Guillaume Biard
In antiquity, statues were not meant to move. At least, this is what the poet Pindar suggests in his famous verses at the beginning of the Fifth Nemean Ode (5th Nemean ode, v. 1-2), where bronze portraits of athletes are described as immovable, in contrast with the swift diffusion of poetic words. Statues were the ultimate symbol of stability and permanence. Horace, five centuries later, perhaps playfully countering Pindar, would claim that his odes were “more enduring than bronze” (Odes III, 30, v. 1).
History and archaeology, however, seem to vindicate Horace: the majority of ancient statues were destroyed, melted down, smashed, or reused, while the poets’ words have survived mostly intact. Although it is true that widespread destruction and removal of statues became particularly prevalent from Late Antiquity onwards, one should not underestimate the various ways statues were reused in earlier times, whether for economic, political, or cultural purposes. Among these practices, the looting of statues during war, followed by their accumulation or re-display by victors, was initially uncommon in the Greek world. With some symbolic exceptions – such as the removal of the Tyrannicides from Athens during the Second Persian War – Greek belligerents generally destroyed them entirely in an attempt to erase them from memory.
The Romans were the first to systematize the practice of bringing works of art back from their campaigns in the Greek world, beginning in the late 3rd century BC. This practice was closely tied to the triumph, a religious and political ceremony at the heart of the Res publica. In the triumphal procession, captive leaders and soldiers, captured weapons, precious metals, and statues taken as spoils were displayed in a lavish parade. Ironically yet inevitably, the Romans soon developed an insatiable appetite for Greek art, prompting another well-known remark from Horace (Epistles II, 1, v. 155-156) : Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artis intulit agresti Latio (« Greece, the captive, made her savage victor captive, and brough the arts into rustic Latium »).
From the Hellenistic period onwards, the seizure of statues as war booty was adopted by belligerents from other cultural traditions as well. The significance of this practice is manifold, as illustrated by an exceptional example kept in modern-day Iraq. The object under discussion is a Hellenistic bronze statue of Heracles (Fig. 1) ; nearly half life-size, modelled after the famous Farnese Heracles attributed to Lysippus (Invernizzi 1989 ; Bernard 1990). It was unearthed in 1984 at Seleucia-on-the-Tigris (about 30 km southeast of present-day Baghdad), though unfortunately not through official excavation. Local accounts indicate that it was discovered on the banks of the Tigris, about 800 meters northwest of Tell ‘Umar, the main mound of the city. Yet this was certainly not its original setting, as proven by an extraordinary bilingual inscription – in Greek and Parthian language – carved on both thighs of the figure (Canali De Rossi, no. 86) (Fig. 2). Only the Greek version is given below, with its English translation.
Ἔτους τοῦ
καθ᾽ Ἕλληνας
βξυʹ βασιλεὺς
βασιλέων Ἀρ-
σάκης Ὀλόγασος,
υἱὸς Μιραδάτου βα-
{βα}σιλέως, ἐπεστρα-
τεύσατο Μεσσήνηι
κατὰ Μιραδάτου βασιλέ-
λέως, υἱοῦ Πακόρου τοῦ
προβασιλεύσαντος, καὶ
τὸν Μιραδάτην βασιλέ-
α ἐγδιώξας τῆς Μεσήνης
ἐγένετο ἐνκρατὴς ὅλης
τῆς Μεσήνης καὶ εἰκόνα
ταύτην χαλκῆν Ἡρακλέ-
ους θεοῦ, τὴν μετενεχθεῖ̣-
σαν ὑπ᾽ αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ τῆς Μεσή̣-
νης, ἀνέθηκεν ἐν ἱερῶι̣ τῷ̣-
δε θεοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος το̣ῦ
χαλκῆς πύλης προκα̣-
θημένου
In the year 462 [i.e. 150/1 AD] of the Greek era, the king of kings, Arsaces Vologeses, son of Mithridates, waged a military campaign in Mesene against King Mithridates, son of Pacorus, who had reigned before him. After expelling King Mithridates from Mesene, he became master of all Mesene and dedicated this bronze statue of the god Heracles, which he had transported from Mesene, to this sanctuary of Apollo, who stands before the Bronze Gate.
Stylistic analysis dates the statue to the late Hellenistic period, while the inscription provides the precise date of 150/1 AD. Scholars Antonio Invernizzi and Paul Bernard, who studied the statue in depth, argued that it was the product of a local workshop, possibly based in Seleucia-on-the-Tigris, a city known archaeologically for its significant artistic output in Hellenistic times. The statue may originally have been a royal dedication commissioned by Hyspaosines, the first independent king of Mesene (also known as Characene),(Fig.3), during the reign of the Seleucid king Demetrios II Nikator (145‑139 BC).
Heracles, who appears frequently on Mesene’s coinage, was a protector of the kingdom. Thus, the statue was probably not originally erected in Seleucia-on-the-Tigris but in one of the principal sanctuaries of Hyspaosines’ capital, Spasinou Charax (about 50 km north of present-day Basra) a Seleucid foundation to which Hyspaosines later gave his name. In its original context, the Heracles statue was a highly symbolic object: set up in the capital of a newly independent kingdom, it proclaimed the power and wealth of its rulers. As a locally produced work emulating a masterpiece by Alexander the Great’s official portraitist, it signalled the kingdom’s claim to artistic sophistication on par with the legacy of the conqueror himself. At the same time, it was a bold, even hyperbolic statement: for although Hyspaosines briefly ruled Babylon, by the end of his life he was a vassal of the Parthian king.
Nearly three centuries after its original consecration, the statue retained its symbolic potency, as evidenced by the inscription that was then carved on his thighs. The “King of Kings” Vologesus mentioned in the statue’s inscription is the Parthian ruler known to historians as Volageses IV (r. 147‑191 AD). It is likely that the Parthians lost control of Mesene following Emperor Trajan’s campaigns of 116‑117 AD. Mithridates, son of Pacorus, was probably a Parthian prince and client of Rome.
Thus, the conquest of Mesene/Characene by Volageses IV was both an act of revenge for Trajan’s Parthian wars and a reminder that, even in Hyspaosines’ day, Mesene/Characene had been subject to Parthian rule. The campaign also had a crucial economic dimension: Mesene/Characene controlled a vital artery of trade with the East. By reclaiming the territory, Volageses sought not only to assert political supremacy but also to re-establish Parthian dominance over a key commercial route.
In these circumstances, what is the meaning of the transfer of the Heracles statue from Spasinou Charax to Seleucia-on-the-Tigris? On a religious level, the relocation of the kingdom’s protective deity from Mesene to a sanctuary of Apollo/Tir at the city gate of Seleucia signifies, within the Mesopotamian tradition, the transfer of divine protection. On a political level, the looting of a sanctuary belonging to a Roman client kingdom can be read as symbolic compensation for the earlier spoliations carried out by Roman troops. On a broader cultural level, the appropriation of a prestigious Hellenistic statue – an emblem of continuity with the age of Alexander and his successors – served to magnify the grandeur of the Parthian Empire. The meaning of the act becomes even richer when one considers the materiality of the inscriptions, carved directly in the 2nd c. AD on the Hellenistic statue. The practice of inscribing texts on statues was well attested in Mesopotamia, notably in the case of a statue of Darius I discovered at Susa. In this light, the conspicuous engraving on both thighs of the Heracles figure constitutes a striking gesture of cultural appropriation. Yet it also remains profoundly ambiguous, for the inscription is bilingual: its material and linguistic features embody a deliberate fusion of Greek and Parthian heritage.
Today, scholars often speak of the “biography of objects,” or even invoke the paradoxical notion of “object agency.” Such metaphors can be heuristically useful, but in the author’s view, they should not obscure the reality that objects do not act on their own. It is human agents who create, move, destroy, and reinterpret them, investing them with new meanings and powers over time. What objects do preserve are the material traces of these successive transformations – marks left by human will, belief, conflict, and exchange. In this sense, they are documents of history itself, often bearing witness to processes of extraordinary complexity. The bronze Heracles of Seleucia is a case in point: a single statue encapsulates the interplay of religion, politics, and culture across centuries. To retrace these histories inscribed upon objects is, ultimately, the very essence of archaeology.
Further reading
Filippo Canali De Rossi (ed.), Iscrizioni dello Estremo Oriente (Inschriften griechischer Städte aus Kleinasien 65), Bonn, 2004.
Antonio Invernizzi, « Héraclès à Séleucie du Tigre », Revue Archéologique, no. 1, 1989, p. 65‑113.
Paul Bernard, « Vicissitudes au gré de l’histoire d’une statue en bronze d’Héraclès entre Séleucie du Tigre et la Mésène », Journal des Savants, no. 1-2, 1990, p. 3‑68.
