ANCIENT SITE NARONA

Motif: marble sculpture of Livia Drusilla, AD 14 to 21, Narona, Vid-Metković, Croatia; the head of the sculpture is the property of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. The city of Narona (now the village Vid near Metković, Croatia) was an important Roman colony in the Neretva river valley, on the eastern coast of the Adriatic. Though Salona unquestionably used to be the centre of the Roman province of Dalmatia, since the Late Republican era Narona played a more significant role in relation to south-eastern Europe, connecting the coast with the interior (particularly the area of the present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina). Narona was first mentioned in historical documents as early as the fourth century BC by Pseudo Scylax and Theopompus, however in the mid-second century BC, according to archaeological excavations from 1997, 1998 and 1999, there was an archaeologically attested emporium located at the top of the Neretva river delta (Roman Naro, Greek Naron), on the very spot where the Roman forum of the Narona colony was to be built in the last decades of the first century BC. This place was of strategic importance for the communication from the Adriatic toward the hinterland of the ancient province of Dalmatia, as far as the rivers Sava and Danube. Narona was probably given the status of colonia, a colony, by the emperor Augustus, though there is another rather well founded opinion that it had already been a Julian colony, i.e. earlier than 27 BC. The city walls with towers were preserved. A number of partially explored country houses, (villae rusticae) in the immediate vicinity of the city walls show a considerable degree of interior decoration. The necropolis (burial grounds) from this early ancient period was not investigated, though many Roman Latin epitaphs were preserved. The most impressive building on the wide forum is the Augusteum, discovered and excavated in 1995 and 1996, at the locality of the former Plećaš’s barn. This small temple, with a cella and propyleaeum, on a raised plateau next to the forum, exactly at the spot where the Lower and Upper city meet, had been erected for emperor Augustus round 10 BC. This is also the time when the first statues in its interior with a simple black and white mosaic-covered floor had been erected. These statues were erected on a constructed pedestal. It can be concluded that the Augusteum was destroyed in the late fourth century. The whole of the forum complex was already deserted. Some Christian basilicas were constructed in the Lower city. The Augusteum at Narona, with its 15 preserved large statues out of, probably, the total of more than 20, represents the most numerous group of Roman imperial statues that have been ever found. Beside the statue of Livia from the Augustan period, by the new discovery of the head and torso join – shown on the Croatian Post postage stamp – another statue of Livia was also discovered, this one from the Tiberian period, 14 – 21 AD. The statue is 184 cm high/tall. The torso is made from Pentelic marble and the head Parian. Livia Drusilla, born in 58 BC, died in AD 29, was first married to the Roman military leader Tiberius Claudius Nero and was the mother of emperor Tiberius and the military leader Nero Claudius Drusus. In 38 BC she married Octavianus, the future emperor Augustus. The imperial governor (pro-praetor) of the province of Dalmatia, Publius Cornelius Dolabella simultaneously erected two statues in Narona, the statue of Tiberius and the one of Livia, the latter now known under the name “Oxford-Opuzen Livia”. Livia as the emperor’s mother had been highly honoured, more than she had been in the Augustan period. When she was finally deified at the time of Claudius in AD 41, her cult in Narona has been built up even more, as a matter of fact two inscriptions from that time mention her priest as sacerdos Divae Augustae. Livia’s cult in Narona, even before this discovery, was attested by inscriptions as well as the portrait exhibited at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford that was acquired for the museum by Sir Arthur Evans in Metković in 1878, (it was previously noted by Mihovil Glavinić in 1874). The marble head of Livia from the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, has been on a several-year loan to the Archaeological Museum in Split where it had been exhibited since December 18, 2000, thanks to the museum board, the Visitors of the Ashmolean Museum, and their director Dr Christopher Brown and the curator Professor Doctor Michael Vickers. By this generous contribution to the evaluation of Livia’s portrait and statue, the collaboration of the two museums has been pointed out, the collaboration between the oldest British and north-western European museum Oxford, and the one in Split, the oldest Croatian and south-eastern European one. Endeavouring to find the torso that would correspond to the Oxford head has lasted for a long time and caused great media attention, both in Croatia and Britain. In the London The Times four articles were written by Norman Hammond, professor at Boston University and The Times archaeology correspondent: How a murderous matriarch lost her head, October 25, 2000; Oxford thrilled by headless torso discovery, November 22, 2000; Two heads of Livia are better than one, April 4, 2001; Body of evidence resolves the mystery of Livia’s head, June 20, 2001 On January 22, 2001 it was undoubtedly attested that the join of the Oxford head and the torso of the statue that was kept in Opuzen was perfect. The Opuzen torso was discovered earlier than the year 1847 in Narona, most probably together with another statue, the one of Tiberius, later attested to have come from the Augusteum. The torso was first mentioned by Sir Gardner Wilkinson who had seen it in Opuzen and wrote about it in 1848. The director of the Archaeological Museum in Split, Mihovil Glavinić, who noted the heads of Livia and Mercury in the autumn of 1874, also saw the torso in the same year. The statues were transferred to Opuzen in 1847 or some time earlier under the direction of the prefect of the district Anđelo Vidović and placed in his house in Opuzen. Owing to the fact that the town of Opuzen had already lent the torso to the Archaeological Museum in Split, the “new” statue of the Oxford-Opuzen Livia was also displayed in this museum on May 14, 2002. This statue was presented to the wider Croatian and European public owing to the great project of the Narona Augusteum exhibition that was realized by Emilio Marin, the leader of the excavations in Narona from 1988 to 2004. The exhibitions were accompanied by four catalogues. The exhibition in Split, The Augusteum at Narona – the Siesta of the Narona Emperors in Split was held from May 4 to June 15 2004. The Oxford exhibition The Rise and Fall of an Imperial Shrine – Roman sculptures from the Augusteum at Narona was held from July 6 to October 17 2004, the one in Barcelona Divo Augusto – La descoberta d’un temple roma a Croacia – El descubrimiento de un templo romano en Croacia from November 4, 2004 to January 30, 2005. In Vatican the exhibition L’Augusteum di Narona – Roma al di la dell’Adriatico is held from February 22 to May 18 2005. In Zagreb the exhibition will be shown in the Gliptoteka HAZU (the museum of the Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences) from June 10 to December 31 2005. In this way the Oxford-Opuzen Livia from Narona has turned into an excellent ambassador of Croatian archaeology and a good will ambassador between Croatia and Great Britain.