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Relief with Caracalla and Julia Domna from National Museum in Warsaw – a Proposal of the Interpretation
Abstract
The article proposes a new interpretation of the relief with depictions of Caracalla and Julia Domna from the National Museum in Warsaw. The scene finds references in earlier Roman iconography, and therefore refers to a recognizable system of communication, although as a result of certain stylistic treatments, differences in its functioning may be suspected. The pieces of weaponry gathered on the tropajon refer to the Dacians, which allows hypothesizing that the depiction was made to present Caracalla as a ‘new Trajan’. The element with which the emperor crowns the tropaion should be interpreted as the cap of the Dacian aristocracy, whose social rank Caracalla abolished by granting citizenship to the free inhabitants of the empire, making them symbolically equal to the imperial power. At the same time, the reference to Trajan foretells the expected success in the Parthian expedition. The above considerations allow us to propose dating the relief to 214 and the place of its origin to be identified as Dacia.
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17951/rh.2025.59.457-478
Date of publication: 2025-10-31 08:36:32
Date of submission: 2024-06-09 09:08:33
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