Villa Adriana was embellished by a considerable sculptural decoration, partly consisting of copies of the major works of classical Greece. There was also a marble copy of the famous Discobolus attributed to the sculptor Mirone (active between 470 and 440 BC).
It was a bronze statue depicting an athlete caught in the moment he is about to throw the disc (which represented the first element of the pentathlon), with muscles at the peak of tension. The right arm is raised to the maximum height and is ready to spring in the opposite direction, almost screwing on itself, to launch the tool. The pentatletes, precisely because of their predisposition to the completion of 5 different sports activities, had a physique with harmonious proportions and were therefore often the subject of Greek artists.
Of the original by Mirone, one of the most famous images of the classical world, we have news both from Pliny (Naturalis Historia XXXIV) and from Quintilian.
Several copies of marble were received from the discus thrower, even two from the Villa Adriana alone (one preserved in the Vatican Museums and the other in the British Museum in London). Many of these have come to us mutilated by time or modified as a result of the interpretative restorations carried out between the 16th and 18th centuries that transformed them into other characters. Only in the nineteenth century, thanks to the description of ancient writers and analyzing all the copies received, was it possible to reconstruct the original aspect of Mirone's work.
Both copies from Villa Adriana are characterized by the fact that the head is facing forward instead of towards the disk, perhaps following an incorrect restoration.