Roman oscilla An assessment RABUN TAYLOR What is an oscillum? As its used today, the term oscillum (oscilla in the plural) refers to two distinct but related things in the Roman world: in one case an artifact, in the other a historical construct. According to standard modern Usage it was an object of marble worked in relief on both sides, probably painted, and suspended by a hook from the architrave or ceiling of a colonnaded portico." It tends to take one of three forms: tondo (a thin disk), pinax (a framed rectangle), or pelta (a broad, lunate shield). Small marble theater masks, usually hollowed ‘out in the back, have sometimes been found in the company of conventional oscilla, most famously at the House of the Golden Cupids at Pompeii (fig. 1). All these objects are frequently depicted hanging from fictive colonnades or garlands in Pompeian frescoes. The reliefs appearing on oscilla are mostly typical Roman ‘genre scenes dominated by Dionysiac and theatrical themes; occasionally a mythological vignette will appear in highly abbreviated form. Marble oscilla of the Roman west (a few have also been found in Athens) came into vogue only in the first century cr. and declined in popularity after the mid- second century. Clearly their various forms were deemed interchangeable by the time they began to ‘appear in permanent materials. But their eclecticism is ‘not meaningless. Indeed, we should see their popularity 1 Marble plaques are not the only cass of abject called axilla, Palle ays out the problem of definition succinctly: *Vemplot Indscrimin de ce terme comporte quelques inconvénients, quand le ‘méme mot en vient 3 désigner des bas-elies de marbre du les. ap J-C, des masques ou poupées suspendus aux arbres dans de views cules taliques, de petits médallons dete cute du Ne sav. J-C. trouvés dans des tombes de Grace ou de Sicil, ov méme nrimpon | ‘que! masque, tympanon ou bouclier Amazone intégré 8 un décor architectural Piller 1982:744,n, 5), Yet anather class of oscilla, these made of teracota, have been found in Gaul (Vert 1975). This ‘typological confusion is indeed unfortunate. But with the possible exception ofthe Greek and Sicilian evidence—metl small erraclta ‘objects of many forms with single oF double holes fot suspension—its ‘ot out of place to group the other deiniions within a coninuum of traditions onthe Malian peninsula associated wit funerary ritual and Dionysive cult in domestic contexts as a commodification of a variety of ritual traditions on the Italian peninsula which extended back for centuries, and which shared one ‘common feature: their meaning was defined or enhanced by the act of susper Although the scholarship on oscilla is not robust, a number of article-length studies, a dissertation, and a short monograph have appeared on the topic.? These have been concerned not only with the oscillum as a ‘material artifact, but with the Latin word ascillum from which the moder term is derived—a word so obscure that literary commentators in late antiquity could only speculate about it. To distinguish between the archaeological artifact, which is never directly referenced in any ancient text, and the lexicographic one, | will designate each by typeface: the former in roman, the latter in italic. My intention is not to establish an absolute distinction, but merely to place emphasis on cone designation or the other. Since the nineteenth century, there has been a strange gulf between art historians, who tend to sidestep the literary construct too quickly, and the students of religion such as Franz Altheim and Jean-Louis Voisin, who deal at length with the literary sources and the various claims to ritual ‘origins for oscilla but hardly acknowledge the existence of a physical corpus of suspended objects, let alone the ‘extant representations of them in a variety of media? ‘The question of origins ‘This article investigates a range of possible primary functions—most of them ritual in nature—that underlie the more overtly semantic and aesthetic secondary 2. Shom aficles on Roman oscilla found in archaeological ‘contexts: Cain 1988; Antico Galina 1984-1987; Veet 1975; Picard 1965; lacopi 1963:147-153; Lippold 1921. More substantive atiles ‘on meaning: Cain 1988; Piller 1983, 1962; Dwyer 1981; Maurice ‘Albert 1881, Dissertation: Corwandt 1982. Monograph: Losy 1999, Se also Tayoe 2003 3. On the sacral origins of axils and oscilatio see Mazzacane 1980; Voisin 1979; lacopi 1963:147-153; SaintDens 1949; Ehlers, 11942; Altheim 1931-65-91; Picard 1926; Lippold 1921; Maurice Albert 1881; Boeticher 1856:80-9284 RES 48 AUTUMN 2005 Figure 1. Restored peristyle garden ofthe House of the Gilded Cupids at Pompeii as it appeared in the mid-twentieth century. Photo: Alinari 11994, functions of these objects. An oscillum signifies by ‘means of at least four properties: form, context, disposition, and iconography. To the extent that the iconography carried on an oscillum refers back to the coscillum itself, as opposed to themes that were just as prevalent in many other media, it does so only in the most generalized way. The prevalence of Dionysiac and theatrical themes may suggest a primordial connection between oscilla and the Dionysus cult, but this kind of imagery is widespread across a broad spectrum of Roman domestic and ritual objects. My principal concer, therefore, is with form, context, and disposition of oscilla: the shapes that they take, their confinement to the liminal space of the colonnade, and their tendency to hang, and indeed, oscillate. M. Maurice Alberts early analysis of marble oscilla (1881) identified two possible paths by which they came into being. On the one hand, a passage of Vergil and the ancient scholiasts commenting on it suggest that the cult of Dionysus included a ritual of suspending small effigies in the form of masks from trees (Georgics 2.387-389). the only direct, unqualified usage of the term that survives from the classical period of Latin literature: “they Ithe people of italy] put on hideous faces carved from bark, invoking you, Bacchus, with glad refrain; and for you they hang soft oscilla from the lofty pine."* From this passage was born the modern term for the archaeological artifact, together with the unshakable conviction that itis related to Dionysiac rituals. On the other hand, Maurice Albert observed, the Romans had adopted from the Greeks the practice of suspending votive shields in temples or colonnades to celebrate military victories.5 Honorary shields such as the imago clipeata and the clipeus virtutis were granted to outstanding citizens, even to the deceased, and were displayed prominently in temples. Both practices, he reasoned, made their mark in the litle marble epigones of the Roman imperial period. But he took his argument 4. oraque cortcibus sumunt horrenda cavats/t te, Bache, vocant per camming lata, tibique / oscilla ex ata suspendunt mola pin (Georges 2387-88). 5. Pausarias 1.25.26, 5.10; Aeschines, Cesiphon 116; Pliny, Historia naturals 35.4; Livy 25.38, 35.10.Taylor: Roman oscilla 85 no further, observing only that the old practices were watered down and domesticated over time.® Some moder commentators have rejected any connection between oscilla and shields, preferring to follow the ‘more purely Dionysiac model (Pailler 1982; Lippold 1921). Jean-Marie Pailler in particular (1982:791-812) has proposed a reductive model. Believing many of the iconographic appurtenances of Dionysiac art and testimony to be fictions without any reference to historical practice, he contends that oscilla as a class are a part of these mythologizing impedimenta. Others are ‘more inclined to see a broad variety of causes underlying the phenomenon of oscilla (Loisy 1999; Dwyer 1981). While their claim of eclecticism may be less intellectually satisfying than Pailler’s strict reductionism, | contend that it is correct in principle, if not always in detail. iimetic or amuletic? Meaningful suspensio Besides Vergil, the only other surviving source to use the term oscillum before late antiquity comes from the pen of the antiquarian Varro—and only in a paraphrase from a late-antique scholiast who happens to be commenting on the Vergil passage: “Varro said offerings of appeasement were made to those who had been hanged, who were unworthy of prescribed ritual, with the hanging of oscilla, as if through imitation of the death.”” Neither this source nor the Vergil passage actually describes oscilla but each in its own way suggests 1) that they were suspended; and 2) that they ‘were effigies of some sort. In Vergil’ case, they were pethaps the cork masks themselves; in Varro’s, Undefined “imitations.” ‘Ancient speculation on the oscillum also survives in commentaries on the passage in Vergil, most written in late antiquity. Some of them justify the Dionysiac tradition of hanging oscilla by their physical analogy to bodies of the hanged, specifically mythological figures who died by hanging ® Several of these explanations, 6. "Quan sculpteur...remplace les afeuses figures de Mania tes tts svéres des vieux Romains par de gracicux tableaux: ‘que. fantasie capricieuse représente des personnages et des “cines dveres, olla des objets anciens completement métamorphosés” Maurice Abert 1881:136) 7. Varro ait suspendicss, quibusiusta fet jus non si, suspensis ‘oscil, elu per imtationem mts parentar (Servis Aucts, (Commoutaass ad Aenea 12.603). 8. Neeru sources try 10 connect Vers oscilla to the myth of| Erigine, who hanged herself when she discovered the murdered have developed around a hard kernel of ritual truth: the placation of, or atonement for, the unburied dead. Since the nineteenth century, scholarship on oscilla, hhas been preoccupied with the rituals of swinging and hanging, Most have thought the act of hanging objects from trees, as Vergil describes the ritual, to be a mimetic act. Early in the twentieth century scholars favored interpreting the development of sacrificial effigies as a substitution for older rites of expiatory human sacrifice (Bayet 1975 [1922]:294-299; Carcopino 1919:378-387;, Nilsson 1915). Charles Picard (1928:58) suggests that the various myths compiled by the commentators may have been marshaled for the purpose of explaining the obscure ritual of hanging effigies from trees. Rather than represent humans, he proposes, they may have reflected some aspect of the gods, who themselves had arboreal origins. Rosanna Mazzacane (1980) sees two conflated rituals here: that of suspension, which represents the status of souls hovering between the earthly and heavenly realms; and that of oscillation, which represents the search of a restless spirit for whatever it seeks. Altheim (1931) suggests that an oscillum ritual, which according to one commentary was frequen in Italia,’ and which was appropriated by the Liber- Dionysus cult because of that god’s identity as a Maskengott, represented the souls ofthe restless dead; they were shades or ghosts (larvae, maniae) transmuted into litle mask-effigies of Dionysus and his followers, then attached to a tree. The oscillation of these masks represents the souls and their restlessness. Altheim does not explain what this ritual is meant to accomplish. Does it grant the souls a means of atonement by “airing out” their imperfections, as Servius suggests in his commentary on the Georgics? Do the masks thereby “capture” the souls and make them their own, initiating them posthumously into the Dionysiac domain? cep of her father, cars, the first human tobe given the git of wine by Dionysus; see Hyginus, Astonomica 2.4; Hyginus,Fabulae 130; Servius, Commentarivs ad Georgca 2.389; Bem scholiast of Versi, Cecrpcs 2.389; scholist of Status, Thebaid 11.644; Peeudo- Apolladors, Bibliotheca 3.192: Aelian, De natura animalive 728. (On the Aiéra, the Atic festival of the grape to which this myth is attached, see Mazzacane 1980; Nilsson 1915, Others associate i wth the mysterious death of King Latinus, who disappeared and was found hanging Festus, p. 212 Ls. “oscillates Serius, Brevis exposiio ad Georgica 2369); oF with Tarquinius Superbus, wn responded to fan epidemic of hanging suicides by ordering the bodies tobe nailed to ‘roses in punishment Servius Auetus, Commentarus ad Aeneid 12,603), Macrobus reports that oscilla were invented as surtogats or human heads offered to Dis, the underworld god (Saturnalia 1.7.31). 9, Probus, ad Georgica 2.385.