Marble statue of the emperor Hadrian, in Greek dress
From Cyrene, northern Africa
AD 117-125
The Roman emperor Hadrian is shown here in the himation
(a Greek mantle). This unique and well known statue is made up of
fragments found in 1861 in the ruins of a temple in the city of
Cyrene, in northern Africa.
He is dressed as a Greek, rather than a Roman,
in a demonstration of his well-known love of Greek culture. This is
often considered to be a defining characteristic of his reign. One
ancient source even calls him graeculus, or
‘Greekling’.
However, a recent re-examination of the
sculpture by the British Museum has demonstrated that Hadrian’s
head almost certainly never belonged on this body.
No other statue of a Roman emperor in Greek
civilian dress exists, and investigation by Museum conservators has
revealed that the statue consists of several different parts –
the body, two separately carved hands, and the head. It is in fact
the result of an incorrect restoration in the Victorian period. In
order to hold the head in place, restorers applied a thick layer of
plaster covering part of the neck and some of the folds of drapery.
Originally, the body was probably part of a statue of a local
benefactor. The head of Hadrian came from a separate sculpture,
which is now lost. Fragments from many different sculptures were
mixed up in the ruins of Cyrene.
For the purposes of the Hadrian: Empire and Conflict exhibition at
the British Museum (24 July 2008 – 26 October 2008), the head has
been temporarily re-attached. Without the plaster fill it is clear
that the body and head do not belong together.