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Apollo figures in mythology as an athlete. In the Iliad, at the opening of the boxing match between Epeios and Euryalos,730 he is mentioned as the god of boxing, which refers, perhaps, to his presiding over the education of youths (κουροτρόφος) and to his gift of manly prowess. Pausanias records that he overcame Hermes in running and Ares in boxing.731 He gives these victories of the god as the reason why the flute played a Pythian air at the later pentathlon. Plutarch says that the Delphians sacrificed to Apollo the boxer (πύκτης), and the Cretans and Spartans to Apollo the runner (δρομαῖος).732 Apollo’s fight with Herakles to wrest from the hero the stolen tripod of Delphi,733 which is the subject of many surviving works of art,734 is outside the realm of athletics. As with Hermes, it is often difficult to distinguish between statues of Apollo and those of victors assimilated to his type. A good instance of this doubt is afforded by the long and indecisive discussion of the monument represented by several replicas, especially by the Choiseul-Gouffier statue in the British Museum (Pl. ssss1), and the so-called Apollo-on-the-Omphalos (Pl. ssss1) found in 1862 in the ruins of the theatre of Dionysos at Athens, and now in the National Museum there.735 The bronze original of these marble copies must have been famous, to judge from the number of replicas of it. It has been ascribed to many different artists—to Kalamis, Pythagoras, Alkamenes, Pasiteles,736 to one on more, to another on less probability. As A. H. Smith has pointed out, the krobylos treatment of the hair almost certainly indicates an Attic sculptor of the first half of the fifth century B.C. But here again the main interest in these copies is to determine whether the original represented Apollo or an athlete. The connection between the Athens replica and the omphalos found with it is all but disproved737 and can not be used as evidence that the statue represents the god. However, the original has been called an Apollo because of the presence of a quiver on certain of the copies. Thus, while we have a tree-trunk beside the Choiseul-Gouffier example, we have a quiver on the copy in the Palazzo Torlonia in Rome,738 and on a similar statue in the Fridericianum in Kassel,739 and both tree and quiver on the fragment of a leg from the Palatine now in the Museo delle Terme.740 The Ventnor head in the British Museum741 has long locks suited to Apollo, and the head from Kyrene there742 was actually found in a temple of Apollo. It has also been pointed out that the head of a similar figure, undoubtedly an Apollo, appears on a relief in the Capitoline Museum,743 and a similar figure is found on a red-figured krater in Bologna, which shows the god standing on a pillar with a laurel wreath in the lowered left hand and a bowl in the right.744 On coins of Athens, moreover, we see the figure of Apollo in a similar attitude with a laurel wreath in the lowered right hand and a bow in the left.745 From such evidence a good case for an Apollo has been made out by many scholars—A. H. Smith, Winter,746 Helbig,747 Conze,748 Furtwaengler,749 Schreiber,750 Dickins, and others. The evidence of the quiver in the delle Terme fragment and the Torlonia replica is looked upon as a deliberate device of the copyist to indicate the god. The attempt especially to connect it with the Apollo Alexikakos of Kalamis751 must certainly fall, since the date is about the only thing in its favor. In the long list of statues ascribed to this sculptor,752 there is none of an athlete, and the Choiseul-Gouffier type, whether it represents Apollo or an athlete, has a markedly athletic character. If the Delphi Charioteer (Fig. 66) be ascribed to Kalamis, certainly this type of statue can have nothing to do with him or his school. Nor is the type at all identical with the Alexikakos appearing on coins of Athens,753 in which the locks of hair, in the true archaic fashion of a cultus statue, fall down over the god’s shoulders. Besides, the work of Kalamis, characterized by λεπτότης and χάρις,754 must have been of the delicate later archaic style of the transition period.