Another series of figures, much more numerously represented, gives us the corresponding type of male figure.  One of the earliest examples of this series is shown in Fig. 78, a life-sized statue of Naxian marble, found on the island of Thera in 1836.  The figure is completely nude.  The attitude is like that of the female type just described, except that the left foot is advanced.  Other statues, agreeing with this one in attitude, but showing various stages of development, have been found in many places, from Samos on the east to Actium on the west.  Several features of this class of figures have been thought to betray Egyptian influence. [Footnote:  See Wolters’s edition of Friederichs’s “Gipsabgusse antiker Bildwerke,” pages 11 12.] The rigid position might be adopted independently by primitive sculpture anywhere.  But the fact that the left leg is invariably advanced, the narrowness of the hips, and the too high position frequently given to the ears—­ did this group of coincidences with the stereotyped Egyptian standing figures come about without imitation?  There is no historical difficulty in the way of assuming Egyptian influence, for as early as the seventh century Greeks certainly visited Egypt and it was perhaps in this century that the Greek colony of Naucratis was founded in the delta of the Nile.  Here was a chance for Greeks to see Egyptian statues; and besides, Egyptian statuettes may have reached Greek shores in the way of commerce.  But be the truth about this question what it may, the early Greek sculptors were as far as possible from slavishly imitating a fixed prototype.  They used their own eyes and strove, each in his own way, to render what they saw.  This is evident, when the different examples of the class of figures now under discussion are passed in review.

Our figure from Thera is hardly more than a first attempt.  There is very little of anatomical detail, and what there is is not correct; especially the form and the muscles of the abdomen are not understood.  The head presents a number of characteristics which were destined long to persist in Greek sculpture.  Such are the protuberant eyeballs, the prominent cheek-bones, the square, protruding chin.  Such, too, is the formation of the mouth, with its slightly upturned corners—­a feature almost, though not quite, universal in Greek faces for more than a century.  This is the sculptor’s childlike way of imparting a look of cheerfulness to the countenance, and with it often goes an upward slant of the eyes from the inner to the outer corners.  In representing this youth as wearing long hair, the sculptor followed the actual fashion of the times, a fashion not abandoned till the fifth century and in Sparta not till later.  The appearance of the hair over the forehead and temples should be noticed.  It is arranged symmetrically in flat spiral curls, five curls on each side.  Symmetry in the disposition of the front hair is constant in early Greek sculpture, and some scheme or other of spiral curls is extremely common.