Portonaccio sarcophagus

The chest is very high, with all the front covered in high reliefs of combat between Romans and barbarians. The complex battle is divided into four sections: two above with Roman cavalry, one with Roman infantry, and the last and lowest with the overwhelmed barbarians. At the center, forceful lines converge on the one figure, the cavalry general charging and who does not have a carved face. • Illustration — Detail of front, to centre, with the general The face of the general is unfinished, either because the sculptors awaited a model to work from, or they had produced the work speculatively with no specific commission. There might either have been time to finish it before the burial or the sculptor might not have been able to learn the buyer's face. Some modern studies believe that the sculptors would create biographical scenes that would serve as illustration for anyone's life. The general and his wife are also each shown twice on the lid frieze, together holding each other's hands at the centre, and singly at the ends, again with unfinished faces. Pairs of figures of an older man and a woman stand beneath trophies at either end of the main face, uninvolved in the battle. The barbarian at right is probably Suebian (Marcomanni, Quadi, or Buri) based on his hairstyle (a Suebian knot). The barbarian on the left is either a high German or a Sarmatic Iazyges. These are at the same scale as the general, and all the other battling figures are smaller; indeed, in defiance of any attempt at perspective, the soldiers and horses at the "front" of the scene in the lower part are somewhat smaller than their equivalents at the "back" in the upper part. The sarcophagus representations don't exhibit any sympathy for the conquered peoples—they are represented as coarse and despicable, crushed under the superior Romans. • Illustration — Detail of the corner of the sarcophagus The cover of the sarcophagus has two large acroterions depicting gargoyles and is decorated with a low-relief frieze that depicts a life story (the presentation of a baby to its mother, his education, marriage, and a dedication to Clementia). The face, as on the main sarcophagus, is not depicted. The sarcophagus inscription suggests that it houses a general named Aulo Giulio Pompilio Tito Vivio Levillo Pisone Bereniciano.