{"id":1320,"date":"2018-07-01T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-07-01T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ajaonline.org\/2018\/07\/01\/3670\/"},"modified":"2024-08-13T03:46:03","modified_gmt":"2024-08-13T03:46:03","slug":"3670","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/article\/3670\/","title":{"rendered":"A New Tetrarchic Relief from Nicomedia: Embracing Emperors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ancient Nicomedia, the most important capital of the eastern Roman empire during the Tetrarchy, now lies below the modern industrial city of \u0130zmit. The first systematic archaeological research on Diocletian&rsquo;s capital, supported with a grant from The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (T&Uuml;B\u0130TAK), examines a series of monumental reliefs and statues from a terraced imperial cult complex, found in the &Ccedil;ukurba\u011f district at the heart of modern \u0130zmit. Excavations have brought to light more than 30 relief panels (average ht. 1.0 m x wdth. 1.5 m), the only surviving examples of Late Roman state reliefs that have extensive paint preserved on them. The panels illuminate multiple aspects of the art of the period, including the brightly colored costumes and the new and distinctive self-representation of the tetrarchic emperors and their administration. In this article, one of these relief panels, with a representation of two emperors embracing, is discussed as the precursor to the well-known porphyry Tetrarchs from Venice and the Vatican. It is argued that the relief panel is part of a larger <em>adventus<\/em> scene that shows the meeting of the two diarchs, Diocletian and Maximian, and thus dates from slightly before the onset of Tetrarchy in 293 C.E.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ancient Nicomedia, the most important capital of the eastern Roman empire during the Tetrarchy, now lies below the modern industrial city of \u0130zmit. The first systematic archaeological research on Diocletian&rsquo;s capital, supported with a grant from The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (T&Uuml;B\u0130TAK), examines a series of monumental reliefs and statues from a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1319,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[904],"tags":[5,26,28,29],"issues":[653],"region":[805],"class_list":["post-1320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article","tag-iconography","tag-lateantiquity","tag-arthistory","tag-romanperiod","issues-653","region-turkey"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>A New Tetrarchic Relief from Nicomedia: Embracing Emperors | July 2018 (122.3) | American Journal of Archaeology<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/article\/3670\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A New Tetrarchic Relief from Nicomedia: Embracing Emperors | July 2018 (122.3) | American Journal of Archaeology\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Ancient Nicomedia, the most important capital of the eastern Roman empire during the Tetrarchy, now lies below the modern industrial city of \u0130zmit. The first systematic archaeological research on Diocletian&rsquo;s capital, supported with a grant from The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (T&Uuml;B\u0130TAK), examines a series of monumental reliefs and statues from a [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/article\/3670\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"American Journal of Archaeology\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/aja.journal\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-07-01T04:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-08-13T03:46:03+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/1223_Agturk.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"900\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"807\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta 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