Statue of Domitian

In June of AD 68 the emperor Nero took his own life after the Senate had declared him an enemy of the state. His portraits stood all over the empire, and marble was too valuable to throw away, so sculptors recut many of them into the faces of the rulers who followed.

This statue is one of them. The head belongs to the body, and in antiquity it was reworked from a portrait of Nero. Who it became is less certain. It is usually identified as Domitian, younger son of the emperor Vespasian, who ruled from AD 81 to 96, but scholars still put a question mark against the name. He stands naked except for a mantle, his head turned to the left.

If it is Domitian, his own memory later suffered the same fate. After his murder in 96 the Senate ordered his name chiselled off inscriptions. The statue, 2.25 metres high, was found in the spring of 1758 among the remains of a Roman villa near Colonna, in the hills south-east of Rome.