EPIDAUROS - 2011

Epidauros. V. Lambrinoudakis (Committee for the Conservation of the Monuments of Epidauros) reports the discovery, in the course of work on the Little Theatre, of the well-preserved torso of a slightly over-life-sized marble statue of a male figure wearing a himation. This is an Imperial Roman copy of a fourth-century BC Hermes in the tradition of Polykleitos. It may date to the second century, around the time of the Emperor Hadrian’s visit to Epidaurus. It is impossible to determine whether this statue bore the portrait head of a dignitary of the period. The area in which the statue was found likely encompassed the agora of the ancient city. The sculpture was built into a rough construction of the fourth century AD or later close to older structures which apparently belong to the wider agora area.