CIRCA 1ST-2ND CENTURY A.D.

One side depicts an archaistic image of Dionysos, with a thick beard and mustache, wearing an elaborate wreath of grape leaves intertwined with looping ribbons forming a kind of turban, their ends falling along his neck. The other side depicts a maenad with wavy center-parted hair, wearing a thick wreath wound spirally with a ribbon. For other herm heads of Dionysos wearing similar crowns, which are thought to refer to the god’s eastern travels, his exotic connections, and the natural resources that he brought back to the Mediterranean world, see the marble from the House of Loreius Tiburtinus, Pompeii, no. 70 in C.C. Mattusch, Pompeii and the Roman Villa, and the two bronze herms, one from the Mahdia shipwreck, and one now in the Getty Villa, nos. 45 and 46 in J.M. Daehner and K. Lapatin, Power and Pathos, Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World.