Signed statue of cuirassed man. The inscription, which states
in Greek that ‘Sosikles, the son of Sosikles, from Athens
made it’, is visible on the front of the statue support.
The left hand and the right arm were carved separately and attached,
the head, too, would have been sculpted separately and inserted.
None of these survive; though, a hand with a sword, which may
pertain to the statue, was found by Ugolini during the excavations.
The figure stands with the weight on his right leg, the left
is flexed in a walking pose; on his feet he wears patrician
shoes. The torso of the cuirass is undecorated apart from three
rows of pteryges: an upper row decorated with lion heads,
and a lower row of longer elements ornamented with palmettes
and volutes - behind the latter another row is just visible.
The triple row of pteryges is an unusual feature, mainly
found on cuirassed statues in Greece and southern Italy.[1]
The humeralia are visible on the right shoulder, those
on the left are obscured by the folds of the chlamys.
Below the cuirass the figure wears a tunic reaching to just
above the knees; the right sleeve is rendered as a cluster of
folds on the shoulder suggesting the figure was depicted with
the arm raised. Part of the chlamys, or mantle, rests
on the figure’s left shoulder but is in the main wound
around the his left lower arm, from where it falls in zigzag
folds in front of the support. The support itself is rendered
as the trunk of a tree.