A Figurine of Victory from Holloway Street

This little figurine was found among the grave goods buried with the cremated bones of a soldier in a pit on the Valiant Soldier site, Holloway Street in 1973-4. Regarding this piece Dr Roger Ling, an authority on Roman art, wrote as follows:

The figure stands frontally, with its left arm bent forwards from the elbow; the missing right arm appears to have been extended. The dress is a Doric chiton girded at the waist; the overfold billows round and behind the hips, as does the skirt round the legs. The figure is represented as alighting in the face of the wind, a familiar type in Greek and Roman art; the hands presumably held the usual emblems of victory, a wreath and palm branch. The lower part of the statuette contracts almost to a point, and the hollowed rear shows that only a frontal viewpoint was intended; the piece may have been some form of fitting or appliqué. There is no sign of the globe which supports the standard Roman type of Venus Victrix. The surface is badly affected by pockmarks and bubbles, the result of exposure to considerable heat; the head in particular is disfigured almost beyond recognition.