Imagine yourself visiting the Newfields Collection in Indianapolis, USA. You have entered gallery space C200 and have come across a marble sculpture of a bearded, semi-clothed man reclining on a couch. This sculpture is positioned amongst artworks curated for an exhibition devoted to representations of the body. The artwork caption identifies the piece as follows: ‘Roman, Funerary Monument of Flavius Agricola, 138–193 c.e., marble, 26-1/2 x 70 x 27 in. Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Alan Hartman, 72.148’. The caption also reproduces portions of the sculpture’s epitaph. For many passersby, these minimal details are all they have with which to engage the piece. Yet, this artwork, as H.’s monograph masterfully demonstrates, has so much more to offer. H. provides readers with a rich interpretative narrative on themes such as the Roman family, community, religion, as well as classical reception, to name a few.

To tell the object’s story, H. divides the monograph into two parts. The first, ‘The Life and Death of Flavius Agricola’, unpacks themes in six chapters to provide the social context for the monument. The second part, ‘The Many Afterlives of Flavius Agricola’, consists of two chapters documenting the reception of the sculpture since its controversial rediscovery beneath the baldacchino of Rome’s St Peter’s Basilica in the seventeenth century. The book takes a scaffolded approach. Readers learn how one single sculpture’s story expands from the establishment of Flavius Agricola’s identity to further knowledge of this individual’s family and their contributions to Roman society. But the story does not end there. Readers also receive invaluable accounts and interpretations of the lengthy and surprisingly well-documented history of this single piece of sculpture that made its way from Italy to France and finally to the United States.

From an inscription, intentionally removed in the seventeenth century, we learn how the deceased, Flavius Agricola, espoused living the good life. More specifically, in Chapter 1, H. assesses the extant evidence to identify and piece together carefully the portions of the monument that have either been deliberately separated or lost from the original burial over time (e.g. cemetery, monuments, inscriptions, additional sculpture, the individual’s remains). The portion of the funerary sculpture that we see today was inserted inside a tomb located in Rome’s Via Cornelia and used as a receptacle for the cremated remains of the deceased. In Chapter 2, H. turns to the various modes of self-representation associated with the sculpture (e.g. name, epitaph, dining, body, objects, divine associations) to present a robust biography of the deceased. Of particular interest is the epitaph, which is no longer part of the sculptural group (see Chapter 7 for further details). From the first part of the epitaph we learn that Flavius was an erudite man who wined, dined and encouraged passersby to make love to beautiful girls. The epitaph’s narrative then shifts to his family and their community. These references to his family have often been overlooked in the scholarship but become an invaluable focus in Chapters 3 and 4.

Chapters 3 and 4 explore Flavius’ familial relationships and community. Namely, readers learn about his wife, Flavia Primitiva, who was a chaste devotee of Isis, and her son, Aurelius Primitivus, who was held responsible for maintaining or even commissioning the tomb. These chapters are important contributions to understanding better the couple’s network beyond the grave. What is particularly creative is H.’s ability to reconstruct what Isiadic worship was like in the city of Rome. Flavia’s world view was seemingly different from Flavius’. H. explores how this couple may have navigated differences in religious practices, likely without too much difficulty.

Chapters 5 and 6, the final chapters of Part 1, delve into the ritual practice of dining to bridge perceived religious differences shared between the couple. There is a tension between Flavius’ visual and textual memorialisation. He is represented as a garlanded, half-clothed reclining erudite man who drank wine and touted sex. This is contrasted with the textual nod to Flavia’s religious representation as a chaste devotee of the goddess Isis. To resolve this tension, Chapter 5 returns to the dining culture theme with a focus on the philosophical relationships between death and dining. H. then challenges the assertion that the couple’s outlooks on death were different. This becomes apparent when the god of wine and revelry, Dionysus, is brought into the picture (p. 88). Chapter 6 brings the discussion full circle, returning to the question of how viewers may have engaged with the tomb in antiquity. Serving as a meaningful conduit between the living and the dead, the tomb was a social space that allowed for visitations and ritual meals for community members.

With Flavius’ biography in place, in Part 2 H. provides a rich history of how the sculpture ultimately landed in Indianapolis’ Newfields Collection. The important contribution is how this sculpture went through successive stages of interpretation as it moved through different locations over time. Chapter 7 focuses on what happened after the sculpture’s discovery in 1697. Because of its scandalous sexual overtones, the inscription was removed and the sculpture was to be thrown into the Tiber. Instead, the sculpture was incorporated into the narrative cycle in the palace of the Barberini cardinals to assert their rising stature. Chapter 8 takes readers into the antiquarian worlds of the Renaissance and the modern period. With a collapse in societal systems, the statue travelled to France and then to the United States. Solvency issues with New York art houses would again result in the statue’s burial, so to speak, only to resurface again in Indianapolis’ Hartman family collections. This chapter drives home the message that the statue is not only a means of preserving Flavius’ memory but also a testament to how successive generations have continued to reinterpret his monument. This is an important point as material remains from antiquity are not simply static remnants of the past. They are objects whose meanings continue to evolve.

H.’s training as a social historian provides the necessary catalyst for an innovative and engaging reading of Flavius’ funerary monument. He brings the ancient world to life in a manner familiar to those who have engaged with his scholarship (e.g. The Roman Street: Urban Life and Society in Pompeii [2017]). H. has clearly moved past traditional scholarly narratives that frequently privileged typology, style or large corpora of evidence to support claims about the lives of individuals from the highest strata of Roman society. H. demonstrates thoroughly and provocatively that one single incomplete funerary monument that has lived over 2,000 years has more than one story to tell.

This impactful monograph creates space for future discussions. For instance, while H.’s choice of describing Flavius as an ‘ordinary’ Roman is well explained, one might still question the applicability of the term. Flavius was ordinary amongst his commemorated peer group, yet not necessarily in all spheres of Roman society (e.g. enslaved individuals or the urban poor). In antiquity, would an enslaved individual passing by the tomb have seen Flavius as ordinary? The monograph also potentially raises more questions about the responsibilities of museums and scholars. Flavius’ sculpture encourages reflection on these ethical responsibilities in the twenty-first century. As H. has successfully demonstrated, the histories of collecting need to be acknowledged in a way that foregrounds both the ancient and modern biographies of objects.

H.’s monograph is a must-read for anyone interested in Roman social history and should be made part of curriculum reading lists for upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses, as well as recommended to generalist and specialist readers.