Head of a Young God or Hero, copy after a 2nd century BC type

128 Head of a Young God or Hero Roman copy of a second century B.C. type. The nose and chin are damaged. The break runs across the neck just below the chin. The flesh of the face has a high polish, and there are traces of reddish color in the hair. The drill has been used at the corners of the eyes and mouth. Both ears were sketchily represented and are now damaged, especially the subject’s left ear. A dent on the back of the head could be for attachment. This head could be from a large sarcophagus, one showing the Labors of Hercules and with the figures almost free-standing in niches. The head is certainly worked completely in the round. The god or hero (perhaps Herakles) has the sunken eyes and upturned face of the Skopaic tradition in Greek sculpture of the fourth century B.C. There is a fillet in the form of curled strands of rope in the hair. The hair is treated in short, lumpy curls. The brows are heavy, and the neck is well muscled. The subject's left side appears to have been treated with slightly more care than the right, which might suggest the head was turned toward the viewer's left. The tradition of representation is derived from Attic funerary and decorative sculpture around the year 200 B.C., as the seated Herakles on the left front of the relief in the Alsdorf Collection from near Syrian Antioch (Vermeule, C., 1981, p. 246, no. 206). Here the god is seated in profile to the right. The heads of Achilles and Patroklos (?) on the right short side of the high-relief Attic sarcophagus in Adana from Tarsus are nearly identical with the head at Harvard (Budde, 1964, pp. 9-26, pls. 1-14; Bielefeld, 1968, p. 354,, no. 4900). Cornelius Vermeule and Amy Brauer