How Art Made the World

by Nigel Spivey

  Did Aristotle have any influence over this image? It is tempting to suppose so, because the subject of physiognomics is among the many recorded scientific interests of the philosopher. For him, physical attributes, especially facial features, carried strong indications of personality. Animal resemblances were particularly telling. If a man had parts of him that resembled a lion – a thick mass of tawny hair, for example – then one could predict a bold, fierce and courageous disposition.

  At any rate, the look fixed for Alexander was consistent. A dense mane of hair swept back from a broad and slightly frowning brow; intense, liqueous eyes; and the muscles of the neck always setting the royal head at an angle, as if gazing heavenwards. How far Alexander himself affected this look we can never know. By all accounts, to be in his presence was an emotive experience, even if he was only acting up to expectations. (It was rumoured that he made his mane more leonine by sprinkling it with gold dust.) Keeping the image fixed was clearly a matter of concern to him. One of his biographers, Plutarch, explicitly tells us that Alexander maintained in his entourage three image specialists, each outstanding in his medium – whether sculpture (Lysippus), painting (Apelles), or gem-cutting (Pyrgoteles).This third artist may have been responsible for encapsulating Alexander’s look numismatically(Fig. 80), for, like Darius before him, Alexander realized that spreading a message by coinage was highly effective – even in parts of his empire (such as Arachosia, in modern Afghanistan) where coins served no daily economic function.

  The historical ambience created by Alexander is often termed ‘the Hellenistic world’, where the Greek language became a convenient means of communication, and Greek culture travelled in Alexander’s wake (so the precepts of Aristotle reached Afghanistan). Alexander’s political orientation was, however, firmly directed towards the East. If he were to establish himself as master of Asia, he would be wise to absorb the many localized and widespread traditions of divine kingship.This was exactly his practice, but it puzzled his Greek biographers: to them, it seemed like compromising with the barbarians. But even in the Greek world, Alexander’s assimilation to divine status was made visible. Since he claimed descent from Herakles, it was easy enough for Alexander to present himself as wearing one of the hero’s attributes, a lion’s scalp. And given his flow of golden hair, Alexander could readily be imagined as Helios, the sun god.

  But perhaps no ancient representation of Alexander so clearly shows the strategic importance of his image as the ‘Alexander mosaic’ – a Roman adaptation of a large painting that celebrated one of his several victories over the Persians (Fig. 81).The original painting does not survive, but the mosaic is a masterpiece in its own right.We see Alexander astride his horse, charging into the thick of battle, the only combatant shown not wearing a helmet. ‘With complete disregard for his own safety’, as modern citations for bravery phrase it, Alexander is thrusting his pike through an enemy body, but he has his eyes fixed upon the Persian king further away.This is Darius III, destined to be the last of the Achaemenids.A look of complete panic is written across his face; wheeling his chariot around, Darius clearly wants to get away with extreme haste. Whether dismayed by their leader’s panic, or else likewise thrown by the sight of Alexander, all the Persians are scattering pell-mell. So we understand why Alexander is helmetless: his head, complete with furious flying hair, is terrible to behold (Fig. 82). If looks can kill, then this look of Alexander’s, so flashing-eyed and ecstatic, is portrayed as nothing less than a weapon of mass destruction.

  Alexander’s death – while he was just in his early thirties – occurred at Babylon in 323 BC.The former stronghold of Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar was to have been developed as his great imperial capital, eclipsing all the other many cities created in his name. It never happened. Instead, Alexander’s empire was rapidly broken up and divided among his Macedonian chiefs of staff, largely according to where they found themselves at the time of their captain’s premature end.Wherever they were, however, none of the so-called ‘successors’ of Alexander could afford to lose sight of his image.Their own claims to power depended upon the semi-divine sovereignty he embodied. His image, therefore, was their talisman, so the packaged charisma of the Alexander look lost none of its effect after he died. If anything, it gained, and ensured his place in the world’s collective memory as Alexander the Great.

  A MEGALOMANIAC IN RETREAT

  LEGENDARILY, Alexander wished to be lord of all the world. His lieutenants, it seems, were content with less.This is what happened when the mismatch of ambitions came to a head. Ten years on from their first passage into Asia, the forces of Alexander arrived at a rain-swollen river, the Beas, in the Punjab area of India. They had marched eastwards for nearly 18,000 kilometres (11,000 miles), during a course of conquest that had so far included the Black Sea, Asia Minor, Egypt, Arabia, Mesopotamia, Persia and Bactria. Now Alexander was for crossing the torrent, and pressing onwards to the Ganges plain, but his chiefs of staff were unpersuaded, and the troops, for their part, were exhausted and homesick.The will of all ranks was firm: they refused to go on.

  It was a rare episode of insubordination. As recorded in the biographies of Alexander, its immediate consequence was that the would-be ruler of the world, thwarted of his ambitions, plunged into a profound sulk lasting two full days. But eventually Alexander emerged from his tent. Very well, he conceded: his army had reached a reasonable limit.Yet the men had a special task to perform before making the withdrawal.

  Alexander’s war-weary followers were divided into 12 units. Each unit was assigned to build an altar to one of the Greek Olympian deities as thanks and remembrance for divine support thus far. But these altars were not to be of the usual dimensions (about waist height); rather, like enormous towers. Then, the soldiers should set about constructing a mock camp, three times the size of the one they were actually using, and surround it with a massive ditch. They were to build great huts, too, with oversize beds inside, and huge feeding-stalls nearby; some colossal suits of armour and pieces of equipment were also to be made and strewn about. It must look as if a regiment of giants had encamped here – giants who could have negotiated this river as if it were a mere stream. Any local people coming across this abandoned outpost could thank their lucky stars that its superhuman occupants had refrained from advance.

  81 (above) Battle of Issus, Roman mosaic from Pompeii, after a 4th-century Greek painting.

  82 (inset) Detail of Alexander, from the Battle of Issus.

  AUGUSTUS: ART AND THE ORGANIZATION OF OPINION

  In Egypt, where Alexander had made himself pharaoh in 332 BC, and subsequently founded the city of Alexandria as his capital, his deputy officer was Ptolemy, who promptly proclaimed himself King Ptolemy I, eventually to be hailed as soter (saviour) of the country. Himself a somewhat rotund figure, Ptolemy happily traded on the more glamorous image of Alexander as the guarantee of his power. It worked well: a Ptolemaic dynasty lasted for several centuries, and saw Alexandria flourish as a centre of trade, art, scholarship and athletics.The best-known of the Ptolemies, however, was also the last – the queen who was Cleopatra VII.

  Cleopatra ruled Egypt at a difficult time. Much of the eastern Mediterranean, including Macedonia, had fallen to the seemingly unstoppable military machine of Rome: once – in the ninth century BC – just a few huts on a hillside by the River Tiber, but now – by the first century BC – a city on course to build an empire greater than that of Persia or Macedonia. For a while, Cleopatra’s sensual mode of conducting international relations looked as if it might succeed: one Roman general (Julius Caesar) left her with a child, then another (Mark Antony) promised her a lasting marital alliance, to the point of abandoning Rome as a capital in favour of Alexandria. But Cleopatra’s charms were lost on the ambitious young politician who eventually commandeered Egypt, and made it his own special province. He was then known as Octavian, but was soon to become Augustus, the first Roman emperor.

  That change of name – Augustus means ‘revered�
� or ‘awe-inspiring’ – is characteristic of the calculating method by which one man projected himself as primus inter pares (first among equals); he not only maintained that paradoxical position for the rest of his life, but established it as a system of government lasting several hundred years. Augustus, with its overtones of piety and respect, implied that its owner’s exercise of power was vocational.The deities and ancestral spirits of the Roman people supported this man and his cause.

  There are echoes of Darius here and of those Hellenistic monarchs who projected themselves as saviour figures to their subjects. But Augustus was in a much more delicate position of authority. He was head of a constitution that was nominally republican, with a proud anti-monarchical history. Power was res publica (a public matter), not an individual right. Unlike Darius, Augustus could never flaunt himself as a king; to do so carried a very real threat of assassination. And, unlike Alexander, he could not rely upon the charisma born of inspirational leadership in the front line, for not only did Augustus lack military flair, but he also rightly sensed that most of his fellow countrymen were exhausted by decades of strife at home and abroad. So the genius of Augustus lay in creating an illusion. He must present the absence of war as a supreme military achievement, and he must wield all the autocratic power of a monarch while seeming to restore and uphold Rome’s time-honoured republican state.

  We have our own word for this illusionistic process: it is ‘spin’ – some kind of distorting twist on reality. In certain contexts the term ‘propaganda’ may be used, but although this derives from the Latin verb propagare (to propagate in the horticultural sense), its origins lie with mission statements of the Catholic Church, and its modern application is reserved mostly for the often clumsy attempts by totalitarian governments to brainwash an entire populace.There is no ancient term for the subtle process whereby Augustus assumed monarchical power without appearing to do so. ‘Organization of opinion’ may be the best way of describing it. Certainly, its success derived from factors of psychological response that inform current techniques of mass advertising; and, arguably, no single ruler before or since Augustus has so cleverly understood and manipulated the power of images.

  To appreciate his skill, we need to remind ourselves of the political background here.

  The Roman Republic came about towards the end of the sixth century BC, when the Tarquins, an unpopular Etruscan dynasty, were expelled from the city. A basic principle of the complex constitution then installed was that power (imperium) should not rest with one man, but be shared (for a limited period) by two consuls, who were answerable to an assembly of senators (literally, ‘senior men’ of the city). From the beginning there was, however, the provision that in times of emergency a dictator might be temporarily appointed ‘to carry out the business of the state’.The political tensions created by this possibility became particularly acute in the period of Rome’s military expansion far beyond Italy, during the first century BC, with army generals such as Sulla and Pompey openly flouting the democratic principles of res publica. It was the climax of a trend when, in 44 BC, Julius Caesar – another successful general – declared himself dictator perpetuus (permanent dictator). He intended to be a benevolent ruler, but Caesar’s benevolence only emphasized the tyrannical extent of his power. He was assassinated on 15 March 44 BC, at the hands of a group of principled aristocrats led by Brutus and Cassius.They did not hate Caesar the man: it was his monarchical posture that offended them. His head on coins, statues of himself displayed in temples and public spaces … the peril of making such overt displays of power proved fatal.The lesson must have been clear enough to his great-nephew Octavian, who, when Caesar’s will was published, found himself promoted from great-nephew to son and heir. Octavian added his adoptive father’s name to his own. Eventually, ‘Caesar’ became fixed to the title of all Roman emperors. Meanwhile, young Octavian Caesar (later Augustus) needed to find ways of gaining Julius Caesar’s power without meeting Julius Caesar’s end.

  And the historical circumstances in which Octavian/Augustus came to prominence are truly dramatic. Shakespeare’s telling of how Julius Caesar died, and how Caesar’s assailants failed to win popular support for renewing the Roman Republic, is essentially accurate. So too is the Shakespearean account of how a triumvirate, of unlikely political allies – Octavian, Lepidus and Mark Antony – first avenged Caesar’s death, and then fought amongst themselves. Lepidus soon fell aside, and the final battle between Octavian and Antony took place in September of 31 BC, at Actium, off the coast of northwest Greece. As reported in Shakespeare’s tragedy Antony and Cleopatra, this was not so much a naval success for Octavian as a gesture of defeat or indifference from Antony, who simply sailed away with his beloved Cleopatra.

  Such was the reality of Actium, sad or romantic as it may seem.The illusion created by Octavian was otherwise. Actium was extolled as a momentous event, with Octavian’s victory willed by the support of Apollo, for a temple to the god stood in view of the engagement. A shore settlement became the site of Nikopolis (Victory City), marked by a triumphal monument, the elaborate design of which has only recently become known to archaeologists. Back in Rome, poets hymned victory at Actium as the dawn of a new era. Civil war was over. Romans could at last begin to enjoy the fruits of peace, prosperity and world dominion.

  The name change of Octavian to Augustus was made official in 27 BC, when the senators of Rome granted an unprecedented range of constitutional powers to Actium’s victor – who had pursued Antony and Cleopatra to Egypt, and compelled them both to suicide.The change to Octavian’s identity was made immediately visible. As he secured sole authority, so he took care not to adopt the ostentatious airs of sole authority.We witness the shift in his portrait features. A colossal head, now to be found in a courtyard of the Vatican, gives us Octavian, the youthful contender: with big hair and an upward tilt to his features, he invites comparison with Alexander (Fig. 83).This was an image hardly in keeping with the name Augustus; it was, moreover, the sort of radiant saviour image likely to antagonize those traditionalists who still cherished the ideal of a Roman Republic. So Augustus commissioned a new portrait type: commanding, but not arrogant; stern, yet handsome; grave with burdens of responsibility, yet also fresh and ageless (Fig. 84). This was the visage that defined Augustus, and one that his artists faithfully reproduced throughout his long tenure of power at Rome – that is until his death, aged over 70, in 14 AD.

  The political tactic of Augustus was not to abolish the many particular offices of power in the structure of the Roman Republic, but rather to occupy those posts himself, or else ensure his control over the appointed occupants. It was tantamount to a revolution, but of course it was never represented as such.The slogan was res publica restituta, ‘the Republic restored’, and restored for motives that were sacrosanct. It was typical of Augustus that in 12 BC he volunteered himself for the important post of pontifex maximus (chief priest), and equally typical that a statue of him appeared in that guise, fully draped in a toga and veil, in the posture of conducting sacrifice. Later, Augustus would set up an inscribed autobiographical record of res gestae (things done). Prominent among these achievements was the rehabilitation of numerous shrines and temples that had fallen into disrepair.The peace Augustus brought with him was a blessed state, guaranteed by intercession between Augustus and the gods above.

  So wedded was Augustus to the ideal of a pax Augusta (Augustan peace) that he ordered an Altar of Augustan Peace to be set up by one of the gateways to Rome, at the end of the Via Flaminia. In the main processional relief of this altar, the person of Augustus is only slightly more conspicuous than all the other worthy Romans on whom his rule depends: as princeps (leader) or imperator (giver of orders), he appears nevertheless to be part of a team. And the Golden Age assured by his presence is gracefully symbolized on the additional carved panels on the altar, where we find a maternal figure seated amid cherubic offspring, contented livestock and the horns of plenty (Fig. 85). Soft breezes waft acros
s, borne on the backs of swans. Since Augustus has settled political matters at Rome, the entire countryside regains its mythical, pristine abundance.

  The range of images gathered into the Augustan project of mass persuasion is too great to catalogue here.We do not know the names of the architects, painters, sculptors and other craftsmen who contributed to the scheme, but evidently there was a scheme, because for all the variety of images and media, there remains a remarkable consistency of message.Those who designed the irrepressible floral patterns on the Altar of Peace, for example, were surely aware of the vogue among wall-painters for profuse vegetation, such as that seen in the frescoes of the villa belonging to Livia, wife of Augustus (see page).Whether laying out a ‘heritage trail’ on the Palatine Hill, where Augustus opted to live close to the supposed hut of Rome’s legendary first builder, Romulus, or creating a new Forum of Augustus in the city’s heart, or decorating silver drinking cups with scenes of imperial clemency to barbarians, the Augustan image-makers worked in harmony.They were all, as we should say, ‘singing from the same hymn-sheet’.