C U L T A N D S C U L P T U R E : S A C R I F I C E I N T H E ARA PACIS A U G U S T A E *

By JOHN ELSNER
(Plates I-VII)

O n 30 January 9 B.c., two thousand years ago this year, the Senate dedicated the Ara
Pacis Augustae.' This paper celebrates that anniversary by putting forward a new interpretation of the altar's significance. Rather than focusing on a discussion of iconography or the
identification of individuals portrayed on the altar, I shall explore the sacrificial implications of
what was, after all, an important site for sacrificial cult in Rome. We may note that the earliest
Roman accounts of the Ara Pacis both emphasize sacrificial rite. I n the Res Gestae, Augustus
comments (12.2):
Cum ex Hispania Galliaque, rebus in iis provincis prospere gestis, Romam redi, Ti. Nerone P.
Quintilio consulibus, aram Pacis Augustae senatus pro reditu meo consacrandam censuit
ad campum Martium, in qua magistratus et sacerdotes virginesque Vestales anniversarium
sacrificium facere iussit.
On my return from Spain and Gaul, in the consulship of Tiberius Nero and Publius Quintilius
[13 B.c.], after successful operations in these provinces, the Senate voted in honour of my return
the consecration of an altar to Pax Augusta in the Campus Martius, and on this altar it ordered the
magistrates and priests and Vestal virgins to make annual sacrifice.
Ovid, too, in the F a s t i (1.7ogf .) specifically stresses the sacrificial theme of the Ara Pacis when
he describes the festival connected with it on 30 January:
Tura sacerdotes pacalibus addite flammis

albaque perfusa victima fronte cadat . . .

Add incense, priests, to the flames which burn on the altar of Peace;
let a white victim fall after the sprinkling of its brow . . .
One general weakness of scholarly discussions of the Ara Pacis is that they fail to emphasize
sufficiently this sacrificialfunction of the altar. They therefore miss an important aspect of its
meaning to which the Romans themselves were particularly responsive. I n fact, it is hard to
overestimate the significance of sacrifice in Roman culture as a whole. I n Augustan Rome,
sacrificial ritual not only defined the relation of Romans to their gods, but also established the
hierarchy of social relation^.^ I t is in this context, then, that I shall examine the meaning of the
Ara Pacis.
Before proceeding any further, I should make my position explicit with regard to previous
interpretations of this much-studied monument. Underlying most traditional interpretations
is a set of assumptions about ancient art which centre on the theme of 'naturalism'.

* Versions of this paper have been delivered at

seminars in Oxford, London, and at the Classical
Association in Wanvick. I should like to thank all those
present, and especially Mary Beard, Peter Garnsey, John
Henderson, Keith Hopkins, Roger Ling, Jamie Masters,
Jeremy Tanner, and the Editor for their comments. I am
particularly indebted to Valerie Huet whose knowledge of
Roman sculpture and understanding of Roman sacrifice
are second to none. My thanks to Professor G . Waywell
and the Ashmole Archive of King's College, London, for
Pls I1 and VII and to the German Archaeological Institute
in Rome for the remaining plates.
On the dates and historical circumstances, see S.
Settis, 'Die Ara Pacis', in Kaiser Augustus und die
verlorene Republik (1988), 401 and E. Simon, Ara Pacis
Augustae (1967), 8. The relevant texts areRG 12.2; Ovid,
Fasti 1.709ff. ; CIL VI,2028b; VI, 32347a; X, 8375.
On Roman sacrificial procedure, see G. Wissowa,

'

Religion und Kultus der Roher (1912), 4 0 ~ 3 2and K.

Latte, Romische Religionsgeschichte (1970)~379-93. On
aspects of the sociological and anthropological significance
of Roman sacrifice, see R. L. Gordon, 'The Veil of Power:
Emperors, Sacrificers and Benefactors' and 'Religion in
the Roman Empire: The Civic Compromise and its
Limits', both in M. Beard and J. North (eds), Pagan
Priests ( ~ g g o ) ,201-55; J. Scheid, 'La Spartizione a
Roma', Studi Stonci 4 (1984), 945-56; idem, 'Sacrifice
et banquet A Rome: quelques problkmes', MEFRA 97
(1985)~193-206. General works on the significance of
sacrifice in Graeco-Roman antiquity are: R. Girard,
Violence and the Sacred (1979), W. Burkert, Homo
Necans (1983), M. Detienne and J.-P. Vernant, La
Cuisine du sacrifice en pays Grecs (1979), J. Rudhardt
and 0. Reverdin (eds), Le Sacn$ce duns I'antiquite'
Entretiens Fondation Hardt 27 (1981), R. G. HamertonKelly (ed.), Violent On'$ns (1987).

C U L T A N D S C U L P T U R E : SACRIFICE I N T H E ARA PACIS A U G U S T A E

5'
'Naturalism' is an entailment of the ancient theory of mimesis whereby art represents nature.
Narrowly defined, it assumes that a naturalistically painted or sculpted image refers back
specifically to a real object or situation. So a particular figure on the Ara Pacis must be a
portrait of Augustus, Agrippa, or a member of the imperial family (for example), while the
processions sculpted on its walls must refer to specific historical processions - at the altar's
dedication in 9 B.c., for instance. My objection to this approach is not that it is necessarily
wrong, but that it is limiting. I t assumes that images have single meanings rooted in the
intentions of artists or patrons. T h e ancient viewer's role is simply to register such original
meanings; the modern scholar's role is to decode them. This naturalist theory of art leads
scholars into a debate of identifying and re-identifying figures and thereby tends to exclude the
viewer. I t deprives art of the many possibilities for additional, creative and subversive
interpretations which images inevitably evoke in different viewers and at different times.
There is a less narrow version of the 'naturalist' thesis, advanced most recently and with
considerable sophistication by Paul Zanker.3 With this I must also take issue. Zanker argues
that the Ara Pacis does not merely represent a single historical event or a group of individual
portraits. On the contrary, as Zanker writes of the processional friezes (Pl. I ) :
The sculptural style and composition, inspired by classical reliefs, elevates the scene beyond the
historical occasion into a timeless sphere. Not all the figures depicted were actually in Rome on the
day of the dedication. The Senate, which commissioned the monument, was concerned not that
every figure be recognizable, but with the correct grouping of each of the priesthoods.
Significantly, only the most important men have portrait features, while the rest have idealized
faces that conceal their individual identity. (p. 121)
Zanker eschews the narrow naturalism of reductivist identifications for a much broader
ideological interpretation of the altar's reliefs. T h e naturalistic rendition of specific details
such as the actual order of the priests (pp. 120-I), or their leather caps, cloaks and staffs
(pp. I 18-19) conveys an aura of likelihood and actuality on what is in fact a highly symbolic
representation. T h e idealism of such iconography 'conveys the dramatic experience of the
ritual slaughter, which was able to unleash powerful emotional forces every time' (p. I 14). In
short, the Ara Pacis (like Augustan art generally in Zanker's account) uses its naturalistic style
and religious associations to propagate a highly sophisticated and politicized picture of the
Augustan Principate. But such an interpretation is too totalizing. I t assumes that viewers
would see and accept the Augustan message without the possibility of alternative readings or
questionings of the iconography presented to them. And yet we know very well that poets like
Ovid subjected the official meanings of state ideology to irony and subversion. Although
Zanker cites odd works of art (such as a caricature from a villa near Stabiae of Aeneas,
Anchises, and Ascanius as dog-headed apes with large phalli) as 'minority voice^',^ he never
conceives of the bulk of official imagery as offering any meanings other than 'their un
relentingly didactic intent, manifested in constant repetition, similies and equivalences'
(p. 209). Essentially, Zanker's account, by presenting Augustan art as the state might ideally
have wished it to be viewed, deprives art of any subversive or conflictive viewings in a way that
is culturally and sociologically too ~ i m ~ l i s t i No
c . ~ society has ever been so efficiently
dictatorial that the image propagated by the government of itself was at once the only image
held of the government by every citizen.
My interpretation of the Ara Pacis is based on an alternative model of art to that provided
by 'naturalism'. I emphasize the nature and importance of viewing in the understanding
of images.6 Traditional approaches limit the meaning of art by referring us back to the

P. Zanker, The Poweroflmages in theAgeofAugustus

(1988).
Zanker, op. cit. (n. 3), 209; see also Zanker's article
'Bilderzwang: Augustan Political Symbolism in the
Private Sphere', in J. Huskinson, M. Beard and J.
Reynolds (eds), Image and Mystery in the Roman World
(1988), 1-22.
At the heart of this approach is the straightforward
sociological pyramid of Roman culture drawn by

G . Alfoldy, TheSocialHistory ofRome (1985), 146, with

the emperor at the top and the plebs at the bottom. This
model, accepted by Zanker, op. cit. (n. 3), 152 (cf. also
129), may be acceptable as a crude picture of social
hierarchies but has little relevance to the way people
viewed, thought about, or ironized such hierarchies.
See J. Elsner, Art and the Roman Viewer (forthcoming).

s2

JOHN ELSNER

supposed prototypes of naturalistic images - a member of the imperial family, particular

priests' hats, a sacrificial procession on a specific date. In this paper, I argue that an important
meaning of the Ara Pacis for its Roman viewers was actually constructed by their participation
in the sacrificial ritual which was the altar's function. Based on their previous experience of
sacrifice and on their experience at the moment they viewed the altar (whether as part of a
sacrificial ritual or not), viewers creatively constructed numerous meanings which might
deconstruct, undermine or conflict with each other. A Jewish view, for instance, or a
Pythagorean one might have been very different from that of a Roman priest. Moreover, the
altar - as a temple and a place of sacrifice - carried a series of cultural associations which
themselves constructed the ancient viewer as a religious participant. (We modern viewers, by
contrast, are no longer affected by these cultural associations- or we should not be so inclined
to naturalist interpretations.) There is a reciprocal relation of art-object and viewer, viewer
and art-object, that creates a 'dialogue' out of which meaning is born. In looking at the altar,
Roman viewers did not simply see images of a sacrifice that once happened. They saw a
cultural process in which they themselves became involved. This was a process which included
the sacrifice Aeneas made long ago, the sacrifice Augustus and the Senate made when the altar
was dedicated, the sacrifice that emperor and people would be making every year, the sacrifice
in which the viewer had himself participated (maybe last year and the year before) and would
make again in the future. In this sense, the sacrificial process, of which the Ara Pacis was the
setting, was permanently incomplete and yet always temporarily fulfilled by the viewer's own
participation in the sacrificial rite.
I do not argue that viewers never identified particular figures on the frieze. But in addition
to that kind of looking, and to the assimilation of the ideological impact of images so well
evoked by Zanker, there was a further, more complex, area of meaning embodied by the
sacrificial theme and context of the altar. A deep paradox is embedded in this set of religious
meanings. While sacrifice held out a promise of divine blessing and fruitfulness and life, it
simultaneously denied or at least undermined these benefits by the death and blood-spilling
and skulls through which man approached god.
I.

TOPOGRAPHY, POLITICS

AND SACRIFICE

All religious art evokes an Other World, which is different from this world. T h e particular
orientation of that Other World varies according to what kind of goal or Other a religion
presupposes. Before we examine the sculpture of the Ara Pacis, it may be helpful to set this
altar-temple's religious orientation into context and by this to suggest something of the nature
of the Roman state cult. T h e Ara Pacis was significantly located in relation to the gigantic
solarium of Augustus, dedicated in 10or 9 B . c . , in the same tribunician year as the altar itself.'
On Augustus' birthday, celebrated at the autumn equinox, the shadow of the gnomon or
.~
the
pointer of the sundial (a 30 m tall Egyptian obelisk) pointed to the Ara P a c i ~Moreover,
whole orientation of the precinct, the width of its entrances and even its central point were
'dictated' by a complex geometry based on the equinoctial line in the grid of the solarium,
which (if extended eastwards) would have cut through the entrances in the precinct walls and
through the sacrificial altar i t ~ e l fI.n~effect we cannot clearly separate the significance of the
Ara Pacis from the broader context of the Horologium and the whole Campus Martius
complex (including the Mausoleum and Ustrinum of Augustus), built between 42 and 9 B.C.'O
This entire programme, which cannot be dissociated (certainly after Augustus' death) from

' See E. Buc*,

Die SonnenuhrdesAugustus(1982),
(also idem, Horologium Solarium Augusti', Kaiser
Augustus und die verlorene Republik (1988), 240-5). On
the topography of this part of the Campus Martius, see E.
Rodriguez-Almeida, 'I1 Campo Marzio Settentrionale.
Solarium e Pomeriuml,Atti51-2 (1978-80), 195-212 and
F. Rakob, 'Die Urbanisiemngdes nordlichen Marsfeldes:
neue Forschungen im Areal des Horologium Augusti', in
Urbs: espace urbain et histoire Coll. de 1'Ccole Francaise
98 (19871,687-712.
10

Buchner, op. cit. (n. 7), 37 and Zanker, op. cit.

(n. 3)* '44
' Buchner, op. cit. (n. 7), 36 and the diagramat 27. For
a brief discussion of the symbolic effects of this relationship of monuments, see E. Simon, Augustus (1986),
26-9; on Augustus' propagandist use of the theme of time,
see A. Wallace-Hadrill, 'Time for Augustus', in M.
Whitby, P. Hardie and M. Whitby (eds), Homo Viator:
Classical StudiesforJohn Bramble (I&), 221-30.
lo On this whole 'Baukomplex', see Simon, op. cit.
(n. 91,2646.

C U L T A N D S C U L P T U R E : S A C R I F I C E I N T H E ARA P A C I S A U G U S T A E

53
the Emperor's apotheosis, is a visual enactment of the interpenetration of Augustan religion
with imperial politics. T h e Ara Pacis, a prime site of sacrificial cult, always bore the visual and
symbolic reminder that its sacrifice had a socio-political orientation.''
When we come to the imagery of the Ara Pacis, its sculptures directly relate either to the
theme of sacrifice which defined its cultic function or to the imperial mythology with which its
context had already imbued it.'' Like the imagery of other Augustan altars,13the reliefs which
we may provisionally identify as representing Aeneas, Mars with the twins, Italia, and Roma at
the corners of the West and East walls all refer pointedly to myths propagated under the
Principate. Generally, interpretations of the sculptural programme of the Ara Pacis have
focused on the mythic-political aspects of this imagery, or have attempted to identify and
reidentify particular figures in the sculpted frieze.14By contrast, I wish to concentrate on the
cultic implications of the sculpture and the relation of the imagery to the altar's primary
sacrificial function.
In fact the political theme of the Ara Pacis is dependent on the cultic theme, since any
politics involved in its inauguration drew on the charisma of the altar's sacrificial implications.
Moreover, the cultic theme offers us access to some of the responses of Roman viewers to their
art by giving us a context or frame within which they saw it. T h e festal context of a sacrificial
procession and the commentary which the processional and sacrificial reliefs of the Ara Pacis
make on such a festival provide a means of elucidating some of the cultural and social
implications of how the Romans looked at their art. Because, to some extent, we know how the
Ara Pacis was used, and can reconstruct something of the ritual flavour of its use from
archaeology, this monument is extraordinarily important not only for the finesse of its
sculpture but also for the more general information it can give us about the ritual and sacred
functions of Roman religious art. Nevertheless, it is important not to forget that the religious
art of the Ara Pacis is always related to an explicitly political imperial context.15
Before we turn to the sculptural decoration of the Ara Pacis, we should note some
important features of Roman sacrifice. In Roman religion, the cult statue (which represented
the deity whom the sacrificial rite was intended to propitiate) was normally not in the same
place as the actual sacrifice. Many reliefs (such as the image of Aeneas and the Penates on the
Ara Pacis, P1. 11) seem to suggest an ideology of divine presence where the god appears to be
there during sacrifice. Yet at the same time both reliefs and actuality often represent this
presence as at a spatial distance from the place of sacrifice. In the image of Aeneas and the
Penates (Pl. 11), the temple or shrine is behind and away from the sacrificial space of the altar
and the act of libation. In the surviving temples excavated at Pompeii the altar is always within
the main sanctuary but outside the aedes proper in which the god's image was housed.16 This
Pompeian arrangement is actually prescribed as an ideal for temple architecture in Vitruvius
(De Architectura 1 v . 5 . I and 1 v . 9 ) where the author makes much of a play between the gaze of
the statues within the temple looking out and down on those who sacrifice and that of the
worshippers who look up towards the temple and its cult deities -'the very images may seem
to rise up and gaze upon those who make vows and sacrifices'.

"

While doubt was once raised whether the monument

I discuss should be correctly identfied with the Ara Pacis

(see S. Weinstock, 'Pax and the "Ara Pacis"', JRS 50
(1960), 44-58), there is no doubt about its sacrificial
nature, its Augusfan date or its to ographic location in
relation to other highly significant lugustan monuments
in the Campus Martius.
l2 T h e principal discussions in English of the Ara Pacis
are M. Torelll, Typology and Structure of Roman
Historical Reliefs (1982), 27-62, and Zanker, op. cit.
major
(n. 3), 120-5, 158-61, 172-6, 1 7 d 3 , 203-6. TWO
overviews are Simon, op. cit. (n. I ) , and Settis, op. cit.
(n. I ) . The fundamental publication of the excavation is
G. Moretti, Ara Pacis Augustae (1948). A comprehensive
bibliography (to 1986) of what has now become a huge
literature is provided by G. Koeppel, 'Die historischen
Reliefs der romischen Kaiserzeit v: Ara Pacis Augustae,
Teil 1', BonnerJahrbucher 187 (1987), 101-57, esp. 152-7.
l3 For instance the altar of the gens Augusta set up by

P. Perelius Hedulus in Carthage, see L. Poinssot, L'Autel

de la gens Augusta a Carthage ( I 929).
l4 The latest example of this, with a large bibliography,
is C. B. Rose, "'Princes" and Barbarians on the Ara Pacis',
*JA 94 (199017 453-67.
On the pol~tlclzlngof sacrifice in the Roman Empire,
see Gordon, op. cit. (n. z), 201-31.
l6 See the excellent diagrams in J. B. Ward-Perkins and
A. Claridge, Pompeii A.D. 79 (1976), 58-61. On the
separation of sacrificial altar and temple proper 'for
reasons of conven~ence'see H. C. Bowerman, Roman
Sacrificial Altars (1913)~5; Pauly-Wissowa 'Altar' 11,
1649; J. E. Stambaugh, 'The Functions of Roman
Temples', ANRW 11, 16.1, 554-608, esp. 571-2. The
implication of 'the altar in front of the temple'in I Clement
(of Rome), Ad Corinthos 41 ( c . A . D .96) is that the same
structural arrangement is true (or was thought true by
Christians in Rome) of the Temple in Jerusalem before its
destruction in A.D. 70.

54

JOHN ELSNER

The altar is in one sense the goal of sacrificial action, the point where the exta are finally
placed.'' And yet this is only a preliminary goal in that the actual propitiation is of the god in
his temple. Furthermore the altar may not be the actual locus of killing but rather the place
where the exta are finally laid after being extracted. The altar is thus as much distanced
locationally and temporally from the sacrificial act of slaughter (there may be a considerable
time-lag between killing and cooking) as it is present by being the goal of at least some part of
the action. I shall touch later on the importance of what I shall call 'deferral'-- this quality of
the altar as preliminary rather than final goal, its function of being an end-point that points to a
further end (the deity in the aedes at which one gazes), a completion that hints beyond itself.
The Ara Pacis was not an untypical Roman templum in its layout or structure. In the
strictest definition, a templum was a piece of land set aside for religious purposes and
determined by ritual as a place for taking the auspices. This meant that a templum need not
possess an aedes, or house for the statue of the god.18 I n the case of the Ara Pacis, the absence
of an aedes complicates the process of 'deferral'. There was no cult statue within the precinct
walls, no obvious end to which the sacrificial process was directed. Clearly, who the final
recipient of any sacrifice at the Ara Pacis was to be, was deliberately left ambiguous. Among
the candidates must have been Pax herself, Mars the patron deity of the Campus Martius, and
not least the god Augustus whose remains were housed in the Mausoleum after A.D. 14 and
whose Horologium pointed portentously towards the sacrificial altar on the day of his birth.
Not only was 'deferral' extended here by removing any deity to be placated from within the
precinct walls, but it was further complicated by the multiplicity of divine Others who might
receive the oblation.
11.

THE ALTAR SCENE

In the art of Roman religion there are two principal types of representation of sacrifice:
the sacrificial ~rocessionand the altar scene.19 Both are to be found on the Ara Pacis. There are
sacrificial friezes both around the altar ('the small procession', P1. 111) and on the exterior of
the precinct walls ('the large procession', P1. I).'' There is, furthermore, a relief panel on the
exterior of the sanctuary wall to the right of the main entrance to the precinct which depicts a
togate and bearded man probably pouring a libation onto an altar (Pl. 11). This seems to be the
preliminary ritual before the slaughter of the sacrificial animal, here a sow. Over the altar is an
oak tree and behind is a temple in which are two male deities. T h e scene is usually interpreted
as the sacrifice of Aeneas to the Penates (Virgil, Aen. 111.389f. and v111.81f. ; Dionysius of
Halicarnassus,Ant. Rom. 1.57.1)."
Whatever its mythological associations, the scene of Aeneas pouring a libation has a
szeneral relations hi^ to its context. It decorates the walls of the ~ r e c i n cwithin
t
which the verv
ritual it portrays was enacted. The scene may have a specific referent (as has often been
argued)" in the inauguration rites for the Ara Pacis. But it also has a general referent in the act
of sacrifice that would take d a c e at different times within the san~tuarv.'~
The position of the ~ e A e a relief
s
on the outside wall of the precinc; is important. It marks
not a goal and location of sacred action (as would an altar scene actually carved on the altar),
but the boundaries of a sacred site by representing on the outside the sacrificial act which
occurs in the inside - the act by which the site is sanctified. It may represent the original
sacrifice, in Aeneas' case not the origin of the altar but of the nation and city which the altar's
sacrifices uphold and the origin of the ancestry of Augustus who, on his own account, restored
the nation ('respublica', R G I ) , the city (RG 19-20) and of course was voted this very altar by
the city and nation in gratitude (RG 12). But at the same time the relief marks not only the
'origin' but also the present - the eternal repetition of sacred action through the passage of

" W. Warde Fowler, The Religious Experience of the

Roman People ( I ~ I I18c-I.
),
l8 See Stambaugh, op. cit. (n. 16),557 and 568.
l9 I. Scott Ryberg, Rites of the State Religion in Rome,
MAAR.22 (1955)~
19-1.

20 S~mon,
op. cit. (n. I),14-16.

ibid., 23-4.
e.g. ibid., 24.
The Aeneas relief 'is surely intended to prefigure the
main sacrifice which is represented on the two outer faces
of the monument', Gordon, op. cit. (n. 2),209.
21
22

55
time within this particular space. It thus represents, defines, and enunciates the sacredness of
the enclosure by virtue of the signs which the enclosure boasts in its decoration. T h e present is
validated by being the enactment of the 'original' past, the past is meaningful because it is relived, re-presented, in the present.
At the same time as it describes function by representation, the Aeneas relief is a
prescriptive sign. It looks forward to ritual action, defines and delimits it - setting a
representative ideal for the sacrifice which will actually take place. In ritual action (which is
always process, a dynamic that leads to and beyond the act of sacrifice), the altar relief is static:
not only as a particular furnishing and stage of ritual action but also as a representation of a
single frozen moment (even if that 'moment' is in fact a symbolic conflation of actual
'moments'). The altar relief engages in a play with the viewer as he participates in the ritual; it
constantly summarizes and conflates a multifaceted diachronic rite in a synchronic and
schematic space. Ritual is action through time while the image is the static synchronic
commentary and prescription for this action; although, when it partakes in the rite (by being a
decoration of the Ara Pacis), it may be symbolically 'activated'. T h e viewer is of course never
an objective or distanced observer; he is always a participant, or potential participant, an
initiate, in the ritual.
I n effect, there is a play of time. For the relief foretells in a general way throughout the
year on non-sacrificial days what will happen on the special day of sacrifice, and also more
specifically what will happen when the sacrificial procession moves through the gates past the
relief to the ritual act at the altar when the appointed day of sacrifice has come. But the image
also looks back to what has happened and stands therefore for the general truth, the eternal
value of an act which can happen only occasionally. Marking sacred space and action in this
way, Roman images function in order to define the meanings of religion. Their very presence
in sanctuaries is a kind of visual theology.
All these meanings are borne by the Aeneas relief of the Ara Pacis in its particular position
and context at different times and for different viewers. In terms of the notion of 'deferral', it is
significant that many of these meanings stand for an act that will happen, or has happened (in
fact an act that is both past and future, an act that ritually creates the terms for temporality in
religion). Even on the day of sacrifice, the relief never actually represents what is happening
now where it is happening. Its reference is in a general sense to the kind of act it portrays
- but there is always a gap (temporal and spatial) between the image and what it
refers to.
Deferral is in fact built into the iconography of the scene. Not only are the aedes and the
gods in it located away from the altar (something both disguised and emphasized by the fact
that the image juxtaposes the two locations into a single panel), but the action of libation is
specifically not the action of sacrifice. T h e living sow is not the animal slaughtered or during
slaughter. T h e living sow stands for the preliminary nature of the libation represented (on a
scene which is itself placed at a preliminary position outside the door of the precinct). T h e
Aeneas scene, perpetually frozen in an uncompleted sacrifice stands always as a pre-sacrifice at
the sacred entrance, but also for the perpetual incompleteness of sacrificial action itself because
of the deferral that characterizes it. In the Ara Pacis, where there is no aedes, there is no cult
image, no representation of a god to receive the propitiation of the site. Of course there must be
such a god; but the greater the ideological need to construct that deity imaginatively (as
opposed to visually through a cult statue), the greater the factor of deferral.
C U L T A N D S C U L P T U R E : S A C R I F I C E I N T H E ARA P A C I S A U G U S T A E

111.

T H E SACRIFICIAL PROCESSIONS

Processions also appear in a wide variety of contexts in Roman art : on altars (for example,
the Ara Pacis), sanctuary walls (for instance, the Ara Pacis and the Ara Pietatis), arches (for
example, that of Titus in Rome), and columns. They play a tantalizing game with the viewer
since they always evoke sacrifice (through the animals, ritual implements, and so forth
represented) and yet the sacrifice is always deferred. Thus the main theme and end of the ritual
occasion depicted is always an absent goal.

s6

JOHN ELSNER

I n the Ara Pacis the effect of such deferral is particularly pronounced. T h e 'large
processions' on the long sides of the exterior walls both lead from the sanctuary door at the east
towards the sanctuary door at the west (Pls I and IV). However, instead of continuing round
the wall onto the western face (as for instance the Parthenon frieze does), the procession is
'interrupted' by the panels on either side of the door. T o the right as one faces the altar is the
scene with Aeneas and to the left a now very fragmentary relief usually interpreted as Mars
with the infant Romulus and Remus. The rhythm of processional movement is disturbed by
the static panels with a disruption or at least switch of subject matter.24 In the case of the
Aeneas relief (which we have in relatively good condition), the scene gives us a sacrifice to
which the procession is moving. But it is not the sacrifice (since it is not inside the temenos, or
sanctuary precinct, but on the outside wall) nor is it a representation of any actual sacrifice but
rather a mythological (or at best myth-historical) act - which generally and ideologically
validates not only the altar and the procession leading to it but also the Roman viewer who is
proceeding past it into the sanctuary.
Inside the precinct, along the low walls at the altar sides and encircling them, is a second
frieze procession (Pl. 111). It is preserved well in some parts, but is very fragmentary or lost in
others. Its scale is much smaller than that of the outside wall. Is it the same ~rocessionor a
different one? Some would like the altar frieze to protray the annually recurring sacrifice while
the exterior frieze shows actual people (the imperial family and senators) performing the
original rite of consecrating the altar.25On similar lines, other have emphasized the contrast of
a specific and unique event celebrated on the precinct walls as opposed to the altar frieze which
represents the annual celebration -'simultaneously a unique event and a single instance of the
cyclically recurring
However, all such views are limited by the 'naturalism' which I
discussed earlier. They want the different figures and portions of the altar to have single,
simply definable meanings which it is the role of scholars to disentangle. While I would not
argue that any such scholarly interpretations are necessarily wrong, it seems to me unnecessary
to insist on the singleness or exclusivity of such meanings. The Ara Pacis was a highly creative
complex of sculpture arranged in a very careful programme which invited creative interpretation from its viewers. One of the questions deliberately and tantalizingly left open by the altar's
structure was the relation of the two friezes. Viewers could make UD their own minds.
The frieze on the altar itself inside the precinct is unfo;tunately fragmentary. In
particular the whole section at the rear of the altar is lost, which means we cannot ascertain the
direction of its p r o c e ~ s i o nBoth
. ~ ~ processions (that on the altar frieze and that on the precinct
walls, if they are indeed two rather than one) move in the same direction: from east to west (see
Fig. I ) . T h e interior frieze .(on the altar itself) curls round the heart of the altar. If two
different processions are depicted, then the inner one ends at the altar, while the goal of the
outer one is deferred (although, if the frieze represents an actual procession, that too would
have ended at the actual altar). If, however, the same procession is represented in different
scales on the two friezes, then the outer procession (on the precinct walls) ends at the west (the
front entrance), whereas the inner procession begins at the east (by the rear entrance). There
would appear to be a problem of continuity.
T h e fact that the friezes offer a complex set of movements which are not easy to interpret,
in addition to the framing of the outside processions with 'static' images, is evidence not of
clear differentiation in meaning between the friezes, but of ambiguity. As the effect of any
ritual depends on the participants' response, so the sculptures of the Ara Pacis are opent to the
viewer's interpretation. T h e limits to this play of subjectivity are precisely the cultural
boundaries of ritual and sacrificial experience which viewers would have brought to the Ara
Pacis, particularly when they were present during an actual sacrifice, and which we cannot
reconstruct. I n particular, it would be interesting to know if there was a representation of an
altar scene and a sacrifice on the lost part of the altar frieze. If not, then the process of deferral
would go to a stage further -offering only fulfilment in the sacrificial act of the actual ritual.
24 On the "'arrested" movement' of these reliefs 'more an icon than a narrative scene', see Zanker, op. cit.
(n. 3), 205-6.
25 Simon, op. cit. (n. I ) , 15 f.
26 P. J . Holliday, 'Time, History and Ritual on the Ara
Pacis Augustae',Art Bulletin 72 (~ggo),542-57, quote 554.

27 Because this portion of the altar is lost, I ignore the

debate about its possible iconography, on which see H.
Kahler, 'Die Ara Pacis und die augusteische Friedensee',
JDAI6g (1954),67-looand Simon, op. cit. (n. g), 31-3.

C U L T A N D S C U L P T U R E : S A C R I F I C E I N T H E ARA P A C I S A U G U S T A E

Aeneas
sacrificing

57

Mars and the

Twins

Senators

0
I

Italia

Roma

@ precinct walls
@ altar wall and inner frieze

+ lost portions of inner frieze

FIG. I

T h e notion of the gap is important in a further respect. T h e frieze offers us on the inner
altar wall images of animals - including what is either a bull, an ox or a cow - being led to
sacrifice (Pl. 111). A cow also appears in the famous relief usually called 'Tellus' or 'Italia' at the
south side at the east (the back) of the altar's exterior wall (Pl. V)." One precondition of
fruitful plenty in the years of the Pax Augusta is the cow -the animal which ploughs the earth
for man (e.g. Virgil, Georgics 1.63ff.) and which the earth nourishes in order that man can
bring it to the sacrificial altar, as in the altar frieze (e.g. Ovid, Fasti 1v.629f.). In the actual
sacrifice a white cow would probably have been slaughtered within the terneno~.'~
T h e death of
one of the animals most necessary to human life is a kind of insurance for the continuation of
28 For a discussion of some of the complexities of this
scene, and some of the identifications given it, see Zanker,
op. cit. (n. 3), 172-6.
29 This is the conclusion scholars draw from a
fragmentary inscription probably of Caligula's time: CZL
VI, 32347a. See e.g. H. le Bonniec, Ovide: Les Fastes I
(1965)~ad Fasti 1.720, p. 1 x 0 . Ovid's own text on the
sacrifice to Pax 'perfusa [or percussa with Frazer] victima
fronte' does not specify the victim, and it may be that other
animals than cows were slaughtered at the Ara Pacis. If we

follow the iconographical hints in the imagery, such

victims could certainly have included sheep and perhaps
pigs. See also Wissowa, op. cit. (n. z), 334-5. The thirdcentury A.D. Feriale Duranum corroborates this
assumption by recording male cattle (hulls or oxen) a
being offered to male deities, and cows as the offering for
goddesses such as Salus or Pax; see R. 0. Fink, Roman
Military Records on Papy!us (1971)~inscription no. I 17,
PP. 422-9.

58
JOHN ELSNER
that life.30 T h e notion of the gap - of the loss of what is one's own as the guarantee of the
preservation of one's own -is built into the ideology of sacrifice. At the heart of sacrifice is the
great gap of death, which in the case of sacrificial killing is a kind of aversion of disaster, a
shunning of death by the sacrificers through death.
IV.

SACRIFICE AND DEATH

T h e Ara Pacis is eloquent on the subject of death. Around the inner walls of the enclosure
is a frieze of garlands boasting many fruits hanging between the skulls of dead cows. Above the
garlands are images of paterae or sacrificial vessels (Pl. VI).31Even as sacrifice took place, its
participants were surrounded by the memento mori of its results - the fruitfulness of life
bought at the ritual cost of death. Just as the Aeneas relief both presaged and looked back to the
sacrificial action and function of the sanctuary, so the Italia scene (in the opposite position at
the back of the altar to the Aeneas relief at its front) offers a golden age fantasy of fruitfulness
which in Augustan ideology marked the distant past, the Augustan present, and the immediate
future. T h e fruitful bliss of the Italia scene, cow and all, is insured by the procession of cows to
their death at this very altar, by the cows becoming the skulls from which the garlands hang.
T h e visual pun works in both Latin and English: the garlands depend on the skulls. T h e cow, a
recurring image in its different forms in the precinct, is a visual metaphor for the reciprocity of
sacrifice, for what depends on what and for the cost of Augustan plenty. T h e scene of Italia
could not be there but for this altar, could have no meaning but for the skulls. In the Ara Pacis,
the cows of fruitfulness, the cows of sacrifice, and the skulls of the precinct wall represent as
one thematic continuity the sacrificial transaction by which man's social life is insured and
linked to the sacred.
However, sacrifice in Roman ideology is more than 'a unifying and re-creative social
phen~menon'.~'
At times, in Roman poetry of the late Republic and early Empire, the act of
sacrifice may define the golden age, when the blood of animals was spilled for the gods instead
of the blood of fellow-men (e.g. Catullus 64.386-408), or may represent celebration (as in the
sacrifice on behalf of Caesar in Virgil, Georg. 111.22-3). But the image of sacrificial blood is an
unstable metaphor -a metaphor liable to imply the reverse. In Lucretius, sacrifice -one of
the impia facta of Religion (1.83) -is tied to the sense of fear (v. I I 61-8). In Virgil's Georgics,
'two interpretations of ox-slaughter - as impious crime and unifying ceremony - are
balanced at the very centre' in the form of the sacrifices at 11.536-7 and 111.22-3.33 In both
Georg. 11.536-7 and Ovid's Metamorphoses xv.95-142 the combined image of animal sacrifice
and the eating of meat is used to define the end of the golden age. At the very least, the image of
sacrifice is an ambivalent one. While it establishes social life through ritual killing, it also
evokes the gap of death which gapes before that social life at its boundary and undermines its
very foundations, its very meaning, with a great denial. Ritual killing and imagined religious
worlds to be placated seem (like imperial 'apotheosis') to be the defence of Roman ideology
against the deconstructive fact of death. But it is ironic that death itself must be the
prophylactic barrier to death.
In the Carmen Saeculare, Horace prays that the prayers of Augustus, entreated of the
gods by the slaughter of white bulls, be answered (vv. 49-52).
quaeque vos bubus veneratur albis
clarus Anchisae Venerisque sanguis,
impetret, bellante prior, iacentem
lenis in hostem.
cf. Burkert, op. cit. (n. 2), 2-3 on the Ara Pacis.
On this part of the frieze and more generally on the
widespread imagery of 'bucrania' (cattle skulls) - but
without any sense of a deconstructive or ambivalent
meaning- see Zanker, op. cit. (n. 3), I 15-17.
32 T . N. Habinek, 'Sacrifice, Society and Vergil's OxBorn Bees', in M. Griffith and D . J. Mastronarde (eds),
Cabinet of the Muses: Essays on Classical and Comparative
Laterature in Honor of Thomas G . Rosenmeyer ( ~ g g o ) ,

''

23 quote p. 215.
g ~ i b i n e k , op. cit. (n. 32). 213-15, quote p. 215. His
argument has been contested by R. Thomas, 'The
"Sacrifice" at the End of the Georgics, Aristaeus and
Virgilian Closure', CP (1991,forthcoming) - although
Thomas accepts the ambivalence of sacrifice in Roman
ideology which Habinek implies. I am grateful to Don
Fowler for referring me to both these papers.
20

CULT AND

SCULPTURE:

S A C R I F I C E I N T H E ARA P A C I S A U G U S T A E

59

Whatever he of Ancises' and Venus' pure blood

(a warrior heretofore, now lenient to the fallen

foe) entreats of you with white bulls,

grant him his prayers.

(Translated W. G. Shepherd)

Significantly, the image of blood - which echoes in the references to war and sacrificial
slaughter -is transferred to the Princeps upon whom the success of these acts depends.34T o
be Augustus is an act of blood (in both the kin and carnage senses of the word), and upon the
Augustan blood of divine progeniture, war, and sacrifice rests the image of the golden age of
Augustan plenty (vv. 57-60) :
iam Fides et Pax et Honos Pudorque

priscus et neglecta redire Virtus

audet, apparetque beata pleno

Copia cornu.
Now Faith, and Peace, and Honour,

and pristine Modesty, and Manhood neglected,

dare to return, and blessed Plenty appears

with her laden horn.

This image of blissful plenty including Pax is like the balmy fantasy of Italia on the Ara
Pacis: in Horace, as on the altar, Augustan plenty rests on the fact of death. Nor is this
problematic relationship confined to political or 'Augustan' themes. I n Odes 1.4 the poet's
celebration of the return of spring turns sombre as the necessity for celebratory sacrifice leads
to the inescapable fact of death. There is a brilliant chiasmus whereby the dancing of the
deities at springtime (vv. 5-8) leads to the fittingness of human celebrations (vv. FIO) and the
parallel fittingness of sacrifice to appease those deities (vv. I 1-1 z ) , which in its own right leads
to the dance of death (vv. 13-14). T h e relevant lines (vv. 5-14) read as follows:
iam Cytherea choros ducit Venus imminente Luna,
iunctaeque Nymphis Gratiae decentes
alterno terram quatiunt pede, dum gravis Cyclopum
Vulcanus ardens visit officinas.
nunc decet aut viridi nitidum caput impedire myrto
aut flore terrae quem ferunt solutae;
nunc et in umbrosis Fauno decet immolare lucis,
seu poscat agna sive malit haedo.
pallida Mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas
regumque turris . . .
Cytherea leads the dance by moonlight,
the seemly Graces hand in hand
with Nymphs tread the rhythm while flamy Vulcan
inspects the Cyclopes' gloomy works.
Now is the time to deck your glistening hair
with green myrtle or the flowers
of the liberated earth, to sacrifice to Faunus
in the shady wood a lamb or a kid.
Pallid death kicks impartially at the doors
of hovels and mansions . . .
(Translated W. G. Shepherd)

T h e ambiguous theme of dance ('Gratiae . . . quatiunt pede' (vv. 6-7) and 'pallida Mors aequo
pulsat pede' (v. 13)) encloses the parallelism of celebration and sacrifice articulated in the
anaphora of 'nunc decet' (vv. 9 and I I). T h e themes of spring and love (vv. 19-20) become

"

For the image of sacrificial blood and its transference

to new life in a different context, see Horace, Odes 111.13
with R. Hexter, '0Fons Bandusiae: Blood and Water in
Horace, Odes III,13', in Whitby et al., op. cit. (n. g),

1 3 1 9 . On such patterns of life and death in Horace (but

without special reference to sacrifice), see N. Rudd,
'Patterns in Horatian Lyric', AJPh 81 (1960),3 7 3 9 2 .

60

JOHN ELSNER

inseparable from that of death - both the death which we inflict through sacrifice and the
death which dances at the door of the rich and the poor alike. T h e verbal imagery of Roman
lyric, like the visual imagery of Roman art, is unable to extricate living from the problematic of
dying and the implicit negation by which death (whether inflicted by us or upon us)
undermines life.
On the face of it the Italia relief of the Ara Pacis is the least significant part of the altar for a
discussion that proposes to be about sacrifice. But, on the contrary, it is precisely because the
relief's relation to sacrifice is at the same time so tenuous and so essential that it is important.
This scene (like the very fragmentary representation of Roma in the corresponding position on
the other side of the rear entrance of the ternenos -if indeed it is Roma) offers, in the present
viewing moment in this very image, the goal or rather the resultant effect of the sacrificial
action of the rest of the altar. T h e positive implications of the Italia panel cannot be separated
from imagery that reeks of killing. Every image on the relief -the cow and the sheep (another
animal that appears in the sacrificial procession on the altar), the personifications seated on
bird and sea monster, the central female figure nourishing the infants - whatever their
meanings, which are the complex and idiosyncratic construct of a new imperial ideology that
was only at that moment in the process of formation, none of this can be separated from the
death by which this fantasy of perfection is to be bought. It is a fact of Roman religious
ideology that both the act of sacrifice and its literal imagery of death and slaughter must be
constantly interpreted to mean life. Not only the Italia relief but also the great panels of
acanthus scrolls teeming with birds, frogs, snakes, and other life (which form the bottom layer
of the outer wall -which literally underlie its imagery, P1. VII) are the visual paradigm of this
necessary and constraining interpretation.35T h e art of the Ara Pacis could not work without an
intense cultural framework of meaning to keep the anarchy of its possible (negative) implications at bay. It is because religion is about the most essential things, that it shows up so strongly
a culture's deeper ideological contradictions in the face of precisely the most essential things.
V.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Long after the identities of the figures portrayed on the Ara Pacis would have been
forgotten, sacrifice was still offered at the altar. An exploration of the cultic themes of its
imagery offers perhaps a deeper guide (deeper than the uncertainties of identifying particular
figures)36to the responses the altar would have elicited from its viewers. There would have
been a deep response to the sacrificial nature of the reliefs even in Augustan times, when the
sculpture also carried immediate political messages. But later, under Hadrian say, when the
politics of Augustus were all but forgotten, the sacrificial theme in its ritual context would have
remained a primary avenue for understanding the monument. What is interesting is that this
very avenue for interpretation - offered by the images of the altar itself in combination with
its sacrificial function- should have led in such an ambiguous direction, towards some of the
deeper contradictions implicit in Roman religious life.
One important question, especially in the light of Paul Zanker's presentation of Augustan
art, is where does an awareness of these contradictions take us? It has been Zanker's signal
contribution to establish forever the centrality of images and monuments to any understanding
of the cultural, social, and political implications of the Principate. He portrayed images
working together in a complex, cohesive, and synthetic manner with texts, rituals, and
monuments to propagate a new ideology of empire. Far from seeing any contradictions openly
displayed or any possibilities for subversive readings, Zanker emphasized the overwhelmingly
unified effect of such Augustan ~ r o p a g a n d aT. ~o~the Romans 'an image was more powerful
than the reality, and nothing could shake their faith in the new era' (p. 238). 'No one could

35 On the symbolism of vine scrolls in the Ara Pacis and

Au stan art in general, see Zanker, op. cit. (n. 3), 17fl3.
p ~ e e Rose, op. cit. (n. 14). 454: figures on the 'Ara
Pacis are so idealized that identification based on
physiognomy alone is extremely difficult. . .'.

" See the comments of A. Wallace-Hadrillin his review

of Zanker's book, 'Rome's Cultural Revolution', JRS 79
(1989), 157-64, especially 162-3.

61

CULT A N D SCULPTURE: SACRIFICE I N THE ARA PACIS AUGUSTAE

escape the impact of the new imagery, whether he consciously paid attention to it or not'
(p. 274). 'The impact of the new imagery in the west thus presupposed the acceptance of a
complete ideological package' (p. 332). In short, for Zanker, Augustan art unproblematically
encapsulates and propagates Augustan ideology - retailing it to a public which accepts its
implications wholesale.
What is the impact of the ambivalences and contradictions, which I have examined in the
Ara Pacis, on this picture of how Augustan art works? If the Ara Pacis, a prime monument
located in the great new imperial complex in the Campus Martius, could evoke ambiguity
and uncertainty even during the sacrificial ritual for which it had been designed, can
we be sure that no other Augustan monuments might work in a similar way? If the imagery of
the Ara Pacis could be read in more than one way by different viewers, how can we decide
which way was most normal in Roman culture? As Andrew Wallace-Hadrill has noted, 'the
possibility for which Zanker does not allow is that the monuments had an ambivalent effect on
all roman^'.^'
This problem of the ambivalence of Augustan art -and in particular of the ambivalence
of sacrificial representations - raises a still more worrying question about the nature of the
Principate itself. Was it really as overwhelming an ideological phenomenon as Zanker's thesis
suggests? An emphasis on the ambivalence of the art which propagated the Principate goes
rather a long way to undermining the overwhelmingness of its dominance. Can we perhaps
sustain Zanker's thesis, however, by arguing that the ambivalences about life and death, and
the gaps of deferral, exist only at the religious level, and that on the political plane the message
remained deliberately unambiguous? Can we support, then, a view that the religious implications of Roman art went in one direction (towards uncertaintv rmd even contradiction). while
the political meanings of the same images' reinforced a simpld picture of Augustus as the new
Aeneas, a paradigm of Roman piety, standing as indispensable mediator between life and
death, man and god, Roman war and Roman peace? Richard Gordon has argued that the
placing of the princeps at the centre of the visual representation of sacrifice helped to turn
. ~ ~this begs the very question
religion into 'a naked instrument of ideological d ~ m i n a t i o n 'But
at issue: if such visual re~resentationframes the emDeror in a context of ideolo~icaluncertainties and contradictions, then can it really be reinforcing imperial power, ideology and
domination, as Zanker and Gordon would wish? Perhaps we might say that the prime position
of sacrifice in Roman religious ideology provided the dynamic which gave the imperial image
its power, but that the gaps, deferral and ambivalences implicit in Roman sacrifice had the
potential to undermine the imperial image from within.
Given my own principles of emphasizing the role of viewers and readers in creating
meaning, it would be incongruous of me to attempt to legislate about any of these questions.
But it does seem that a number of positions are available for students and scholars to adopt
today, just as there were a number of positions available even in Augustus' own time.
There was no one simple view of the emperor. There was a multiplicity of views created
competitively in numerous monuments and texts, and themselves creatively transformed in
the experience and according to the prejudices of the people whose father the emperor claimed
to be.
0

Jesus College, Cambridge, and Courtauld Institute ofArt

ibid., 163.

Gordon, op. cit. (n. z), esp. 202-19, quote 207.

IY