There have been numerous identities given to this noble-looking young man, mostly on little or no evidence. It may represent an idealised personification of a middle eastern man, with heroic overtones of Alexander the Great, or possibly the emperor Gallienus, who reintroduced a fashion for longer hair.

The dating does not tally though; most scholars agree however on a date in the reign of Antoninus Pius, around the middle of the second century, a hundred years before Gallienus ruled