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- [Steven] When we're lucky enough to have
an ancient object that was excavated by
trained archeologists, we have so much more
information than we would otherwise have.
- [Elizabeth] A perfect example of this is
a pair of portraits that are today
in the British Museum.
- [Steven] They're not in great condition.
- [Elizabeth] Getting excited about these works
requires us to give up our expectations of
ancient portraiture that it has to be beautiful
and smooth and white.
We have to learn to look past the breaks
to appreciate everything these can tell us.
- [Steven] But if we have that patience,
we are richly rewarded.
- [Elizabeth] So let's just imagine for a moment
that these portraits didn't come from
a well-documented archeological excavation,
but rather that they surfaced on the art market.
That's where the vast majority of the Roman sculpture
first becomes known to the public,
is when it's in a dealer's hands
or in a private collection already.
What would we be able to say about this?
- [Steven] We'd have as evidence
only the object itself.
- [Elizabeth] And there's a lot to build on there.
This is a beautifully carved work of
Greek Pentelic marble.
The sculptor used a range of tools;
a drill, a chisel.
He modeled the surface of
the stone with tremendous skill.
- [Steven] The other thing that we
would have been able to do if we didn't have
a findspot was to compare it to
other existing sculptures.
And there is in fact another portrait
that looks very similar.
- [Elizabeth] We can compare these portraits
to coin images of a man named Pertinax
who was the emperor of Rome,
and who had been governor of Britain.
- [Steven] But in fact, we have the findspot.
The findspot was in a villa
not outside of Rome, but outside of what was then
Londinium in the Roman province of Britannia,
what we now call England.
- [Elizabeth] So already, just knowing that
tells us a tremendous amount.
It tells us that it was in somebody's interest
to bring this all the way from Greece
where it would've been originally carved
up to Britain, a remote northern province
of the Roman empire.
Public portraits would've been set up
not only in places that we think of as public,
but they also would've been set up in
important officials' homes.
- [Steven] So what do we know
about the villa itself?
- [Elizabeth] The archeology of the villa
suggests that it was right around the period
when this portrait was made,
that this villa was expanded and spruced up
in very Roman ways.
A bath complex was added.
Walls were repainted with Roman-style imagery.
A very high-status finger ring carved in
a semiprecious stone was found on the site.
- [Steven] And having marble portrait busts
was very much a part of this Romanization.
- [Elizabeth] And people coming to the villa
would've seen all of this Roman visual culture
and understood that whoever was living in
this villa was someone with close ties
to Roman imperial authority.
- [Steven] Britain was the outskirts,
and so one can imagine how important it would be
to reflect Roman culture.
- [Elizabeth] It's very tempting to imagine
that this villa was the country estate of Pertinax
when he was the governor of Britain.
- [Steven] And it would not be unusual to
imagine that the governor would have brought
an image of himself from the Mediterranean world
as an expression of his power, of his prestige.
- [Elizabeth] And we have to remember that
this was set up in the house together with
the image of what is probably a relative of his.
The two portraits were probably set up in
the public atrium of the house or some public
reception room where they would've been seen by
people coming to the villa
to conduct official business.
- [Steven] But it's also possible that
the portraits date to his imperial period,
perhaps in recognition that he had once
lived here as governor.
- [Elizabeth] Already, we can see the ways
in which the presence of these portraits
in this villa gives us a lot of information
we would not have otherwise had
about the villa itself.
What's really exciting about these portraits is
they weren't found in a large
public space of the villa.
They were found in what seems to be
a kind of cult room in the basement of the house
with bowls installed in the ground
in front of them, apparently in order to
receive libations, in order to
receive votive offerings.
- [Steven] There are two explanations for this.
One has to do with the fact that this emperor,
after he was killed, was deified.
That is, he was made into a god,
and so offerings would be appropriate.
- [Elizabeth] Another possible explanation
is that whoever the later owners of this villa were
found these portraits and they respected them
as part of a kind of house spirit,
and so set them up in this honorific
context in the basement.
If we fast-forward another hundred years,
the archeologists were able to see that
this basement was renovated.
- [Steven] One of the earliest Christian
house churches in all of Britain was
built just immediately above.
But these figures were not toppled,
they were not buried.
They continued to be venerated
even as the Christian church above was used.
- [Elizabeth] We have to remember that
for a very long time after the introduction of
Christianity into the Roman empire,
traditional forms of worship continued
side by side with these new Christian practices.
- [Steven] So we have these two portrait busts.
They're not in great condition,
but they still tell us an enormous amount
about late Roman imperial history
and early Christian history in Britain.
- [Elizabeth] Because these works have a findspot.
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