Abstract
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.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 7-37 |
| Number of pages | 31 |
| Journal | The Art Bulletin |
| Volume | 93 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Publication status | Published - Mar 2011 |
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