Reading images without texts on Roman sarcophagi

Sophistic," but that would be a topic all on its own. At any rate, the earlier mythological sarcophagi quite often stand in expensively decorated tombs, with myths and mythological figures depicted on the walls and ceiling.1 In my paper I start from the premise that usually there is no single, unambiguous claim about the deceased or death, or on behalf of the living, that can be deduced from the mythological reliefs. Instead, the images contain a multiplicity of prompts and associations for the viewer. The totality of these prompts and associations yields a "horizon of meaning" or "frame of reference" for the understanding of the respective images. I shall try to illustrate this from the example of two closely related types of image. In the process, 1 shall start from the images themselves, not from ancient texts and the philosophical and allegorical meanings to which they bear witness. While, as a rule, the texts reflect the myths as such, and also the individual mythological figure, I am concerned with the choice of scenes and figures, and the way they are molded in the imagery. The image carries the message, and it must be comprehensible in and of itself: That is my hypothesis. In the process, a wider or narrower spectrum of associations and variable meanings is involved, according to the nature of the individual image; in my view, this relates to the popular Roman habit of expressing things by means of mythological allegories. The "slippage" in the resulting frame of reference is to be regarded as a positive feature of myths that are conveyed via the medium of images. This enables different readings to match the personal situation of the viewer. As far as the individual viewers are concerned, I take as my starting point the fact that we are dealing with patrons who are usually not intellectuals trained in philosophy, but citizens from different'sectors of society—citizens, moreover, who can afford a sarcophagus for themselves, like the inhabitants of Pompeii, who have their houses partially decorated with the same myths that crop up on sarcophagi. As examples for my argument I have chosen two love stories: Selene and Endymion on the one hand, and Dionysos and Ariadne on the other. In both images the lovers are depicted in the same iconographic arrangement. In each case, one of them is approaching the beloved, who is lying in front of the lover in the same pose both times. The two images were already compared with one another by contemporaries, and in at least one surviving instance were treated as pendants of each other. I am thinking of two luxury sarcophagi in the Louvre, from a tomb in Bordeaux (figs. 1-2).2 They will form the centerpiece of my argument. On some of the sarcophagi showing Endymion and Selene, just like some showing Ariadne and Dionysos, the mythological couples are identified directly with the people buried in the sarcophagi (usually married couples) by means of their portraits and contemporary hairstyles, or—as in the case of the two sarcophagi in the Louvre (figs. 1-2)—such an identification was enabled by leaving the heads in the bosses to be carved later as portraits. The representation of the deceased as gods and heroes or heroines limits the possible allegorical points of reference to claims that seem to make sense within the