Alkamenes.[683] However, as soon as the statue was properly cleansed and pieced together, its early dating was seen to be untenable, and its Hellenistic character became evident.[684] E. A. Gardner found little resemblance in the head to that of the Praxitelean _Hermes_, but more in the treatment of hair and eyes to that of the _Lansdowne Herakles_ (Pl. 30, Fig. 71,), which he ascribes to Skopas.[685] He saw in its labored and even anatomical modeling similarity to the _Apoxyomenos_ of the Vatican and concluded that it was, therefore, later than the fourth century B. C., being an eclectic piece disclosing influences of several fourth-century sculptors, the work of an imitator especially of Praxiteles and Skopas. K. T. Frost also assigned the work to the Hellenistic age, but believed it was the statue of a god and not of a mortal, and so followed Kabbadias and Waldstein in interpreting it as a Hermes Logios.[686] Gardner had interpreted it as probably the statue of an athlete “in a somewhat theatrical pose,” though admitting it might be a _genre_ figure representing an athlete catching a ball, even if its pose were against such an interpretation. In any case he was right in saying that the pose, even if incapable of solution, was chosen by the sculptor with a desire for display, as the centre of attraction is outside and not inside the statue, and so is against the αὐτάρκεια of earlier works. More recently, Bulle has asserted that it is not an original work at all, but, as evinced by the hard treatment of the hair, merely a copy. He also interprets it as a _Hermes_, restoring a kerykeion in the left hand, and he likens its oratorical pose to that of the _Etruscan Orator_ found near Lago di Trasimeno in 1566 and now in the Museo Archeologico in Florence, or the _Augustus_ from Primaporta in the Vatican.[687] For its date he believes the statue marks the end of the Polykleitan “_Standmotif_” (the breadth of the body showing Polykleitan influence, the head, however, being too small and slender for the Argive master), and the inception of the Lysippan (the free leg not drawn back, but placed further out), as we see it in the _Apoxyomenos_. He concludes that its author can not have been a great master.[688] Doubtless, the statue, which is the pride of the Athenian museum, is merely a representative example of the kind of bronze statues made in great numbers in the early Hellenistic age; but it shows the high degree of excellence attained at that time by very mediocre artists.[689]