[Illustration: FIG. 58.—Statue known as _Pollux_. Louvre, Paris.]
The bronze plate from the base of the statue of the boy boxer Philippos, an Azanian of Pellene, was found at Olympia and has been referred to the end of the fourth or beginning of the third century B. C.[1723] However, since Pausanias says that Myron made the statue,[1724] various attempts have been made to reconcile the discrepancy in dates. Our own solution is that the statue seen by Pausanias did not represent Philippos at all, but some earlier unnamed Arkadian boxer, who was contemporary with Myron.[1725] Years later the Azanian boy Philippos won a victory at Olympia and attached the recovered epigram to the old base, in which he implored Zeus to let the ancient glory of Arkadia be revived in him, and also a newer one in which he said that he had restored the statue of Myron.[1726] Pausanias saw the newer one, but omitted to mention the older, which was probably illegible from weathering. He therefore thought that the original Myronian statue used by Philippos represented the latter victor.[1727] The words on the affixed plate beginning ὧδε στὰς ὁ Πελασγὸς ἐπ’ Ἀλφειῷ ποκα πύκτας κ. τ. λ., may refer to the position of the boxer rather than to a portrait of the victor.[1728] We have long ago hazarded the suggestion[1729] that the so-called _Pollux_ of the Louvre (Fig. 58),[1730] whose body forms recall the _Marsyas_ and whose head recalls the _Diskobolos_, may go back to the statue of the unnamed Arkadian by Myron.[1731] But the uncertainty which we have found in a former section[1732] in assigning this and kindred works to Myron or to Pythagoras leaves it only a suggestion.