Tuesday, November 08, 2022
Bonus Eventus?
Paul MacKendrick, Romans on the Rhine: Archaeology in Germany (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1970), p. 158:
Id., p. 159 (footnote omitted):
On the Bonus Eventus hypothesis see id., pp. 114-115.
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Another imported bronze, this time life-size, fished out of the Rhine near Xanten, may provide further evidence of Roman cult in Germany, if it represents, as has been plausibly conjectured, Bonus Eventus, the god of good result, whether in crops or any other human activity. He is represented (Fig. 6.3) as a boy in his early teens, with outstretched arms. Since his effeminate air closely resembles statues of the Emperor Hadrian's boy-love Antinous, he has been dated about A.D. 130. Whether he came from a temple or a villa, he is evidence of close religious connection with the homeland kept up by the Roman Establishment on a far frontier.Better known as the Xantener Knabe (Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Antikensammlung, inv. no. SK 4). See Uwe Peltz and Hans-Joachim Schalles, Der Xantener Knabe. Technologie, Ikonographie, Funktion und Datierung (Darmstadt: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 2011 = Xantener Berichte, 22), from which I borrowed the following (Tafel 1):
