[Illustration: FIG. 6.—Bronze Statuette of _Hermes-Diskobolos_, found in the Sea off Antikythera. National Museum, Athens.]
The statue discovered in the ruins of Hadrian’s villa in 1742 and now in the Capitoline Museum,[676] which represents an ephebe nude, except for a chlamys thrown around the middle of his body, standing in an easy attitude with his left foot resting upon a rock and bending forward with the right arm extended in a gesture, was formerly looked upon as a resting pancratiast. Because of its general likeness to Praxitelean figures—the head is especially like the Olympia _Hermes_—Furtwaengler interpreted the figure as that of Hermes Logios or Agoraios, the god of eloquence, and assigned it to an artist near to Praxiteles. However, it is probably nothing else than an idealized portrait of the age of Hadrian or the Antonines, and represents an ephebe, probably a victor, assimilated to the type of Hermes.[677]
[Illustration: FIG. 7.—Bronze Statue of a Youth, found in the Sea off Antikythera. National Museum, Athens.]
Another example of assimilation may be the much-discussed bronze statue in the National Museum at Athens, which was accidentally discovered in 1901, along with the rest of a cargo of sculptures which had been wrecked off the island of Antikythera as it was on its way to Rome about the beginning of the first century B. C. (Fig. 7).[678] This statue, the best preserved of the cargo, is a little over lifesize and represents a nude youth standing with languid grace, the weight of his body resting upon the left leg, while the right is slightly bent and the right arm is extended horizontally, the hand holding a round object now lost and variously interpreted. In short, the pose strongly resembles that of the Vatican _Apoxyomenos_ (Pl. 29). Opinions as to the age and authorship of this statue have been very diverse, ranging from the fifth century B. C. down to Hellenistic times and ascribing it to many masters and schools. Kabbadias, who published it, in conjunction with the other objects, directly after their discovery,[679] thought it would prove to “rank as high among statues of bronze as does the _Hermes_ of Praxiteles among those of marble,” and characterized it as “the most beautiful bronze statue that we possess.” Waldstein praised it in no less exaggerated terms, and classed it along with the _Charioteer_ from Delphi (Fig. 66) as among the first Greek bronzes, if not among the finest specimens of Greek sculpture.[680] He followed Kabbadias in assigning it to the fourth century B. C. and in interpreting it as Hermes. He at first ascribed it to Praxiteles or his school, but later he thought it more Skopaic.[681] Th. Reinach placed it in the early fourth century B. C., but regarded it as the work of a sculptor influenced by Polykleitos, naming the youthful Praxiteles or Euphranor.[682] He explained the pose as that of a man amusing a dog or a child with some round object. A Greek scholar, A. S. Arvanitopoulos, assigned the work to the fifth century B. C. and to the Attic school, referring it possibly to Alkamenes.[683] However, as soon as the statue was properly cleansed and pieced together, its early dating was seen to be untenable, and its Hellenistic character became evident.[684] E. A. Gardner found little resemblance in the head to that of the Praxitelean _Hermes_, but more in the treatment of hair and eyes to that of the _Lansdowne Herakles_ (Pl. 30, Fig. 71,), which he ascribes to Skopas.[685] He saw in its labored and even anatomical modeling similarity to the _Apoxyomenos_ of the Vatican and concluded that it was, therefore, later than the fourth century B. C., being an eclectic piece disclosing influences of several fourth-century sculptors, the work of an imitator especially of Praxiteles and Skopas. K. T. Frost also assigned the work to the Hellenistic age, but believed it was the statue of a god and not of a mortal, and so followed Kabbadias and Waldstein in interpreting it as a Hermes Logios.[686] Gardner had interpreted it as probably the statue of an athlete “in a somewhat theatrical pose,” though admitting it might be a _genre_ figure representing an athlete catching a ball, even if its pose were against such an interpretation. In any case he was right in saying that the pose, even if incapable of solution, was chosen by the sculptor with a desire for display, as the centre of attraction is outside and not inside the statue, and so is against the αὐτάρκεια of earlier works. More recently, Bulle has asserted that it is not an original work at all, but, as evinced by the hard treatment of the hair, merely a copy.