The ancient city of Plotinopolis lies on Aghia Petra hill which rises gently above the plain south of Didymoteicho (Thrace), not far from the Hebros river. Little information on the city, which was renamed by Trajan, has come down to us, although it features on ancient route maps and was mentioned by Ptolemy (3.11.3) and Procopius (Aed. 4.11.19).1 Few archaeological excavations have been carried out, and of the city itself few vestiges remain (fig. 1). In 1965, while the Greek army was excavating a trench at Didymoteicho, a gold bust of an emperor wearing a cuirass came to light.2 There is no documentation on its discovery, no report on the Greek army’s intervention, nor even any information on the follow-up excavation carried out by A. Vavritsas.3 Having initially been hidden by its discoverers, the bust narrowly escaped being melted down – the fate suffered by the majority of antiquities made of gold – for already in the days directly after the discovery one part of the edge of the cuirass was cut into pieces and sold off by the soldiers. This reckless action betrayed the bust’s discoverers and made it possible for the unit’s officers to recover the bust. Considering its extreme rarity, this type of object is important, not only for the questions it raises regard-ing its original purpose and dating, but also for our understanding of toreutics. Our interpretation of the piece, which is effectively without archaeological context, has to rely on a critical analysis of its technical, iconographic and artistic aspects, taking into account extant depictions of imperial busts and textual references.

中文翻译：

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塞普蒂米乌斯·塞弗勒斯 (Septimius Severus) 的黄金半身像 (imago) 来自 Didymoeicho (Plotinopolis)

古城普罗提诺波利斯位于 Aghia Petra 山上，该山从 Didymooteicho（色雷斯）以南的平原上缓缓升起，距离赫布罗斯河不远。这座由图拉真重新命名的城市的信息很少，尽管它出现在古代路线图上并且被托勒密（3.11.3）和普罗科皮乌斯（艾德. 4.11.19）。1很少进行考古发掘，城市本身也几乎没有遗迹（图 1）。1965 年，当希腊军队在 Didymoteecho 挖掘战壕时，一尊身穿胸甲的皇帝的金半身像被曝光。2没有关于它的发现的文件，没有关于希腊军队干预的报告，甚至没有关于 A. Vavritsas 进行的后续挖掘的任何信息。3最初被它的发现者隐藏起来，半身像险些被熔化——这是大多数由黄金制成的古董所遭受的命运——因为在发现后的几天里，胸甲边缘的一部分被切割成碎片，被士兵卖掉了。这种鲁莽的行为背叛了半身像的发现者，并使该单位的官员有可能找回半身像。考虑到它的稀有性，这种类型的物体很重要，不仅因为它提出了有关其最初目的和年代的问题，而且对于我们对 toreutics 的理解也很重要。我们对这件作品的解释，实际上没有考古背景，必须依赖于对其技术、图像和艺术方面的批判性分析，