page_title: Altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus
section_title: Description
hierarchical_section_title: Altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus / Description
caption_attribution_description: Museo pushkin, calchi, ara di domizio enobarbo
context_page_description: The Altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus, more properly called the Statuary group base of Domitius Ahenobarbus, is a series of four sculpted marble plaques which probably decorated a base which supported cult statues in the cella of a Temple of Neptune located in Rome on the Field of Mars.
  The frieze is dated to the end of the second century BC, which makes it the second oldest Roman bas-relief currently known. However, there is also a contemporaneous relief depicting a Roman naval bireme with armed marines, from a temple of Palastrina built c. 120 BC.
  The sculpted panels are still visible today, with one portion on display at the Louvre and another at the Glyptothek in Munich. A copy of this second piece can be seen at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.
context_section_description: Despite their common name, the reliefs probably did not originally form part of an altar, but a large rectangular base (5.6 m long, 1.75 m wide, and 0.8 m high), intended to support the cult statues. These included works attributed to the Greek sculptor Scopas, like the important statuary group featuring Neptune, Thetis, Achilles, the Nereids, Tritons and Phorcys with sea monsters and other fantastic creatures.
  The reliefs consist of two large panels on the long sides of the base and two smaller panels for the short sides. The large panel conserved in the Louvre is typical of Roman civic art and depicts a scene which one would only find at Rome in this period: the census. The other three panels depict a mythological theme in a Hellenistic style: the marriage of Neptune and Amphitrite. Given the difference in style, subject and material, it is thought that the two friezes are not contemporary. The mythological frieze seems to have been executed earlier, covering the three visible sides of the base, which would originally have been connected to the back wall of the cella. Some years later, the base would have been shifted away from the wall, freeing the fourth side for the panel depicting the census.
caption: Cast of the mythological panels, Pushkin Museum.
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