Appen­dix II turns its gaze to the elu­sive visu­al iden­ti­ty of two tow­er­ing fig­ures in Roman poet­ry: Vir­gil and Lucretius. The text jour­neys through the tan­gled efforts to recon­struct their appear­ances, not through sur­viv­ing sculp­tures or death masks, but from scat­tered and frag­ile arti­facts that leave more to imag­i­na­tion than fact. For Vir­gil, we are offered no reli­able mar­ble bust or pre­served like­ness; instead, hope rests in ancient man­u­scripts, par­tic­u­lar­ly a well-known one housed in the Vat­i­can. This man­u­script, from the twelfth cen­tu­ry, depicts a youth­ful fig­ure said to be Vir­gil, dark-haired and com­posed, seat­ed with a scroll—suggesting intel­lec­tu­al seren­i­ty and a life immersed in let­ters. Though not a pho­to­graph­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion, this image may echo a tra­di­tion that car­ried some mem­o­ry of his fea­tures. That like­ness, repeat­ed through cen­turies, may not have been arbi­trary, lend­ing a thread of cred­i­bil­i­ty to how we pic­ture the poet today. Still, it remains an inter­pre­ta­tive lega­cy, not foren­sic cer­tain­ty.

In con­trast, Lucretius’s visu­al record hangs on a more pre­car­i­ous hook—a small engraved sard bear­ing the inscrip­tion “LVCR.” The gem, once part of the Nott col­lec­tion, now resides with the author him­self, who believes it might depict the poet. Experts like Mr. A. S. Mur­ray and Mr. C. W. King have cau­tious­ly sup­port­ed this iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, giv­ing the gem a schol­ar­ly weight that ele­vates it beyond sim­ple antique curios­i­ty. Yet even with expert nods, doubt per­sists. Some schol­ars remain skep­ti­cal, sug­gest­ing that gems bear­ing Roman names were often styl­ized trib­utes rather than gen­uine like­ness­es. Despite this uncer­tain­ty, the gem con­tin­ues to be stud­ied and ref­er­enced, illus­trat­ing the ten­sion between art, arti­fact, and his­tor­i­cal truth. The image, if authen­tic, por­trays a high-fore­head­ed man with a pen­e­trat­ing gaze—perhaps sug­gest­ing Lucretius’s philo­soph­i­cal rig­or.

The author, intrigued by Lucretius’s sto­ic expres­sion, goes beyond phys­i­cal descrip­tion and pon­ders the poet’s emo­tion­al land­scape. He imag­ines Lucretius as a man of solemn thoughts, emo­tion­al­ly dis­tant, per­haps even inca­pable of the warmth required in domes­tic inti­ma­cy. This inter­pre­ta­tion reflects not only the poet’s epi­cure­an themes but the myth of a jeal­ous wife, a notion the author dis­miss­es as unfound­ed. Instead, he sketch­es Lucretius as some­one absorbed in the abstract and meta­phys­i­cal, whose inter­nal world may have left lit­tle space for tra­di­tion­al com­pan­ion­ship. Whether true or spec­u­la­tive, it adds depth to the way we view fig­ures from the past—not just through what they wrote, but how they might have lived and felt. Such spec­u­la­tion reminds read­ers that lit­er­a­ture often outlives—and obscures—the lives of its cre­ators.

Both por­traits, though lack­ing defin­i­tive proof, serve a greater lit­er­ary pur­pose. They invite reflec­tion on how we recon­struct the iden­ti­ties of his­tor­i­cal authors when phys­i­cal evi­dence is scarce or ambigu­ous. Arti­facts like man­u­scripts and engraved gems, while debat­ed, pro­vide a can­vas for con­ti­nu­ity between past and present, help­ing us imag­ine what can­not be con­firmed. Their exis­tence bridges the dis­tant gap between schol­ar­ly analy­sis and the human desire to con­nect with the faces behind endur­ing words. In Virgil’s case, the repli­ca­tion of a man­u­script image across cen­turies becomes a visu­al folk­lore in itself. For Lucretius, the gem becomes a lens—however cloudy—through which the poetry’s tone and the poet’s tem­pera­ment might be aligned. Whether accu­rate or not, such por­tray­als deep­en the expe­ri­ence of engag­ing with clas­si­cal lit­er­a­ture.

This appen­dix, then, is not just a study of visu­al arti­facts but a med­i­ta­tion on mem­o­ry, iden­ti­ty, and the myth-mak­ing nature of pos­ter­i­ty. It under­scores how his­to­ry often relies on imper­fect ves­sels to car­ry its truths, and how our under­stand­ing of great minds is shaped as much by evi­dence as by imag­i­na­tion. These attempts to “see” Vir­gil and Lucretius reflect a time­less impulse to make the abstract tan­gi­ble. Read­ers seek­ing more than just the writ­ten lega­cy of ancient poets are giv­en some­thing to grasp—a pro­file, a gaze, a visu­al echo. While his­to­ri­ans may argue over authen­tic­i­ty, the por­traits endure because they answer a fun­da­men­tal human ques­tion: who were the peo­ple behind the poet­ry that still speaks across cen­turies? And though we may nev­er know with cer­tain­ty, the effort to bridge that gap remains a com­pelling pur­suit.