[Illustration: FIG. 33.—Head of an Athlete, from Perinthos. Albertinum, Dresden.]
The attempt to ascribe the head of a pancratiast from Perinthos in Dresden (Fig. 33)[1318] to Pythagoras is not convincing, though Furtwaengler has included it in his provisional Pythagorean group,[1319] as he does the boxer in the Louvre known as _Pollux_ (Fig. 58),[1320] the athlete of the Boboli Gardens in Florence formerly called _Harmodios_ by Benndorf,[1321] and the statue of an athlete of later style in Lansdowne House, London.[1322] Other scholars have also connected the Perinthos head with Pythagoras.[1323] Hermann brought it into relation with the bust in the Riccardi Palace in Florence, which, despite its swollen ears, we have already classed as representing a hero and not an athlete, because of the garment thrown over the shoulder.[1324] Furtwaengler tried to show that this bust was Myronian in style, classing it and the head of an athlete in Ince Blundell Hall, Lancashire, England,[1325] along with that of the earlier _Diskobolos_, explaining the acknowledged differences in the three by Pliny’s statement that Myron _primus multiplicasse veritatem videtur_.[1326] Arndt lists the Perinthos, Riccardi, and Ince Blundell heads, together with two others in the Jakobsen collection in Copenhagen,[1327] the head of the so-called Pollux of the Louvre, a bearded head in Petrograd,[1328] and the so-called head of _Peisistratos_ in the Villa Albani, Rome,[1329] as works emanating from one school of sculptors—the differences being explained by the many copyists. But to attempt to differentiate within the group two different sculptors, Myron or Pythagoras, he finds impossible, chiefly because we are dealing in every case with copies and not with originals, and because in no case are we certain that the head belongs to the torso on which it is set.[1330] Still another critic, A. Schober, classes together as more or less related works the Riccardi, Ince Blundell, Perinthos, and Ny-Carlsberg heads, the Louvre boxer (_Pollux_), Chinnery _Hermes_ in the British Museum,[1331] the Boboli athlete, the athlete metamorphosed into a _Hermes_ in the Loggia Scoperta of the Vatican, and the Lansdowne athlete, and finds them all Myronian. He believes the Perinthos head to be the prototype of the Riccardi and Ince Blundell heads.[1332]