Abstract

A badly mutilated male portrait head in the Museo Nacional de Arte Romano of Mérida (Inv. 17.461) is identified as one of the finds from the earliest excavations (1910–1916) in the Roman theatre of Colonia Augusta Emerita, nowadays Merida (Spain). Therefore, most probably, it belongs to a series of portrait statues of the imperial family that adorned the scaenae frons in its second form, completed late in the reign of Claudius. Because of this re-established context, the head might represent Marcus Agrippa, the founder of this theatre, as is recalled on various inscriptions. One of these was running on the stylobate of the lower (perhaps the only) storey of the stage-building in its first phase. Together with the granite base, these inscribed blocks were re-used in the second phase of the scaenae frons, erected in marble. Agrippa’s presence in this afore mentioned group of portraits, however, might be due to his important role (as a substitute for his wife Iulia, Augustus’ daughter, banished in the year 2 BC) in the somewhat artificial, awkwardly-drawn line of descent of the future emperor Nero from Julius Caesar, claimed by his mother Julia Agrippina.