Bronze Statue of an Athlete

After sports and competitions in the palestra, the athletes cleaned of oil and dust with the strigilis, a curved scraper. The bronze statue shows a young man, who cleans himself with the lost strigilis with his thumb and forefinger of the left hand. The whole attention of the youth is focussed on this activity. The statue, which has been reconstructed from 234 fragments, was found in the palestra of the Harbour Gymnasium of Ephesus. The statue is a copy from Roman times after a lost original of the later 4th century BCE. The statue can not be attributed to any Greek artist with certainty, but further Roman repetitions in marble and reproductions on clay reliefs and cut stones prove the high degree of popularity of the original.

Image used in

• Ephesos-Museum