Rome, Imperial Period, ca. 1st to 3rd century CE. Finely carved in relief, a section of a marble frieze from a sarcophagus depicting winged Eros (Cupid) riding a hippocamp. Eros, depicted as a cherub, is posed with one arm raised, perhaps carrying his bow, and the other holding the reigns of the sea-horse. In the Roman period, Eros had become a child (to the earlier Greeks, he was a muscular youth), but here he retains his mischievous air, ready to help couples fall in love through not-entirely-innocent interventions. The hippocamp was a Greek and Phoenician mythological beast, its upper section (head and foreparts) belonging to a horse and its lower section with a serpentine tail of a fish. This horse of the sea, also seen in Etruscan art, was featured in Roman art and often seen in mosaics and marble sculptures like this example. A wonderful example of well-executed sculpture with a wonderful mythical figural program carved in deep relief. Size: 17.25" W x 9" H (43.8 cm x 22.9 cm)

The ancients, according to scholars, believed that hippocamps were the adult versions of the petite creature we now call the sea-horse. The mythical sea-horse known as the hippocamp (hippokampe, hippocampus, hippokampos) was described by Pausanias as a horse, but with the part of its body below the breast representing that of a sea monster or fish. This creature is mentioned in Homeric poems as a symbol of Poseidon who famously rode a chariot pulled across the sea by horses.

See Guntram Koch and Karol Wright, "Roman Funerary Sculpture: Catalogue of the Collections," Getty Publications, 1988, p. 67 for a discussion of a Phyrgian marble sarcophagus in the Getty Collection featuring iconography that also includes an eros on a hippocamp.

Provenance: private Carlton Collection, Los Angeles, California USA

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#122076

Repaired from three pieces, a fragment from a larger work with some restoration and losses to peripheries as shown, and normal surface wear.