Around 1616 Peter Paul Rubens engaged in a large tapestries series project about the heroic Roman consul Decius Mus. This panel, which is a small sketch or modello for the larger composition, depicted the first episode of that story, which normally consisted of seven or eight scenes. In his History of Rome, Livy describes an episode in the war between the Romans and the Samnites, the inhabitants of the plains of Latium (south-central Italy), against their Roman rulers in 340 BC. The Roman forces led by co-consuls Decius Mus and Titus Manlius were outnumbered and in danger of defeat when an apparition visited them both at night and declared that victory would come to the army whose leader lost his life. Decius Mus, thus, vowed that he would sacrifice himself to ensure Roman victory.

In the Gallery’s painting, Rubens depicts Decius Mus recounting the apparition to his soldiers the following morning. With his right arm raised and left hand holding the commander’s staff, he strikes a powerful pose that conveys the gravitas of the vision as his men listen with rapt attention. The soldiers hold the signa, or legionary standards, of the Roman republic—the Roman eagle, or Aquila; the open palm, a symbol for virtue; and the standard inscribed SPQR, the symbol of the Roman Republic—and lend historical legitimacy to scene.

Rubens maintained an abiding fascination with Greco-Roman antiquity throughout his career. This interest manifested in his fidelity to ancient literary and pictorial sources and in the subject matter he chose. The lion-scalp trim on Decius Mus’s boots, his armor with its torso-molded breastplate ornamented with griffins, and even the lappets on his skirt adorned with alternating lion and human heads were all drawn from historic sources. Rubens was profoundly influenced by the ancient philosopher Justus Lipsius’s writings about the great Stoic philosopher, Seneca, who hailed Decius Mus a model for military and political leadership due to his constancy, virtue, and nobility. Rubens underscored these Stoic ideals by placing Decius Mus on a marble dais whose square shape emblematized fortitude.

The Emperor Decius

249-251

Gaius Messuis Quintus Decius (201-251) was a native of the middle Danube region, either Illyricum or Pannonia (modern Hungary). In 248,while possibly a prefect of Rome, Decius was appointed by Emperor Philip to restore order along the lower Danube, an area which was under attack by the Goths and where Roman troops where in revolt. After a successful restoration of the region, his troops urged him to accept the imperial title and challenge Philip. With the support of his troops he then marched to northern Italy where he defeated and killed Philip near Verona in September of 249. After defeating Philip, he also killed Phillips sons. Soon after his defeat of Philip, the Senate named Decius emperor and granted him the title of Trajunus.

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Because of the political instability, military and economic crisis, and the social upheavals in the Roman Empire during the third century, one of Decius’ main objectives was to restore the stability of the empire’s past. In early AD 250, in an effort to unite the Empire against the threat of the Gothic invasion in the Balkans and the Sassanian Persians in the East and also as an attempt to restore the old virtues of Rome, Decius commanded that all citizens of the empire demonstrate their loyalty to the state gods and his divine reign through public sacrifice. Decius then set up sacrificial commissions in all cities and villages to supervise the execution of the sacrifices and to deliver written certificates to all citizens who performed the sacrifices. A citizen’s refusal was regarded as a threat to the religious unity of the Roman Empire and a denial of the general goodwill to the sovereign. Consequently, any citizen who refused to perform the sacrifices was subject to arrest, imprisonment, and execution.

Although it is debated whether or not this was a strategic attack against the Christian community, Decius’ enforcement of the edict initiated the first general persecution of Christians in the empire’s history. Previous to Decius’ time, Christian persecutions had been spontaneous and local. Roman Emperors, beginning with Nero, were threatened by the rapid expansion of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire. For this reason, Christians often became victims of urban riots and were made scapegoats for disasters and local troubles, as was the case of Nero’s persecution of Christians blaming them for the great fire of Rome in AD 64. By the time of Decius, the Christian community was no longer a small association of uneducated lower class citizens but had become a cross-section of Roman society including members on all levels of the social scale. Because of this, Christianity posed a much greater threat than in earlier years. However, Decius’ persecutions had a devastating impact on the Christian community. Many Christians recanted their faith and performed the sacrifices, others purchased false certificates to evade persecution, and many others fled. Those who refused to perform the sacrifices were imprisoned, tortured, and executed, including bishops Fabian of Rome, Babylos of Antioch, and Alexander of Jerusalem.

As Christian persecution increased, crisis on the Danubian frontier in AD 250 prevented the end of the religion. In late AD 250, Decius followed his son Herennuis’ campaign to the front and led an attack against the Goths and defeated Kniva, the king of the Goths, but Decius’ army was severely checked. Soon after, Decius suffered a major defeat at Beroea and was forced to flee for safety. By early spring AD 251, because of Decius’ military diversion at the Danubian front, Christian persecution abated and had ended in Carthage and Rome. The faithful Christians readmitted the apostates and restored steadfast faith and zeal to the entire Christian community. In midsummer of AD 251, Decius led another attack against the Goths and was defeated and killed at Abrittus in the Dobrudja, becoming the first Roman emperor to die in battle against foreign invaders. Decius’ successors Trebonianus Gallus and Valerian continued his persecution of Christians but never reached the same level of general persecutions.

Decius: The Years 249-251

After defeating Philippus Arabs at Verona in September of 249, Gaius Messius Quintus Decius had become the new ruler of the vast Roman Empire. The new emperor built the thermae Decianae or Baths of Decius on the Aventine Hill in Rome and was possibly also responsible for construction of the obscure Porticus Decii. His decision to have the Colosseum restored, which had been damaged in a fire, may have been an attempt to bolster his popularity. The people still remembered Philippus’ spectacular Ludi Saeculares of the previous year and expected much the same from Decius.

From the beginning, Decius’ rule was insecure and threatened by internal and external factors. The rebellion by Jotapianus in Syria soon faltered and the man’s head was brought to Decius to prove it, but the mysterious Silbannacus may still have been stirring up trouble in Germania before he too was taken care of. A much more serious development was that a Germanic tribe known as the Franks had appeared on the Rhine border not too long ago. The Franks were banging on Rome’s door and would soon strike deep into the heart of the Empire. Their brethren the Alemanni were a threat as well, and so were the Goths, Carpi, Sarmatians and other tribes on the Danube border.

Decius must have kept a wary eye on the Persians too. They had made peace with Philippus, but Philippus was dead and King Shapur needed little encouragement to stage a new invasion. Finally, Decius soon had to deal with a new enemy, an enemy that was not even human. It is quite possible that early in Decius’ reign, the epidemic that is known as the Plague of Cyprian spread from Ethiopia to the Roman province of Egypt. From there it would find its way to other provinces and ultimately Rome and claim tens, if not hundreds of thousands of lives. In these precarious circumstances, the new emperor needed as much support from the immortal gods as he could get.

The Edict

Early in his rule, Decius issued an Edict which ordered the entire free population of the Roman Empire to sacrifice to the ‘ancestral gods’ on his behalf. Although the text of the edict itself has been lost, we can reconstruct it fairly well. This is in large part thanks to so-called libelli which have been found in Egypt and which date from June and July of 250. A libellus was basically a receipt which proved that the holder had respected the Edict and had made the required sacrifices. Provincial and local authorities set up sacrificial committees and summoned families to sent representatives to sacrifice on behalf of the whole family. They were required to appear before the committees and make a libation, burn some incense or sacrifice an animal and eat from the meat.

The obligation to sacrifice to the ‘ancestral gods’ was rather vague, perhaps deliberately. The 50-70 million inhabitants of the Empire, most of them Roman citizens since Caracalla’s Constitutio Antoniniana of 212, did not necessarily have to sacrifice to the traditional Roman gods. They could also pick local favourites. Jews were likely exempted from the Edict, as it was clear that these staunch monotheists would never sacrifice to ‘gods’ (plural). Christians, on the other hand, were not exempted, and the Edict would prove to be extremely problematic for them.  Already in about 112, the governor of Pontus and Bithynia, Plinius the Younger, was told that there were certain rites that true Christians would never perform, such as invoking the traditional gods and offering incense or wine to images of (divine) emperors.The church father Tertullianus (ca. 155-240) concurred. In his Apologeticus, he cites Plinius’ observations and concludes more than once that Christians categorically do not sacrifice.

The Apologeticus was written in 197, and in 249, little more than 50 years later, many Christians likely still felt the same. This must certainly have been true for the Church authorities, the patriarchs and bishops. So how did the Christian communities in the Empire respond to Decius’ Edict? There will certainly have been Christians who saw no problems with offering a little incense for the emperor’s wellbeing, but other must have experienced a deep spiritual crisis. Some openly refused and were lynched, executed or locked up, others fled and waited for the storm to pass. There were also Christians who simply bribed the provincial and local authorities to obtain their libelli without ever having made a sacrifice. And then there were those who lapsed and made a token sacrifice, albeit dejected and half-heartedly. We cannot how many people were in each of the categories mentioned, but we may reasonably assume that the number of deadly victims of the Decian persecution cannot have been more than a few hundred.[3] Most victims were likely from the eastern provinces, for the simple reason that this part of the Empire had the largest Christian populations.

While later Christian writers tended to exaggerate the Decian persecutions and the number of martyrs, we should beware not to underestimate the seriousness of the event. Decius’ Edict was in any case without precedent and his persecution does seem to have hit the administration of the Church very hard. The bishop of Rome, Pope Fabianus (236-250), was executed or died in prison on 20 January 250. In 251, bishop Alexander of Jerusalem passed away in prison as well. Saint Babylas, the patriarch of Antiochia, was imprisoned and died in captivity in 253. The bishop of Carthage, the same Cyprianus who gave his name to the aforementioned Plague of Cyprian, went into hiding (he would later die a martyr’s death in 258), while patriarch Dionysius of Alexandria fled to the desert of Libya. Rome, Jerusalem, Antiochia, Carthage and Alexandria were all cities with sizeable Christian populations. Although there is no evidence that Decius specifically targeted Christians with his Edict, the fact that provincial and local authorities went after bishops and patriarchs may have been an attempt ‘to bite the head off the snake’.

The events regarding Fabianus, Alexander, Babylas, Cyprianus, Dionysius, and certainly their deaths, imprisonments or flights may be considered historical. Another famous victim of the persecution was the Christian teacher Origenes, who may have corresponded with Decius’ predecessor Philippus. However, there are plenty of stories about alleged martyrs that need to be taken with a pinch of salt. The historicity of saints such as Minias, Reparata, Fusca and Maura is problematic, while the tale of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus is pure fiction.

War against the Goths

In the summer of 250, Decius named his eldest son Herennius Etruscus his Caesar. As is attested by numerous coins, he also began styling himself Trajanus, after the famous Roman emperor (98-117) who had conquered Dacia. Decius had good reasons for doing so, as hostile tribes had once again crossed the Danube. They invaded the province of Moesia Inferior and began pillaging their way to Thrace further to the south. The invaders were most likely Goths (‘Scythians’ in Zosimus’ account), although these may have been joined by bands of Carpi and Sarmatians. Decius and his son hastened to the region to intercept them. The emperor was going to follow in Trajanus’ footsteps, as his illustrious predecessor had campaigned here as well.

The most detailed account of the Gothic and Roman campaigns is given by the sixth century historian Jordanes, who was himself of Gothic descent. It should be noted that he wrote some 300 years after the facts, but there is not good reason to reject his base narrative. The Goths were led by their king Cniva, who decided to split his army into two smaller forces. The first column probably attacked the city of Marcianopolis (now Devnya in Bulgaria), which had been named after Trajanus’ sister. The attack was likely unsuccessful. According to Jordanes, the second column comprised 70.000 men, a number that is no doubt inflated. This part of the army was commanded by the king himself. Cniva first attacked Novae, which was defended by the governor of Moesia Inferior, Trebonianus Gallus (Legio I Italica was stationed here). Gallus managed to repel the Gothic attack, so Cniva decided to march further south and advanced on Nicopolis, a city founded by the great Trajanus himself.

History of Villa Decius

By now the emperor had arrived in Moesia, along with his son and his army. Cniva therefore withdrew into the Balkan Mountains (Haemus Mons) and advanced on Philippopolis, which was defended by the governor of Thrace, Titus Julius Priscus. Decius gave chase, but his army was ambushed near Beroea and almost annihilated. The emperor fled north with the few survivors, took refuge with Gallus and began raising a new army. In the meantime, Cniva could focus on taking Philippopolis. The city was captured and sacked, and the fourth century historian Ammianus Marcellinus suggests that 100.000 people were killed. This is no doubt an exaggeration and even Ammianus himself seemed sceptical of the claim, but the city was certainly thoroughly pillaged. Somehow Titus Julius Priscus had managed to strike a deal with Cniva, as he was not killed and – likely with Gothic support – even proclaimed himself emperor. Perhaps Cniva hoped to get away with his loot while Decius focussed on defeating his rival for the throne. As it turned out, Priscus was swiftly murdered, probably by his own men.

With Priscus out of the way, Decius succeeded in cutting off the Gothic retreat. The final confrontation took place near Abritus in 251. The battle was probably fought in June, and – if we follow Zosimus’ account – likely involved a number of large skirmishes. The emperor managed to rout two Gothic warbands, but did not realise that he was being lured into the marshes. There Decius was defeated and killed, along with Herennius Etruscus and most of his soldiers. The emperor’s body was never recovered. His Gothic campaign had ended in disaster and Decius became the first Roman emperor to be killed in battle against a foreign enemy. Some sources claim that he had been betrayed by Trebonianus Gallus, who was said to have refused to come to the emperor’s aid. The story sounds like mere gossip, but it was easy to blame Gallus, as the troops in the region soon proclaimed him the new Augustus.

While Decius was in the Danube region fighting the Goths, a certain Julius Valens Licinianus had revolted against him in Rome, in 250 or 251. This revolt had been quickly crushed, and now that Decius was dead, the Senate had little choice but to recognise Gallus as the new emperor, along with Decius’ other son, Hostilianus. Gallus’ son Volusianus became a Caesar. The death of an emperor on the battlefield marked the darkest day of the Crisis of the Third Century so far. But even darker days were soon to follow.

Jost Ludwig Dietz came to Kraków from Hungary in 1508. Who could have expected then that that young lad would soon become one of the most influential persons in the city? That he would leave a remembrance that would shape the image of Kraków to the same extent as the Royal Wawel Castle. Justus Ludovicus Decius- as this is how the Alsatian started to be called in Poland – was a protégé of his compatriot, Jan Jacob Boner, a royal banker, the founder and manager of the largest commercial empire in contemporary Europe – the Wieliczka and Bochnia salt mines. Through his positions as secretary, bookkeeper and trusted deputy, Decius quickly became a consummate diplomat, practised financier and a highly positioned royal dignitary. A secretary of King Sigismund the Old since 1520, and soon his advisor and the principal of crown mints, due to many talents, literary and historical dissertations, many journeys and scientific predilections, he enjoyed the respect and friendship of the most outstanding European humanists.

He knew Martin Luther and Desiderius Erasmus. He also maintained close contacts with the Habsburg court. Already by 1519 he had obtained noble status from the King, and somewhat later he was received to the House of Tęczyński. In 1528 Justus Decius purchased parts of Przegorzały and Wola Chełmska villages near Kraków in order to build a suburban villa following the example of a fashionable paradis terrestiare in the environs of Florence and Rome – estates that were meeting places and places of rest and philosophical debate. He employed three Italian architects for the designing and construction of building: Giovanni Cini of Siena, Zenobius Gianotti of Rome and Filippo of Fiesole. Located on the picturesque eastern slope of Sowiniec, surrounded by an extensive renaissance garden, the palace was completed in 1535. Soon it became the venue for meetings of representatives of different cultures and nationalities, the exchange of opinion and for creative confrontation between various convictions.

After the death of the patron of the house, in 1545, the estate was inherited by his son, Justus junior, known as the leading dissenter in the capital of the Republic of Poland. The Arcadian estate in the Wola district, already known as Wola Justowska, was again full of guests. Those followers of religious innovation, the disciples of Luther and Calvin, found an atmosphere of tolerance and freedom at Villa Decius, and who knows, perhaps even an idyllic foretaste of eternity .

In 1590 Sebastian Lubomirski, the founder of the fortune of his House, bought the estate. He rebuilt the palace to meet the needs of his family. In 1630 a new storey, with a large impressive hall heightened the Villa. Two alcove towers were added and linked by a three-story arcade loggia. Most probably the renaissance treatise of Sebastiano Serlio inspired the change. Matteo Trapoli – the personal architect of the Lubomirskis, supervised the reconstruction works. The first outbuilding of the Villa, known today as the Łaski House , also comes from that period. The Lubomirskis were gradually becoming one of the first aristocratic Houses of the Republic of Poland and the small palace finally turned out to be too little. Therefore they moved to new much grander residences at Wiśnicz and Łańcut.

The eighteenth century was less favourable to Villa Decius. The estate often changed owner, and these did not always husband it appropriately. Under the Sanguszkos who presumably renovated the building and introduced changes into the interior, the whole second floor collapsed. Despite the size of the catastrophe, Andrzej Morzkowski – provincial royal official in Barcice – purchased the estate. Later, this time fortunately, the Villa passed into the hands of the Wielowiejskis.

The first of the three great ladies to reside at Villa Decius in the nineteenth century came from the Wielowiejski family. Already in the 1820s Joanna Ledóchowska née Wielowiejska transformed the destroyed and walled up Villa into a summer residence in accordance with her likes and Zeitgeist. The garden underwent the most significant change, it was converted into an English landscape park following the contemporary fashion. Such surroundings gave the Villa a romantic and somewhat enigmatic touch.

 

In the 1840s Henrietta Kuczkowska née Ankwicz took an interest in the estate. She came back to Poland after many years spent in Rome, where her parents kept open house, inviting the distinguished notables of the Polish emigré community. It is no secret that Miss Henrietta Ankwicz was the muse and the youthful beloved of Adam Mickiewicz, who portrayed her as Ewa in the third part of Dziady . After she had come back to Poland at the side of her second husband, Kazimierz Kuczkowski, Henrietta tried to maintain intimate contacts with the aristocracy paying no heed to their difficult financial situation. However, due to that carefree attitude the Villa underwent yet another costly reconstruction. An impressive front staircase appeared, the towers received balconies, an attic was added over the loggia. Once again the Villa was embellished, yet eventually the married couple went into debt. They tried to save the situation by selling off the palace furniture and Gobelin tapestry, and by selling licenses for tree felling in the Wolski grove. In the end, a Viennese banker, J. G. Schuller, purchased the declining estate for more than a million zlotys.

In the 1870s Villa Decius once again recovered its former splendour due to Marcelina Czartoryska, the Villa’s last aristocratic owner. The daughter of Michał Radziwiłł and Emilia née Worcelli, she was raised in Vienna, where she began her musical studies under Carl Czerny. She took lessons from Frederic Chopin in Paris, becoming with time one of the best performers of his works. In Paris she befriended many personalities from among the eminent Polish émigré community, as well as French literary and artistic circles. Her guests included such figures as Charles Gounod, Paul Delaroche, and Eugene Delacroix. In 1867 the Duchess returned to Poland for good and took up residence in Kraków at Villa Decius. Her house soon became the leading salon in the city, the mainstay of patriotism and Polish character. A fire at the residence in 1882 forced Czartoryska into a temporary removal to the city centre. Soon, after the reconstruction of the Villa supervised by Tadeusz Stryjeński, the Duchess returned to the palace in the Wola district. That restoration gave Villa Decius its neo-renaissance form and its current layout of rooms. Moreover, she added the impressive wooden stairway leading from the hall on the ground floor to higher storeys which still exists today. With the death of Duchess Czartoryska in 1894, the halcyon days of Villa Decius came to an end.

During the First World War it was used as army quarters. Later the Villa was changed into a tenement building. The Second World War deepened the devastation of the building – the Villa housed the Nazi police headquarters. After the war the building housed successively a school for auditors of co-operatives, a boarding school and a tuberculosis ward of the Dr. Anka Hospital. In the 1970s the building fell into complete ruin and it was hard to imagine that it would ever come back to life. Nevertheless, in 1996 Villa Decius once again opened wide its doors. Restored due to the efforts of the City of Kraków, the Villa regained its former splendour.

Willa Decjusza. Architektura i dzieje – Zbigniew Beiersdorf (plik PDF)

 

Decius Last Name Facts Where Does The Last Name Decius Come From? nationality or country of origin The last name Decius is held by more people in Haiti than any other country or territory. For other possible spellings of Decius click here. How Common Is The Last Name Decius? popularity and diffusion The surname is the 153,186th most frequent family name worldwide, held by around 1 in 2,538,187 people. Decius occurs mostly in The Americas, where 98 percent of Decius reside; 89 percent reside in Caribbean and 89 percent reside in Gallo-Caribbean. It is also the 189,934th most frequent first name globally, held by 1,594 people. The surname is most commonly held in Haiti, where it is carried by 2,552 people, or 1 in 4,186. In Haiti Decius is most common in: Artibonite, where 39 percent live, Ouest, where 31 percent live and Nord, where 14 percent live. Apart from Haiti this last name exists in 11 countries. It also occurs in The United States, where 9 percent live and Germany, where 2 percent live. Decius Family Population Trend historical fluctuation The frequency of Decius has changed through the years. In The United States the number of people bearing the Decius surname rose 2,822 percent between 1880 and 2014. Decius Last Name Statistics demography In The United States those bearing the Decius last name are 17.82% more likely to be registered with the Democrat Party than the national average, with 71.05% registered to vote for the political party. Decius earn somewhat more than the average income. In United States they earn 6.45% more than the national average, earning $45,932 USD per year.  Peter Paul Rubens Decius Mus Relating His Dreams, ca. 1617 Oil on panel transferred to canvas (1773) in turn transferred to masonite (c. 1954-55), 80.7 x 84.5 cm Samuel H. Kress Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C, 1957.14.2 (1394) Catalog Entry by Peter C. Sutton The story of Decius Mus is told by Livy (8.6, 9-10). Publis Decius Mus (the Elder) was a consul and commander of the Roman legions fighting the Latins at Capua. He and his fellow commander, Titus Manlius, both had a dream informing them that one of the two armies engaged in the conflict would have to sacrifice its commander to the gods of the underworld and to Mother Earth, but as a consequence the opposing army would be completely defeated. Each general conveyed the dream to his officers. After consulting a soothsayer who performed a sacrificial offering to the gods, it was determined that Decius Mus must make the ultimate sacrifice. At the command of the highest priest, Decius covered his head with a toga and consecrated himself to the infernal gods with a solemn and dreadful vow. He then threw himself into battle and was killed. Fulfilling the prophecy, the Romans attacked with renewed strength and routed their enemy. In the present sketch, which is the first in a series of five modelli for tapestry designs, Decius Mus wearing a bright red cloak stands on a pedestal to address five of his officers whose ensigns and standards bristle against the sky. Closest to the dais, the young warrior in shadow wears armor over a dark red tunic and has a green cloak over his shoulder. The soldier with his back to the viewer wears a leopard skin over a blue tunic. The soldier on the far right wears an elaborately decorated helmet and bright red cloak and carries a labarum. An eagle hovers above Decius, and at the base of his pedestal is a still life consisting of his helmet, complete with a gilded relief of the Roman wolf with Romulus and Remus in a circular decoration, his shield with an apotropaic head encircled with radiating bolts of lightning, and weapons. The other four modelli for the series depict the interpretation of the animal sacrifice by the soothsayer, the modello for which is in the Oskar Reinhardt Collection, Winterthur (Held 1980, no. 2); the consecration of Decius Mus by the high priest, present location unknown (a copy is in Munich; Held 1980, #3); the death of Decius Mus, in the Museo del Prado, Madrid (Held 1980, no. 3a); and the obsequies of Decius Mus, in the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich (Held 1980, no. 4). A series of cartoons in the princes of Liechtenstein collection now in Vienna were executed after the modelli and have been variously attributed to either or both Rubens and his pupil, Anthony van Dyck. Rubens was a descendant of a famous tapestry manufacturer (Hendrick Pype, called Pypelinckx, d. 1580) and in 1630 married the daughter of a prominent tapestry dealer; thus, he was closely allied with this flourishing Flemish industry. The Decius Mus series was the first of his large tapestry series. It was commissioned on November 9, 1616, by a Genoese businessman, Franco Cattaneo, from the Antwerp tapestry merchants Jan Raes and Frans Sweerts, in a document that specified that Rubens should design the series and be the judge of the quality of the final product—a testament to his expertise in the field. Rubens himself mentioned the tapestries in letters to Sir Dudley Carlton in May 1618. As Emil Kieser (1933) and Wolfgang Stechow (1968) observed, the subject of the history of Decius Mus had never before been depicted in an art cycle. It undoubtedly appealed to Rubens because, as he pictured it, the story was one of unflinching heroic stoicism, valor, and a profound trust in the wisdom of the gods. In all probability the subject was suggested by the learned artist and avowed Stoic to Cattaneo prior to the drafting of the contract in November 1616. Rubens also probably was attracted to the theme by the occasion it presented to display his extensive knowledge of the costumes, customs, and appearances of antiquity. Much of Rubens's time in Italy had been spent researching ancient Roman civilization and its relics. He also had a renowned command of ancient literature. As early as 1608 Rubens had contributed drawings of Roman sculptures to illustrate his brother Philip's book of essays on Roman expressions referring to civilian and military apparel. The Decius Mus series thus offered him for the first time a grand stage on which to display his expertise. It surely is not a matter of chance that, as H. D. Rodee (1967) first observed, Rubens's Decius Mus series is more archaeologically correct than any of the master's other later treatments of Roman history subjects. Even the composition of the present work is derived from ancient Roman examples, namely the allocutio designs of leaders addressing their troops that appear on the Arch of Constantine (see Kieser 1933, p. 126). Rubens later returned to the allocutio composition when he executed The Emblem of Christ Appearing to Constantine in 1622 in his second venture into tapestry design, the Life of Constantine series. As Julius Held observed (1980, vol. 1, p. 25), Rubens surely knew Justus Lipsius's De Militia romana libri quinque (3rd ed., Antwerp, 1602), which discusses the classical allocutio and gives examples of the associations of antique military leaders and military signs. Held (ibid.) further observed that one of the ensigns features a prominent outstretched hand that appears frequently on Roman coins and which Caspar Gevartius in the Pompa Introitus ([Antwerp, 1641-42], p. interpreted as a "symbol of warlike valor and trust." The painting in Vienna corresponds to the present modello in most salient regards, but its major change is the conversion of the design to a more upright, narrower format. Thus in the large version, the left side of the frame is much closer to the figure of the general, his hand almost touches the ensigns, and the figure of the eagle is eliminated. A black chalk drawing in the Albertina, Vienna, no. 8238, was published by Ludwig Burchard and R.A. d'Hulst (Antwerp 1956, no. 81) as an original study by Rubens for the present design but was correctly demoted to a copy by J. Müller-Hofstede (1966, p. 449) and Held (1980, vol. 1, p. 25).