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Representing Medea on Roman Sarcophagi: Contemplating a Paradox

It is one thing to find Medea compelling, another to make her art, let alone funerary art. This article faces this complexity head on by examining Medea's visual identity within a sepulchral context. It interrogates her presence on Roman sarcophagi of the mid to late second century CE. The corpus is not insubstantial—nine intact relief panels plus further fragmentary pieces offer ample testament to Medea's presence in the funerary context. Beyond this sphere, Medea's emotionally charged legacy needs no introduction, and her characterisation—outsider, avenger, semi-divine sorceress, victim and murderer—is fleshed out by her capacity to fascinate and repel. Modern scholarship fans the flames, as she remains a popular subject for scholars of Latin and Greek literature, mythology and gender studies. In contrast, Medea's visual sphere of interest has attracted less in-depth attention. Recent studies have acknowledged the implications of her presence on pots and in freestanding sculpture, and most notably, wall painting is beginning to receive careful treatment. Yet art-historians have been more reluctant to confront Medea within the enclosed and predisposed funerary context. Traditional approaches to mythological sarcophagi more generally have favoured consolado as the dominant mode of commemoration, in which empathy and pothos are paramount and protagonists like Adonis and Endymion seen as positive exempla worthy of analogy and assimilation. The deceased is elevated by association with these figures (an association which is often underlined by the use of a portrait head) and the bereaved reassured by the implied interaction of mundane and heroic, mortal and divine. In this way, desire becomes a gloss for grief and loss is translated as yearning.