Lyceus

It is called "Lycean" not after Lycia itself, but after its identification with a lost work described, though not attributed to a sculptor, by Lucian[2] as being on show in the Lyceum, one of the gymnasia of Athens.

[3] The attribution, based on the type's "elongated proportions, elegant pose and somewhat effeminate anatomy", as Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway characterised it,[4] is traditionally supported on the grounds of the type's similarity to Praxiteles's Hermes from Olympia - one replica of the Lycian Apollo even passed as a copy of the Hermes for a time.

[5] The comparison essentially rests on the Apollino, whose head has proportions similar to those of the Aphrodite of Cnidus[6] and whose pronounced sfumato confirms the long-held idea that it is Praxitelean in style, in spite of the many differences among the extant examples.

Nevertheless, most exemplars of this type exhibit a pronounced musculature which does not resemble masculine types normally attributed to Praxiteles - it has further been proposed that it is a work of his contemporary Euphranor,[7] or of a 2nd-century BCE work[8] The Apollino, for its part, would thus be an eclectic creation from the Roman era, mixing several styles from the "second classicism" (i.e. from the 4th century BC).

The pose is also used in the Amazon statue types, and its long-established[11] conventional expression of lassitude identified Sleeping Ariadne as well.