Capitoline Museum
Photos by Erik Anderson

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“The Stanza dei Filosofi [Philosophers Room] in the Capitoline Museum in Rome is a room filled with scores of busts of famous ancient poets, orators, and philosophers.  The busts have been numbered and rearranged several times in the past three centuries.  Since its arrival in the museum in 1743, the double-herm of Epicurus and his placid follower Metrodorus has stood in the same place at the end of the main axis of the room  That the piece has stayed put through the centuries is remarkable, for the position is special and hence vulnerable.  It is a place of focus, orientation, and power.  That Epicurus has occupied it against the competition of virtually the whole corpus of ancient Greek portraits speaks volumes about  the magnetism of his image.”

- Bernard Frischer, preface to The Sculpted Word


  

Bust of Epicurus
  


Metrodorus / Epicurus double herm