The Borghese Ares Revisited: New Evidence from the Agora and a Reconstruction of the Augustan Cult Group in the Temple of Ares

by Andrew Stewart

Hesperia, Volume 85, Issue 3
Page(s): 577-625
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2972/hesperia.85.3.0577
Year: 2016
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ABSTRACT:

This article discusses the Borghese Ares, often thought to copy the statue by Alkamenes that Pausanias saw in the Temple of Ares in the Athenian Agora, in the light of an unpublished copy from the Agora, dated by context to the Augustan period. After examining the significance of the ring around the statue's right ankle, with reference to some hitherto unnoticed 5th-century sculptural parallels, ancient texts about chained statues of Ares, and the god's Athenian mythology, the author investigates the type's original purpose, location, and date, and proposes a new reconstruction of the temple's Augustan cult group.