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HomeGreek PhilosphyColossus at the Crossroads: Reexamining a Hellenistic Cult Statue of Herakles from...

Colossus at the Crossroads: Reexamining a Hellenistic Cult Statue of Herakles from Kleonai


The small, second-century BCE temple of Herakles at Kleonai has lengthy been a landmark in the southern Corinthia, visited by early vacationers in Greece and completely studied and printed. Less consideration, nonetheless, has been paid to the in situ fragmentary colossal cult statue of Herakles, and questions regarding its date, artist, and sculptural “type” stay unresolved. The fragmentary nature, colossal scale, and important context of the fragment have made these interrelated points troublesome to review utilizing conventional means of documentation. This article presents a novel reexamination of the cult statue in its architectural and archaeological contexts, using strategies drawn from each conventional sculptural research and up to date improvements in digital object documentation. In September 2020, the authors undertook a full restudy of the Kleonai torso, gathering detailed measurements and images. This information set was used to create a scaled 3D photogrammetric mannequin that illuminates beforehand undocumented traces of facture and affords new proof for the show context of the full statue. These outcomes resituate this fragmentary sculpture as one of the most notable examples of a Hellenistic sculptural kind, the Herakles Epitrapezios, common throughout the Graeco-Roman Mediterranean.

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