In A. D. 62: Pompeii, this portrait bust represents Alexander, the Greek slave steward for the Tullius household. A steward was a household and estate manager, knowledgable about the family's finances and privy to the family's secrets.

This portrait bust is in the Capitoline Museum in Rome (in the "room of the philosphers"). No one seems to know who the subject was, although one author speculated that this statue represented a Roman senator. That might be true, although patricians did not tend to wear beards until a later period; during the first century, most patrician Romans were clean shaven.

Unlike the sculptures of ancient Greece, which were usually idealizations, many Roman portrait busts portrayed their subjects realistically, sometimes even in quite unflattering ways. Even portraits on coins were so detailed, and so lifelike, that it's often possible to identify individual emperors by their faces.

For more information about Roman portraits, see:

Anderson, M. L. & Nista, L. (1988). Roman portraits in context: Imperial and private likenesses from the Museo Nazionale Romano. Atlanta: Emory University Museum of Art and Archaeology.

Hale, W. H. (Ed.) The Horizon book of ancient Rome, by the editors of Horizon magazine. New York: American Heritage Publishing Co.

Walker, S. (1995). Greek and Roman portraits. Published for the Trustees of the British Museum by British Museum Press.