In ancient Greece and Rome, statues not only looked beautiful - they also had lovely aromas.
That’s the intriguing and rather delightful conclusion of a new study published this month in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology. Cecilie Brøns, who authored the study and works as an archaeologist and curator at the Glyptotek art museum in Copenhagen, reveals that Greco-Roman statues were often perfumed with scents like rose, olive oil and beeswax.
While reading ancient texts, Brøns noticed a handful of references to sweet-smelling statues. This piqued her curiosity, so she decided to go looking for more references to scented sculptures, and was surprised to discover plenty of evidence in texts by Cicero, Vitruvius and Pliny the Elder, amongst others. Numerous texts mentioned anointing statues of Greek and Roman deities.
Her research also revealed that these ancient statues were anointed in different ways. In some instances, they were covered in a mixture of waxes and oils through a process known as “ganosis.” In others, they were coated in olive oil as part of a process called “kosmesis,” which was meant to help protect the sculptures from the elements.
The fragrances would have made viewing the statues not only a visual experience, “but also an olfactory one,” Brøns writes in the paper.
Source | Image: Wikimedia Commons
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