The paper deals with copyist’s signatures as a tool to investigate nature and origin of the copying practice in Antiquity. A repertoire of about thirty signed ‘copies’ is presented, taking into account cases in which copies are identified by a longterm tradition (e.g. the Doriphorus) or by an unanimous scholar consensus, even though no tradition exists. The author discusses the signature of Apollonios son of Archias of Athens on the bronze herm of the Doryphorus from Herculaneum (Naples, m.a.n. inv. 4885) as an interesting example of the original-copy relationship in the Late Hellenistic world. His purpose is to show how all but one
copyist’s signatures between the mid 2nd Century bce and the early 3rd Century ce are standard sculptor’s signatures, the only exception being reletively late (Hadrian-Antonine era). A clue that suggests to see in the early copies a phenomenon related to the Neoattic Classicism of the 2nd century bce, at its very begininng linked to cult and votive images in Greece and later extended to the business of the Art market in Italy.
