Minerva with Phiale

Standing frontally, Minerva raises her left hand, which would originally have held an upright spear or staff, while her right hand is held out at waist level, grasping a circular patera with a raised central boss (1). The craftsmanship is rather rough, and the goddess has a rather short, stocky build. She wears a high-crested Italo-Corinthian helmet, with a crest that is forked in the front and ends in a long tail in the back that attaches to her shoulders. Her hair is rendered in wavy locks pulled into a roll on either side of her head and gathered at the back of her neck. Her facial features, including the eyes, raised brows, prominent nose, wide mouth, and pointed chin, are large and rough. She wears a mantle over a short-sleeved garment. The gorgoneion of her aegis is represented as an animal face with a broad brow, large eyes, and a flattened nose. The tips of both feet are just visible under the hem of her garment. The statuette is fully modeled in the round. Examples showing Athena (Minerva) in this stance and bearing a libation dish date from the Archaic period (2). NOTES: 1. An almost exact copy of this statuette is in Braga; see A. J. N. Pinto, Bronzes figurativos romanos de Portugal (Lisbon, 2002) 165-66, no. 33, pl. 47. A closely comparable statuette, although lacking a mantle, is in the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, inv. no. Fr. 1878. Two others from Augst, of a slightly different style, are published in A. Kaufmann-Heinimann, Götter und Lararien aus Augusta Raurica: Herstellung, Fundzusammenhänge und sakrale Funktion figürlicher Bronzen in einer römischen Stadt, Forschungen in Augst 26 (Augst, 1998) 80 and 138, nos. S35-36. 2. Larger and more carefully formed statuettes of Minerva, although in the same stance and also bearing a circular object (described as a shield in one case), are presented in Los bronces romanos en España, exh. cat., Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Palacio de Velazquez (Madrid, 1990) 243-44, nos. 151 and 153. An example from Sparta, dated to the Archaic period, shows Athena holding in her right hand a patera with a raised boss and lifting her left to hold a spear, as in the Harvard example; see Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae Athena no. 185 (top). Lisa M. Anderson