Statue of the Standing Diskobolos, after Naukydes (?). Vatican Museum, Rome.
An excellent instance of this tendency seems to be afforded by the so-called Standing Diskobolos in the Sala della Biga of the Vatican (Pl. [6]),[660] known since its discovery by Gavin Hamilton in 1792. It represents a youth who is apparently taking position for throwing the diskos, the weight of the body resting on the left leg, the knees slightly bent, the feet firmly planted, and the diskos held in the left hand, just prior to its being passed to the right. This position is one which immediately precedes that of Myron’s great statue. The bronze original dates from the second half of the fifth century B. C., and has been variously assigned to Myron by Brunn, to Alkamenes by Kekulé, followed by Overbeck, Michaelis and Furtwaengler,[661] and to Naukydes, the brother and pupil of Polykleitos.[662] The head of the Vatican statue shows no trace of Peloponnesian art, but rather resembles Attic types of the end of the fifth century B. C. However, as we shall see, this head does not appear to belong to the statue. Among the works of Alkamenes Pliny mentions a bronze pentathlete,[663] called the Enkrinomenos, and this work has been identified with the statue under discussion.[664] Such an assumption is tenable only if the statue fits Pliny’s epithet. This epithet appears to mean “undergoing a test,” and should refer not to the statue, for we know nothing of any principle of selecting statues, but to the athlete represented, the ἔγκρισις referring to the selection of athletes before the contest.[665] Pliny’s statue, then, presumably, represented a pentathlete, not in action as the Vatican statue does, but standing at rest before his judges. An all-round athlete like a pentathlete would especially fit such an ordeal, and his statue, albeit lighter and more graceful, would be an ideal one like the Doryphoros of Polykleitos.[666] We know how Alkamenes treated Hermes from the bearded herma of that god found in Pergamon in 1903 and inscribed with his name.[667] Its massive features, broad forehead, and wide-opened eyes bear no analogy to the head on the Vatican statue, nor to the one with which Helbig would replace it. The ascription of the statue to Naukydes is better founded. As the head of the statue is Attic and not Argive, it is difficult to connect the work with a Peloponnesian artist. However, the present head of the statue can not be shown to belong to it, and no other replica has a head which can be proved to belong to the body. A fragmentary replica of the statue, of good workmanship, was found in Rome in 1910, and nearby a head, which must belong to the torso.[668] This head fits the Vatican statue better than the head now on it, and certainly comes from the Polykleitan circle—both head and body showing elements of Polykleitan style. This new head represents the transition from Polykleitan art to that of the next century, i. e., to the head-types of Skopas, Praxiteles, and other Attic masters. Presumably, then, in the original of this fragment and its replicas, we have a famous statue—the one by Naukydes mentioned by Pliny.[669]
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.
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
