CIRCA 1ST CENTURY A.D.

The young Hellenistic ruler depicted here wears a royal Macedonian helmet, with the ram's horns associated with Zeus Ammon, and an aegis-like cuirass, another connection to the divine. Through this iconography, the ruler forges links both with the god and with Alexander the Great, the self-declared son of the deity. Upon his death in 323 B.C. Alexander was an instant icon, and later Hellenistic rulers often sought to emphasise their connection to the great conqueror. This herm therefore presents the Hellenistic ruler, who cannot be identified with certainty, though must have been known in the 1st Century A.D., as the just and natural successor to Alexander's empire.

There are at least twenty other herms of this type; all were executed in the early Roman Imperial period by copyists, possibly as decorative sculpture for the home. Cf. L. Budde and R. Nicholls, A Catalogue of the Greek and Roman Sculpture in The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 1964, pp. 55-58, pl. 30, no. 88, inv. no. G.R.S.3.