and rebirth; moreover, associated with transformation la figure "les miroirs, qui refl?tent comme par miracle i^fHHB^&SB9?^S^. des personnes pr?sentes, ?taient cens?s pouvoir faire reflect appara?tre aussi celle des absents" [mirrors which as if by a miracle the figures of persons present were believed also to be able to make the absent appear] (Cumont 1917:104). The current thinking is that the mirror may have served as a ritual tool of personal the enactment of death and rebirth or transformation, the migration of the self that so often attends religious to the Orphic ekstasis. The mirror, which according tradition was one of the objects given to the baby into the and transformed Zagreus as he was murdered into an immortal Dionysus, may have evolved sees implement of ritual. Jean-Pierre Vernant (1990:135) the mirror as a tool, used in conjunction with the mask, the initiand and the god can make the chiastic by which of being: leap ^^^^^^HBSHaBBRMHbbbbmmiaSBBSIEIa?JS^BSHSSHB? SSiHSHB Figure 15. Intarsia panel from the House of the Colored Capitals at Pompeii. Naples, Museo Nazionale, inv. 9977. 100 RES 48 AUTUMN 2005 Figure 16. Silver skyphos from the Berthouvi IleTreasure with reliefs on a Dionysiac Biblioth?que Nationale, Cabinet des M?dailles. Il faut que l'initi? regardant lemiroir s'y voit lui-m?me en masque dionysiaque, transform? dans le dieu qui le poss?de, d?plac? de l? o? il se tient en un lieu diff?rent, transmu? en un autre qui le renvoie ? l'unit?. Dans le miroir o? Dionysos enfant se regarde, le dieu se disperse et divise. Dans lemiroir initiatique, notre reflet se profile comme nous, une ? notre figure place, ?trange, nous un masque qui, en face de regarde. [The initiate looking in the mirror must see himself in a Dionysiac mask, transformed into the god that possesses him, displaced from the place where he is to a different place, transmuted into an Other who returns him to unity. In the mirror where the baby Dionysus observes himself, the god is dispersed and divided. In the mirror of initiation, our reflection is contoured like an alien figure, a mask which, facing us, takes our place, gazing at us.] (1998) sees a Following Vernant, H?l?ne Cassimatis somewhat similar function for mirrors in south-Italian vase painting. The almost fetishistic attention paid to inanimate objects in this corpus, which distinguishes it so acutely from vase painting of the Greek mainland, is directed with special energy to mirrors, both suspended theme. Paris, draws a divide, similar to that Cassimatis dual the cult, between ontology of Dionysiac delimiting the realm of the living, outside the naiskos, and the realm of the dead inside it. But here, rather than the function as a machine of personal transformation, mirror serves to bring the living into communication with the dead through the agency of the gaze. "En tout cas ce que ces repr?sentations tentent de montrer c'est and handheld. la vision simultan?e de deux mondes, realit? et fondamentalement ?trangers et l'imagination mais que les croyances rencontrer" [in every case what these to is vision the simultaneous show try s?par?s dans la l'un a l'autre, font se representations of two worlds, in reality and each fundamentally alien from separated in belief and the other, but which are made to meet Boudoir (Cassimatis 1998:323-325). imagination] in in mirrors have particular?may objects general?and been thought to remind spirits of their bodily past, in the them to reconstitute themselves allowing to this understanding, presence of the living. According the mirrors are in no sense apotropaic; quite the Far from spirits, they draw them opposite. deflecting Taylor: Roman oscilla forth, or they draw the living into the realm of the dead. They are, in essence, miniature portals of communication. And that brings us back to the syzygium on the form?a Pompeian panel (fig. 15). This architectural a or on of lintel columns pair simple pillars, often with the cult cinerary urns arranged across the top?evokes sites of heroes, and thus the living memory of the dead. It is liminality embodied. As in a funerary epigram, the speaks through this portal to the living from its dangling, the grave. Perhaps with beyond flashing disk(s) it also invites the visitor to break on through to the other side. Is this, like the objects impending over deceased or those in Poseidonia, hung from the na?skoi of the reanimated dead on south-Italian vases, the remnant of a mystery cult practice? And is it symbolic that so many syzygia and honorific accident any scenes are accompanied in sacral-idyllic columns by a as were if older the cultic relic slowly gnarled tree, its cargo of souls and symbols?and yielding the new? Here we may gain some insight meanings?to the bier into the presence of architecture in the tableau of meaningful suspension. The garden/forum just beyond in the colonnade represents the more ancient context, tree adds magical power to the which the enabling artifact of dangling through metonymy; signification eternal life through metaphor; and contextual meaning it from the chthonic it realm and offering by detaching to the air. The enframing colonnade, on the other hand, generates a new binary function (in/out) to the up/down dichotomy of elevation and complement It strengthens the the moving/still of polarity suspension. an interior dimension apotropaic by realizing sphere to be protected; but in doing so, it also admits of In denying entry to some, itmust allow it permeability. to others. Let us return momentarily to the various ancient of the oscillum, which are of the dead (Mazzacane 1980; Voisin 1979). The most interesting of these may be an author of the explanation proposed by Macrobius, late antiquity. He relates that men of old placated Dis, a god of the underworld, with human heads and Saturn with human victims because of a Greek oracle that and etiologies etymologies intimations saturated with "Send heads to Hades and men [phota] to commanded, the Father." But Hercules introduced an innovation that the reinterpreted the oracle more moderately; sacrificants thereafter "offered to Dis not the heads of men but oscilla devised by skill in human form, and honored the Saturnian altars not with the sacrifice of a man but with kindled lights?for phota means not only a 101 man but also a light" (Saturnalia 1.7.31).37 Elsewhere adds that oscilla were offered at (1.11.48) Macrobius into one ritual shrines (sacella) of Dis, thereby merging the images of small trabeated shrines, swinging effigies, is fictitious, and torches. The cleverly duplicitous oracle of course; but itmay have been fashioned to make sense of a vaguely remembered ritual involving torches, and shrines of the dead. Clearly a syzygium may represent a threshold or between contrasting modes of consciousness existence. But how might a mirror, or any other artifact, assist the psychic journey into the au suspended del?? Signification alone cannot summon a trance. One if these are vestiges of a cult practice of wonders oscilla, hypnotism, and music. substances helped along by mind-altering After all, the most salient dynamic characteristic of the oscillum is oscillation. Perhaps the are derivations of ancient commentators lexicographic not entirely arbitrary when they focus on the motion of the oscillum; Servius derives the term from a conjunction Latin word for "face" (os) and the of the synecdochic ad obscure verb eitlere, "to move" (Commentarius 2.389). A flickering torch in the dark, Ge?rgica in the swinging bronze medium but otherwise iterated from the initiand's sight, would augment the effect of the disk alone. mesmerizing Lest we think that mirrors were never used in such elaborate and inscrutable ways, let us consider a ritual sequestered that was Demeter practiced at Patras: in Pausanias's time at the Temple of Here there is an infallible oracle?not infallible in all matters, but in the case of the ailing. Tying a mirror to a fine cord, they lower it, taking care that itdoes not sink too far into the spring, but extends just far enough to touch the water with its circumference. Then, praying to the goddess and burning incense, they look into the mirror: this shows them the patient either alive or dead.38 Ido not wish to suggest that this ritual is related to the Iam proposing. It is an example of catoptromancy, the practice of reading mirrors to predict the future, in Roman sources (Macchioro 1932). Here 1930; Delatte one 37. The connection is quite between Dis Rater and Liber / Bacchus / to Bayet 241-270). (1971:89-129, Dionysus according 38. uocvteIov ?? ?vtocu0<x ?oriv dc^eu???, o? uev ?xri TravT? ye KcxTOTrrpov KaXeo?ico tg?v TTpayucm, ?XX? Elfi tg?v Kauv?vTcov. Xetttg?v close, un. irpooco Ka0iK?a0ai tx\? ot?occvte? Ka?i?oi, oraOucauEVoi tg? kukXco tou KaTOTTTpOU. Trriyfj?, ?XX' ?oov ETTivpauoai touu?ccto? TO 5? 8VT6?08V e??cXUEVOITfj 0600 Kai ?UUlOCOaVTE? EC TO KCXTOTTTpOV to ?? o<t>toi tov vooou-Ta r|Toi ?covtoc x\ Ka? te0veguvtcx ?XETTouar ?tti?e?kvuoi (Pausanias 7.21.12). 102 RES 48 AUTUMN 2005 serves a the mirror purpose, perhaps diagnostic to the oracle's descent into a trance. But it subsequent in the act of evoking the may have assisted concurrently trance.39 One notes that reflection is not the only in this is movement. there also The ritual; dynamic mirror is lowered (oscillating?) to the surface of the spring. Oscillation and divination or garlands may have had votive or even purposes. Those dangling from the apotropaic of the dead may have originated from the catafalques that with associated the premise ordinary objects hedges, deceased's activities in life could shepherd the released repose, or even bring it into spirit communication with the living. Contradiction is often the stuff of reality. Why shouldn't such paradoxes exist in the object, either as art or as artifact, as content or into contented context? In light of the divinatory function of the mirror at source of Ratras, Iwould suggest yet another possible ancient meaning for the oscillum. If suspended objects mark a threshold of transition, then they may have a mantic function to assist the would-be traveler in the menacing divide. The seemingly arbitrary negotiating nature of oscillation introduces just the kind of in a mechanism that is necessary of contingency In his novel Middlesex, divination. Jeffrey Eugenides relates the story of an old Greek matriarch (2002:4-5) who the gender of unborn children by predicted a spoon from a string over the pregnant dangling mother's womb. East-west oscillation promised a girl; a was The north-south, spoon boy. kept in a silkworm box along with amenities of the boudoir such as hair crowns. On the box was the image braids and wedding tree from which of a mulberry the silkworm would naturally have hung. The attentive reader comes to realize that the spoon stands in for the silkworm itself, its own rich metaphorical In our own with possibilities. one is struck by the scrutiny with body of evidence, the old satyr stares at the hanging disk in figure 11. Is the disk hypnotic? Or does it have something to like the old woman's Or both? tell, spoon? which Paradox reflects human ambiguity toward the some we in world itself: welcome it, in ways spirit others we appease it, in others still we shun it.The sacrum is by definition both blessed and accursed, and execrable. venerable this article has served less to unravel the Obviously of oscilla than to implicate them in a web of mysteries But Ibelieve it takes a legitimate fragmentary meanings. to sacral that have in the approach objects long histories are of Oscilla ideas. mottled marketplace delightful, mongrels a diverse to reduce Any attempt historical phenomenon heritage of forms and functions. them to a single, coherent is destined to fail. Like the diverse architectural forms of Roman tombs, for their evident example, unity of function at the moment is no argument for a uniform of their commodification wildly heritage. BIBLIOGRAPHY Allroggen-Bedel, A. 1974 Maskendarstellungen Wandmalerei. 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