Description
The Marathon Boy or Ephebe of Marathon is a Greek bronze sculpture found in the Aegean Sea in the bay of Marathon in 1925; it is conserved in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, where it is dated ca 325-300 BCE. The Museum suggests that the subject may be a youthful depiction of Hermes, though none of the god’s attributes are present. With its soft musculature and exaggerated contrapposto, its style manifests the influence of Praxiteles on his contemporaries; it is the closest contemporary reflection of Praxiteles’ manner. His upraised arm and the distribution of his weight demonstrate that in his original context, this ephebe was leaning against a support. Before the advent of scuba diving, its chance recovery suggested the possibility that artistic as well as archaeological treasures had been preserved from human destruction in underwater sites. Other well-known underwater bronze finds have been retrieved, generally from shipwreck sites, in the Aegean and Mediterranean: the Antikythera mechanism, the Antikythera Ephebe and the portrait head of a Stoic discovered by sponge-divers at Antikythera in 1900, the Mahdia shipwreck off the coast of Tunisia, 1907; the standing Poseidon of Cape Artemision found off Cape Artemision in northern Euboea, 1926; the horse and Rider found off Cape Artemision, 1928 and 1937; the Getty Victorious Youth dredged up off the coast of Fano, Italy; the Riace bronzes, found in 1972; the Dancing Satyr of Mazara del Vallo, in the Sicily Channel, 2003; and the Apoxyomenos recovered from the sea off the Croatian island of Losinj in 1999.
