36 
otherwise cause us to suspect), for its material places this 
interesting fact entirely out of doubt, being the fine-grained 
gritstone of the actual neighbourhood. 
On its intrinsic value as a monument of ancient sculpture, 
all critics are agreed—but as to the idea the sculptor had in 
view—whether a god, a tutelary genius, or a mortal—there 
exists a very wide diversity of opinion; and although each 
theory finds support in some particulars of the representation, 
yet each in turn is controverted by other portions of the 
accessories that strongly militate against it. To examine these 
interpretations successively, and to state the arguments suggested 
by the work itself for and against each of them, is the 
object of the present paper. 
The most obvious explanation of the meaning of the figure is 
that we have in it the portrait of some very youthful Caesar, 
represented in his proper character of imperator ” as best 
befitted the requirements of the place where it was to be 
honoured—the important military station of Ebm’acum. That 
such representations w^ere usual in this island is attested by 
the beautiful bronze statuette of Nero haranguing his troops, 
22 inches high, and exhumed at Barkinghall, in 1790, now 
deposited in the British Museum. The cuirass, indeed, now 
wants that indispensable badge of imperial dignity, the 
Gorgon’s head, of which Martial makes such ingenious use:— 
Accipe helligercB crudum thoraca MinervcB^ 
Ipsa MedusecB quem timet Ira comce: 
Bum meat hcec, Ccesa}\ poterat lorica vocari, 
Pectore cum sacro sederit, eegis erit 
Nevertheless the marks of its attachment to the metal are 
still perceptible. But the breast of our statue was never graced 
with this distinctive ornament, neither are the legs covered 
with the callg (By that equally indispensable part of the Eoman 
military costume, but, on the contrary, with the metal greaves of 
Greek Heroic times, the use of which had grown entirely obsolete 
in actual service long before the conquest of Britain. The 
Eoman imperator invariably appeared in his statue in the same 
equipment as that in which he marched in front of his army, 
or harangued them before a battle. These two circumstances 
