Dynamis in Rome? Revisiting the South Frieze of the Ara Pacis Augustae

Abstract

The Senate voted to build the Ara Pacis to welcome home Augustus after restoring order in the western provinces, while Agrippa pursued a similar mission in the East. Agrippa had settled the turmoil in the Bosporus by arranging for Queen Dynamis to marry King Polemon of Pontos, thereby uniting the two realms. Brian Rose (1990) explained that two boys on the Ara Pacis who do not wear togas are foreign princes in Rome in 13 BC exactly when Augustus and Agrippa returned from their foreign tours. Rose considered the older boy on the south frieze an eastern prince, probably Aspurgos, the future king of the Bosporus. He speculated that Queen Dynamis had come to Rome with Agrippa, and that she is the woman who puts her hand on the boy’s head. Rose exposed the frailty of Giuseppe Moretti’s theory, who regarded the two boys as Gaius and Lucius Caesar dressed as Trojans. We agree with Ann Kuttner, Gaius Stern, John Pollini, Ilaria Romeo that the boys are barbarians, not Romans, but cannot accept the identifications with Dynamis and Aspurgos, (1) on prosopographical lines, because the placement of Dynamis on the Ara Pacis relies upon identifying her as the mother of Aspurgos, which claim the ancient sources do not support; (2) on practical terms, since Dynamis should have stayed in her kingdom to help Polemon consolidate his new throne (not speculation but positive evidence would be needed to counter this view); (3) iconographical ly, as the woman on the Ara Pacis does not closely resemble the image of Dynamis; (4) be cause Dynamis was a mature, middle-aged queen by 13 BC, as her portrait on two gold staters indicate, whereas the Ara Pacis teenager is far too young. She is actually Agrippa’s least famous daughter, wearing not a diadem, but a brill appropriate for a Roman teenage girl close to marrying age. Her hand is resting on the head of a Parthian prince, a ‘guest’ in Rome, hosted by the family of Agrippa.