The Mouth of Truth and the Forum Boarium: Oceanus, Hercules, and Hadrian

• Autores: Fabio Barry
• Localización: Art bulletin, ISSN 0004-3079, Vol. 93, Nº 1, 2011, págs. 7-37
• Idioma: inglés
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• Dialnet Métricas: 2 Citas
• Resumen

  • The Bocca della Veritá (Mouth of Truth) has earned popular fame as an enchanted lie detector. The ancient effigy actually represents the god Oceanus: primordial water, end of the earth and threshold of the heavens, springboard from history to eternity. As such, the figure recurrently surfaces in Roman iconography, mythography, rhetoric, political history, numismatics, hymnody, and material symbolism. In the context of the Forum Boarium, the Bocca was integral to the myth of the Romanized Hercules; evidence suggests its creation in Hadrian’s reign as part of a universal symbolism that characterized the emperor as cosmocrat and alter Hercules.