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A New Portrait of Plato

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Frederik Poulsen
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Extract

From the Renaissance onwards efforts have been made to discover the portrait of the thinker whom even his contemporary Isocrates called the ‘prince of philosophers.’ At that period it was believed that it had been discovered in a venerable long-bearded male type, a view which Fulvius Ursinus thought to be supported by a gem inscription. According to this there was no longer anything to prevent the ascription of the name Plato to a whole series of Olympian heads, now acknowledged as being of the type of Dionysus or of Hermes. And when the bronze bust of the Indian Dionysus was found at Herculaneum in the beginning of the eighteenth century, it was greeted with enthusiasm as the most expressive portrait of the great intellectual hero, and passed as such in popular works right down to the end of the nineteenth century. Even in the beginning of this century an Italian archaeologist tried to save the name of Plato, and proposed to explain the bust as a combination of Plato and Dionysus.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , 1920 , pp. 190 - 196
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1920

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References

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