“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
