The return of Persephone on an early byzantine round box brooch

Heidl, György (2025) The return of Persephone on an early byzantine round box brooch. ACTA ANTIQUA ACADEMIAE SCIENTIARUM HUNGARICAE, 65 (1). pp. 95-113. ISSN 0044-5975

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Abstract

In the province of Pannonia, in the fortress of today’s Keszthely-Fenékpuszta (Hungary), a Romanized Christian population continued to live after the collapse of Roman administration in the fifth century CE. They survived the Lombard and Avar conquests and maintained important trade and cultural relations with the Mediterranean and northern Italy regions. The jewelry found in the graves of women and children in the Horreum cemetery of the fortress testifies to the wealth of the ruling elite and its remarkable Byzantine artistic and cultural influence. The present paper focuses on a round box brooch from grave no. 5 of the Horreum, which stands out among the Pannonian round box brooches for its quality, but the scene it depicts has not yet been identified with certainty. The author argues that the scene is that of Persephone’s anodos. The image, unusual but not unprecedented in the Christian context and with a rich history in ancient funerary art, might have been inspired by the tragedy of a young girl torn from her mother by death. A wealthy mother buried her child, whose gold earrings with peacocks indicated her Christian identity, and whose collar, modeled after the jewelry of Byzantine empresses, referred to her social status. The polytheistic myth was probably chosen because there is no appropriate scene in the purely Christian iconographic tradition that can clearly express the mother-daughter relationship, the pain of a mother grieving for her daughter, and the hope that one day they will be reunited

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