Ideal portrait of the 'Striding Poet'

Roman, late 1st century CE, after a Classical original from the 5th century BCE, made of marble, from the Marble Hall of the Harbour Gymnasium in Ephesus

This striking portrait of an old man with short curly hair and a thick beard depicts an anonymous poet who has much in common with the statue of the so-called Striding Poet in the Louvre. This ideal portrait depicts the restlessly roaming singer with the parted lips, a detail informed by portraits of Themistocles and Pindar known from Roman copies. This portrait was presumably part of the original decor of the so-called Marble Hall in the Harbour Gymnasium, dated in an inscription to the late-Flavian period.

Image used in

• Ephesos-Museum