Archaeology Magazine - October 1966 - 23

continued
Cybele
otherwise intact. The goddess wears Greek dress: a
sleeved chiton, girt at the waist, and over this a himation, drawn up like a veil over the back of her head
and crown, which takes the form of a crenelated city
wall with turrets. Her other attributes are the phiale
(libation bowl) in her right hand, and in her left the
tympanum which was used to beat out the rhythm for
the orgiastic dances performed by her votaries.
The statuette was made in three pieces, the arms
being cast separately and fastened in place with dowels. The joins are concealed by the ends of the sleeves.
The lions also are genuine, though corroded in places
and somewhat bent out of shape. These too were cast
in several sections which were joined together. Head
and mane, for example, were cast in one piece and
then fitted onto the shoulder, almost like a mask.
These portions, the tails and the front legs appear to
have been broken off at some time and repaired by
Martinetti.
The attachment of the chariot-pole, in the form of
a Tuscan Doric capital, and most of the pole itself
are ancient, but they were wrongly placed in Martinetti^ composition and it is not certain that they
belong to the cart. These and many other pieces of
ancient bronze which do not seem to belong where
Martinetti placed them have been left aside, and only
the sides of the footstool and the wheels, in addition
to the lions and the goddess, have been incorporated
in the new restoration.
In preparing this restoration, the main problem
was how to display the authentic parts of the group in
their correct relative positions without distracting the
eye from them by the superfluous and even spurious
detail that had been so conspicuous a part of Martinetti^ design. It was clearly necessary to make a
chassis of some sort to which the wheels could be attached and which in turn would support the goddess.
She was also in need of a seat, not to mention a top
for her footstool. Since three ancient wheels survived,
it was evident that we were dealing not with a twowheeled chariot but with a four-wheeled cart. Unfortunately, whatever further evidence for the construction
of the vehicle may have existed at the time of its excavation, all had long been lost beyond hope of recovery. If the new cart was to be more like the original than Martinetti^ version had been, other sources
of information had to be found. The evidence for
the structure of Roman wagons, however, is rather
meager, for even when a cart was represented by an
ancient artist, it was never his intention to provide
illustrations for a treatise on Roman carriage-work.
The relief in the Vatican Museum illustrated in
Goddess

Figure 5 does not tell us much more than that the
top of the cart projects above the rim of the wheel
and that there is some sort of horizontal connection
at the level of the axles. All details of the carriagework between the axles and the top of the cart are
obscured by the wheels. The same features occur on
other representations of carts on Roman and on Gaulish monuments, but more explicit details are hard to
find. It does seem, however, that the front wheels on
these carts had a fixed axle, in contrast with some of
the more sophisticated Thracian chariots of the period,
which had bogies at the front to facilitate steering.
The same problem arose with respect to the harness. Nothing of the original harness and yoke survives, and even the pole which came from Martinetti
with the rest is partially restored and does not certainly belong. It was therefore decided to make the
cart as simple in form as possible, and to leave the
harness out entirely. The result can be seen by comparing the old and new restorations (Figures 1 and 6) .
The new cart is made of plastic with a frosted surface
to reduce transparency and eliminate unwanted reflections. It will also be noted that a plain block of
the same material has been provided in lieu of the
ornate throne devised by Martinetti.
At this point the reader may well be wondering if
all this work of restoration is justified. If Martinetti
added so much that is alien or completely modern,
how can we be sure that the ancient pieces really belong together? Why is Cybele represented on a scale
so much smaller than that of the lions? Why is she
sitting on a four-wheeled cart? Even if the assembly
of these components into a group is justified, what
purpose did it serve ?
In order to answer such questions we must first
explain who Cybele was and how she came to Rome,
for she was not an original member of the Roman
pantheon but rather an Asiatic mother-goddess, associated in myth and cult with the god Attis. She is
often represented accompanied by lions, riding a lion
or, as on an altar in the Villa Albani (Figure 7),
enthroned "on a chariot driving a pair of lions"
(Lucretius 11.6OI). The chariot in this relief has a
curious feature in common with our bronze group:
in each case the wheels have seven spokes. A wheel
with seven spokes, rather than six or eight, would be
difficult to make, as well as unnecessary, and can
hardly have been a common sight in the streets of
Rome. Even representations of such wheels in art are
unusual, and it is perhaps no coincidence that both of
these instances are associated with Cybele. There
seems no reason to doubt that the wheels, the lion
and the statuette of Cybele did originally form part
of a single monument.
255

Archaeology Magazine - October 1966

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Archaeology Magazine - October 1966