page_title: Portraits of Odaenathus
section_title: Diadem portrait
hierarchical_section_title: Portraits of Odaenathus / Marble portraits / Diadem portrait
caption_attribution_description: English: 228, Lot: 327. Estimate $100. Sold for $84. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee. Aurelian, with Vabalathus. AD 270-275. Antoninianus (22mm, 3.78 g, 5h). Antioch mint, 8th officina. 1st emission, November AD 270-March AD 272. Radiate and cuirassed bust of Aurelian right; H below / Laureate, draped, and cuirassed bust of Vaballathus right. RIC V 381; BN 1258-61. Good VF, brown surfaces, minor roughness.
context_page_description: Odaenathus, the king of Palmyra from 260 to 267 CE, has been identified by modern scholars as the subject of sculptures, seal impressions, and mosaic pieces. His city was part of the Roman Empire, and he came to dominate the Roman East when in 260 he defeated Shapur I, the Sasanian emperor of Persia, who had invaded the Roman Empire. Odaenathus besieged the Sasanian capital Ctesiphon in 263, and although the city did not fall, the campaign led to a full restoration of Roman provinces taken by Shapur I. In the aftermath of his Persian war, Odaenathus assumed the title King of Kings, which was a challenge to the Persian monarch's claims of authority in the region. Odaenathus ruled the Roman East unopposed with imperial consent. In 267, he was assassinated alongside his eldest son Herodianus while conducting a campaign against Germanic raiders in Bithynia; he was succeeded by his son Vaballathus under the regency of the widow queen Zenobia.
  Palmyrene portraits were usually abstract, depicting little individuality. Most reported portraits of Odaenathus are undated and have no inscriptions, making identification speculative.
context_section_description: A 27-centimetre-tall (11 in) marble head portrait, in the Palmyra Museum (Inv. B 459/1662), apparently was part of a life-sized statue. The piece is poorly preserved and fragmentary. The hair begins on the centre top of the head with long sparse strands, which are carved flat and held by a diadem. The beard binds to the hair at the temples and is placed low on the cheeks with a stiff, clean cut. The forehead is furrowed by deep lines beginning at the top of the nose. The man is depicted in traditional Greek style except for his hair, which resembles Iranian Parthian examples rather than the hairstyle seen on Roman portraits. Balty considered it likely that the portrait depicts Odaenathus, noting the similarities to the tiara portrait: the eyes are also wide open, and the gaze has the same intensity. The most noticeable difference is the simpler hairstyle of the diadem portrait; Balty suggested that if the hairstyle difference makes it necessary to ascribe the diadem portrait to a different man than the tiara portrait, Odaenathus' viceroy Septimius Worod is a suitable candidate since the tiara (a symbol of royalty) is missing.
  While lacking the tiara, the portrait depicts its subject wearing a diadem, the main item in the regalia of Hellenistic monarchs; it was used to connect rulers to Alexander the Great, a source of legitimacy for Hellenistic kings. The diadem was probably linked in a Greek context to the god Dionysus, who played a part in royal ideology as a victorious leader, and the headdress became a symbol of monarchy in the East. The Hellenistic Seleucid kings of Syria used a white cloth diadem, and their legacy was a source of legitimacy in the East for early Parthian monarchs against Roman claims (leading to the adoption of their symbols by the Parthian court). The diadem depicted in the portrait is Oriental in style, reminiscent of Parthian iconography. Odaenathus' successor and son, Vaballathus, was depicted wearing a diadem on his coins; this indicated his royal rank to his eastern subjects, and Herodianus was also crowned with a diadem and tiara by his father in 263. Gawlikowski considered it likely that the portrait depicts Odaenathus, and that the lack of a tiara (which made Balty hesitant in his identification of the portrait's subject as Odaenathus) is offset by the royal diadem.
caption: Odaenathus' son and successor, Vaballathus, wearing a diadem
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