JULIUS CAESER FOUND AT BOTTOM OF FRENCH RIVER

France is a strange place to find a man who liked to fight.

He was a military leader turned dictator who had such a complex about his receding hairline that he perfected the Roman comb-over and liked laurel crowns that disguised his bald patch.

In flattering posthumous portraits Julius Caesar was often portrayed as a dashing, healthy-haired, divine being. But now a realistic marble bust believed to be the oldest representation taken during his lifetime has been discovered at the bottom of the river Rhône in France.

The life-sized bust, which has thrilled French archaeologists, shows a man in his fifties with the receding hair said to have given him a complex after taunts from his battlefield enemies.

He also has wrinkles and lines that reflect the war-hardened life of the man who conquered Gaul and whose quest for power was largely responsible for turning the Roman republic into a dictatorship that would later become an empire.

The riddle that remains is why the bust ended up at the bottom of the river in the town dubbed "Little Rome in Gaul".

And they say there are no real men in France.