422 MR ANDREW COVENTRY’S NOTICE OF 
with a fillet of hair bound round the head. If this observation be correct (and 
I have since found it in Muller),* then it furnishes us with one presumption more 
for the bust being that of Octavia; since, if it must belong to her age, it is no 
stretch to say that it may more fairly be given to her than to any other, when 
we take into account its perfect accordance with her character, and its resem- 
blance to her brother, Augustus. 
Such are the various grounds on which I should be disposed to rest. That 
they amount to proofs I do not pretend, for well I know the difficulty in all such 
matters of getting more than presumptions. Uncertainty hangs over too many 
of the finest remains of antiquity, making the Clite of one person the Isis of 
another, and raising a question, whether the beautiful Ariadne in our adjoining 
room is not, after all, a Bacchus, as Visconti and the latest editor of Winckel- 
mann} maintain. Enough, then, if I may be thought to have adduced reasonable 
grounds of belief, and all that could be hoped for at the end of nineteen cen- 
turies, with no contemporary record of the features, and scarce a relic left to 
guide us. 
The bust may have been made at Rome by some of the numerous Greek 
artists who flocked there, encouraged by Cicero and Atticus. Octavia} was more 
than once at Athens, the idol and the charm of it, but this was as a married 
woman,—and the bust must have been made before her marriage, if we may 
safely judge by the hair tied behind in a knot, and not as matrons were in the 
habit of wearing it. There is no reason for supposing that the drapery may not 
be of high antiquity. The Carrara, or, as they were then termed, the Luna marble 
quarries, were open before her day, in the time of Julius Ceesar. § 
Since preparing this notice, I received by to-day’s post the following very in- 
teresting communication from Mr Burgon of the British Museum, which was sent 
me by Sir David Dundas. 
« Mus. Brit., Feb. 14, 1852. 
« Dear Sir Davin, 
“ T beg to return my best thanks to your friend for his very 
kind compliance with my suggestion, in sending me two new photographs. I 
hope they may be thought to have been productive of some fruit. I have done 
my best in coming to a conclusion, and have made up my mind to suggest that the 
bust represents Antonia, the daughter of M. Antonius and Octavia. She was the 
wife of Drusus, and the mother of Germanicus and of Claudius, who struck coins 
in her honour. She was a personage of high celebrity and a very likely person 
to have a fine bust, having had the honour of numismatic deification at least. 
* Miicrer’s “ Ancient Art and its Remains,” pp. 169-70. 
+ WuinckELMany, p. 96. t Mertvare’s Roman Empire, IIL., 309. 
§ Burron’s Rome, I., 22; and II., 303. 
