Statues Are Useful Going Up and Coming Down

What does one have to do to get a statue carved of oneself?  In the old days it was easy, win a few battles and before you knew it half the sculptors and bronzesmiths in the country would be banging away.  Being royal helped, naturally and from time to time a lessor political luminary got the nod as well.

Let's be clear, I'm not talking about busts.  Anybody with an unemployed stonemason handy and some room on the mantelpiece can get a bust.  No, I'm talking about full on statues; life sized or greater with a plinth and quite possibly a horse thrown in for good measure (or possibly because they ordered too much bronze in the first place).  You really have to have impressed somebody to get a statue, either that or you possess sufficient wealth and power to impress yourself.  Statues are the way a grateful nation says "thank you" (or the way a ruthless dictator says "fuck you").

But let's go with "thank you".  I wonder how many statue recipients would happily have swapped immortality for the cost of the statue in ready cash?  Of course quite often statues are commissioned after the subject is dead.  This is a better option for a couple of reasons.  Firstly with the subject in the ground its unlikely they're going to turn up at the opening ceremony and announce that they would have preferred an index linked pension and a few more years with the grandkids.  Secondly with the object of veneration no longer around its less important if the statue doesn't really look like them.  To make doubly sure you can put the statue somewhere it's unlikely to attract close scrutiny.

The perfect example of this is Nelson's Column in London.  Sure, there's a statue of Nelson, at least they say its Nelson but since the thing is standing on top of a column over a hundred and sixty feet high who the hell knows, it might be anybody.  They probably just grabbed a one armed jockey, covered him in pigeon crap and used him as the model.  In fact how do we know there's even a statue there?  It might just be a vaguely Nelson shaped pile of pigeon droppings.

Yet we keep coming back to statues.  From the time of Nebuchadnezzar we have loved statues.  No dictator is so tinpot that there isn't at least one statue of him hanging around to be torn down by the infuriated rabble (or occasionally the US army) when his time comes.  In fact creating colossal statues of dictators can be considered a public service  What would happen if dictators simply settled for having their heads on stamps?  You'd feel pretty damn stupid attempting to demonstrate your hatred of the tyrant by ripping up a postage stamp in front of the news cameras.