CIRCA 1ST-2ND CENTURY A.D.

Lysias was among the best orators of his time. Born circa 458 B.C. in either Syracuse or Athens (ancient writers differ on this point), he was the son of Kephalos, a native of Syracuse, who went to Athens at the time of Perikles. In his middle teens he settled in Thourioi, the Athenian colony in South Italy. Following the defeat of the Athenian forces at Syracuse in 413 B.C., Lysias returned to Athens, where he devoted himself to oratory. During the period of the Thirty Tyrants, his property was confiscated and his brother was executed, so Lysias fled to Megara, where he became a logographos, a writer of orations for others. One of his earliest was against Eratosthenes, who was responsible for his brother’s death. Later he helped Thrasyboulos to overthrow the Thirty Tyrants. Many of his orations are preserved by later writers (see G.M.A. Richter, The Portraits of the Greeks, vol. 2, pp. 207-208).
While there is no mention of a statue of Lysias in the ancient literary sources, two known portraits survive; a bust inscribed with his name at the National Museum, Naples, and a similar head now at the Capitoline Museum, Rome. Both are Roman in date, as is the version presented here, and all three must copy a now-lost Greek original probably erected around the time of his death in 380 B.C. Lysias is shown as a man of middle age with distinctive physiognomy. His baldness reveals a somewhat flat cranium. He has distinctive thick locks at the sides and back, and a full beard and a thick mustache that envelopes his upper lip. His forehead is creased and he has small, deep-set eyes. The example presented here takes the form of a herm, with drapery over both shoulders. For the Naples and Rome portraits, see Richter, op. cit., figs. 1340-1342 and 1343-1345.