Boundary Stones and the Rebellion of Nature

Abstract

Boundaries demarcate property throughout European history, though the utopian dream of terrain without boundaries recurs, not least in association with the figure of the free-roaming god Pan. Ancient Rome had a god of boundaries, Terminus, associated by Horace with venerable, quasi-natural landscapes of human occupation. In Renaissance culture, Terminus is represented as a hybrid figure—part human; part lithic; often incorporated into architecture. This essay identifies a composite object in a Roman sculpture collection, noted for figures of Pan, as a model for Erasmus’s widely divulged emblem of Terminus, featured in images by major artists. Initially identifying himself with Terminus’s resistance to divine authority, Erasmus met with criticism for arrogance. In response, he drew on Horace’s ethically colored evocation of Terminus, now in connection with the ultimate boundary, that between life and death, as appears in Hans Holbein’s moving design for a monument to the humanist.