Rereading the “Neumagen School Relief”

Since its identification by H.I. Marrou in 1938 as the only “true” school scene depicted in Roman funerary art, the second-century CE “Neumagen School Relief,” found at the site of the ancient town of Noviomagus Treviorum and currently exhibited at the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Trier, has been widely reproduced in specialist and non-specialist studies of ancient education; it has appeared everywhere from the covers of academic monographs to Wikipedia. But while Marrou and other scholars’ interpretation of the relief as a moment of classroom instruction featuring three pupils and their instructor has been largely unquestioned in English-language scholarship, it is not entirely supported by a close reading of the image. This paper draws upon other reliefs from the Neumagen site, Mediterranean funerary art, Roman Imperial-era literary evidence, and the Late Antique Colloquia of the Hermeneumata Pseudodositheana to present a new interpretation of the School Relief which foregrounds the role of enslaved labor in Roman education. After briefly considering the role of educational imagery in Roman Imperial funerary iconography, it challenges the prevailing “three pupil” hypothesis, suggesting that the smallest figure is in fact a puer scriniarius/capsarius. The importance of this role, which is also attested in literary sources, will be further examined and discussed. Finally, the paper will consider “local” visual elements of the school relief, comparing them with Mediterranean images of Roman childhood. In doing so, this study will more accurately contextualize the contents of an image that continues to serve as important evidence in the study of Roman education.

Kirsten Traudt (University of Oxford)