ABSTRACT
The earliest sculptural representations o f Britannia were excavated in 1980 in Aphrodesias in Turkey. There, a series o f com m em or ative reliefs dating from the first century a d celebrated the Roman conquest o f Britain by Claudius. Britannia, her name probably derived from the name o f one o f the native Celtic tribes, denotes the genius or local spirit o f the land. There had long been a convention in Greek art to represent cities and provinces as ideal ised female figures. By Hellenistic times, subject nations were sometimes also modelled on actual male and female captives. 1 The Britannia o f Aphrodesias seem to belong to the first category.
