Statue of Antia Julia Polla

Portrait statue from the south gate of the lower Agora in Ephesus, which may well depict Antia Julia Polla, sister of the consul C. Antius Aulus Julius Quadratus.

The portrait’s body was found inside the south gate of the lower Agora in 1903, just eight years into the long-term Austrian excavations at Ephesus. The head was found in a debris layer near the same gate and was joined to the body in 1934.

Water damage to the right foot, left hand and shoulders, as well as to the lower mantle hem on the back, suggests that it stood for years in an open air location.29At some point, the face was damaged by a fall or other blows to the eyes, brow, nose, lips and chin (the cheeks remain smooth)—locations suggesting a deliberate attack on the face, and a very different kind of response to the representation of social identity.

The hairstyle dates the statue to the late Trajanic period.30The body replicates the Small Herculaneum Woman type in a way typical of the Trajanic period. The proportions are naturalistic and attention is given to an illusionistic rendering of the drapery lines—but only when seen from a distance. The folds of the mantle at the crook of the right elbow and across the groin, for example, are thick and strongly shadowed, but they are cut into the marble without the detailed, illusionistic effects of fabric overlying body volumes that characterize some very high quality replicas of the earlier Imperial period.

"(This statue honors) Antia Julia,daughter of Aulus,] Polla, sister of GaiusAntius Aulus Julius Quadratus, son of Aulus, Voltinia (tribe), consul twice, septemvir epulonum, Arval brother, legate and propraetor of Asia twice, legatus augusti of the province(s) of Pontus and Bithynia, Cappadocia, Galatia, Phrygia, Lykaonia, Paphlagonia, Armenia Minor, proconsul of Creteand Cyrene, imperial legate and propraetor of the province of Lycia-Pamphylia, legate and imperial propraetor of Nerva Trajan Caesar Augustus Germanicus Dacicus of the province(s) of Syria, Phoenicia, Commagene, and Tyre. The setting up of the statue wascarried out from their own funds by Ti. Flavius Pythio, son of Perigenes, Quirina (tribe), asiarch, and Flavia Myrton, his wife, with their children, Flavius Aristoboulus, Flavius Iulianus, Flavius Scapula and Flavia Pythias."

It specifies the person represented in a highly conventional way, identifying Antia Julia Polla with her formal, legal name and in terms of her family ties. Her brother was of extremely high social rank; C. Antius Aulus Julius Quadratus was suffect consul in 94 and consul again in 105. Moreover, the overall structure of the inscription is equally formulaic, with the honorand placed at or near the beginning, the patrons at the end, and honorific information in between (in this case, the extensive titles of her brother). Antia Julia Polla herself is described only in terms of Quadratus; there is no mention of a husband, priesthoods held, or any formulaic terms of praise for her, which may mean that she was young and unmarried.

Image used in

• Ephesos-Museum