A Roman military census: detail of a relief from the so-called Altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus (actually the base of a statue-group
from a temple). This earliest known example of the representation of a Roman religious ceremony in sculpture poses serious
problems of dating and attribution; but the most likely date-range is between c.120 and C.50BC.
More original work "was produced when Greek artists were asked to tackle unfamiliar themes. A good example is the census relief
from the so-called Altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus, a statue base probably made for the temple of Neptune in Rome and datable
some time between the late second and mid first centuries. Three faces of the base were decorated with conventionally florid Neo-
Attic reliefs, now in Munich, showing the marine cortege of Poseidon and Amphitrite; but the fourth side (in Paris) carries a
specifically Roman subject, the taking of a census and the associated ritual sacrifice of a pig, a sheep, and a bull (suovetaurilia), all
rendered in a harder, more matter-of-fact style. Despite uncertainties in scale and a lack of fluency in composition, this scene takes
its individual figure-types from the Hellenistic repertory and is unquestionably the work of a Greek artist, probably the same man as
carved the other three panels. There he was reproducing a well-tried theme; here he was tackling one for which a new iconography
must be created. For all its stumblings, his effort is an important pointer towards the future: the commemoration of Roman
ceremonies and events, enhanced by attendant divinities (here Mars) and personifications, and rendered in a broadly Classical style,
was to be one of the mainsprings of Imperial relief sculpture, brought to maturity in the finest state monument of the Augustan age,
the Ara Pacis (below, pp. 776 f.).
Another unfamiliar kind of commission was the Roman-style portrait. The Romans, under the influence of their native tradition,
preferred portraits which concentrated on the face at the expense of the body and put a premium on maturity and experience rather
than good looks; and, since Greek sculptors always responded well to the challenge of depicting foreign physiognomies, the
outcome was the marvelous series of expressive portrait heads and busts which is perhaps the highest achievement of Late
Republican sculpture. These shrewd, uncompromising faces, with their close-cropped hair, firm-set mouths, and deeply creviced
cheeks, are more reminiscent of modern American financiers than of the philosophers and statesmen of the Hellenistic world; they
provide a fine insight into the qualities of ruthlessness and hard-headedness which carried Roman rule to all corners of the
Mediterranean. At times, as in the coin portraits of C. Antius Restio, the no-holds-barred, warts-and-wrinkles approach is carried
almost to the point of caricature, and it has been attractively argued that such ruthless realism was in some measure inspired by the
Greek artists' dislike of their Roman patrons. (For Republican portraits see above, pp 455, 465, 468.)