The damage to this figure makes it hard to identify what it is doing. It could be an athlete, charioteer, warrior, sandal-binder, even a dancer. Whatever he is, it is a far cry from the static standing figures of the Archaic period.
Without evidence from its archaeological context, and without a head, it is also difficult to date the sculpture. The closest similarities are to the Aegina Pediments and the Tyrant Slayers. If the date is similar to those, then the sense of movement and tensions in the musculature are adventurous innovations
Athens National Museum 1605
Lippold: Griechische Plastik, 109 (n.4)
Karo: Personality in Greek Archaic Art, 276
Papaspiridi: Guide du Musée Nationale d’Athènes (1927), 36
Neugebauer, KA: Archäologischer Anzeiger (1915), 274-, figs.1-2
Richardson, RB: American Journal of Archaeology 1st series, IX (1894), 53-, pl. XI
Richardson, RB: American Journal of Archaeology 1st series, IX (1895), 51
Found in 1887 at the temple of Aphrodite near Daphni, a few miles outside Athens on the road to Eleusis
