Probably the statues of boy runners did not differ essentially from those of men. That they were sometimes represented in motion is shown by the footprints on the recovered base of the statue of Sosikrates by an unknown artist. Here the right foot touched the ground only with the front portion.[1457] The view has often been expressed that the bronze statue in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome, known as the _Spinario_ (_Thorn-puller_) portrays a runner (Fig. 40).[1458] It represents a boy, from twelve to fifteen years old, seated upon a rock bending over and engrossed in extracting a thorn from his left foot, which rests upon the right knee. The severe hair treatment, low forehead, full cheeks, and strong chin appear to show the ideal beauty of a boy of the period of about 460 B. C. The motive seems to have been inspired directly by nature—witness the supple bend of the back, the delicate arms, the naïve, though not too realistic, concentration of interest in the act portrayed. Few pieces of ancient sculpture have given rise to more discussion and extraordinary difference of opinion than this popular work. One school of archæologists[1459] believes it a late adaptation of a Hellenistic original, a more accurate copy being the one in the British Museum, and consequently views it as a purely _genre_ statue impossible of conception before Alexander’s time. According to this view the London copy was an archaistic work of the time of Pasiteles. Another school, however, including Helbig, Wolters, Kekulé, and many others, sees in the Roman statue an original work of 460 to 450 B. C., chiefly because the face shows great similarity to those of the statues of the Olympia gables (especially to that of Apollo)[1460]. According to this view the statue can not have been a _genre_ work, as such works of decorative character were of later origin, but the motive must be sought in some definite incident—in some myth or historical event. Thus it has been referred to the colonization of the Ozolian Lokroi, whose ancestor Lokros is said to have got a thorn in his foot and to have founded cities near where this occurred in fulfilment of an oracle. Many others, on the other hand, have seen in its motive that of a boy victor in running, who has gained his victory despite a thorn, which he is now pulling out, and who has dedicated his statue to commemorate both the victory and the untoward circumstances under which it was won. It has been assigned to various sculptors and schools—to Myron, Pythagoras, and Kalamis, and to Peloponnesian, Bœotian, and even Sicilian art.[1461] The boy’s absorption in his task certainly reminds us of the concentration so characteristic of the _Diskobolos_ of Myron. In determining its age and artistic affiliations several things must be considered. In the first place, the Roman statue is a copy, as the rock on which the boy sits is cast with the figure, which would have been impossible in the fifth century B. C.