A study of deity assimilation in sculptural representations of male children from the Roman imperial era

Representing the deceased in the overall guise of a known deity was a common funerary practice in the first three centuries AD, and representations of such "deity assimilation" have long been recognized in Roman sculpture. In these depictions, the deceased was represented with portrait head and the attributes of a deity, in order to suggest that he possessed qualities characteristic of that deity, or that he would continue to be under the protection of that deity in the afterlife. While scholars have given attention to this practice for years, their studies have focused on examples of Roman men and women. To this point, however, scholarship has not addressed the examples of young boys portrayed in divine guise. The result has been the misidentification of many important monuments. This dissertation has undertaken such a study, and has involved a careful investigation of the archaeological and literary evidence.; This work includes a catalog of over 100 sculptural images of little boys assimilated to gods. It also provides a discussion of the divinities chosen for assimilation, as well as their significance to the boys and those who commissioned and viewed the images. Above all, this dissertation suggests that the in-the-round sculptural representations were enjoyable images whose messages to spectators were comprised of two parts which were to be found in the two components of the images themselves: the cheerful portrait expressed the optimal quality of joyfulness possessed by the child in life, while the divine guise expressed survivors' wishes for the deceased child's continued existence. Each of these components expressed one of the two major themes mirrored in the literary and epigraphic evidence written similarly on the occasion of the death of a child.; This study also proposes that these images may have been kept in proximity to survivors, inside the home. Finally, it demonstrates that these pieces of sculpture make up a distinct class of funerary commemoration for male children of the Roman imperial era.