Antiquarian displays of spolia and Roman identity: San Marco, Merbaka, and the Seljuk caravanserais

In the thirteenth century, spolia on façades in Venice, the Seljuk lands, and the Argolid drew on the Roman past of the Eastern Mediterranean to express a cultural identity rooted in romanitas. In order to understand this visual idiom, it is important to take seriously the self-identification of the Byzantines as Romans and to study these examples of spolia display in conjunction with each other. By doing so, this article problematizes three widely cited scholarly theories for explaining the use of spolia: single protagonist decisions, triumphalism, and apotropaia. When studied as part of a larger phenomenon, it becomes clear that Roman cultural identity was built on the perception of a shared past that was not parsed along ethnic or national lines. Finally, the publicly displayed spolia show that the concept of Roman identity was not an elite project in Byzantium but was accessible and even addressed to a non-elite public.