In the last post on Laran I didn’t include statuettes only labelled images. This is because otherwise the reasoning can be circular. Figure has helmet must be war god, all war god must have helmets…
Anyway that doesn’t mean that my search results didn’t force me to look at a great deal of such warrior(god) statues. The most interesting was this one from Florence. With the unusual helmet and also the two wings(?!) off the shoes. Could this be a Mercury (Turms) figure?! Or a Perseus (Perse)?! I want to see how the right leg would have been positioned. IN the original whole composition, was this figure flying and stabbing some enemy? Or was this little statuette always meant to be displayed alone as a single figure?
I’ve been interested in animal-esque headgear for a while and specifically have been looking for parallels involving boars to better understand the unusual RRC 39 series, which I know others are working on as well. One of my working hypotheses is that this series may be intentionally invoking Italic divinities. This idea originated as an outgrowth of my interpretation of the semuncia as Feronia.
Other posts on RRC 39/2. (Iconography repeated on RRC 42/2, 69/5, and 72/7)
Liv Mariah Yarrow 