There were a lot of colorful characters in the heady days of the Roman Republic, when military might was beginning to be vigorously flexed during excursions into the fading Hellenistic domains to the East.
Titus Quinctius Flamininus was somewhat of a wunderkind – a precociously talented military strategist and diplomat of sorts who set his sights eastward in a series of spectacularly successful campaigns into mainland Greece, notably a splash 197 B.C. victory over Philip V. Flaminius was a renowned philhellene which did not preclude some pretty enthusiastic plundering of Greek art, yet generally hailed as the liberator of the Hellenes from their dread Macedonian overlords.
This portrait found at Delphi is thought to represent Flaminius and whether it does or not it is terrific! The touretic crispness of eyelids, hair, and scruff is the work of a too rate Greek sculptor, with a certain wistfulness skillfully imparted.
