Sculptures from the Forum
Among the fine and varied sculptures and reliefs found the forum area, two freestanding marble statues are particularly interesting. Despite the prosperity of Butrint in the Roman period, these two statues are the only ones found to date depicting figures in the traditional Roman garb of the toga.
The most complete of these statues was discovered carefully deposited within a drain alongside the forum square. It is a striking, life-size figure of a man wearing a toga. The angled base suggests that it was intended for display in a niche, but the original location cannot be determined. Though now headless, it would almost certainly have been a portrait of an important individual, like a local dignitary or an emperor.
His Roman identity is indicated by the imperial style toga he is wearing, and his high social rank is demonstrated by his patrician shoes – evident from the double knots and four long laces around his ankles. The left arm was made separately and in his hand he may have held a book-scroll as a sign of learning and authority. Unusually, the right arm was placed across the chest with the hand resting on the edge of the toga folds.
Stylistic aspects suggest that the statue was made in a Greek workshop sometime around the mid-2nd century AD. This is not the least interesting given its clear Roman iconography; whoever the craftsmen were they must have been intimately aware of the symbols of status in Rome.
More enigmatic is an over life-size statue found near the forum square. Its odd appearance is due to several antique attempts of recutting and changing it: first, by reducing it in size, seemingly to create a smaller figure; secondly, by roughing out a bust from the chest area. None of these reworking attempts were completed. Luckily, enough survives to give an idea of the original appearance of the statue. It would originally have been 2.7 m high and have depicted a Roman man wearing patrician shoes and a toga of a type popular in the late Republic (around 50-25 BC).
One proposal is that the statue would have depicted the emperor Augustus and that it was erected soon after his victory over Marcus Antonius and Cleopatra in 31 BC at Actium south of Butrint. The occasion of could have been to celebrate the contemporary refounding of Butrint as a Roman colony, and to stress the city’s loyalty to the new emperor.
Recently, part of the statue’s right shoulder was discovered indicating that the arm of the figure was raised in a sign of address (adlocutio). This gesture is common in cuirassed statues, but it is highly unusual for a togate statue. The mix of civic and military connotations might be a deliberate reference to the foundation of the city of Nicopolis at the site of the Actium battle. In this way Butrint could associate itself with the Augustan city and promote its participation in a new Roman network of cities in the Ionian.
- Life-size togate statue in situ
- Life-size togate statue
- Over life-size recut statue
- Reconstruction of the over life-size recut statue