Fullerton, 'Faces of Power: Alexander's Image and Hellenistic Politics', Bryn Mawr Classical Review 9502
URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/bmcr/bmcr-9502-fullerton-faces

@@@@95.2.9, Stewart, Faces of Power

Andrew Stewart, <i>Faces of Power: Alexander's Image and
Hellenistic Politics</i>. Hellenistic Culture and Society vol.
XI. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
Pp.xxxviii+507, figs. 191. ISBN 0-520-06851-3.
     Reviewed by Mark D. Fullerton, History of Art--The Ohio
State University

     Over the past two decades, the number of publications
dealing with the history and art of ancient Macedonia has
increased dramatically. This explosion of interest resulted, at
least in part, from the spectacular finds at Vergina of the
1970's and was further stimulated by the highly publicized
international exhibition, <i>The Search for Alexander</i>.
Indeed, as the controversies surrounding the Vergina material
have clearly demonstrated, the figures of Philip and Alexander
have loomed large over all arguments concerning the material
culture of Macedonia in the late Classical and Hellenistic eras.
Further exploration and publication have provided more data on
Macedonian artistic and cultural traditions--data which promise
to broaden our framework of interpretation. Nonetheless, given
the status of Alexander's lifespan as the conventional pivot
between the Classical and the Hellenistic world, Alexander
himself--his actions, institutions, personality and image--has
attracted, and probably will continue to attract, the lion's
share, so to speak, of attention. One might think that so focal a
subject as the portraiture of Alexander had been exhausted by
existing scholarship, but such is far from the case, as Stewart's
new volume has shown. Various circumstances can prompt
re-evaluation, including new material, new assessments of
well-known material, and new applications of interpretive theory;
all play a role in Stewart's study. As the author informs us
(p.xxxiii), this work began as a publication of a series of
fragments in the Getty Museum, ostensibly a sculptural group
including an image of Alexander. When confronted with the
plethora of difficulties surrounding any attempt to understand
the imagery of Alexander, Stewart expanded his study and has
produced by far the most comprehensive treatment of the topic to
date.

     One's first impression on encountering this volume is,
indeed, its thoroughness, for Stewart concerns himself not simply
with the portraiture of Alexander in the circumscribed sense of
artistic representation but rather with the image of Alexander
according to the broadest possible definition of that term.
Naturally, much of the study has to do with the appearances of
Alexander in sculpture, painting and coinage primarily during the
period from his own lifetime down to the mid-second century B.C.
However, Stewart seeks to frame our understanding of these
portrayals within the much broader context of the <i>idea</i> of
Alexander, as formulated and propagated in the service of his own
imperialist ambitions as well as those of his successors. Of
course, the evidence for the reconstruction of the concept of
Alexander is just as problematic as that for his physical
representation. Documentation is thus of primary importance and
documentation is provided abundantly in a series of appendices
which, together with a useful index and copious bibliography,
constitutes a full third of the book. Separate appendices include
collections of: literary sources on Alexander's appearance,
literary and epigraphic documentation of the portraits, evidence
for cults of Alexander, preserved Alexander portraits, and a
catalogue of the Getty fragments. When one adds the nearly two
hundred well-selected illustrations, it is clear that this volume
is, at the very least, the starting point for all future studies
of the topic.

     The text is divided into three sections comprising ten
chapters, each of which includes three to five sub-chapters. Such
extensive compartmentalization makes the book easier to follow
and especially easier to consult, although the titles chosen only
sometimes make clear the content of the section, chapter, or
sub-chapter in question. A narrative structure does, however,
emerge. Part I, "Approaching Alexander," provides background: a
criticism and analysis of the nature of the literary and artistic
documentation collected, an exploration of the crucial problem of
identification, an overview of previous approaches, and
explanation of the conceptual bases of his own approach. Its last
chapter seeks, on historical evidence, to isolate aspects of the
image (in the broad sense) of Alexander, including clues to his
actual appearance, his emulation of various heroic models, his
role as a Macedonian king, and finally his status as divine son
of Zeus. Part II, "King and Conqueror," concerns itself primarily
with portraiture of Alexander during his own lifetime. Its
chapters consider, roughly diachronically, his image as prince
and young king, as victor in the battles with Darius and his
forces, as Asian king and conqueror of the east, and the knotty
question of divine images in Greece perhaps shortly before his
death. Part III, "Survivors and Successors," deals with the use
of Alexander's image by his successors and other rulers in the
Hellenistic world during the two generations or so following 323.

     Within this text, there is much that is new or at least
newly emphasized. For example, other treatments of Alexander tend
to stress the importance of implied connections with Herakles
(especially from numismatic evidence) or Dionysos (from the
analogy of the eastern conquest). Stewart, however, convincingly
argues that it was Achilles who was the paradigmatic hero for
Macedonian royal culture generally and for Alexander
specifically. There is a tendency to generalize about the
employment of Alexander's image more or less equally by the
successor dynasties as a device of legitimization. Stewart's
close study of this phenomenon clarifies the extent to which this
was primarily a Ptolemaic policy shared only very sporadically by
rival kings and pretenders. There are many other specific
observations along these lines which richly repay close reading.
However, what seems the most original contribution of this study
is the degree to which Stewart has woven into his approach
observations and insights from disciplines outside those
traditionally associated with the study of classical art.
Scholarship on ancient portraiture, with few exceptions, even
today rarely transcends the long dominant and somewhat na_ve
concerns of identification and biography. Stewart, drawing from
the interest in semiotics displayed in earlier works on, for
example, the Fran_ois vase, the Athena Nike complex, and
Hellenistic "'baroque" sculpture, recognizes that a portrait is
first and foremost a statement. In the case of Alexander, it is a
statement concerning power and the role of personal charisma in
maintaining and extending power. Beginning from that premise,
Stewart introduces concepts from theoretical writings in
sociology and philosophy, especially Weber and Foucault, and
applies them to models of reading found in the
literary/linguistic studies of Peirce, Bakhtin and Eco. Through
this synthesis Stewart foregrounds the essentially semiotic
question of <i>how</i> Alexander's portraiture functioned as a
vehicle of conquest and rule for Alexander and his successors
alike. Although his explicit statement of approach is a
relatively small portion of the book (pp.59-70), the attitudes
presented inform the entire text.

     These new insights are, however, integrated into a study
which approaches many long-standing questions in an essentially
traditional manner. The study of Alexander portraiture
necessarily involves the application of the entire apparatus of
positivistic interpretation which to a large degree has created
our understanding of free-standing statuary from the Classical
and Hellenistic period. Here, as always, two general areas of
concern emerge: the creation of a corpus and the creation of
context(s) for that corpus; both are obviously subjective
enterprises. As Stewart himself points out, there exist only
three undisputed examples: the inscribed Azara herm (a Roman
work), the Alexander mosaic (presumably a copy of an early
Hellenistic painting), and the images on the coins of the
Diadochoi, especially Ptolemy and Lysimachos. These scraps of
evidence can be complemented with information from literary
descriptions of Alexander and of his portraits, but the only
identifying features which suggest themselves are the "leonine"
hairstyle with anastole, the turn of the head (in some images),
and the thoughtful facial expression. Since the anastole is
neither ubiquitous among nor exclusive to the representations of
Alexander, distinguishing the heavily idealized image of the king
(later god) from images of the gods themselves is a highly
subjective enterprise. A most obvious example would be the
difficulty in identifying a heroic figure with thunderbolt as
Alexander Keraunophoros rather than a youthful Zeus. As Stewart's
perceptive analysis has shown, the conflation of images very much
suited Alexander's own purposes, but it very much hinders the
task of the modern cataloguer. Further complications in the
creation of a corpus are of course introduced by the problem of
"copies" and reconstruction, and indeed (as two of the three
sources of evidence cited above illustrate) the vast majority
(perhaps all) of Alexander images involve some judgment
concerning the relationship between a Hellenistic or Roman image
and its possible source. The contexts invoked to explain these
monuments are, like the corpus itself, a creation of the modern
scholar. No example of an Alexander portrait is dated or signed,
and few, if any, are provenanced originals. Thus it is the
scholar's skill which provides the assignment of date, the
attribution to a particular artist and/or geographical school,
and the identification of a specific historical explanation for
the commissioning and execution of the monument in question.

     How a particular scholar visualizes the portrait tradition
of Alexander necessarily depends on how troubled that scholar is
by the element of subjectivity in this interpretive process. In
sculptural scholarship generally, current approaches reflect the
full spectrum from perverse skepticism at the one end to
unquestioning confidence at the other, while the majority
naturally fall somewhere in the middle. Readers familiar with
Stewart's prodigious output will not be surprised to find that in
his work on Alexander too he ranges to the side of confidence,
albeit a confidence borne from an impressive command of the
literary sources and thorough knowledge of the sculptural
material. While some of the more skeptical might take exception
with (or have trouble seeing) some individual identifications,
distinctions and attributions, the value of his study as a whole
will certainly stand on its own. Stewart has not only put the
study of Alexander imagery on a new and solid footing, he has
produced an important model for the intellectually integrative
approach to the study of classical art which is itself the most
significant contribution of current scholarly enterprise.