Head of the so-called Pseudo-Seneca

The head was found accidentally in 1930 in Siena, on via Mascagni, during the construction of the Hygiene laboratory. The portrait depicts an elderly man with an emaciated face, lined with deep wrinkles and covered by a light beard; his hair is arranged in disordered tufts starting from the vortex at the nape. The type is known in the Roman world from a significant number of replicas. The incorrect identification with Seneca, categorically refuted by the nineteenth-century discovery of an inscribed portrait of the philosopher, is attributed to Fulvio Orsini in the Imagines et elogia virorum illustrium (1578). Since the nineteenth century, there have been numerous proposals for identification, mostly directed towards the most important Greek poets such as Museo, Tespi, Archilochus, Euripides, Theocritus, Homer, Aristophanes, Aesop. The emaciated and neglected appearance of the type has led, even recently, to the suggestion of the quintessential peasant poet, Hesiod. While the identity of the figure remains uncertain, the original from which the series of Roman copies is derived seems more defined, likely being a portrait created in the late 2nd century BC. The Sienese copy can be dated to the 1st century AD.