Head of Titus Caesernius Statianus

Hadrian spent much of his reign on the road, touring the provinces with a travelling court of officials and friends. Around AD 129, on his journey through the eastern provinces, one of them was a young man from Aquileia, at the head of the Adriatic, named Titus Caesernius Statianus. An inscription calls him a companion of the emperor in the East.

The museum dates this portrait to around 130. It is an insert head, carved to be set into a separate body, and the straight lower edge of the neck suggests that body was a statue in armour. Statianus also appears among the figures on the large hunting roundels made for a monument to Hadrian, which were later built into the Arch of Constantine in Rome.

His career went on long after Hadrian's death. He commanded the Third Augustan Legion in Numidia, in North Africa, and became consul around 141. At Cirta, today Constantine in Algeria, a statue was set up for him, and its inscription lists his offices. The head came to Munich in 1968.