Heads of Hermes are often found with victor fillets,[719] and some of these doubtless are from statues of victors. The beautiful fourth-century B. C. Parian marble head of a beardless youth in the British Museum, known as the Aberdeen head,[720] which resembles so strongly the Praxitelean _Hermes_, although lacking its delicacy, may be from a victor statue assimilated to the god, for holes show that it once wore a metal wreath. In Roman days the _Doryphoros_ of Polykleitos, as we have seen, was adapted to represent Hermes, and was set up in various palæstræ and gymnasia. The Naples copy of the _Doryphoros_ stood in the Palaistra of Pompeii,[721] and statues of ephebes carrying lances (hastae, δόρατα) and called _Achilleae_ by Pliny,[722] which must have been largely copies of Polykleitos’ great statue, were set up in gymnasia. A later type of Hermes-head often appeared on bodies of the _Doryphoros_,[723] while other statues, showing the body of the _Doryphoros_ draped with the chlamys,[724] and many torsos following the attitude and form of this statue, have the chlamys, which shows that they were intended for the god.[725] Hermes in the _Doryphoros_ pose, in a bronze of the British Museum,[726] is probably intended for an athlete. Furtwaengler has shown[727] that the old Argive schema of the boxer Aristion at Olympia by Polykleitos[728] was used in the master’s circle for statues of Hermes. The best preserved example of a number of existing statues of this type is one in Lansdowne House, London,[729] in the pose of the Aristion, holding an object—probably a kerykeion—in the hand and a chlamys over the left shoulder.
ATHLETE STATUES ASSIMILATED TO TYPES OF APOLLO.