Diomedes

Around 440 BC Athens stood at the height of its power under the statesman Pericles, and among the sculptors working in the city was Kresilas, a man from Kydonia on Crete. He is best remembered for his portrait of Pericles himself. The museum takes this statue to be a Roman marble copy of one of his works.

The hero is Diomedes, one of the Greek leaders at Troy. The Trojans believed their city could not fall while the Palladion, an ancient wooden image of Athena, stayed inside its walls, so Diomedes and Odysseus slipped in by night and stole it. According to the museum he held that small cult image in his left hand and a sword in his right. Both arms are lost today, and so are the legs, which is why the museum lists him simply as the torso of Diomedes.

Scholars name this figure type after two of its copies, this one and a statue found at Cumae, near Naples, and so it is known as the Cumae-Munich Diomedes.