Sette divinità planetarie: esempio di corazza da parata da Castra Tricornia (Mesia Superiore)

Abstract

The study attempts to shed light on the decoration of the breastplate from Castra Tricornia (modern Ritopek), the mutatio in the limes of the Roman province of Upper Moesia, and to revise previous radinig. The study attempts to comprehend and explain the context of this representation of seven deities on a military toreutic masterpiece. The new analogies from a distant part of the Roman Empire allowed for a more reliable attribution of the iconography. It is a Gallo-Roman vexillium with an almost identical representation of seven deities, which is now kept by the Laténium Museum in Switzerland. In addition to the cosmic, represented iconography can have a religious connotation without detracting from the military-historical value of the breastplate armor itself. The paper presents the most famous representations of the seven deities from the Septizonium of Septimius Severus and others. The central relief on the breastplate from Ritopek is viewed in the context of reading two acts from the Iliad, where the stone is used to attack the enemy, Aeneas and Diomedes or Ajanto and Hector, in each case a scene of a heroic act that gives a heroic character to the representation of the deities on the breastplate.