ABSTRACT
In 2nd century Greece, the Hellenic past, particularly the artistic legacy of the 5th and 4th centuries BCE, not only served as a model of self-representation for private individuals but also influenced imperial portraiture set in Greek cultural contexts all over the eastern part of the Roman Empire. A small group of such full-length male and female portraits have survived from the province of Achaea. After an introduction focusing on the significance of this type of representation in “Old Greece”, I present the surviving portraits from the reigns of Hadrian and the Antonines and explore how this particular type of iconography related to Roman imperial propaganda and/or had local political and cultural connotations, especially via the association of both emperors and members of the imperial family with local deities. Hadrian is known to have especially favored this particular type of self-representation, first with his ubiquitous full-beard portraits, and later with special-purpose full-length portrait statues, creations of Athenian workshops, which draw from the legacy of Classical Greek and especially Athenian art (e.g., his cuirassed portraits in Athens and Olympia). Idealistic portraits of the emperor in heroic nudity also survive, while cult statues and representations of his favorite, Antinous, also follow the same trend. The Antonines continued the tradition, but such tendencies functioned more as symbols of a smooth political transfer of power and dynastic continuity than full-on displays of philhellenism. In that respect, the bearded portraits of the Antonines constitute the more obvious example of continuity with the Hadrianic legacy.
