the excavation of the athenian agora twelfth season: 1947

178 HOMER A. THOMPSON
standing figure, our plaque is of considerable interest inasmuch as the association of
Ploutos with Eleusis has hitherto been only slightly documented, viz., by several vase
paintings of the Kertch period.44
Two other marble votive plaques were found in the area west of the Areopagus.
One of them (S 1285), found in a late Hellenistic level in the Great Drain, is a small
rectangular plaque with tenon, decorated with a coiled snake; it is uninscribed but
very similar to the dedications from the sanctuary of Zeus Meilichios now in Berlin.45
The other piece (I 5968, supra, p. 39), from a late and disturbed context, shows a
human eye and bears the inscription, in letters of the third or second century B.C.,
"To the Hero Physician," obviously a thank offering for eyes healed.46
A number of notable additions were made this season to the series of portraits
of the Rotnan period. A miniature but striking study of the Princeps Augustus is
noted below (p. 181). A much-broken marble portrait head of the Julio-Claudian
period (not illustrated) has the tremendous breadth of cranium and the prominent
bony structure of the face characteristic of the ruling family; it may represent one
or other of the youthful princes.7
The small marble head, about one-third life, shown in PI. 55, though also sadly
battered, reveals a masterly hand that has treated a foreign type with both skill and
sympathy. The broad nose, thick lips and prominent cheek bones mark the woman
as of negro origin. The bonnet-like coiffure is a modest civilian version of the style
worn by the court ladies of the Trajanic period.48
Equally striking, though in quite a different way, is the life-sized marble bust
of a man shown in P1. 56.4 This piece was found lying face down beneath the charred
beams and broken roof tiles of one of the large houses of the Roman period on the
east slope of Kolonos, one of those that were destroyed in the Herulian sack of
A.D. 267 and never rebuilt. The highly polished flesh parts are set off effectively
against the rasped surface of tunic and cloak; the eyebrows and the hair have been
rendered by very light strokes of a single point; the eyeballs are smooth. The bust
form would suggest a date in the late Flavian or early Trajanic period. In its masterly
technique and dry realism this bust may be regarded as a somewhat earlier and more
studied work of the school that produced the herm of Moiragenes, found a hundred
metres to the north in 1935.5?
44 Nilsson, Greek Popular Religion, p. 62; Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, III, pp. 146 fif.
45 Beschreibung der antiken Skulpturen, nos. 722, 723.
46 Cf. I.G., JJ2, 839: a decree of 221/0 B.C. in which provision is made for melting down silver
offerings in the sanctuary of the Hero Physician; eyes occur three times.
47 S 1287. Height, 0.20 m. Pentelic marble.
48 S 1268. Height, 0.115 m. Parian marble. For the coiffure compare the portraits of Marciana
(d. A.D. 113) and of Matidia (d. A.D. 119) in Arch. Anz., 1938. cols. 276 if.
49 S 1299. Height, 0.475 m. Coarse grained, Parian (?) marble.
50 Hesperia, V, 1936, p. 17.