A Roman marble portrait head, probably Thucydides

Footnotes

Provenance:
Hormann collection, Germany, 1967-1982, acquired on the German art market.
Exhibited at a Zurich art fair in 1985.
Acquired by the current owner in 1994.

For another bust of Thucydides of similar proportion see the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, object no. 957.159 as well as G. M. A. Richter, Portraits of the Greeks London, 1965, fig. 177.

Thucydides was an Athenian historian and general who wrote History of the Peloponnesian War, which tells of the struggle for supremacy between Sparta and Athens from around 431 B.C. Born in 460 B.C., he was elected one of the 10 stratēgoi, a military magistrate of great importance, in 424 B.C. Shortly after his promotion he was exiled from Athens as he was unable to come to the aid of the city of Amphipolis before it was captured by the Spartans. It was during his exile that Thucydides wrote his History, and sought to record the events of the war as they were happening through extensive travel and research around Greece. His methodological approach and desire to record 'the truth' of the war made him one of the first historians in the Western world, following in the footsteps of Herodotus. His work was completed in 411 B.C. and was widely read by his contemporaries. Later historians took up the mantle and added to Thucydides's History as it did not cover the last six years of the war. Thucydides died sometime around 404 B.C., and his tomb in Athens was still visited into the 2nd Century A.D.

On Thucydides's appearance Richter quotes, "his features and bearing were serious and corresponding to the character of his History" (Portraits of the Greek , p. 213). Representation of the historian show him at around age 50, when he would have been writing his History, and Richter infers further that the Greek original type, which the above portrait likely follows, was most probably erected after his death when his History was becoming widely read (ibid, p. 215).