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Statue of an Emperor in the British Museum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Extract

In the last number of the Journal of Hellenic Studies (VI. No. 1) Mr. Wroth tries to prove that the torso of a Roman Emperor from Cyrene in the Graeco-Roman Gallery at the British Museum originally belonged to a statue of Hadrian. This torso is described in my Guide to the Graeco-Roman Sculptures, 1877, Pt. I. p. 21, No. 46, as the ‘Torso of a Roman Emperor’; it was found at Cyrene in a building which Messrs. Smith and Porcher in their History of Discoveries, p. 76, conjecture to have been the palace of a Roman governor, but which in the ‘List of Sculptures,’ which forms one of the Appendices of the same work, p. 104, may, it is suggested, have been an Augusteum, inasmuch as two busts and one head of emperors of the Antonine period were found in the same building.

Mr. Wroth supposes that the torso in question is that of Hadrian, because ‘when complete it constituted a substantial replica’ of a statue found at Hierapytna in Crete, which is published in the Gazette Archéologique for 1880 (pp. 52–55, Pl. 6), and is now in the Imperial Museum at Constantinople. But how far can the Cyrene torso be considered a replica of the Cretan statue, of which latter I have before me a photograph? I cannot agree with M. Sorlin-Dorigny, who, in publishing this figure in the Gazette Archéologique, states that it is worthy to rank among the finest Iconic statues of the Roman Empire.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1885

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References

page 379 note 1 It would appear from the note to p. 13 of the Ausgrabungen iv., that the torso found at Olympia referred to above has been proved to be that of Hadrian by the discovery of the head of that emperor.