Pseudo-Seneca

Pseudo-Seneca

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Pseudo-Seneca

Roman bronze bust, the so-called Pseudo-Seneca, now generally identified as an imaginative portrait of Hesiod (Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples)

The so-called Pseudo-Seneca is a Roman bronze bust of the late first century BCE that was discovered at Herculaneum in 1754, the finest example of about two dozen examples depicting the same face. It was originally believed to depict Seneca the Younger, the famous Roman philosopher; however, modern scholars agree it is likely a fictitious portrait, likely of Hesiod. It is thought that the original example was a lost Greek bronze of ca. 200 BCE. The bust is conserved in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples.

History

The Pseudo-Seneca in the 19th century (Giacomo Brogi)

The type of this bust was first given its identification as a "genuine" contemporary portrait of Seneca by Gallaeus [Theodor Galle], in an Antwerp republication of Fulvio Orsini's Imagines et Elogia Virorum Illustrium et Eruditor ex Antiquis Lapidibus et Nomismatib[us]...^[1] at a time when the exemplary image of the great man was more inspiring than the quality and character of the work of art that embodied it. By the seventeenth century, about a dozen examples of the intense and haggard "Pseudo-Seneca" had been discovered, and as many more have been discovered since.^[2]

Following the example of Cicero, who had decorated his study with busts, or of the imagines illustrium that peopled the villa at Sorrento of Pollius Felix, described by Statius,^[3] gentlemen and scholars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were avid to have examples of the great writers of Classical Antiquity constantly before their eyes: "the learned all over Europe looked with awe and devotion at the Stoic philosopher, emaciated, even uncouth, disdainful of the luxury and corruption of Nero's court, and soon to commit suicide".^[4]

Of the Herculanean version of the Pseudo-Seneca, as it is still widely known, the outstanding quality was quickly recognized by Winckelmann, though he already began to doubt that the bust was that of Seneca as early as 1764.^[5] An engraving of it was published in the magnificently-produced series of folios that appeared under the royal patronage of Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies, Le Antichità di Ercolano (vol. V, 1767).

Bust of Seneca, part of the double herm discovered in 1813 (Antikensammlung Berlin)

In 1813 an image of Seneca was found on an inscribed herm portrait, which showed quite different features.^[6] Since then, the bust has been conjectured to represent many other people, including Aesop, Archilochus, Aristophanes, Callimachus, Carneades, Epicharmus, Eratosthenes, Euripides, Hesiod, Hipponax, Lucretius, Philemon, and Philitas of Cos.^[7] Gisela Richter suggested that Hesiod seemed to be the most acceptable,^[8] a suggestion that other commentators have endorsed.^[9] Erika Simon believed that it represented Hesiod and that the lost original was created in the circle of Krates of Mallos and the frieze-sculptors of the Pergamon Altar.^[10]