Hades. Roman Culture, II-III centuries A.D.

Hades. Roman Culture. II - III Century A.D.
Marble.
Provenance: private collection D. A., Belgium. Formerly in a Spanish collection, acquired in the 1980s.
Conservation: Good state of conservation, missing the left arm and the part of the crown. Broken and recomposed at the waist.
Measurements: 30 cm high.

Sculptural set of two figures, one lost, only the feet are preserved, in round bulk. The sculpture is formed by the image of Hades, located to the left, and the one that probably was Persephone, to the right. Between them, and as a support for both figures, an architectural element with a geometric shape that could remind us of a funerary stele typical of Roman art. Although it could also be a tomb, a more than characteristic element that may refer to both protagonists, the god of the underworld and his consort.
Hades is represented as a middle-aged individual, bearded and with abundant hair above his shoulders. He is dressed in a tunic. He appears in the sculptural set erect with the right foot slightly more advanced than the left, the face looks to the right. He has his arms separated from the body with the left one wrapping and holding his scepter or cane finished in two points, which originally would have reached his feet, today only the upper part is preserved. At his side two fragments of two feet that surely belonged to Persephone.
Hades for the Greeks, and Pluto for the Romans. He is the son of Cronus and Hera, brother of Zeus, Poseidon, Hera and Demeter. With Zeus and Poseidon, he is one of the three rulers who divided the empire of the Universe after their victory against the Titans: Hades was attributed the underworld, the Hells, or Tartarus.
According to legend, Hades, in love with the young Persephone, abducted her while she was picking flowers with some nymphs on the plain of Enna, in Sicily. The abduction was carried out in complicity with Zeus and in the absence of Demeter. Finally, Zeus ordered Hades to restore Persephone to her mother, but by inadvertence or perhaps tempted by Hades, the young woman had eaten a pomegranate seed, since she could not take any food in the underworld, this was enough to chain her forever to Hell. However, to mitigate her sorrow, Zeus arranged for her to distribute her time between the underworld and the terrestrial world.
The Romans brought two important innovations to the world of sculpture: portraiture and historical relief, neither of which existed in the Greek world. However, they followed Greek models for a large part of their sculptural production, a base that in Rome would be combined with the Etruscan tradition. After the first contacts with the Greece of classicism through the colonies of Magna Graecia, the Romans conquered Syracuse in 212 BC, a rich and important Greek colony located in Sicily, adorned with a large number of Hellenistic works. The city was sacked and its artistic treasures taken to Rome, where the new style of these works soon replaced the Etruscan-Roman tradition that had prevailed until then. Cato himself denounced the sacking and decoration of Rome with Hellenistic works, which he considered a dangerous influence on native culture, and deplored the Romans' applauding of statues from Corinth and Athens, while ridiculing the decorative terracotta tradition of ancient Roman temples. However, these oppositional reactions were in vain; Greek art had subdued Etruscan-Roman art in general, to the point that Greek statues were among the most coveted prizes of war, being displayed during the triumphal procession of the conquering generals. Shortly thereafter, in 133 BC, the Empire