CIRCA 1ST-2ND CENTURY A.D.

On account of the bald pate and full beard, this portrait has previously been identified as Sokrates, but the way the hair at the sides of the head covers the ears does not conform to the surviving portraits identified as him (see for example figs. 456-463 in G.M.A. Richter, The Portraits of the Greeks). Closer to the present example is the portrait excavated in the Athenian Agora which has been tentatively identified as the 5th century B.C. historian Herodotos. Both heads sport the same hair style and have a slight split at the center of the full beard (see Richter, op. cit., figs. 807-809).