The Smell of the Greco Romans: Statues were Scented, New Study Finds

For those of you who watched the recent sequel to Gladiator, imaginatively named Gladiator II, firstly you have our sympathies. Whatever that mess was, it was closer to ill-conceived fantasy than a heroic, historical epic.

But amidst the pointless diversions, the weirdly cheap sets and the endless toga flapping from a poorly cast and out-of-form Denzel Washington, there were many egregious errors in the depictions of the Roman Empire of the 3rd century.

Yes this is not exactly rare in such dramatizations but for such a big budget film these “artistic interpretations” moved beyond the exciting and into the silly. You could forgive horses with anachronistic stirrups and naval invasions featuring ramming a city wall, but a rhino with a rider was a little too much.

But perhaps the most famous error, and one which many are already aware, involves the stunning statues which litter many of the interior scenes. They are omnipresent, often so crowded that the backgrounds resemble a studio storage backlot rather than a dressed set, and they are all entirely wrong.

Roman statues, as many know, were not always white. They were once vividly painted, depicting their subjects in as lifelike a portrayal as possible, and it is only the intervening centuries which has stripped them back to the bare surface.

And now it seems we were even more wrong about the statues than we thought, according to a new study published in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology. Not only were these statues originally painted (and often dressed or decorated with jewelry, too), they were also scented with perfumes.

The study, headed by archaeologist Cecilie Brøns of the Glyptotek museum in Copenhagen, draws on multiple references in ancient texts which refer to the statues being perfumed in order to understand two linked questions: why did the Romans (and the Greeks as well) scent their statues, and by omitting this olfactory element of the artwork are we appreciating it in the wrong way?

In truth, we have known for a while about this practice. Various inscriptions recovered from ancient sites describe the scenting of statues, and the famous Roman orator, demagogue and general busybody Cicero noted it as a common practice. We even know from some sources what was used in the perfumes.

A common scent choice, then and now, was rose petals, applied with a fixative or scent medium such as beeswax or oil. The ingredients would be mixed together, designed to last as long as possible when applied to the statue while not disturbing the painted finish.

The statues would be even more richly scented during festivals, draped with garlands of flowers and regularly topped up with perfumes by devotees or attendants. Perhaps the most extreme form of this adornment was known as kosmesis by the Greeks, and involved dressing a naked statue in fine robes, adding jewels and perfume to complete the transformation into a lifelike individual. Kinky.

The perfumes may also have had a preservative effect, but here we are venturing into more speculative territory. The statues which survive today are, fairly obviously, the ones which didn’t really need preserving, and the ones where the applications of oil may have acted to preserve the surface finish have been lost in the intervening time anyway. All we have are the descriptions.

But for the more durable statues, there are traces to be found of the ancient perfuming rituals. Beeswax has been found still adhering to some ancient statues, most notably a statue of Queen Berenike II of Egypt which was once described by the Roman poet Callimachus as “moist” with perfume. Perfume factories at holy sites like the shrine on the island of Delos further support this theory.

So, how were the Greeks and the Romans interacting with their statues? These were clearly not merely objects to be looked at, they would rustle with fabric and give off a strong perfume to those close enough to appreciate it. Truly, these statues would act on many senses at once.

Header Image: My statue has no nose! How does he smell? Terrible! Source: José Luis Filpo Cabana / CC BY-SA 4.0.