Un torso militar procedente de Itálica

Abstract

The Archaeological Museum of Seville retains a military torso, found in Italica in the
mid-nineteenth century. Nowadays the statue is dated from Julio-Claudian era, but in my
opinion with no definitive arguments, because the parallellels supporting this hypothesis do
not have an absolute dating. The different studies that have analized the torso have ignored,
on the one hand, the analysis of the iconographic elements contained in breastplate and
pteryges; in the other hand, typological issues and possible identification of the person represented.
In these circumstances, the questions of the piece continue, over a hundred years
after its discovery, unanswered. Objective of this work is to study the sculpture from Italica,
mainly from a stylistic and iconographic viewpoint, to offer a proposal for dating and one
hermeneutic interpretation for this statue that combines the maximum possible number of
elements. If my arguments are accepted, the sculpture was done during the last ten years of
Domitian’s reign and reflected some of the most important political events of the year 89
A. D. Therefore, it served as testimony to the fidelity of Italica and italicenses to the regime
of the last of the Flavian.