Bronze statuettes, representing Iuppiter Dolichenus and Iuno Regina (II century A.D.), now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria.
The Roman divinities had acquired iconographic characteristics and mythological connotations only as a result of Hellenic influence. In this way they assimilated the style of picturing the divinities typical of Greek art, in which the anthropomorphic representations are preeminent. That is why the therianthropic representations are almost absent in Roman religious art. With the expansion of Roman civilization in the Mediterranean Near East, during the Imperial age, some Oriental deities were identified with Roman gods or goddesses. Iuppiter Dolichenus originated in the city of Doliche (near the modern Gaziantep, Turkey) and was the result of the fusion of the Roman preeminent god with a local divinity of thunder and weather. Like several other Oriental deities, this god was represented sometimes in the shape of a bull or with the bull as specific attribute. The iconographic tradition, typical of the Near East, of portraying the god standing on an animal – which was his/her symbolic representative – was therefore diffused in the Roman world with the diffusion of the cult of Iuppiter Dolichenus.


[Image: http://www.europeana.eu/portal/record/15502/5C57FFB1E A15DD15D46C7553E76CB84120F64094.html]