A more important question for our discussion is whether the Vatican statue represents a victor (diskobolos) or Hermes. G. Habich has argued that the pose of the statue, standing with the right foot advanced, is not that of a diskobolos taking position. He quotes Kietz[670] to the effect that no vase-painting or other monument has the exact position of this statue, and that the natural position for such a motive is to advance the left foot.[671] Moreover, the fingers of the right hand, which are supposed especially to uphold the diskobolos theory, are modern in all the replicas. On a coin of Amastris in Paphlagonia, dating from the Antonines, and on one of Commodus struck at Philippopolis in Thrace, a figure of Hermes is pictured, which, in all essentials, reproduces the Vatican statue.[672] Since the figure on the coins has a kerykeion or training-rod in the right hand and a diskos as a minor attribute in the left—merely a symbol of the god’s patronage of athletics—we should see in the Vatican statue a representation of Hermes as overseer of the palæstra. Pliny’s words—if we omit or transpose the first _et_—refer, therefore, to a statue of _Hermes-Diskobolos_ and to the _Ram-offerer_ which stood on the Athenian Akropolis, to two, therefore, and not to three different monuments. We should restore all the replicas of the statue, then, with the caduceus, to represent Hermes as gymnasiarch. Though this interpretation of the statue has found opponents,[673] the evidence is strong that in it and its replicas we have an athlete in the guise of Hermes. If we think that the caduceus can not be brought into harmony with the chief motive of the statue, we must conclude with Helbig that the copyist in one isolated case—the one copied on the coins—changed an original victor statue into Hermes by adding the herald staff. This would make it an instance, not of assimilation of type, but of conversion.
A small bronze statuette standing upon a cylindrical base, which was found in the sea off Antikythera (Cerigotto), reproduces almost exactly the attitude of the statue of Naukydes (Fig. 6).[674] Here the left hand is stretched out horizontally at the elbow, but the right arm is lost, so that we get no additional evidence as to the attribute carried. Because of its correspondence with the aforementioned coins[675] even in detail, Bosanquet, followed by Svoronos, looks upon this “little masterpiece” as a copy of the Argive master.