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The recent discovery of a male portrait in the river Rhône and its attribution to Caesar provide an opportunity to study the emergence of marble portraiture in South Gaul. Despite the early and intense Romanization of this area, clear evidence of these privileged records of the elite's figurative culture have not found, even in the funerary field, before the decade of 40–30 BC. Nonetheless, most of the known marble portraits in this period have been considered "official" portraits of important people: Marius, Mark Antonius, Munatius Plancus, and so on. However, not only are these attributions far from convincing, because of the lack of clear parallels in numismatics or statuary, but their stylistic features also invite us to consider them copies of earlier Julio-Claudian prototypes. The issues suggested by the attribution to Caesar of several portraits are rather related to methodology, since none of them resemble either of the two well-known types in his iconography. The argument that an Arlesian portrait could be a unique contemporary copy is not convincing: such a precise stylistic dating is impossible to maintain and the attribution becomes impossible to prove, all the more so since this Caesarian "age portrait" (" Zeitgesicht") fashion is clearly evidenced in South Gaul during the late Republican period. Finally, the local evidence for Caesar is rather vague. As in most of the western provinces, a true diffusion of official marble portraiture did not begin before the start of the Augustan period.