Another comparison can be made to help confirm both the time and context proposed for this statue. Classicizing aspirations were to be observed in the east as well as the west. In some of the cases, indirect western influences resulted in a reinforcement of these tendencies. In 176 BC Antiochos Epiphanes of Syria was on his way back to his kingdom after having spent fourteen years in Rome. Passing through Greece he visited Olympia, where he dedicated a Tyrian curtain to Zeus. In Athens he donated a gilt bronze aegis, which hung on the south wall of the Acropolis[14]. When back in Syria, Antiochos commissioned temples to Zeus Olympios and Jupiter Capitolinus, whom he perceived as the incarnation of unity and power. A colossal bronze Zeus made for Antioch was obviously influenced by the Pheidian Zeus at Olympia, as shown by coins representing the head of the statue[15].
The Ionides Poseidon is quite close to the head of Zeus as it appears in the coins of Antiochos. Their slight differences, especially in the rendering of the beard, suggest that the Zeus Poseidon is closer to the middle of the century, or even later, along with the Aigeira Zeus, more in line with the mainstream classicism of that period. The provenance of the above referenced statue, from India, while connecting the piece with the east, offers a further indication for the widespread appeal of Classicism in the later second century. The stone, finally, is cut flat and thin, a feature also suggesting a date late in the Hellenistic period.
Busts of Herakles in the Hellenistic sculpture
Oxford, Ashmolean Museum 1921.1933; Oval cornelian with flat face and flat back; from the Story-Maskelyne Collection; 19 x 13 x 4.
London, British Museum 1177; Oval sard, with flat face; from the Carlisle Collection; 27 x 22; BM, no. 1177[16].
Copenhagen, Thorvaldsen Museum 787; Oval cornelian with flat face; 18 x 13.
Berlin, Staatliche Museen FG 6966; Oval cornelian, with flat face; 24 x 18 x 5[17].
Among the heads, most prominent is a series of Herakles busts, displaying the same stylistic features and covering the whole chronological span of the Classicizing phenomenon. Youthful Herakles heads were employed in Macedonian coinage before Alexander, and taken up by him and his successors[18]. Although it has been suggested that these early Hellenistic heads conveyed to some extent portrait features of Alexander himself, this does not seem likely, as the type predates Alexander’s reign[19].
