Event: WEDS TALKS: Alterity, Enslavement and Empire in a Roman Genre Sculpture: The Oplontis-Borghese Boy with Duck

ABSTRACT: This talk re-examines a Roman-era genre sculpture - the Oplontis-Borghese boy with duck statue type - that has received minimal attention in previous scholarship as a so-called copy of a lost Hellenistic original. In the case of the Oplontis-Borghese boy with duck, curious particularities, like the boy's mannered hairstyle, have been downplayed or disregarded, leaving modern audiences unaware of the ornately coiffed population that this statue would have called to mind among viewers in the Roman home: pueri delicati, a special group of child slaves who were often but not exclusively imported to the peninsula from the Greek-speaking East. A thriving global economy in which children are bought, sold, and trained to function as objects from a very young age, Sarah argues, helps to explain the attraction of this piece among elite enslavers in the 1st c. Italian Peninsula. Content warning: this talk discusses evidence for the sexualization and sexual exploitation of minors, especially enslaved minors.

BIO: Sarah is an Assistant Professor in Classics at UCLA and a faculty member in the Cotsen Institute of archaeology. Her research is broadly focused on domestic archaeology in the Roman period, late Republic to late Empire. Current projects include a monograph on the late Roman villa habit and several articles on the representation of marginalized groups in Roman luxury arts (sculpture; paintings). Her previous work has been published in the AJA and Art Bulletin, among other venues, and her talk today builds on a January 2023 article in the AJA on the enslaved reader in the Villa of the Mysteries Fresco.