Head of a Man (Pseudo-Seneca/Hesiod (?) type) (Front)

The long, unkempt strands of hair and emotive expression of this elderly man suggest a portrait of a poet in a style typical of the Hellenistic period. Similar portraits include that of Homer and a number of ancient philosophers. Heads or busts of these famous writers and thinkers were frequently copied in the Roman period, and this example likely dates from the first century AD. The curving surface of the underside of the neck indicates that it was once set into a herm of the sort that typically decorated Roman villas.

Although the identity of this individual is not known, he was certainly well-known to the Romans, for the portrait survives in more than forty examples. As the scholar Gisela Richter remarked, the question of identification has been “one of the strangest enigmas … in the field of Greek portraiture.” In the sixteenth century, the man was widely believed to be the Roman philosopher and playwright Seneca, but a herm (now in Berlin) with an inscription identifying the portrait as Seneca proved that identification incorrect. Known today as Pseudo-Seneca, the type likely portrays a Greek poet, perhaps the seventh-century BC poet Hesiod.