Afrodisia, Roma e i Troiani

Issues of identification concerning Oriental figures with Phrygian caps and anaxyrides represented on public and funerary monuments at the beginning of the Roman imperial period arouse particular interest in Aphrodisias (Caria). There, youthful heads with Phrygian caps are frequently carved on the garlands friezes decorating the Portico of Tiberius, on the frieze of the propylon and reliefs of the Julio-Claudian Sebasteion, such as the false base of its north portico inscribed with the name of Cyprus.
Standing figures dressed as Orientals, alternating with naked Erotes, bear heavy garlands on the Julio-Claudian frieze of the temple of Aphrodite, and this pattern spread to some local sarcophagi in the second half of the first century A.D. As the mother of Aeneas and the ancestress of the Julii, the goddess Aphrodite is entitled to be called Prometor on the consecratory inscription of the Sebasteion.
We can therefore assume that these emblematic Oriental figures could be Trojans, human descendants of the goddess and common ancestors of Rome, Aphrodisias and the Julio-Claudian family.
Such a propagandist link is supposed to legitimate the Roman imperial power over Asia Minor; it has been previously used by Silla, followed by Caesar, by sending symbolic gifts to the Aphrodisian goddess, as Memmius, a descendant of the Trojan hero Mnestheus, did on his son's funeral monument in Ephesos in the middle of the first century B.C. The Orientals recall the suggeneia between Aphrodisias and Rome on the architectural decoration of the public monuments.