Cesarea di Mauretania: la piccola Grecia di Giuba II, tra bronzi e marmi

Abstract

Punic Iol, renamed Caesarea in honour of Augustus under Juba II, and promoted by the latter to the rank of capital of the kingdom of Mauretania entrusted to him by the princeps in 25 B.C., underwent a splendid phase of development on the model of Hellenistic cities precisely between the end of the 1st century B.C. and the first part of the 1st century A.D. It is very probable that Juba II, who had grown up in Rome, had provided Caesarea with a port, as the intense trade with the Iberian Peninsula, Gaul and Italy, from whose marble quarries material was extracted for architectural constructions and decorations, as well as from those in Greece, would prove. Caesarea has returned a complex of works of art that is truly unique for Africa: there are many sculptures (mainly in marble, although there is no shortage of bronze) found in the area of the theatre and in that of the baths, whose workmanship recalls the most valuable works of Greek art, to such an extent as to lead one to think that they were brought from Greece itself or from the Hellenistic East. The variety of styles and schools represented by these sculptures suggests, based on the forma mentis of the eclectic Juba II, a lover of Greek art and culture tout court, that the ruler's aim was to create a true collection of a scholarly nature.