TY - JOUR
T1 - The ‘Mouth of Truth’ and the Forum Boarium
T2 - Oceanus, Hercules, and Hadrian
AU - Barry, Fabio
PY - 2011/3
Y1 - 2011/3
N2 - The Bocca della Verita (Mouth of Truth) has earned popular fame as an enchanted lie detector. The ancient effigy actually represents the god Oceanus: primordial water, end of the earth and threshold of the heavens, spring- board from history to eternity. As such, the figure recurrently surfaces in Roman iconography, mythography, rhetoric, political history, numismatics, hymnody, and material symbolism. In the context of the Forum Boarium, the Bocca was integral to the myth of the Romanized Hercules; evidence suggests its creation in Hadrian's reign as part of a universal symbolism that charac- terized the emperor as cosmocrat and alter Hercules.
AB - The Bocca della Verita (Mouth of Truth) has earned popular fame as an enchanted lie detector. The ancient effigy actually represents the god Oceanus: primordial water, end of the earth and threshold of the heavens, spring- board from history to eternity. As such, the figure recurrently surfaces in Roman iconography, mythography, rhetoric, political history, numismatics, hymnody, and material symbolism. In the context of the Forum Boarium, the Bocca was integral to the myth of the Romanized Hercules; evidence suggests its creation in Hadrian's reign as part of a universal symbolism that charac- terized the emperor as cosmocrat and alter Hercules.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=79953208977&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA268313516&v=2.1&u=stand&it=r&p=EAIM&sw=w
M3 - Article
SN - 0004-3079
VL - 93
SP - 7
EP - 37
JO - The Art Bulletin
JF - The Art Bulletin
IS - 1
ER -