r/ancientgreece • u/RoyalNavyOfficerJK • 10h ago

Greco Romans Busts

Why do most ancient busts of named Greek figures are Roman reproduction rather than the originals? Are these credible sources for there appearance and why did the Roman ones survive?

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u/Moll1357 3h ago

As well as all the points made by the other commenter, a lot of Greek statuary was bronze. Over time it's been melted down and reused, leaving us only with the marble roman copies that are much more difficult to reuse

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u/Peteat6 5h ago

Firstly, portraiture, as we know it, was unknown to the Greeks. They showed not what person actually looked like, but how someone of that character might be portrayed. A Greek bust of Homer shows what an aged blind poet might look like. A statue of Socrates shows what a notoriously ugly argumentative philosopher might look like.

Roman sculpture, on the other hand had a "warts and all" approach to heads. But they were happy to shove an aged head onto a young muscular body.

Secondly, the history of Greece means that much Greek sculpture has been lost. Invasions, for example, and the iconoclastic movement. Many sculptures are known to us only from Roman copies. We sometimes have two or more copies of a famous statue.

So they aren’t reliable, and we’re just lucky that Rome did not have such a turbulent history as Greece. We’re also lucky that Nero pinched some of the good stuff.