White Luna marble, 1st cent. A.D.
Herculaneum, House of the Stags
Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei, inv. 75796

This sculpture, a companion piece to the other group with a stag and dogs, represents a Hellenistic subject widely represented in the early Imperial Age. It seems almost a translation into sculpture of Phaedrus' story of the stag that, fleeing from hunting dogs in the forest, remains trapped in the branches of a tree by the fine horns of which it had been so proud.