Glenys Davies

Honorific vs funerary statues of women: essentially the same or fundamentally different?

Draped standing statues of women who were not members of the imperial family were, broadly speaking, erected in one of two contexts: honorific statues might be placed in one of the public areas of the town, and funerary statues would decorate a tomb or grave monument outside the town. Many of these statues conform to a specific statue body type. The chapter explores whether the body types used for statues of women in the two contexts the same or different? It concentrates on the six biggest categories of statue body: the Ceres type, the Large and Small Herculaneum women, Pudicitia, and the Hip-swathe and Shoulder-swathe groups. The chapter illustrates the use of the six popular body types for portrait statues of women, based on information in Alexandridiss Appendix 2. Some differences can discerned in the pattern of use. They are not fundamentally different but not quite the same either. Keywords:Ceres type; funerary statues; Herculaneum Woman type; Hip-swathe type; honorific statues; Pudicitia type; Shoulder-swathe type