engleski

Representations of Weapons at the Arch of the Sergii in Pula, the Sergii’s Last Resting Place

Colonia Pola was instituted between 46 and 45 BC as Caesar's colony for the purpose of becoming a stronghold for Roman conquests in the Adriatic area all the way to Greece. After the civil war of 42 BC between the triumvirate of Octavian, Antony and Lepidus against Caesar's assassins, Brutus and Cassius, Pola, as a city loyal to Caesar, was taken, destroyed and ravaged after Octavian’s victory at the battle of Actium in 31 BC. Lucius Sergius Lepidus, a military tribune and aedile of the coloniae Polae, participated in the battle as the commander of the 29th Roman legion. In the course of the 3rd and the 2nd decades BC, the arch of the Sergii family was constructed. It was an inaugural monument, a herald of the economic, political, architectural and artistic flourishing of the Roman city of Pula at the end of the 1st century BC. The arch was envisaged as a Roman triumphal arch and was located at a prominent spot or, more precisely, at the exit and entrance to the city, on the axis of the main street (decumanus). It was an attractive city portal, built just on the inside of the city walls which were fortified by external, flanking semi-towers. The arch is the result of a dual kind of promotion, one public (the town’s) and the other private (the family’s), and it represents a unique urban structure which had a twin function, both decorative and protective. Salvia Postuma Sergi commissioned the construction of the arch. With its characteristics and size, the Arch of the Sergii falls into the category of small monumental arches. Its attic is strengthened at both ends and in the middle by bases for the statues of the three members of the Sergii family, in whose memory the arch, as a family memorial, was built or, more precisely, was added to the attractive town portal which was itself fortified by two semicircular towers. In the light of the rich military background of the members of the Sergii family, Salvia Postuma Sergi requested that the entablature and the attic be decorated with representations of weapons. There are 119 examples of weapons depicted on four friezes. The motif of irregularly set weapons has its model and origins in the Hellenistic world. Some weapons are represented more objectively and are more emphasised compared with the relief representations in later periods, where their value is mostly graphic and decorative. The practical and aesthetic problem of mounting the three statues of the Sergii on the attic of the arch was resolved by the visual as well as practical division of the attic by three protruding bases in the style of Hellenistic theatrical art. Such an attic also had a sepulchral function. The urns of the deceased would thus be stored at the highest, unreachable point, above which the statues would rise. When the attic was examined, it was observed that the attic remained intact from the moment it was constructed. This indicates the possibility that the remains of the deceased could still be present and intact. The Arch of the Sergii, as a plastic, coloristic and dynamically unified project of a triumphal, sepulchral and public monument, reflects the pro-Augustean spirit of the time when Colonia Iulia Pola was rebuilt.

Wapons; Arch of the Sergii; Pula; Last Resting Place

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