The Weary Herakles of Lysippos

Lysippos created a bronze statue, lifesized or probably larger, of Herakles leaning on his club after supporting the heavens on his shoulders, the apples of the Hesperides in the hand behind his back. The statue was made for Sikyon or Argos, or a copy for each city. The statue must have been cast about the time Alexander the Great died. Early in the Hellenistic period a version was made for Athens, and perhaps around 200 B.C. a baroque styling of the statue was fashioned for Pergamon. The first versions and the later recensions were all copied in various media on scales from colossal to miniature, including coins. Versions were made for the Greek imperial cities of Asia Minor, and the admiration of Emperor Commodus (about 190) led to statues with the Emperor's features, usually very idealized. The baroque versions, large and small, continued through the era of the Tetrarchs, especially on the coins of Maximianus Herculeus. Toward the end of Antiquity, and sooner, the Weary Herakles became more than just a decorative figure for gymnasia and baths. The Lysippic Herakles stood as a symbol of the cares, imperial, civic, and even spiritual, which the pagan ancients and their Judeo-Christian successors carried on their shoulders.


CORNELIUS VERMEULE
[AJA 79 five years. The modern monographs have concentrated on limited aspects of the master's style. Certain creations, whether large marbles or tabletop bronzes, all Graeco-Roman copies (or late Hellenistic versions at best), have been singled out at random as statements of what the great Sikyonian master originally intended. All recent writers have been united in commenting on the popularity, influence, and longevity of the Weary Herakles as a key document of ancient sculpture.
Although the statue appears in miniature as a city-badge on a Peloponnesian (Sikyonian or Argive) silver tetradrachm of Alexander the Great, struck before the end of the fourth century B.C., certain critics have argued that the Weary Herakles by Lysippos stood not in the market-place or gymnasion at Sikyon but in or near the Agora of Athens.6 Support for these suppositions comes, it is said, from the fact that a small bronze and a small marble version, the former thought to be very "pure" in stylistic terms, have been found in the excavations of the "Greek" or old Agora.' Also the figure appears on Greek imperial (Hadrianic or later) bronze coins of Athens, in a series featuring the famous statues, reliefs, and paintings of the city. Finally, the fact that Pausanias does not describe the bronze Herakles by Lysippos at Sikyon, and Libanios does not state where or by whom was the weary Herakles he praises so lovingly, leaves the matter of original location open to some doubt.
Reexamination of the fifty or so versions listed by F.P. Johnson, plus consideration of evidence brought to light in more recent years, enables one to trace the chronology of the Lysippic Herakles and its later variations from about 320 B.C., when the first statue was made, to the period around A.D. 215, when the Baths of Caracalla in Rome were more or less completed. Most critics of Greek sculpture are agreed that Lysippos created his lifesized or larger bronze statue (bronze was his favorite medium) relatively late in his long career. Several modern writers have gone further, suggesting that the type of the resting Herakles known from marble copies in Copenhagen, Dresden, Boston, and elsewhere was an earlier creation by Lysippos on the same theme, a bronze fashioned under the influence of Attic or Polykleitan sculpture about 360 B.C.8 This Herakles, in turn, relates to the Meleager attributed to Skopas (pl. 51, fig. A), to the Polykleitan or later funerary boy known as the Narcissus, and to the Asklepios of Attic votive reliefs late in the fifth century B.C., or even to the elders, eponymous heroes, or heralds of the Parthenon Frieze.
Selective grouping of the Weary Herakles will reveal that the small statues or statuettes found in Athens derive not from the bronze (or bronzes) by Lysippos but from a Hellenistic modification, doubtless also in bronze, of the lost original. This modernized variation of the master's work has likewise not survived. Despite lack of specific evidence, of a statement giving ironclad information, it may be supposed that the statue by Lysippos was set up in a public place in the city of Sikyon or possibly at Argos. Reasons for these suppositions become clearer when the selective groups of statues are examined. THE fig. 4a

THE ROMAN FIGURES, INCLUDING PORTRAITS
The fourth and last group claims the fragment of a small statue in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, as a sub-type and revolves around the Palatine Hill-Palazzo Pitti colossus, "signed" as the work of Lysippos and having a portrait of Commodus scarcely less ideal than the famous half-figure bust of the Emperor Commodus (180 to 192) as Hercules in the Palazzo dei Conservatori in Rome. This group is documented from the large bronze medallions depicting Commodus as the Weary Herakles. While hardly a significant work of art, the Boston Herakles of the latest Lysippic type has the virtue of being totally an expression of its age, the decades when Commodus and Septimius Severus (193 to 211) made the cult of Herakles an in-strument of Roman imperial, pan-Mediterranean policy, a fact reflected in the major arts such as statuary and sarcophagus reliefs, and on coins. The fragment, presumably from Rome, certainly from Italy, has been broken or cut off and dressed (perhaps in post-antique times) irregularly through the upper shoulders. The surfaces are somewhat weathered.12 (pl. 53, fig. 7a, b) The drilling of the eyes, which is undoubtedly ancient, indicates a date in the second or third centuries A.D., probably between about 19i and 210. Like the famous Farnese Hercules in Naples, this small statue probably stems from the late Hellenistic to Antonine baroque recasting of Pergamene creations in the spirit of Lysippos or other fourth century masters. Like the Palazzo Pitti statue from the Palatine Hill, the cult of Divus Commodus has influenced the shape of the head, although this fragment cannot be classed as an ideal portrait. In the Antonine period double-and triple-sized copies (like the Farnese Hercules) were made to suit the grand niches of Roman baths and basilicas. Reduced (half and third-size) copies such as this were also turned out for domestic shrines, villa gardens, fountain-houses, and other areas having small architectural or tabletop settings. Group Two, the Hellenistic (probably Pergamene) version of the Lysippic archetype, has proven to be, by far, the most popular in number and diversity of copies. This is doubtless because the Hellenistic statues were available to the copyists in major centers, such as Athens, while the statue or statues by Lysippos may not have been visited so frequently at Sikyon or Argos. Also, Graeco-Roman taste favored Hellenistic recastings of traditional subjects over their purer, less-exciting fourth century B.C. models. Group Three (the Farnese Hercules and its forerunners) and Group Four (the statues adapted as portraits) were too overwhelming or too topical to enjoy the popularity accorded the Hellenistic statues and statuettes in all media. The manneristic little marble statues from the school of Aphrodisias were also too far removed in their own special ways from the main Lysippic current to share the universality of the Hellenistic Herakles, which was hardly a drastic modification of what Lysippos originally intended. The date of the follis is not long before all overtly pagan divinities disappear from the Roman imperial coinage. The first reverse, that of the Emperor Carinus, can be traced back in the third century A.D., to an aureus of Gordianus III (238 to 244).26 On these aurei, the bearded figure is clearly Hercules rather than Gordian, who was a beardless young man, portrayed on the obverses. From the time of Gordianus III, numismatic representations of the Weary Herakles in the Roman im-perial series, and its Greek imperial counterpart in the East, can be traced back through the Hellenistic period to the coinage of the immediate successors of Alexander the Great.

MIRROR REVERSALS OF THE VARIOUS
Finally, a barbaric double (?) aureus of Gallienus (260 to 268) features an unusual Herakles on the VIRTVS AVGVSTI reverse. A portrait of the emperor may have been intended, but the style is too rustic to say for certain.27 The figure stands so erect that the die designer's prototype could have been the older resting Herakles, the Copenhagen-Boston type often identified with the earlier work of Lysippos towards the middle of the fourth century B.C.
Carinus (283 to 285) had a younger brother Numerianus (283 to 284), and the AVGG of the reverses with the Weary Herakles as the type figured indicates that they shared the sentiment of imperial Virtue as a common theme. Two superbly-preserved aurei of this reverse show how different the statue could be when handled by the same or allied die designers in the imperial mint of Rome.28 (pl. 55, figs. 12a, b, 13a, b) In the first reverse die Herakles seems to be bearded in the Late Antique imperial fashion, a portrait of the Emperor Carinus. Furthermore, he holds the apples of the Hesperides in canonical fashion in his right hand, on his hip. The second reverse clearly follows a different, Hellenistic statuary prototype. Herakles is definitely Herakles, with a heavy head and a full, rich beard. The god places his right hand on his hip, omitting the apples. Thus, it can be shown that even at a date near the end of the pagan antiquity artists in the imperial capital, the seat of art as well as power, were fully aware 23 Identification of the Late Antique Roman imperial numismatic type of the Weary Herakles with the several statues recorded from Asia Minor is logical, since these provinces fea-