Pompey (106 – 48 BCE) was an outstanding general, with major conquests in the East to his name. In the conflict for power back in Rome, he fought and lost a civil war against Julius Caesar, and was murdered in Egypt.
Successful leaders of the Roman Republic saw themselves as successors of the Hellenistic kings, especially and not surprisingly Alexander the Great in particular. In this portrait, Pompey has copied the hairstyle but, unlike Alexander, showed himself with small eyes and narrow lips to produce a less idealised and more personal character
Copenhagen, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek 733
Purchased from the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in 1933
Poulsen: Katalog over Antike Skulpturen Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, 404, pl. XLVIII
Schweitzer: Die Bildniskunst der Römischen Republik, figs.117 & 124-5
Poulsen: The Licinii Tomb Sculpture, Journal of the Walters Art Gallery (1948), 10
Johansen, F: Catalogue of Roman Portraits in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek (1994), vol.1, 24, no.1
Found in a Roman tomb of a descendant of Pompey
