Die young, live forever - Marcus Claudius Marcellus as Hermes Logios, circa 20 BC

 

Marcellus as Hermes Logios - formerly known as Germanicus - is a life-sized marble funerary monument and portrait of Marcus Claudius Marcellus, nephew of the Roman emperor Augustus. Created some three years after the model's death, Marcellus is portrayed as Hermes Logios, the god of eloquence.

The pose of the idealized figure exemplifies what later became known as the Hermes Ludovisi type, and was based on a popular and much copied 5th century BC Greek prototype, with the addition of a portrait head. 

The statue is signed - carved into the figure of a tortoise at the base of the cloak - "Cleomenes (Kleomenes) the Athenian."

The tortoise on the plinth below the drapery alludes to Hermes' invention of the lyre, for which the tortoise shell served as sounding board. Hermes/Marcellus appears to hold a plectrum in his right hand, a plectrum being a small, flat tool used for the plucking or strumming of a stringed instrument.

By 1590 the statue was in the collection of the Villa Montalto-Negroni, Pope Sixtus V's villa on the Esquiline Hill in Rome. It was purchased from the papal collections by Louis XIV in 1664 and placed in the gardens of Versailles; later it was moved to the château itself and installed in the galerie des Glaces. Napoléon had it transferred to the Louvre in 1802, where it remains to this day.

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Marcus Claudius Marcellus (42–23 BC), the eldest son of Gaius Claudius Marcellus and Octavia the Younger, sister of Augustus. He was educated with his cousin Tiberius and traveled with him to Hispania where they served under Augustus in the Cantabrian Wars. In 25 BC he returned to Rome where he married his cousin Julia, the emperor's daughter. As Augustus' nephew and closest male relative, he would enjoy an accelerated political career. Marcellus and Augustus' general Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa were the two popular choices as heir to the empire. In 23 BC an unidentified illness spread through Rome and both Augustus and Marcellus were infected. Augustus barely survived, but the illness proved fatal to Marcellus; he was only twenty years-old. He would be the first member of the imperial family to have his ashes placed in the Mausoleum of Augustus.