The attribution of the “Statue of the commander from Tivoli” revisited

The object of the study was the “Statue of the commander from Tivoli”, which dates back, according to the majority of researches, to the second quarter of the 1st century BCE. Our interest in it is due to the fact that it is still not known which of the leaders of the Republic was glorified in this way. We believe that it is about Gaius Marius that we should speak. We are also taking into account the fact that the “commander’s” face is rather similar to those of the busts from the Münchener Glyptothek and the Musei Vaticani, in which many scholars tend to recognize the military and political leader mentioned above. The sculpture was made after the death of the dictator L. Cornelius Sulla, or, more precisely, it was carved during the First Triumvirate, and most likely on the initiative of G. Julius Caesar. This circumstance determined its future fate: the statue survived. It was supposed to adorn the Temple of Hercules Victor, erected in Tivoli in the 1st century BCE, and it was during the excavations of the temple that the statue was found.