Allégories du peuple des Besses à Aphrodisias et Valentia: premières personnifications de la Thrace dans l’art romain
Allegories of the Bessi at Aphrodisias and Valentia: earliest personifications of Thrace in the Roman art

Summary/Abstract: Among the ethnē subjugated by Augustus and depicted in the exceptional complex of the Sebasteion of Carian Aphrodisias, the people of the Bessi is identified by an inscribed basis (Gen. ἔθνους Βεσσῶν), surmounted by a panel displaying a relief statue of an idealized feminine figure personifying the Thracian population. Another female personification of the Bessi, identified by a Greek legend in Genitive case (Βεσσῶν), occurs in a complex of frescoes from Valentia (Hispania Tarraconensis), as a witness of more iconographic programs celebrating Roman and in particular Augustan victories over various gentes.

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