page_title: Sperlonga sculptures
section_title: Palladium group
hierarchical_section_title: Sperlonga sculptures / The groups / Palladium group
caption_attribution_description: Sperlonga
context_page_description: The Sperlonga sculptures are a large and elaborate ensemble of ancient sculptures discovered in 1957 in the grounds of the former villa of the Emperor Tiberius at Sperlonga, on the coast between Rome and Naples. As reconstructed, the sculptures were arranged in groups around the interior of a large natural grotto facing the sea used by Tiberius for dining; many scholars believe he had the sculptures installed. The groups show incidents from the story of the Homeric hero Odysseus, and are in Hellenistic "baroque" style, "a loud, full-blown baroque", but are generally thought to date to the early Imperial period.
  As Tacitus and Suetonius recount, the grotto collapsed in 26 AD, nearly killing Tiberius, and either then or in a later fall the sculptures were crushed into thousands of fragments, so that the modern reconstructions have many missing elements. A museum was established in 1963 at Sperlonga to display the reconstructed sculptures and other finds from the villa, with cast reconstructions of the large groups, which are described by the classicist Mary Beard as "creative reinventions".
context_section_description: This group also shows an unusual subject. It is mostly thought to represent the moment when, escaping after stealing the Palladium image which protected Troy, Odysseus tries to kill his comrade Diomedes in order to take all the credit himself. Diomedes senses Odysseus' drawn sword behind him, and stalls the attempt. This episode, also not in Homer, shows Odysseus at his least creditable, exhibiting dolus. In Metamorphoses 13, 337ff Odysseus boasts of his capture of the Palladium, just as some lines earlier he claims the credit for rescuing the body of Achilles. The episode took place at night, and may be imagined as dimly lit to heighten the effect.
  The identification remains somewhat speculative, with the key reassembled piece being the top half of a roughly half-size figure of a helmeted Athena clutched by a roughly life-size hand. With this are associated a headless life-size figure who is not the owner of the clutching hand, and one or more heads.  Odysseus may be the figure, with the head and clutching hand belonging to Diomedes. Some believe that the head and side of the torso of Odysseus in a Phrygian cap with his nose missing (illustrated) belongs here rather than with the Polyphemus group, as it is placed in the group reconstruction. The style of the face of the Palladium figure has been said to represent "a late stage in the transformation of Ionian Hellenistic fleshiness into Julio-Claudian classicism" with archaizing elements found in other Julio-Claudian sculpture.
caption: Diomedes' head, and the Palladium he grasps
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