Apollo Sauroctonos facts for kids
The Apollo Sauroktonos (say "Sore-ock-TON-os") is a famous ancient statue. Its name means "Apollo the Lizard-killer." This statue shows the Greek god Apollo as a young boy, which is pretty unusual for statues of gods! The original was made by a famous Greek sculptor named Praxiteles around 350-340 BC. Today, we mostly see Roman copies of this amazing artwork. You can find these copies in big museums like the Louvre in Paris and the Vatican Museums in Rome.
The Original Statue
The very first Apollo Sauroktonos was made of bronze. A famous writer from ancient Rome, Pliny, said that the sculptor Praxiteles created it. Praxiteles was a well-known artist from Athens, Greece. He made this statue a long, long time ago, around 350 to 340 years before Jesus was born!
Another ancient writer, Martial, even wrote a short poem about the statue. He joked, "Spare the lizard, tricky boy, creeping toward you; it wants to die by your hands." This shows how famous the statue was even back then.
Today, the Cleveland Museum of Art believes they might have the original bronze statue, or at least a part of it. Experts like scholars and archaeologists are carefully studying it to see if it's truly the original.
Many Copies Were Made
Because the original statue was so popular, many copies were made. We know of about forty marble copies of the Apollo Sauroktonos that still exist today! People even put images of this statue on Roman gems and coins.
One well-known marble copy is in the Louvre Museum in Paris. It stands about 1.49 metres (4.9 ft) tall. Some parts of this copy, like its left arm, right hand, and the lizard's head, were fixed or added much later. This specific copy used to belong to a famous art collection called the Borghese collection. Then, in 1807, Napoleon bought it for the Louvre.
What the Statue Means
The statue shows Apollo as a young person, which was quite rare in ancient Greek art. Usually, gods were shown as adults, except for a few like Dionysus or Eros.
Some experts, like Martin Robertson, thought the statue might be connected to the myth of Apollo fighting the giant serpent Python. In this myth, Apollo slays Python.
However, other experts, like Jennifer Neils, disagree. They point out that Python was always shown as a huge snake in other Greek artworks. It's unlikely that ancient people would have thought the small lizard on this statue was Python. So, the statue probably just shows a young Apollo playing with a lizard, or perhaps it has a different, more subtle meaning that we don't fully understand today.
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