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Document Details :

Title: Sklavenschicksale
Subtitle: Drei ikonographische Kapitel über hellenistische und römische Kleinbronzen
Author(s): FRANKEN, Norbert
Journal: BABESCH
Volume: 95    Date: 2020   
Pages: 137-150
DOI: 10.2143/BAB.95.0.3287606

Abstract :
The present article deals in three paragraphs with largely unknown aspects of suspected slave depictions in Hellenistic-Roman bronze art, focusing on the punishment and stigmatization of escaped or otherwise criminalized slaves. Based on a statuette from the Fouquet Collection, originally from Egypt, which is now lost, the first paragraph deals with the figure of a flogged man bound in ‘wood’ in Lyon and related statuettes of chained dwarfs. In the second paragraph, using the example of a bronze head vase in Hanover and a dwarf statuette in the Louvre, possible Hellenistic testimonies to the otherwise literarily attested practice of stigmatization, i.e. the tattooing or branding of slaves are examined. The focus of the third paragraph is a Hellenistic statuette in the art market. Shown is a seated, naked man with bound feet and the physical characteristics of a cripple. Due to the head turn and the peculiar attitude of the hands, the author suggests for the first time an interpretation as a prisoner of war used as a rowing slave. This is followed by a discussion of two safe or suspected Roman rower statuettes. These include a statuette in Dijon found not far from the sources of the Seine as a part of a small bronze boat and therefore probably part of a votive ship for the river goddess Sequana and a previously unpublished statuette of unknown origin in the Berlin Antikensammlung.

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