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Another excellent example of a true Hermes head is the fine Polykleitan one in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, which is a copy of a well-known type represented by the Boboli Hermes in Florence and other replicas.710 Though S. Reinach classed this head as Kresilæan,711 its true Polykleitan character has been established,712 even if it does not merit the praise formerly given it by Robinson, of being “easily the best extant copy of a work by Polykleitos.”713

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 shown727 that the old Argive schema of the boxer Aristion at Olympia by Polykleitos728 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.