A Bronze Bust of a Iulio-Claudian Prince (? Caligula) in the Museum of Colchester; With a Note on the Symbolism of the Globe in Imperial Portraiture

Abstract

The bronze bust reproduced in fig. I and on plates I and II, from photographs supplied by the kindness of Mr. Wright, director of the Colchester Museum, was found along with two others, a statuette of Iupiter and a fine mask of Silenus, at Colchester in October, 1845. All three bronzes were described by the late Sir Charles Newton, then quite a young man, in a letter to Sir Henry Ellis. Newton's account of the find is as follows:The three bronzes … were discovered on the line of railway now running between Colchester and Ipswich, about a mile to the east of the Colchester terminus and half a mile west of the town. They were dug up at the depth of about five feet from the surface; portions of red pottery, bronze and lead, were found near them, and, at a distance of about six feet, a human skull and some horses' teeth. The spot presented no indications of having been a place of dwelling or of sepulture, but two or three hundred yards nearer the terminus is a small rising ground, in cutting through which the railway labourers are said to have found urns containing bones.