Apollo Sauroktonos

The bronze original of this sculpture is attributed by Pliny (XXXIV, 69-70) to the Athenian sculptor Praxiteles and is usually dated to c.350-340 BC.

Martial wrote an epigram about the statue (14, 172): "Spare the lizard, treacherous boy, creeping toward you; it desires to perish by your hands.

[5] A marble copy of the Apollo Sauroctonos is in the collection of the Louvre, with the catalogue number MR 78 (n° usuel Ma 441).

[7] The statue depicts Apollo as a youth, unusually for classical artwork which normally did not portray gods other than Dionysius and Eros as children or adolescents.

[8] Martin Robertson has suggested that the statue alludes to the myth of Apollo slaying the serpent Python.