Ancient object
Portrait of Socrates
Marble portrait herm
Vatican Museums, Vatican City
Object provenance
Record incomplete- Object
- Marble portrait herm
- Made
- Evidence level: ProbableRoman imperial period
- Copy of
- A Greek original. Two principal Socrates types are distinguished in the literature, and the later one is sometimes associated with Lysippus; the attribution is not secure.
- Found
- Not recorded in this catalogue
- Excavated
- Not recorded in this catalogue
- Inventory
- Not recorded in this catalogue
- Identification
- Evidence level: ProbableSocrates
The Socrates portrait is secure as a type because several examples are inscribed and because the physiognomy is described in literature — the snub nose and satyr-like features that Plato and Xenophon both mention. It is a type, not a likeness: Socrates died decades before the earliest of these were made.
Not recorded here
- Findspot
- Excavation date and excavator
- Inventory number
- Material and dimensions
Read across
How to read the evidence labels
- Evidence level: Documented
- Supported by a named primary text or by excavated material evidence.
- Evidence level: Probable
- Supported by strong inference that most specialists accept.
- Evidence level: Disputed
- Substantial specialist disagreement exists; competing readings are stated.
- Evidence level: Literary
- Belongs to poetic or mythological construction rather than to history.
- Evidence level: Mythological
- Belongs to shared religious or mythic tradition rather than to any single text.
- Evidence level: Unknown
- The available evidence is insufficient to decide.
These labels describe the status of the evidence, not our confidence in a conclusion. A claim marked Literary is not a claim we doubt; it is a claim about what kind of thing a poem is.