consular diptychs and rhetoric in constantinople

Association of Art Historians 2010 743

Consular Diptychs, Rhetoric and the Languages of Art in Sixth-Century ConstantinopleAntony Eastmond

On 1 January 506, Flavius Areobindus Dagalaifus Areobindus was installed as consul of the city of Constantinople. His appointment maintained an annual tradition that could be traced back one thousand years. His main, indeed his only, duty as consul was to put on seven days of entertainment for the inhabitants of the city. These spectacles were codii ed three decades later in the Codex Justinianus: a procession on the inauguration of the consul, a day of horse racing, a day of theatrical entertainments, a day of animal combats, a second theatrical day, a second day of racing, and i nally a solemn ceremony to end the week.1

The post was entirely concerned with display and spectacle: on the one hand, the wonders and excitements of the games and entertainment offered to the people, and on the other, the ostentatious display of the consul through his wealth and largesse. Although the post was a temporary one, it has left a permanent visual legacy: the magnii cent ivory diptychs that were commissioned by the consuls to celebrate or commemorate their appointment. For Areobindus, ten leaves from seven different diptychs survive, the largest corpus linked to a single consul in late antiquity.2 Each leaf measures between 340 and 388 mm in height and between 110 and 137 mm in width (and all are between 8 and 10.5 mm thick). When placed together, they combine to reveal the expense of the consulship. They are substantial pieces of ivory and represent a heavy investment in this rare and valuable commodity, especially when one takes into account the high probability that the surviving diptychs probably represent only a small fraction of the number that were originally commissioned.3 The relationship between the diptychs and consular display is central to their understanding: the visual languages by which consuls in sixth-century Constantinople paraded their virtues, and the nature of the audiences that they addressed.

Areobindus ivories fall into three clear categories of decoration, i rst classii ed by Richard Delbrueck in 1929, and this model was followed by all his successors as consul in the sixth century.4 One group, the so-called full i gure type (comprising seventeen of the forty-one surviving leaves made between 506 and 541), has been used by scholars to enrich our understanding of the consul and his position (plate 1). These densely carved panels epitomize both the spectacle of the consulship and the excitement of the games associated with them. Their power and their attraction lie in the disparity between the solemnity and rigidity of the consul and the vivacity of the entertainment that he sponsored. The consul dominates the panels in all his pomp, in an uncompromising and unblinking confrontation with the viewer. His robes, throne, sceptre and mappa all build his status, and he is surrounded by further symbols

Detail from Consular Diptych of Orestes, 530 (plate 7).

DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8365.2010.00780.xArt History | ISSN 0141-679033 | 5 | December 2010 | pages 742-765


Consular Diptychs, Rhetoric and the Languages of Art in Sixth-Century Constantinople

of authority and wealth. This picture of taxis (order), dignity and status contrasts markedly with the more lively, almost anarchic world of the games beneath. The consul is shown unaffected by the danger of animal hunts and acrobatics, the slapstick of theatrical mime (note the man with a crab on the end of his nose on Anastasiuss diptych of 517; see plate 2), or the spectacle of processions.5 This is the essence of what has been called the consular image, and its repetition by successive consuls in the sixth century presents it as an almost corporate identity.6 These diptychs reveal both the costs and the rewards of euergetism, the late antique expectation that the rich should use their wealth to benei t the community in which they lived.7

The apparently comprehensive vision of the consul represented by these diptychs has led to a greatly reduced interest in the remaining two groups (numbering

1 Consular diptych of Areobindus (full-i gure type), 506. Ivory, each leaf 360 130 mm. Zrich: Schweizerisches Landesmuseum (inv. A-3564). Photo: Zrich, Schweizerisches Landesmuseum.


Antony Eastmond

twenty-four surviving consular leaves). They are catalogued and exhibited, but rarely discussed.8 The imagery they contain appears meagre and abbreviated in comparison with the full-i gure leaves. Either they show a medallion containing just the bust of the consul, surrounded by a simple foliate design (plate 3), or they have even simpler, more abstract, non-i gural designs (plate 4). Yet, the consuls clearly considered these as important as the full-i gure panels they required as much ivory to make, and survive in larger numbers. Why the consuls chose to use three such different formats to display their authority has never been investigated. This paper considers all the diptychs together, and does so through a consideration of a central aspect of the diptychs: the ways in which they communicated with their audience.

Consular diptychs were made to be sent out as gifts. Q. Aurelius Symmmachus, admittedly writing a century before Areobindus became consul but referring to the same posts and traditions, recorded that he included ivory diptychs and other

precious objects with his letters: It is a solemn and delightful obligation for quaestors candidati to present the customary gifts to people of consequence and close friends, in which number you are naturally included. So I offer you an ivory diptych and a small silver bowl weighing two pounds in my sons name, and I beg you to accept this token of respect with pleasure.9 This allows us to examine all the diptychs as a corpus, and to consider them as part of epistolary communication, to be sent out and received. This connection between diptychs and letters allows us to set the ivories in the same framework of rhetorical and epistolary theory. Letters were both written and read following well-established rules and models, in which correspondents were trained, and for which evidence survives in epistolary manuals and the exercises of the progymnasmata. These provided exemplars for the contents and style in which to write letters, and it is clear that letter writers were taught to tailor both of these to suit their audience. I argue that the same is true of consular diptychs, and that we can use the decoration of consular diptychs to understand as much about the audience of the diptychs as about the consul himself.

Discussion of audience is, however, tempered by one key problem: the diptychs give no direct evidence about the identity of their audience. Beyond Symmachus l attering description of his correspondents, and a few non-specii c references on the diptychs themselves (which will be discussed below), we cannot put names to the lucky recipients of these expensive objects with any precision. It is possible that this information was once contained in the interiors of the diptychs, as all were planed smooth with a raised lip around the edge, which would allow them to have been i lled with a thin layer of wax into which a message could have been incised.10 In no surviving example, however, does any wax remain.

2 Leaf from consular diptych of Anastasius, 517. Ivory, 361 127 mm. London: Victoria & Albert Museum (368-1871). Photo: Victoria and Albert Museum, London.



Everything depends on the interpretation of the exterior carving and the variation between the different types of diptych.11

When the three distinct groups of diptych were i rst classii ed by Richard Delbrueck in 1929, he also considered the audience of the diptychs, and linked each grouping to a social rank.12 He concluded that the full-i gure diptychs were destined for the most important recipients (vielleicht fr Viri consulares, hohe Beamte); the medallion diptychs for Senators, and the simple diptychs for private gifts.13 Delbruecks assumption that the most iconographically replete leaves were destined for the most senior ofi cials has underlain, even if it has not justii ed, the almost exclusive concentration by scholars on them.14 The correlation between density of decoration and the social elevation of the recipient has come to be seen as an almost natural, self-evident link.15 These assumptions are, however, neither natural nor self-evident. This paper seeks to replace that hierarchical model of audience with one linked to epistolary theory and based on networks of communication. Given that we cannot know the audience, the discussion must necessarily be indirect, and must focus instead on the nature of the relationship between the consul and the recipient of the diptychs. The diptychs were just one class of gifts that served to create, build and maintain networks of friendship and inl uence among equals in late antiquity. This is a study of modes of communication, networks and exchange; and of the uses of rhetoric and the different languages of art in its service.

The focus on the audience for consular diptychs raises a second, apparently paradoxical, issue which is discussed in the i nal section of this paper. This considers the diametrically opposite issue to the problem of the variety of diptychs, that of monotony. For a second way of looking at diptychs is diachronically. When successive consuls diptychs are lined up alongside each other what becomes most apparent is, within the different types, their repetitive consistency, in terms of iconography, style and presentation. The thirty-two surviving leaves produced in sixth-century Constantinople by Areobindus successors as consul make no signii cant change to the formats that Areobindus used (and which he probably inherited from the consuls before him). If, as is generally supposed, the consulship was about individual promotion, then why were consuls diptychs so conformist and lacking in individualism?


Antony Eastmond

Category and Hierarchy

In order for my argument to proceed, it is i rst necessary to establish the equal status of the three groups of diptychs. This depends on a consideration of scale, of quantity and of quality.

The argument underlying a hierarchy of ivories and their association with different ranks depends on an analogy with other examples of gift-giving by ofi cials in late antiquity. The prime model here is the distribution of sparsio silver by emperors. The surviving largitio dishes of the fourth century, in particular, show a clear gradation and hierarchy of gifts. This is based on the weight of silver used, and hence its monetary value. At the head of this ranking stands the missorium of Theodosios I, produced for the decennalia of the emperor in 388 (plate 5). It is both the largest and the best decorated of all such dishes. It shows the emperor between his co-emperors Valentinian II and Arcadius handing a diptych of ofi ce to an ofi cial, and is recorded in an inscription on the reverse as weighing 50 roman lb.16 This dwarfs all other surviving dishes, including private commissions such as the Achilles plate in the Sevso Treasure which has an almost identical diameter (720 mm as opposed to 740 mm), but weighs a mere 36 roman lb (11.78 kg).17 The missorium of Theodosios represents a gift at the very top of the social scale: the donor was the emperor, and the inclusion of the recipient on the image (even if only generically depicted, with no individual identii cation) denotes his elevated status.18 Beneath this are a larger number of more humble largitio dishes, which all conform to carefully gradated sizes. The surviving largitio dishes produced in the i rst half of the fourth century for Licinius, Crispus and Constantine II, and Constantius II all i t into approximate groups

3 Consular diptych of Areobindus (medallion type), 506. Ivory, each leaf 340 110 mm. Paris: Muse du Louvre (OA9525). Photo: 2006 Muse du Louvre et AFA/Anne Chauvet.

4 Consular diptych of Areobindus (simple type), 506. Ivory, each leaf 340 125 mm. Lucca: Opera del Duomo. Photo: Lucca, Opera del Duomo.

5 Missorium of Theodosios I, 380. Silver, 740 mm (diameter), 15.35 kg (weight). Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia. Photo: Reproduccin, Real Academia de la Historia.



weighing 1, 1.5, 2, 3 and 4 roman lb.19 It is clear from this that a hierarchy existed. The dishes were produced at set weights which could be awarded either individually by size or in groups to make up a higher value gift, and so allowed rank and reward to be closely linked.20 Jocelyn Toynbee noted a similar correlation between size, weight and rank among late antique medallions.21

However, this ranking cannot work for ivory. First, unlike the silver largitio dishes, what is most striking about consular diptychs is their overall similarity. There is a consistency of scale that runs across all the surviving sixth-century leaves: the height of those that have not subsequently been cut down ranges between 335 and 410 mm (a variation of less than 15% on either side of the average height of 360 mm). Although John Lydus in his On the Magistracies of the Roman State an apparently bizarre mix of autobiography, scatology and bureaucratic history written in c. 552 celebrated the endless nuances of rank and bureaucratic distinctions of hierarchy both within and beyond government administration, it seems unlikely that they were so nuanced as to take the missing 40 mm of ivory into account.22 It is difi cult to imagine men comparing the length of their ivories so carefully.

It is surely more likely that the differences were due to the availability of tusks in any one year. Two diptychs survive from the consulship of Clementinus in 513, and they are noticeably different in size: the one now in the World Museum, Liverpool, measures at least 384 123 mm (it is partially obscured by a later marquetry frame) (plate 6),23 but that in the Victoria and Albert Museum (subsequently re-used by Orestes, consul of Rome in 530, who re-cut the faces and inscriptions) is signii cantly smaller at 344 120 mm (plate 7).24 Despite this difference in scale, they portray almost identical iconography, suggesting that they were conceived as equivalents. The divergence in height can only be explained in terms of the variation in the tusks available to Clementinus.

Consular diptychs required the largest tusks available in order to be able to produce the length and width of panel that was desired, and elephant biology placed limits on this. The forty-one Constantinopolitan leaves that have not been cut down all conform to the same approximate dimensions and ratio (2.8:1) which corresponds to the largest plaques that can be carved from a good size tusk given its curvature. The leaves of the Apion diptych in Oviedo, which measure 410 150 mm, have the largest surface area of any surviving diptych (622.5 cm2 ) (plate 8), but this was only achieved by tapering the inner edges of each leaf where they were limited by the curve of the elephant tusk.25 More to the point, the Apion diptych is of the medallion type, and so should, according to Delbruecks classii cation, be for a middle-ranking recipient. From this it is clear that the analogy between gifts in ivory and in precious metals is fraught with problems. Rather than look for hierarchical divisions, it seems more realistic to accept that, in every case, consular diptychs represent the largest and most impressive gifts possible given the limitations of the material. There is no evidence of half-size diptychs in line with the gradations of medallions and silver plates.

6 Consular diptych of Clementinus, 513. Ivory; each leaf 384 123 mm. Liverpool: World Museum. Photo: National Museums Liverpool.


Antony Eastmond

The only other means of distinguishing between the diptychs is in terms of the carving, whether quantity or quality. Here the hierarchy seems to be more i rmly based, but it is too simplistic to assume that, simply because one diptych is more replete with carving than another, it should be given a higher ranking. Again, comparisons with largitio silver are valuable. Three largitio dishes of Constantius II have been excavated from Kertch in the Crimea, each approximately the same weight (2 roman lb). They were all probably produced to celebrate his vicennalia in 343, but are decorated very differently: two have a proi le bust of the emperor set inside an arcade, the third has a fuller, more narrative image showing the emperor on horseback, between a winged nike and a soldier (plates 9 and 10).26 This last dish has long been regarded as the most important because of its iconographic wealth. However, although the composition on the dish is bolder and more complex than that of the other two dishes, and so presumably took longer to execute, the equal weight of the

7 Consular Diptych of Orestes, 530 (recarved from that of Clementinus, 513). Ivory, each leaf 344 120 mm. London: Victoria and Albert Museum (139-1866). Photo: Victoria and Albert Museum, London.



dishes militates against linking that with value. It places a value on narrative that has no validation in late antique sources. Surely, the recipient would primarily measure his worth by the quantity of silver he was given, rather than by the iconographic complexity of its decoration.

The only evidence that links the form or quantity of decoration with rank comes in the images that accompany the Notitia Dignitatum, a list of dignitaries and their areas of responsibility across the Roman empire that was drawn up in about 420.27 The images that accompany the text show the codicils of ofi ce and other insignia for each post. Although they only survive in late medieval copies of a lost i fth-century original, they appear to show distinctions between the codicils, based on decoration. Throughout the manuscript these imperial codicils are shown uniform in size, but with differing decoration according to the seniority of the ofi ce. But whereas imperial codicils were the ofi cial sign of rank, conferred at an elaborate ceremony in which the recipient adored the purple,28 consular diptychs were private offerings, theoretically without any constraints on their size or subject matter. Justinians law code is explicit about the freedom of consuls to demonstrate their generosity in any way

that they see i t (so long as they do not dispense gold): distribution may absolutely depend upon the desire and pecuniary resources of the donor.29

Just as quantity of decoration is an unreliable guide to the status of the recipient, so to is quality. It is difi cult to i nd a clear correlation between quantity and quality on consular diptychs. The quality of carving varies considerably: for example, the carving of the heads of the audience above the arena on the Areobindus full-i gure panels is cursory and hasty compared to that of the exquisitely precise lions heads on the otherwise unadorned diptychs of Justinian i fteen years later (plate 11).30 This is comparable to the quality of engraving on the three Constantius dishes, which varies considerably: the engraving of the emperor on horseback dish is sloppy and hasty compared to that of the other two dishes, and its gilding frequently runs beyond the i gures and onto the background. Indeed, it must be doubtful whether the fees paid to craftsmen were a signii cant factor in the cost of producing the ivories or the silver, compared to those of acquiring the materials in the i rst place (the hunting of the elephants or the mining of metals) and the expense of transportation. The fact that both ivories and silver were produced in large quantities would inevitably have required a compromise on quality control.

A i nal, fundamental problem with the association of ivory with rank lies in the value of the material itself. The correlation between weight and value is self-evident for the largitio dishes and medallions, in which the bullion value could be realized simply by melting down the objects. Ivory has no equivalent potential value, despite the cost of the material. Whilst the costs involved in acquiring and carving the ivory may have been high, the value of the i nal product is harder to assess. They were expensive to make, an honour to receive, but essentially worthless to the recipient. The diptychs had no realizable value in themselves: ivory could not be melted down or used as currency. They were difi cult to recycle: the crude re-carving of the imperial

8 Consular diptych of Apion, 539. Ivory, each leaf 410 150 mm. Oviedo: Cathedral Treasury. Photo: Fundaci Institut Amatller dArt Hispnic/Arxiu Mas.


Antony Eastmond

faces and the medallion monogram on the Orestes diptych shows the restrictions faced by anyone wishing to stamp their own image or authority on such an object. As Anthony Cutler has pointed out, they are a form of unliquid wealth.31 This places the ivory diptychs in a very different class of object from other gifts in the period.

The true value of a consular diptych lay symbolically in receiving it, and practically in the gifts of silver that generally accompanied it.32 All the references to consular gifts made by Q. Aurelius Symmachus in his letters present ivory diptychs as accompaniments to silver.33 From this point of view, consular diptychs were perhaps closer in function to seals. They authenticated the gifts that were handed out. They also provided a record of those gifts long after the silver itself had been melted down, or re-inscribed to be passed on to the next recipient in the apparently endless chain of gifts and exchanges that existed at the Byzantine court in the sixth century. Indeed, the permanence of the ivory must have been one of its most valuable assets to its commissioners.34 Its inl exibility and inalienability as an object was the best guarantor of the preservation of the consuls memory: the diptych makes concrete what Marcel Mauss i rst recognized as the indissoluble bond of a thing with its original owner.35 Both the ecclesiastical authorities who were the i rst to re-employ diptychs (possibly as early as the end of the sixth century) and later the Carolingians found them hard to re-use.36 Once inscribed with more than a couple of layers of ink to record names,37 or incised with prayers,38 the reverses of diptychs became frozen, apparently never to be updated further, possibly consigned to cathedral treasuries by changes in the liturgy, but more likely by the inability to keep updating the lists. This suggests that consular diptychs would work well as gifts to be sent outside Constantinople. They had a high intrinsic value, yet almost no worth in terms of re-sale or re-use. Unlike the silver that they accompanied, their value could not be realized. They would thus be a very secure gift to send. The Clementinus diptych of 513, which had clearly travelled from Constantinople to Rome before 530 (when it was recarved for the Roman consul Orestes), suggests that diptychs may have been exchanged between the consuls of the Old and New Romes. This clearly continued after the fall of Italy to the Ostrogoths, and indicates that consular diptychs played

9 Silver dish with proi le bust of Constantius II, 343. Silver with gilding, 232-3 mm (diameter), 634.6 g (weight). St Petersburg: The State Hermitage Museum (inv. 1820/158). Photo: The State Hermitage Museum/Vladimit Terebenin, Leonard Kheifets, Yuri Molodkovets.

10 Silver dish of Constantius II on horseback, 343. Silver with gilding, 250 mm (diameter), 660 g (weight). St Petersburg: The State Hermitage Museum (inv. 1820/79). Photo: The State Hermitage Museum/Vladimit Terebenin, Leonard Kheifets, Yuri Molodkovets.



a part in the maintenance of the i ction of the unity of the empire that all sides continued to maintain in the sixth century. This might explain the early appearance of many of these diptychs outside Constantinople.

From this it can be seen that the creation of a putative ranking system among ivory diptychs is extremely difi cult. The empirical evidence, indeed, suggests an absence of hierarchy. This is supported by the limited internal evidence about the nature of the recipients which appears on the series of consular diptychs carved for the consulships of Justinian in 521 and Philoxenus in 525.39 Two of the three diptychs linked to Philoxenus have Greek inscriptions. One, inscribed on a simple diptych adorned only with a geometric design and two acanthus leaves, reads: For someone who is august in rank and character I, Philoxenus, being consul, offer this gift.40 This text is deliberately vague and impersonal, and appears to have been designed to be suitable for a recipient of any rank. It is the equivalent of an off-the-shelf greetings card. The other, inscribed on a medallion diptych, with the bust of the consul above that of a tyche of Constantinople, goes further in indicating the seniority of the recipient: I, Philoxenus, being consul, bring this gift to the wise Senate (plate 12).41 In this Philoxenus seems to have followed the lead set by Justinian four years

11 Consular diptych of Justinian, 521. Ivory, each leaf 350 145 mm. New York: Metropolitan Museum (Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 17.190.52, .53). Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.


Antony Eastmond

earlier, for two of Justinians three surviving diptychs are inscribed with identical Latin texts: These gifts, slight indeed in value but rich in honours, I as consul offer to my senators.42 However, before Justinians reforms of 5378, when he had been emperor for a decade, the membership of the Senate was enormous: it had been expanded to about 2,000 under Constantius II, and not reformed since.43 Within the Senate, the importance and inl uence of men varied greatly, yet these diptychs applied equally to all. These inscriptions also undermine one of the main assumptions about the function of consular diptychs. They are generally thought to have been individual gifts designed to promote the consul among his peers through his wealth, and build up his networks of patronage, inl uence and friendship. As such, they are seen as part of the web of power relationships that worked within the city. However, the medallion diptych of Philoxenus which is addressed to a generic corporate identity, and the simple diptychs of Justinian which are offered to my senators, both imply group gifts, in which identii cation of individual recipients is explicitly avoided. They therefore nullify the potential political power of such gifts and appear more as impersonal objects perhaps produced as a requirement of the post rather than to advertise the individual.

12 Consular diptych of Philoxenus, 525. Ivory, each leaf 350 130 mm. Paris: Cabinet des Mdailles, Bibliothque nationale de France. Photo: Bibliothque nationale de France, BnF.



These inscriptions do little to help identify recipients, and less to help rank the diptychs accordingly. There is no correlation here between rank and diptych type: senators are offered both medallion and simple types. The evidence suggests, instead, that the various types were interchangeable: suitable for individuals and institutions, and with no apparent difference in rank.

Diversity and Visual Languages

Instead, it is possible to look at the diptychs in a different way, and work on the basis that all ten leaves surviving from Areobindus consulship should be seen as equal, as should their audience. The diptychs are therefore equivalent means of projecting Areobindus self-image and authority among his peers. The variations in the decoration must, then, have been designed to appeal to the differing expectations and understandings of various groupings within this elite. The distinctions in audience are due to ways of looking, rather than rank or wealth. We should distinguish between registers of visual language in the diptychs. The different formats are designed to suit the varying expectations of the many audiences Areobindus needed to appeal to. This is comparable to the different levels of language that were employed in early Byzantine literature: the writer chose the style of writing that would most suit the audience to which it was addressed.44

A model for this is presented in the educational curriculum of late antiquity. The progymnasmata (exercises in rhetoric) of Aphthonius the Sophist, written in the second half of the fourth century, sought to teach the tools of rhetoric to the elite of the empire. Some time after the i fth century an anonymous prolegomenon was added, which dealt explicitly with different forms of language, and how to understand them: There are three characters of style: grand [], plain [], and middle []. The grand style has pompous words but plain thought, as are the works of Lycophron [the Obscure, a Hellenistic poet of the third century BC]; the plain has elevated thought but plain words, as are the writings of [St John] the Theologian; the middle has neither elevated thought nor pompous diction but both moderate, as are the writings of [St John] Chrysostom for the most part.45 This cannot, of course, be translated directly across to the reading of consular diptychs, but it does provide an analogous way to divide the different types. The grand, which is bombastic but literal, has parallels in the extended narratives on the full-i gure type; the plain, whose simplicity relies on elevated thought, compares to the simple diptychs and their reliance on symbolism; and the middle, which runs between the symbolic and the narrative, matches the medallion type. A similar tri-partite division can be found throughout the late antique educational system, and students were taught to seek to

understand what they read, heard and saw in different ways. Drawing on Origen (On i rst principles 4.2.49), for example, readers and viewers were taught to be alert for three levels of interpreting the writing in the Scriptures: the literal, the moral and the theological.46

There is ample evidence for the use of separate, alternative but equivalent symbolic languages to make images in this period. We have already seen it on the largitio silver of Constantius II, and it is evident even in the high expense of monumental mosaic. It has long been recognized that any viewing of the great i gural monuments of Justinians reign must look beyond the literal. At San Vitale, Ravenna (consecrated 548), the

13 Transi guration in the apse of S. Apollinare in Classe near Ravenna, 549. Mosaic. Photo: Sacred Destinations Images.


Antony Eastmond

staccato narrative, non-chronological juxtaposition and hierarchical organization of the imagery throughout the apse immediately moves the viewer beyond the literal.47 And in other churches from his reign additional layers of meaning are added by the employment of different modes of representation.

The use of different visual languages is most apparent in the apses of the church of S. Apollinare in Classe near Ravenna (consecrated in 549) (plate 13), and the monastery of St Catherine on Mount Sinai in Egypt (built between 548 and 565) (plate 14). Both preserve images of the Transi guration, and both arise from the same circle of imperial patronage centred on the emperor Justinian. However, the visual languages through which the iconography is shown are radically different. The Transi guration at S. Apollinare in Classe uses a clearly symbolic visual language, in which signs lambs and the cross act as signii ers for the apostles and Christ. Even the inscriptions identifying Christ do so indirectly and in different languages: (the Greek word for 'i sh, an acronym for: Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour) above the cross, and to either side, and Salus Mundi (Latin for Saviour of the World) below. The stress on the non-literal is further underlined by the apses

insistence on repetition and surface pattern. The rhythmic spacing of the rocks and plants across the background and the relentless, undifferentiated register of sheep (representing the twelve apostles) deny any attempt to read the image as narrative. The secondary focus of the apse, the central i gure of St Apollinaris (the only whole i gure in the composition, and the only element given an unambiguous identii cation), is not connected to the ostensible subject of the image at all. Instead, as the i rst bishop of the region, he ties the biblical past into the (legendary) ecclesiastical past of Ravenna, presenting the bishop as a thirteenth apostle. His pose links both pasts to the present, and echoed the gestures of prayer that would have been made by the ofi ciating clergy who would have stood below the image during the liturgy. As an image, this scene must be decoded rather than read, its elements separated out and translated, before they can be understood.48

In contrast, the apse at St Catherines presents the Transi guration in an apparently literal way. Here we can immediately identify the participants (all named bar Christ, whose cruciform halo acts as an identii er), their roles in the biblical narrative and their emotional reaction to Christs metamorphosis. This is a very different form of representation from the church at Classe, but even within this image, different visual languages are employed. It has long been recognized that the six i gures are depicted using different visual modes: the apostles and prophets are given a more volumetric and weighty appearance than the distinctly l atter and more dematerialized Christ.49 The varying degrees of naturalism convey the participants different place on the scale of humanity from the earthly apostles to the divine Christ.

The theological messages that art historians have discerned in both churches suggest that they were each designed for visually literate and sophisticated audiences able and adept at reading into the details of the image series of interrelated, but

14 Transi guration in the apse of St Catherines Monastery, Mount Sinai, Egypt, 54865. Mosaic. Photo: Robert S. Nelson.



distinct theological and even political messages. Whilst geography obviously determines the audiences of these churches to a great extent, it is neither possible nor reasonable to discern any hierarchical difference between the two; rather the differences in representational language must be linked to the specii c theological needs of the communities for which each image was designed.

Returning to consular diptychs, it is now possible to propose that each type presents an image of the consuls authority or wealth, but using a different visual language. The i rst, simple, type depends entirely on a metaphorical language of symbols, relying on an understanding of the conventions employed, the imagery of wealth and plenty. The cornucopia are in essence a symbolic way of rendering of Areobindus wealth and generosity, identical in meaning to the more literal display of boys pouring out sacks of money and ingots that Clementinus, Magnus and Justinus were to employ on their diptychs in 513, 518 and 540.50 The emblematic language of fecundity that the cornucopia and potent vines represents i nds a further comparison in the decoration of the church of St Polyeuktos in Constantinople, built by Areobindus wife Anicia Juliana in c. 5247.51 This church was built expressly to convey the familys wealth and prestige, and its interior was covered in a latticework of vines and ivy tendrils as well as cornucopia, which adorned columns, capitals, and cornices (plate 15).52 Indeed, there are similarities in the style of the sinuous vines on the Lucca diptych and those carved onto the columns of the church, suggesting that both can be seen as part of a broader, consolidated visual language employed by this prestigious family in Constantinople. The visual richness and vitality of the foliage reinforces the actual wealth of Anicia Juliana and her claim to power that was spelled out literally in the inscription that ran around the interior of the church.53 The appearance of a cross on the Lucca diptych, notably absent from all the others in Areobindus series, adds to this emphasis on symbolic rather than literal depiction. Why Areobindus should have proclaimed his Christian allegiance here, when he felt it unnecessary on all his other surviving diptychs, is mysterious; but perhaps indicates again the way in which diptychs were made for particular groups of recipient, in this case perhaps a senior church ofi cial.

Equally, the second medallion group should not simply be seen as a reduced version of the full-i gure type. Whilst the imagery on the medallion diptych in the Louvre is indeed more abbreviated, it is not necessarily more straightforward. The absence of the narrative and descriptive elements that make the full-i gure type so ripe for analysis by modern scholars cannot be ascribed solely to a more junior recipient. Rather, it suggests the opposite. Viewers are required to bring much more of their own knowledge and experience to bear on the diptych. The attributes of the consul are necessarily more symbolically laden as they are not supplemented or explained by other details, and need to be read and deciphered fully to understand the consuls authority. More signii cantly, the absence of the consuls names and titles might suggest a greater degree of familiarity between the consul and the recipient. To identify the consul here requires an ability to decipher his monogram, by no means a straightforward task.54 Moreover, the monograms here are in Greek, unlike the Latin monogram given on the Lucca diptych. Latin was still the ofi cial administrative language of the empire at this time, and the shift on these leaves to Greek suggests a move away from the ofi cial towards the personal and familial; a move much lamented by the bureaucrat John Lydus (whose decision to write in Greek himself declaims the non-ofi cial nature of his history).55 A similar distinction appears in the use of Greek and Latin on the diptychs of Justinian and Philoxenus.


Antony Eastmond

The full-i gure diptychs are the one group that spell out fully the consuls position, his wealth and virtues, his generosity and his games. To modern viewers they effectively act as the key to unlocking the meanings of the other two groups. The subtle variations between the various consular types the variance between abstract and narrative depictions, between Latin and Greek, between overt identii cation and more cryptic portrayal, between verbal and visual account do not seem to have hierarchical underpinnings. Rather they seem to be designed for different groups within the elite, each with different ways of reading the imagery depending on their proximity to the consul himself.

Whilst this account provides a parallel by which to interpret the different visual languages used by the diptychs, it does not yet explain why the consuls needed to use them all. However, a possible explanation can be found again in the teaching of rhetoric in late antiquity, in this case in conjunction with epistolary theory. This is validated by our knowledge that, as Symmachus records, diptychs were sent out with letters (and silver) to friends and persons of consequence.

Although ancient rhetoricians seem mostly to have been concerned with types of letter (censorious, congratulatory, ironic, apologetic, etc.)56 rather than the levels of language within them, there is evidence that they were each written differently, and geared to the varying needs of their audience. The treatise Typoi Epistolikoi (compiled between the second century BC and the third century AD, and falsely attributed to Demetrius of Phalerum), opens: According to the theory of epistolary types, [letters] can be composed in a great number of styles, but are written in those that always i t the particular circumstances.57 However, as no different styles are discussed, it is clear that the audience is expected to recognize and understand these without further explanation. In the sixth century, the most eloquent teacher of epistolary form remained Cicero (10643 BC), who was rather more explicit: You see, I have one way of writing what I think will be read by those to whom I address my letter, and another way of writing what I think will be read by many (Epistulae ad familiares 15:21:4).58 The meaning is identical, but the method of conveying it changes.

All writers agree, however, that letters are designed to bridge the gap between the correspondents, and to evoke a face-to-face encounter between the letter writer and the recipient.59 Letters must, then, convey the same information in different ways, depending on the relationship between the writer and the recipient. As Julianus Victor notes in his Ars Rhetorica (fourth century AD): letters should conform with the degree of friendship [you share with the recipient] or with his rank.60 The degree of distance, whether geographical or in terms of network zones, will determine the manner in which the information is presented.61 Menander Rhetor, whose Treatise was written in the third or fourth century AD, is explicit in reminding his readers that it is not necessary to describe what people already know.62 This has a direct analogy in the diptychs: those who are closer to the consul, either physically or socially, do not need to have his virtues spelled out as fully or as obviously as those in the outer zones of his network of contacts. The consuls intimates could be expected to infer from the simple or medallion diptychs all the information that needed to be supplied in the full-i gure diptychs to those that lack direct knowledge of him. Julianus Victor also makes reference in the same text to explicitness of language. He states that cryptic language is permissible between close acquaintances, so long as its meaning

15 Marble impost capital from H. Polyeuktos, Constantinople, 5247. Photo: Antony Eastmond.



is perfectly evident to the intended recipient. This would i t the simple diptychs being destined for the closest acquaintances (although his warning that while you strive for brevity, do not be so elliptical that effort must be expended on the truncated argument may explain why no consuls after Areobindus produced simple diptychs that were quite so emblematic in form).63 His overall advice that letters should be clearer than conversations, as points cannot be further explained again supports the idea that consuls needed to present themselves unambiguously to those outside their immediate circle.64

There is one i nal literary comparison to consider in conjunction with the visual language of consular diptychs: encomia. It should be possible directly to compare encomia and diptychs: both sought to praise their subjects through a highly developed and structured genre with a clear format and dei ned goals. Although primarily for people, encomia could also praise countries, cities, bays, harbours and even dumb animals.65 The format for encomia of great men that is outlined in the progymnasmata demanded a tri-partite description of the subjects achievements, illustrating the qualities of soul (especially the cardinal virtues: piety, courage, justice and wisdom) and of body (beauty, strength) and the possession of external goods (friends, wealth, inl uence).66

This outline for an encomium highlights the limitations of consular diptychs. They could not easily portray all the elements traditionally required when praising a great man. Whilst the full name of the consul in the titulus indicated his birth and ancestry, nurture and education are less easy to visualize. Qualities of soul are even harder to demonstrate. Essentially it is the existence of the diptych that demonstrates them: the fact that the consul is in the position he is in rel ects his innate qualities of piety, courage, justice and wisdom. However, these are most easy to extrapolate from the full-i gure diptychs. The medallion diptychs give little of this information, and the simple ones even less, although it is tempting to see their abstract nature as an attempt to represent these intangible qualities.

Consular diptychs instead concentrate on the i nal area of praise: the possession of wealth and power.67 This is the message that all forms of diptych repeatedly emphasize to the viewer, both through their medium and their iconographies. However, from the point of view of an orator, this was perhaps the least important element in an encomium, it was little more than a referent for the great mans other qualities. The progymnasmata of Aphthonius emphasizes that encomia should concentrate on intrinsic, rather than transitory, qualities: birth and virtues come before deeds, and rewards are clearly envisaged as the result of the inherent virtues.68

The emphasis on wealth and display in fact opened consular diptychs to a different attack: that of self-glorii cation. Imperial images could be presented simply as representations of imperial ofi ce, and in many cases were commissioned not by the emperor himself but by communities to adorn their towns.69 Consular diptychs, in contrast, were unambiguous self-proclamations of power. In c. AD 100 Plutarch had written a treatise On the manner in which we may praise ourselves without exciting envy in others.70 This discussed the tact required and the precautions necessary to remove offensiveness, but neither tact nor precaution is obvious in the diptychs.71

The unabashed self-glorii cation of consular diptychs is surprising given that its consequences could often be lethal. Many consuls came to regret their prominence when they became embroiled on the losing side in the apparently ceaseless struggles to gain, hold or usurp the imperial throne in the i fth and sixth centuries. This brings us to the i nal paradox of consular diptychs: monotony.


Antony Eastmond

Monotony

Having discussed diversity of diptych production within one consulate, it is now necessary to examine an apparently contradictory element in their production: the conformity, indeed monotony, of diptychs. This really raises the question of what to do with an old diptych (assuming they do not become the diaries, love letters or Romances of wistful Roman women, as Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema imagined in his 1892 painting, Comparisons, now in the Cincinnati Art Museum).

Monotony must be assessed by looking at production across the sixth century. There is a regularity within each class of consular diptych that is extraordinary for privately produced objects for which no ofi cial rules applied, and which delineated no bureaucratic or imperial hierarchy. This relies on examining the diptychs diachronically rather than synchronically, and considers the cumulative imagery on consular diptychs over the decades of the sixth century. Even if we accept Delbruecks overly generous estimate of the manufacture of about 100 diptychs per consul per year (which quickly adds up over just one century to 20,000 diptychs, and so can easily be expanded to reach his proposed total for the period of possibly 100,000 diptychs),72 it is not actually a quantity that would go particularly far on an annual basis among the elite of Constantinople (with a Senate in the region of possibly 2,000 members before Justinians attempts of 5367 to reduce it in size), let alone among the broader elite of the empire if, as I propose, a proportion was sent abroad to announce the new consul.73

Within Constantinople, circulation must have been restricted: the endless overlaps between wealth, membership of the senate, court and military appointments, all woven through marriages into the broader imperial family in the early sixth century, suggest an annual circulation among a very tightly knit group. Of the twenty-seven eastern consuls from 500 to 541, twenty were either the emperor himself or members of the imperial family, and all the others seem to have had close court connections.74 As a result it is perhaps more sensible to view these consular gifts as an annual circulation of such objects within a small group rather than as an annual distribution to a much wider audience. This raises the spectre of certain senatorial, court and imperial families literally having cupboards full of these diptychs, and adding new ones on a yearly basis. The armarium images in the late medieval copies of the Notitia dignitatum show how such objects could be conceived of as a collection, lined up in an ofi ce or home (plate 16). This i ts with what we know about the reciprocity of gifts, especially in late antiquity.75

Thus, when Justinus sent out his diptychs in 540, we can reasonably posit an important senator, relative or ex-consul who would have received one and added it to an already extensive collection of such objects. Thus, just to limit ourselves to recorded or surviving ivories, a Justinus diptych could i nd itself alongside those of Apion 539, Philoxenus 525, Justinian 521, Magnus 518, Anastasius 517, Anthemius 515, Clementinus, 513, and Areobindus 506. Whether displayed together as a form of living calendar,76 or whether each new consuls diptych replaced that of his predecessors, whose diptychs were then retired to a cupboard somewhere, the result is strikingly monotonous. Between them, the two earliest diptychs provided the models for every element of the iconography of Justinus diptych: it is very hard to see any major shift in the display of consular power. There are many small differences, but the overall comparison is indistinguishable in essence. Indeed there was a stock of motifs that could be combined from year to year to make up the diptych: the boys pouring out sacks of bullion; the various elements that make up the circus entertainments.



Cecilia Olovsdotter and others have seemingly inexhaustibly teased out the subtle differences between leaves, but they have never really considered the overwhelming monotony that unites them far more than the differences that divide them.77 If placed alongside each other, these diptychs suggest that consular identity was about conformity and a deliberate corporate cohesion. Year after year the consul stressed the same message as his predecessors, and visualized it in the same way.

The repetition is doubled again by the almost identical nature of the two leaves of each diptych. This duplication across the leaves distinguishes the eastern diptychs from their western counterparts. All the surviving diptychs from Rome and the west date to the i fth century, and seem to have allowed a much freer relationship between the leaves.78 Equally, book covers or religious diptychs of this period, such as the sixth-century diptych showing Christ and the Virgin in Berlin, make the most of the requirement for hand carving of each leaf to double the range of imagery that was produced.79 The duplication of imagery on the eastern diptychs gives these objects a very different structure. The fact that the inscription across the top of the diptychs runs across both leaves forces the viewer to confront this duplication: the text of the consuls names and titles can only be read by looking at each leaf in turn. Thus for the diptych of Areobindus in Zurich (see plate 1), the inscription starts on the right leaf (the opposite of the order of the western diptychs).80 This gives his full names: FL[avius] AREOB[indus] DAGAL[aifus] AREOBINDUS V[ir] I[nlustris] (Flavius Areobindus Dagalaifus Areobindus, the Illustrious man). The titles continue on the left, back, leaf in ascending order of precedence: EX C[omite] SAC[ri] STA[buli] ET M[agister] M[ilitum] P[er] OR[ientum] EX C[onsule] C[onsul] OR[dinarius] (former count of the sacred stables and master of the army of the orient, former consul, ordinary consul). In order to read the full name and titles the viewer is required to view both leaves, thus imprinting the duplication of the imagery.

The duplication across leaves and across the years may have been an unwritten condition of the post itself. The limited and entirely ceremonial duties of the consul, and the weight of tradition that accompanied them one thousand years after the establishment of the institution, would perhaps have made this inevitable. However, a desire to conform may have had other motivations behind it. The elevated status of the consuls, their wealth and connections may have encouraged a form of institutional conformity and anonymity. Consuls were among the few men in a position to be able to court the popularity that they would need alongside their wealth to seize power in Constantinople. Vitalianus murder in the palace in 520 during his consular year, supposedly on the orders of Justinian, seems to have been motivated by just such a fear of the coincidence of his imperial ambitions and his position and popularity in the publics eye.81 And the Nika riot of 532 put forward two former consuls, Hypatius (cos. 500) and Pompeius (cos. 502), as pretenders to the throne.82 This continuing fear of rivals emerging among the consuls seems to have led to Justinians decision to end the institution later in his reign. In 512, Areobindus had been forced to l ee Constantinople when his wealth (derived from his marriage to Anicia Juliana) and his prestige (derived from having been consul in 506) made him a popular candidate for the imperial throne during a revolt against the emperor Anastasius.83 Areobindus seems to have played no part in this revolt, but his public position had given him that role despite himself.

The ultimate fate of failed consuls was plain for all to see, and had been enshrined in the law code of Theodosios in the fourth century. The disgrace of the consul Eutropius in 399 was to be eternal: His splendour has been stripped away and the consulate delivered from foul muck and from the need to remember his name and its


Antony Eastmond

i lthy squalor. This has been done so that, once every item of business he transacted has been revoked, silence may fall for all time and the stain on our age may not be made visible by his name being listed among the consuls ... We direct that all statues, all likenesses, whether they be of bronze, or of marble, or painted (or of whatever material these images may be made), should be obliterated from all cities, towns, and from public and private places, so that this blot on our age may not dei le the gaze of those who look upon it.84

This is strikingly different from the west, where the Gothic rulers of the late i fth and early sixth centuries encouraged their consuls to generosity. Theoderic wrote to Felix, western consul in 511: This is an occasion where extravagance earns praise where one gains in good opinion all that one loses in wealth.85 More coni dent in the loyalty of his (non-Roman) troops, Theoderic was perhaps more secure in his ability

16 Armarium in the Notitia Dignitatum, 1542, copying a i fth-century original . Munich: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (Clm. 10291, fol. 199v). Photo: Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek.



to buy the Romans acquiescence and continued loyalty with other peoples money.However, the diptychs visual evidence of a move towards a sense of corporate

rather than individual identity among the consuls of the east in the sixth century seems to undermine what are otherwise some of the key factors in becoming a consul at all. As i rst noted by Edward Gibbon, the post of consul existed for the sole purpose of giving a date to the year and a festival to the people.86 Consuls immortality was assured by the requirement to name them in identifying any particular year; and Kim Bowes has argued that the consulship was popular precisely as a vehicle for individual, not corporate, memorial.87 She argues that the attraction of accepting the consulship was simple: although it required enormous expenditure (much of it underwritten by the imperial coffers in Constantinople), its reward was the consuls place in history. With the bureaucratic year named after him, and his name added to the consular lists his everlasting memorial was guaranteed (bar disgrace of the sort that Eutropius suffered).

The imagery on consular diptychs also reveals a tension with John Matthews arguments that consular games were held in a spirit of anxious rivalry, knowing that their expenditure on the games would be compared to that of previous consuls.88 The visual evidence of the surviving diptychs cannot support such an individualistic reading. Whilst Justinian was famed for outspending all other consuls on his games in 521 (a total of 228,000 solidi), that expense was not explicitly revealed in his consular diptychs.89 At the very least we must see it as a war of excess fought behind a curtain of sameness. In the same way that the tetrarchs of the late third century asserted their power through visual solidarity with one another, so too in the sixth century it seems consuls proclaimed their position by downplaying their separate identities.

The individualization of consuls in this period is carried out within very strict limits: Within the corpus of full- and half-i gure diptychs Areobindus is only distinguished from Clementinus or Anastasius by the relative chubbiness of his cheeks,90 and the same hair styles and round faces appear on the diptychs at the end of the sequence. Only Magnus receding hairline and beard,91 and Philoxenus square jaw and heavy jowls help them stand out from this sequence,92 but again in both cases the distinctions are relatively small. Whether they were viewed in series or in parallel in the sixth century, it is hard to see these objects standing out as manifestos of individuals importance. Again diptychs here seem to match elements of epistolary theory. Letter writing was learned via models rather than manuals, and so it encouraged emulation and imitation over originality.93

Ultimately, it is impossible to square the circle that this paper has investigated: the paradoxes of diversity and monotony, and of corporate conformity and individuality. This can only be because the positions of the consuls could not be reconciled either. The role of consul was entirely concerned with individual display and spectacle, but the political dangers that accompanied the consulship required anonymity. Consuls sought both to present their prestige to a variety of audiences, and so required a variety of visual languages to display that authority; yet simultaneously, they sought anonymity in the thousand years of tradition that underpinned their role before its abolition by Justinian in 541. The visual forms of praise that they employed ultimately all sought to say the same thing, and used different modes to portray particular institutional rather than individual virtues.


Antony Eastmond

18 For example, he has been identii ed as Cynegius, Praetorian prefect of the East 3848 (Bente Kiilerich, Late Fourth-century Classicism in the Plastic Arts: Studies in the so-called Theodosian Renaissance, Odense, 1993, 22) or Constantius III (J. Meischner, Das Missorium des Theodosius in Madrid, Jahrbuch des deutschen archologischen Instituts, 111, 1996, 419). In contrast, Leader-Newby has proposed that the dish was made by the depicted recipient to link his promotion to the decennial of the emperor: Ruth Leader-Newby, Silver and Society in Late Antiquity: Functions and Meanings of Silver Plate in the Fourth to Seventh Centuries, Aldershot, 2004, 48.

19 J. P. C. Kent and K. Painter, eds, Wealth of the Roman World: Gold and Silver AD300700, London, 1977, nos. 110: each weighing approximately 0.5, 1 and 1.5lb. R. Delmaire, Les largesses impriales et lemission dargenterie du IVe au VIe sicle, in N. Duval and F. Baratte, eds, Argenterie Romaine et Byzantine, Paris, 1988, 114, lists all the Licinius pieces, with further bibliography. For a brief overview see Leader-Newby, Silver and Society, 1617.

20 This was presumably the case with the nine dishes in the Munich hoard and the three in the Cervenbreg hoard (Bulgaria) which both add up to about 8lb of silver. See Leader-Newby, Silver and Society, 1819, for further references.

21 Jocelyn M. C. Toynbee, Roman Medallions [Numismatic Studies: 5], New York, 1944, 11617.

22 John Lydus, Ioannes Lydus On Powers, or the Magistracies of the Roman State, ed. A. C. Bandy [Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society: 149], Philadelphia, PA, 1983; and lively discussion in Christopher Kelly, Ruling the Later Roman Empire [Revealing Antiquity: 15], Cambridge, MA, and London, 2004.

23 D16/V15.24 D32/V31. The identii cation of the Orestes diptych as originally

a Clementinus diptych has been convincingly made by N. Netzer, Redating the consular ivory of Orestes, Burlington Magazine, 125, 1983, 26571. Olovsdotter, Consular Image, 312, disagrees, but does not provide a clear alternative explanation for the evident alteration to the heads of the consul and imperial couple.

25 D33/V32. In comparison, the roughly contemporary archangel leaf in the British Museum is 428 143 mm (612.04 cm2 ): slightly taller but less wide, and again here the left edge tapers at top and bottom to match the curvature of the tusk: most recently published in Robin Cormack and Maria Vassilaki, eds, Byzantium 3301453, London, 2008, no. 21.

26 The three dishes are all in the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg: Constantius on horseback (Hermitage inv. 1820/79) is 660 g; the dish with proi le bust of Constantius (Hermitage inv. 1820/158) is 634.6 g (and has an inscription on the reverse claiming it to weigh 1 pound, 11 ounces, 8 scruples = 636 g); The other dish weighs 642.4 g: Leonid Matzulewitsch, Byzantinische Antike. Studien auf Grund der Silbergefsse der Ermitage, [Archologische Mitteilungen aus russischen Sammlungen: 2], Berlin and Leipzig, 1929, 95107, esp. 107 n.1; pls 2325; see now Antony Eastmond, Robin Cormack and Peter Stewart, eds, The Road to Byzantium: Luxury Arts of Antiquity, London, 2006, nos. 61 and 62.

27 Munich Staatsbibliothek MS Clm. 10291 fols 178r222r. See P. C. Berger, The Insignia of the Notitia Dignitatum: A Contribution to the Study of Late Antique Illustrated Manuscripts, New York, 1981, 2531, 17583; i gs 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 23, 24, 46, 48, 49, for portrait-bearing codicils and full discussion of the manuscript history and the authenticity of the images. See also Robert J. Grigg, Portrait-bearing codicils in the illustrations of the Notitia Dignitatum?', Journal of Roman Studies, 69, 1979, 10724.

28 Lydus, Magistracies of the Roman State, 3.4; Kelly, Ruling the Later Roman Empire, 19 quoting 3.4.

29 Novel 105.2; trans. in The Civil Law, 105.2: Concerning the wife and mother of the consul.

30 Areobindus: D912/V811; Justinian: D268/V257. On the technical aspects of the carving of the Justinian diptychs: Cutler, The making of the Justinian diptychs.

31 Anthony Cutler, Prolegomena to the craft of ivory carving in late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, in X. Barral i Altet, ed., Artistes, artisans et production artistique au Moyen Age: 2: Commande et travail, Paris, 1987, 43175, at 433.

32 Although Alan Cameron, Obervations on the distribution and ownership of late Roman silver plate, 185, has doubted even this, declaring that silver was not all that valuable.

Notes

1 Justinian, Novellae, eds R. Schll and G. Kroll [Corpus iuris civilis: 3], Berlin, 1928, 105.1; trans. in The Civil Law, including the Twelve tables: the Institutes of Gaius, the Rules of Ulpian, the Opinions of Paulus, the Enactments of Justinian,

and the Constitutions of Leo, ed. S. P. Scott, vol. 17, Cincinatti, OH, 1932; reprint: New York, 1973, 17: 105.1: Concerning the seven processions of the consuls.

2 D915/V814. The numbering is taken from: D = Richard Delbrueck, Die Consulardiptychen und verwandte Denkmler, Berlin, 1929; V = Wolfgang F. Volbach, Elfenbeinarbeiten der sptantike und des frhen Mittelalters [Rmisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum zu Mainz. Katalog: 7], Mainz, 1952, 2nd edn.

3 Delbrueck, Consulardiptychen, 10, estimates that each consul may have produced 100 diptychs, but this number is pure guesswork, based on the assumption of a survival rate of no more than 10 percent (i.e. the ten leaves of Areobindus). The multiple production of diptychs is considered below.

4 Eighteen leaves from 12 diptychs of full-i gure type (D912/V811 [Areobindus, 506]; D16/V15 [Clementinus, 513]; D17/V16 [Anthemius, 515]; D1821/V1721 [Anastasius, 517]; D22/V2324 [Magnus, 518]; D32/V31 [Orestes, 530, probably re-cut from a Clementinus panel, see note 24]); 12 leaves from 7 diptychs of medallion type (D1314/V1213 [Areobindus, 506]; D29/V28 [Philoxenus 525]; D33/V32 [Apion, 539]; D34/V33 [Justinus, 540]; D4142/V4142 [both anonymous]); 12 leaves from 7 diptychs of simple type (D15/V14 [Areobindus, 506]; D21bis/V22 [Anastasius, 517]; D2628/V2527 [Justinian, 521]; D29, D31/V2829 [Philoxenus, 525]). This count excludes the diptych of Basilius, 541, (D6/V5), which is now generally accepted to have been made in Rome for the eastern consul: Alan Cameron and D. Schauer, The last consul: Basilius and his diptych, Journal of Roman Studies, 72, 1982, 12645. A possible fourth category, the imperial diptych, is represented only by fragments of an anonymous i ve-part panel in Milan: D49/V49.

5 D20/V18; Paul Williamson, The Medieval Treasury: The Art of the Middle Ages in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1998, 523.

6 The emphasis on full-i gure diptychs is evident in both Cecilia Olovsdotter, The Consular Image: An Iconological Study of Consular Diptychs, [BAR International Series: 1376], Oxford, 2005, and in the essays in Massimiliano David, ed., Eburnea Diptycha. I dittici davorio tra Antichit e Medioevo, Bari, 2007.

7 Paul Veyne, Le pain et le cirque. Sociologie historique dun pluralisme politique, Paris, 1976, trans. Brian Pearce, Bread and Circuses. Historical Sociology and Political Pluralism, London, 1990.

8 The honourable exception is Anthony Cutler, The making of the Justinian diptychs, Byzantion, 54, 1984, 75115, reprinted in A. Cutler, Late Antique and Byzantine Ivory Carving [Variorum: CS617], Aldershot, 1998, Study V.

9 Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, Lettres III (livres VIVIII), ed. and trans. J. P. Callu, Paris, 1995, 7.76, quoted in Alan Cameron, Obervations on the distribution and ownership of late Roman silver plate, Journal of Roman Archaeology, 5, 1992, 180, along with two very similar quotations.

10 For the legal use of diptychs, Elizabeth A. Meyer, Legitimacy and Law in the Roman World: Tabulae in Roman Belief and Practice, Cambridge, 2004.

11 The most recent attempt to hypothesize the interior written content is Kim Bowes, Ivory lists: Consular diptychs, Christian appropriation and polemics of time in Late Antiquity, Art History, 24: 3, 2001, 33857.

12 Delbrueck, Consulardiptychen, 1016.13 Delbrueck, Consulardiptychen, 16. 14 Olovsdotters refusal to examine them has already been noted in the

review by Anthony Cutler, The consular diptych and the limits of iconology, Journal of Roman Archaeology, 19: 2, 2006, 711.

15 Cutler, The making of the Justinian diptychs, 105: it is likely that the three varieties of diptych were intended for different grades.

16 Martn Almagro-Gorbea, Jos lvarez Martnez, Jos Blzquez Martnez and Salvador Rovira, eds, El disco de Teodosio [Estudios del Gabinete de Antigedades: 5], Madrid, 2000. Accepting the general concensus that 1 roman lb = 327.168 g, then the missorium should weigh 16.13 kg (it actually weighs 15.35 kg.)

17 Marlia Mundell Mango and Anna Bennett, The Sevso Treasure vol. 1, Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series, 12: 1, 1994, 153: the Achilles plate has a diameter of 720 mm; and weighs 11,786 g.



33 Symmachus, Lettres III (livres VIVIII), 7.76.34 Most gifts in late antiquity were rather more impermanent, impersonal

or transferable; compare the many gifts of food, horses, robes, etc., that are recorded in letters: Ian Wood, The exchange of gifts among the late antique aristocracy, in Almagro-Gorbea, lvarez Martnez, Blzquez Martnez, and Rovira, eds, El disco de Teodosio, 30114, esp. 3012.

35 Marcel Mauss, The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies, London, 1954, 62.

36 The Areobindus leaf in the Louvre (D13/V12) was carved with an image of creation in the ninth century: Danielle Gaborit-Chopin, Ivoires mdivaux VeXVe sicle, Paris, 2003, nos 8 (front), 41 (reverse).

37 For example, the Boethius diptych of 487 [D7/V6] whose interior includes two painted images and a list of martyrs of the seventh century: Diptyques, in F. Cabrol and H. Leclercq, eds, Dictionnaire darchologie chrtienne et de liturgie: 4.1, Paris, 1920, cols 1045170, or the Lucca diptych [D15/V14] inscribed with a list of martyrs in a sixth- or seventh-century Lombard hand: Diptyques, col. 1085.

38 As Clementinus [D16/V15], reused in Rome during the pontii cate of Hadrian I (77295): Diptyques, cols 108790.

39 D2631/V2529.40 D30/V29: [Dumbarton Oaks]:

.41 D29/V28 [Paris, Cabinet des mdailles]:

.42 D2628/V2527: + MUNERA PARVA QUIDEM PRETIO SED

HONORIB[us] ALMA + PATRIBUS ISTA MEIS OFFERO CONSUL EGO.43 Arnold Hugh Martin Jones, The later Roman Empire, 284602: A Social,

Economic and Administrative Survey, Oxford, 1964, 5267.44 On levels of literature see Ihor evcenko, Levels of style in Byzantine

literature, in Akten der XVI Internationaler Byzantinistenkongress I.1, Vienna, 1981, 289312.

45 Hugo Rabe, ed., Prolegomenon Sylloge, Leipzig, 1931, 79.2580.7; trans. G. A. Kennedy, Progymnasmata: Greek Textbooks of Prose Composition and Rhetoric, Atlanta, GA, 2003, 95: Aphthonius uses all three: the grand in ethopoeia, the relaxed and plain in ekphrasis, and the middle in some of the others.

46 Michael Trapp, Greek and Latin Letters: An Anthology with Translations, Cambridge, 2003, 334.

47 For the fullest exegesis of the imagery, see Otto von Simson, Sacred Fortress: Byzantine Art and Statecraft in Ravenna, Princeton, NJ, 1948, 2339; Friedrich W. Deichmann, Ravenna, Hauptstadt des sptantiken Abendlandes. Geschichte und Monumente [I], Wiesbaden, 1969, 23443 and Friedrich W. Deichmann, Ravenna, Hauptstadt des sptantiken Abendlandes. Kommentar II, Wiesbaden, 1976, 16694.

48 Fuller interpretations of the apse appear in Deichmann, Ravenna I, 26170 and Deichmann, Ravenna, Hauptstadt des sptantiken Abendlandes. Kommentar II, 24572; von Simson, Sacred Fortress, 4062, and Andreas Andreopoulos, Metamorphosis: The Transi guration in Byzantine Theology and Iconography, Crestwood, NY, 2005, 11725.

49 Kurt Weitzmann, The mosaic in St Catherines Monastery on Mount Sinai, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 110: 6, 1966, 392405; for fuller interpretations: Jas Elsner, The viewer and the vision: The case of the Sinai Apse, Art History, 17, 1994, 81102; Andreopoulos, Metamorphosis, 12744.

50 Clementinus: D16/V15; Magnus (later copies): D2325/V24bis; Justinus: D34/V33.

51 R. Martin Harrison, A Temple for Byzantium: The Discovery and Excavation of Anicia Julianas Palace-church in Istanbul, Austin, TX, 1989.

52 Harrison, A Temple for Byzantium, i g. 104 for cornice with monograms, vines and cornucopia.

53 The starting point for the extensive literature on the church is Harrison, A Temple for Byzantium, 3341; see also Mary Whitby, The St Polyeuktos epigram (AP 1.10): a literary approach, in S. F. Johnson, ed., Greek Literature in Late Antiquity: Dynamism, Didacticism, Classicism, Aldershot, 2006, 15988.

54 See Antonio Francesco Gori, Thesaurus veterum diptychorum consularium et ecclesiasticorum, Florence, 1759, I:227, Diptyques, col. 1112, and Delbrueck, Consulardiptychen, 117, for doubts about deciphering the monograms.

55 Lydus, Magistracies of the Roman State, 3.42; with discussion in Kelly, Ruling the Later Roman Empire, 324.

56 For a list of the letter types see Carol Poster, A conversation halved: Epistolary theory in Greco-Roman Antiquity, in C. Poster and L. C. Mitchell, eds, Letter-writing Manuals and Instruction from Antiquity to the Present, Columbia, SC, 2007, 2830.

57 Abraham J. Malherbe, Ancient Epistolary Theorists, Atlanta, GA, 1988, 30:1; Poster, A conversation halved, 25.

58 Jeffrey T. Reed, The epistle, in S. E. Porter, ed., Handbook of Classical Rhetoric in the Hellenistic Period 350B.C. A.D.400, Leiden, 1997, 17193, esp. 173; Similarly Gregory Nazianzus (Epistulae 51:4) distinguished between the style of his writing according to his audience: Reed, The epistle, 1845.

59 Reed, The epistle, 185.60 Malherbe, Ancient Epistolary Theorists, 64.89; Poster, A conversation

halved, 35.61 For an introduction to networks and zones: John Scott, Social Network

Analysis: A Handbook, London, 1991, 738. For its practical application in Byzantium: Margaret Mullett, Theophylacht of Ochrid: Reading the Letters of a Byzantine Archbishop [Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman monographs: 2], Aldershot, 1997, 163222.

62 D. A. Russell and N. G. Wilson, eds, Menander Rhetor, Oxford, 1981, Treatise II, 428, ll.79; discussion in Ruth Webb, Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice, Aldershot, 2009, 1601.

63 Malherbe, Ancient Epistolary Theorists, 62.205.64 Malherbe, Ancient Epistolary Theorists, 62.1517.65 Russell and Wilson, Menander Rhetor, 2874; Rabe, Prolegomenon Sylloge, 18,

trans. Kennedy, Progymnasmata, 82.66 This list brings together the various elements listed in the treatises:

Kennedy, Progymnasmata, 502, 813, 10811, 15462, 20610.67 It would perhaps be fairer to compare diptychs with praise, which

Nicolaus the Sophist distinguishes from encomium: Encomium differs from praise in that praise is constructed from few words for example, mention of one good thing whereas encomium is developed through an account of all the virtues and all the excellences of what is being praised (Kennedy, Progymnasmata, 155). Pseudo-Libanius makes a similar distinction (Malherbe, Ancient Epistolary Theorists, 70.1419).

68 Kennedy, Progymnasmata, 108.69 Peter Stewart, Statues in Roman Society: Representation and Response, Cambridge,

2003, 8391; Robert R. R. Smith, Late Antique portraits in a public context: Honorii c statuary in Aphrodisias in Caria, AD300600, Journal of Roman Studies, 89, 1999, 15589.

70 Plutarch, Traits 3741, in Oeuvres morales: 7 part 2, eds R. Klaerr and Y. Vernire, Paris, 1974, Treatise 40, 6485; discussed in Georg Misch, A History of Autobiography in Antiquity, London, 1950, I:1734.

71 Aelius Aristides, writing c. AD 170, takes an opposite view: pride in ones actions is in every way an old custom and a Greek one too, and that without this pride there would be accomplished among mankind neither a memorable deed nor a signii cant word, nor anything else, in his Oration XXVIII: Concerning a remark in passing: Aelius Aristides, Aelii Aristidis opera quae exstant omnia, ed. B. Keil, vol. 2, Berlin, 1898, 18; trans. C. A. Behr, Aelius Aristides: The Complete Works, Leiden, 1981, 110.

72 Delbrueck, Consulardiptychen, 10.73 Moreover, under Justinian the number of high honorary ofi cials

proliferated: S. J. B. Barnish, A. D. Lee and Michael Whitby, Government and administration, in A. Cameron, B. Ward Perkins and M. Whitby, eds, Cambridge Ancient History XIV: Late Antiquity: The Empire and Successors AD425600, Cambridge, 2000, 177.

74 Roger S. Bagnall, Alan Cameron, Seth R. Schwartz and Klaas A. Worp, Consuls of the later Roman Empire [Philological monographs of the American Philological Association: 36], Atlanta, GA, 1987.

75 Useful evidence is collected in Wood, The exchange of gifts, 3014; Mauss, The Gift, remains the primary anthropological source for these ideas.

76 This could be in addition to (rather than in opposition to) Kim Bowes argument that the lists were inscribed inside the diptychs: Bowes, Ivory lists.

77 Olovsdotter, Consular Image, 73178, provides the fullest such investigation.

78 D1, 7, 2, 57, 65, 63, 64 /V1, 6, 35, 58, 62, 63, 64. The contrast between the two leaves of the Basilius diptych of 541 is one of the principal reasons for its attribution to Rome rather than Constantinople: Cameron and Schauer, Last consul.


Antony Eastmond

79 V137. For recent bibliography: Cormack and Vassilaki, Byzantium 3301453, no. 25. For ivory bookcovers see John Lowden, The word made visible: The exterior of the early Christian book as visual argument, in W. E. Klingshirn and L. Safran, eds, The Early Christian Book, Washington, DC, 2007, 1347.

80 On this issue see Josef Engemann, Zur Anordnung von Inschriften und Bildern bei westlichen und stlichen Elfenbeindiptychen des vierten bis sechsten Jahrhunderts, Jahrbuch fr Antike und Christentum 28: Chartulae. Festschrift fr Wolfgang Speyer, Mnster, 1998, 10930.

81 The murder is recorded in John Malalas, Chronographia, ed. L. Dindorf, Bonn, 1831, 412; trans. and ed. Elizabeth Jeffreys, Michael Jeffreys and Roger Scott, The Chronicle of John Malalas [Byzantina Australiensia: 4], Melbourne, 1986, 2323, with commentary.

82 Malalas, Chronographia, 4756; trans. and ed. Jeffreys, Jeffreys and Scott, The Chronicle of John Malalas, 27881.

83 Ludwig August Dindorf and Barthold Georg Niebuhr, eds, Chronicon paschale [Corpus scriptorum historiae Byzantinae: 78], Bonn, 1832, 610; trans. and ed. Michael Whitby and Mary Whitby, Chronicon Paschale 284628 AD [Translated Texts for Historians: 7], Liverpool, 1989, 102. Malalas, Chronographia, 407; trans. and ed. Jeffreys, Jeffreys, and Scott, The Chronicle of John Malalas, 228.

84 T. Mommsen and P. M. Meyer, eds, Theodosiani libri XVI cum Constitutionibus Sirmondianis: Et Leges novellae ad Theodosianum pertinentes, Berlin, 1905, 9.40.17; trans. C. Pharr, The Theodosian Code and Novels and the Sirmondian Constitutions, Princeton NJ, 1952, 9.40.17.

85 Cassiodorus, Senatoris Variae, ed. T. Mommsen, Berlin, 1894, II.2; A. Cameron and D. Schauer, The last consul: Basilius and his diptych, Journal of Roman Studies, 72, 1982, 139.

86 Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, London, 1994, vol 4, ch. XV.

87 Bowes, Ivory lists, 347.88 John Matthews, Western Aristocracies and Imperial Court, AD 364425, Oxford,

1975, 13.89 Brian Croke, ed., The Chronicle of Marcellinus [Byzantina Australiensia: 7],

Sydney, 1995, 41.90 Compare D10/V9 [Areobindus] with D16/V15 [Clementinus] and

D21/V21 [Anastasius].91 D22/V23.92 D29/V28.93 Poster, A conversation halved, 22.