The typical scheme for archaic and archaistic art was to represent the runner with one knee nearly touching the ground, the upper log forming a right angle with the lower, the other leg being perpendicular to the upper. This scheme appears on many vases and reliefs and in statuettes and statues.[1418] This old method of depicting runners was kept up by vase-painters down to the time of the red-figured masters.[1419] We see them on many reliefs, _e. g._, on the Ionic-Greek reliefs on the three archaic bronze tripods of the middle of the sixth century B. C. in the possession of Mr. James Loeb;[1420] on a small bronze relief in the Metropolitan Museum in New York which represents a winged Boreas;[1421] and on the marble funerary stele of the so-called dying hoplite runner found in 1902 near the Theseion, and now in the National Museum in Athens.[1422] Almost the same position as that of the figure on this Athenian relief is seen in a small bronze in the Metropolitan Museum, whose primitive features and solidly massed hair date it in the early part of the sixth century B. C.[1423] Another slightly larger bronze in the same museum represents Herakles running in a kneeling posture.[1424] Because a spearman is incongruous behind a bowman, Kalkmann[1425] and Furtwaengler[1426] have interpreted the two kneeling figures near either end of the West gable of the temple on Aegina as archaic runners (see Fig. 21, left). We may further compare with these figures the positions, though not the motives, of two others from the West gable at Olympia,[1427] as well as that of the kneeling bowman _Herakles_ from the East gable of the temple on Aegina.[1428] In this connection we shall also mention the life-size marble torso of a kneeling youth found in Nero’s villa at Subiaco in 1884 and now in the Museo delle Terme, Rome (Pl. 24).[1429] This statue, representing a boy of delicate build apparently striding forward with the right leg and bending the left so that the knee nearly touches the ground, has been regarded by some scholars[1430] as a runner, whose pose copies the archaic manner, being historically the last example known of its use in sculpture. The right shoulder is turned backward and the head, now missing, was turned back and upwards; the right arm is raised high and twisted about with the palm of the hand facing backward, the left arm extended with its hand in some way related to the right knee. The impression made on the spectator is that of a boy bending aside as if to ward off some danger. It is an excellent piece of work, evidently the marble copy of an original bronze. This has been variously assigned to the fifth, fourth, and even later centuries B. C.,[1431] and interpreted in various ways[1432]—as a Niobid,[1433] as Ganymedes swooped down upon by the eagle,[1434] as Hylas drawn into the water by nymphs when he was filling his pitcher,[1435] as a ball-player,[1436] as a boy throwing a lasso,[1437] as a gable figure,[1438] as a runner at the games, etc. Many of these interpretations are purely fanciful; the last is, perhaps, as good as any, though the strongly turned upper body seems not quite fitted to it. If it represents a runner, the sculptor has reproduced the well-known archaic pose.