Paul Zanker,
Roman Art, tr. Henry Heitmann-Gordon (Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2010), p. 19:
Fig. 11. Bronze bust from the Villa of the Papyri, the "Pseudo Seneca." Roman copy of a Greek original of the late third century B.C. We see an elderly Greek poet, his face lined by hard work, but with a vigorous expression. The identification of the portrait is uncertain: it may be an image of the "peasant poet"
Hesiod. The torso is unfortunately missing, which is all the more regrettable because the bust, which was intended for insertion into a herm, suggests that it would have been a tour de force of realistic art. Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale.
Paul Zanker,
The Mask of Socrates:
The Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), pp. 150-154 (notes and figures omitted):
There is a whole series of these
retrospective images of great men of the past among the Roman copies of Hellenistic
intellectual portraits. But unfortunately, as is so often the case, for almost all of them only
the head is preserved, thereby severely limiting our ability to interpret them. This is true,
for example, of the most problematic case, a portrait that was once taken to be Seneca
and has thus acquired in the archaeological literature the rather odd nickname of Pseudo-Seneca. We are fortunate that the superb copy in a bronze bust from the Villa dei Papiri in
Herculaneum (fig. 80a–c) gives at least a hint of the body type. The head represents a
complete break with the traditional aesthetic of Classical art. Among Hellenistic portraits,
apart from the statue of the Cynic in the Capitoline (cf. fig. 72), there is no other even
remotely comparable to this one in its unrestrained rendering of passion, old age, and
dishevelment. Rather, the closest comparison might be with the roughly contemporary
statue of the pitiful old fisherman, which may give us some idea of the realism with which
the poet's desiccated body must have been depicted. Peter Paul Rubens already
combined the portrait with the fisherman's body, even though he was aware of the head
that went with it. If the large number of copies of the Pseudo-Seneca, one of them a
double herm together with Menander, did not guarantee that he must represent one of the
most famous Greek poets, we might have suspected that the type is not a portrait at all,
but rather a genre figure.
The hair falls over the brow in straggly locks. This is not, however, meant to express poetic
inspiration or enthusiasm, as in other instances, but evidently the unkempt appearance of
the peasant. This is particularly obvious at the nape of the neck, where the locks are caked
with dirt and sweat, as well as in the crudely trimmed and irregularly growing beard. This
last detail is a clear allusion to the iconography of the peasant, as we have seen in our
discussion of the portrait of Chrysippus (p. 112). In pseudo-Aristotelian physiognomic
theory, peasants and fishermen were marked by their irregular beards (along with other
negative traits) as ridiculous and even as morally inferior beings. In the bronze bust of the Pseudo-Seneca, this trait is only hinted at, but enough to evoke the
imagery of fishermen and peasants, with their negative connotations, when contrasted with
the beards of contemporary philosopher portraits (excepting Chrysippus, of course). This
impression is reinforced by the leathery skin, dried out by the sun, forming ugly furrows on
the neck and shoulder, as well as by the shriveled body with bones protruding in face and
neck.
But this old man is in no way characterized as sick or dispirited. Instead, he is filled with a
passionate energy. The tension in the forehead and eyebrows suggests extreme
concentration, as he searches for just the right word. There is something compelling in his
expression, as if he just has to express himself, as if something is driving him that is
stronger than he is. But who would listen to this unkempt old man, an outsider in polite
society?
As in the case of the seated singer, this portrait seems to aim at capturing a specific set of
biographical data, at rendering in its particular pathos a specific and unmistakable spiritual
physiognomy comprising these elements: manual labor, poverty, a disregard for personal
appearance, and a breathless, almost fanatical manner of speech. All this seems to point
to the peasant-poet Hesiod, who was called to poetry by the Muses while he was tending
his goats on Mount Helikon and who lived and, in his verses, described a life of inexorable
toil, worry, and disappointment. That later ages did indeed imagine Hesiod as an old man
is confirmed by Vergil, who evokes him as the "old man from Ascra" (Ecl. 6.70: Ascreus
senex).
But I am less concerned here with the identification of the portrait, which must remain a
conjecture until an inscribed copy is discovered, than with the boldly rendered
"biographical physiognomy" of this old man. One of the great poets of the past is
presented with the physiognomic traits of the peasants and fishermen who had always
been despised by bourgeois society and had to struggle to eke out a living. This is more
than just a retrospective, literary portrait of a poet. Rather, like the silen's mask of Socrates
and, later, the portrait of Chrysippus, it is a polemical statement of the independence of
intellectual talent from noble birth or societal convention. Even a man who stood on the
margins of society, who did not have the benefits of paideia, could become a great poet. And again, a body worn out by toil and privation could still harbor a
great spirit. Neither humble birth nor manual labor could rob this man of the power of the
poetic word. An image like this implies a fundamental challenge to prevailing norms and
values, even if only retrojected into the distant past.
