Appropriating Images—Embodying Gods
Appropriating Images—Embodying Gods
This chapter examines a text by the Augustan poet Sextus Propertius, Propertius 4.2, which has a god speak about himself in the first person. This text analyzes the identity of god and image. On the one hand, the god—who introduces himself by the name of Vertumnus—claims an identity independent of situational appropriations and even of his image. He implicitly claims an identity within different material shapes, including statuettes and paintings. In the fiction of the speech, the god claims such an identity by remembering other and former images. However, he remains subject to them; he is bound to concrete appropriations. Similarly, Vertumnus's physical movements are located in the imagination of observers, where the manifestation of the “present” is extended into imagined sequences of actions.
Keywords: Sextus Propertius, Propertius 4.2, god, image, Vertumnus, situational appropriations
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