Roman Garland Sarcophagi from the 

 Quarries of Proconnesus (Marmara) 



By J. B. Ward Perkins 



Director, British School at Rome, Italy 



[With six plates] 



Few objects of antiquity have received more attention from the 

 archeologist and the art historian than the rich series of sculptured 

 Roman sarcophagi, dating from the second to fourth centuries, ex- 

 amples of which, of varying degrees of refinement, can be seen in 

 most of the museums of the western world. The literature is vast 

 and scattered, dealing both with individual pieces and with groups 

 classified by style, subject matter, or location. For all its bulk, how- 

 ever, this literature is curiously stereotyped. There are innumerable 

 studies of these sarcophagi as documents for the history of Roman 

 art ; others, less numerous but equally fruitful, treating them as social 

 documents, indicative of the status and beliefs of the persons buried 

 in them. Little attention has, on the other hand, been paid to other 

 more prosaic, but no less important, questions which they raise. Where 

 were they made, and by whom? How were they produced and dis- 

 tributed? What was the relation between sculptor and client? 



These are in themselves vital questions to anyone who wishes to 

 study Roman sarcophagi in their proper setting, rather than as 

 museum pieces, detached in time and space, and unrelated to the lives 

 and aspirations of those who made them and used them. They are, 

 moreover, questions that need to be answered before one can hope to 

 get a true picture of them either as works of art or as social documents. 

 In studying, for example, the representation of a particular pagan 

 myth, it is obviously essential both for the art historian and for the 

 student of ancient beliefs to know whether any individual piece was 

 created for a particular client, or whether it was a school piece, one 

 of a group of standardized products, manufactured in quantity for 

 sale in the open market. The point is an obvious one ; but it is all too 

 often ignored. 



In all this the student of Roman sarcophagi, as of so many other 

 fields of classical antiquity, has been the victim of an attitude of 



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