Roman Times: The "Little Refugee": A Hooded Boy from Nysa

A small marble statuette in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens carries an emotional weight far greater than its modest 63-centimeter height would suggest. Catalogued simply as a boy with a dog, it is known to visitors and staff alike by an unofficial name: the "Little Refugee" (Prosfygaki).

Hooded child holding a puppy from ancient Nysa in Asia Mintor 1st century CE.

The figure shows a chubby, barefoot child wrapped in a hooded traveling cloak, arms wrapped tightly around a puppy held against the chest. The carving is unpretentious; this was never intended to be a great public monument. Yet its appeal is immediate: a barefoot child clutching a puppy for comfort. Most catalogue entries date it to the 1st century BCE, though at least one specialist account describes it as a Roman-period copy of an earlier, 3rd-century BCE Hellenistic type, which would place the invention of the image itself a good deal earlier than the surviving carving.

Its modern nickname, however, comes not from what it depicts but from its own extraordinary journey. It was found at Gerontikon, a locality within the ancient city of Nysa on the Maeander in Asia Minor (near modern Sultanhisar, Turkey), and was brought to Athens by Greek refugees in 1922 — the year of the catastrophic Greek exodus from Anatolia that followed the Greco-Turkish War.

A small carved child, lifted from the earth where it had rested for nearly two millennia and carried across the Aegean by people fleeing their own homes, became itself a quiet refugee.

It has understandably become a quiet emblem of displacement for many who encounter it today.

Telesphorus and the Hooded-Child Type

The hooded-cloak type to which this statuette belongs has a longer and more intriguing history than that of a simple "boy with pet." Related hooded-child figures across the Roman world invite comparison with Telesphorus, the hooded son of the healing god Asclepius, whose cult spread outward from the great Asclepieion at Pergamon during the Roman period—not far, geographically or culturally, from Nysa itself. Whether this particular figure was intended as a devotional image tied to that healing tradition, a garden or funerary ornament in the well-established Hellenistic genre of children with animal companions, or simply a beloved decorative piece with no deeper cultic charge, remains genuinely open. Sometimes, the hooded cloak of a small, chubby-cheeked marble child conceals more than a single tidy label.

The enveloping hood is the defining iconographic feature of Telesphorus

While some representations include secondary attributes, the hood—not any accompanying object—identifies the figure. His origins remain debated: some scholars place them in the Pergamene Asclepieion of the Hellenistic period, from which both his cult and iconography spread through Asia Minor and eventually into the wider Roman world; others argue that the Roman image reflects an older, non-Greek religious tradition that was later incorporated into the Asclepian cult.

The type had real staying power and real geographic reach. In the Celtic provinces of Roman Gaul, Britain, and the Danube lands, hooded child or dwarf figures known to modern scholarship as the Genii Cucullati ("Hooded Spirits") appear from the 1st century CE onward, sometimes singly (as on the Continent) and sometimes in triads (as is characteristic in Britain).

Bronze sculpture of a child wearing a hooded cloak possibly a furniture terminal, Champagne, circa 1st century CE. - National Archaeological Museum of Saint-Germain-en-Laye courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Siren-Com.

Genii Cuculatti and Goddess, Roman relief sculpture, Corinium Museum, Cirencester courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Tony Grist.

Their exact relationship to Telesphorus is unresolved — some scholars treat the Genii Cucullati as a localized, Celtic-inflected descendant or parallel development of the Pergamene type, associated broadly with fertility, healing, and protection; others argue for an independent native origin onto which the hood motif was later mapped. No ancient text names or explains either figure directly, so both identifications rest on the images themselves and a small body of votive inscriptions.

Date	Example	Attribute
Hellenistic	Nysa	Hood and Puppy
1^st century CE 2nd century	Gallic bronze terminal Pautalia coins	Hood with No Additional object Hood with Variable object or none
2nd–3rd century	Aquae Iasae	Hood with No Additional Attribute
Roman Britain	Genii Cucullati	Triplicate with Hood and variable Eggs, fruit, etc.
Early 5th century	Liverpool ivory diptych	Hood with Scroll

For the Nysa statuette specifically, the case for a Telesphorus connection is suggestive rather than demonstrated. The dog is an unusual attribute not generally associated with the canonical Telesphorus type. Dogs carry their own healing associations in Asclepian cult practice (temple dogs at Asclepieion were credited with therapeutic licking of wounds, and dogs appear elsewhere in Asclepian iconography and votive relief). A hooded child with a dog, from a region within the broader cultural orbit of the Pergamene healing cult, is plausible as a loosely Telesphorus-adjacent image — but the museum's own cataloguing treats it primarily as a genre statuette of a boy with a pet, and that more cautious reading deserves equal weight until better evidence is revealed.

From Hellenistic Nysa to Late Antiquity: The Transformation of a Type

The Nysa statuette is unusual in pairing the hooded child with a puppy. Later representations of Telesphorus from Asia Minor, the Danube provinces, and beyond increasingly emphasize the hooded figure itself while secondary attributes become optional or disappear altogether. A second-century relief from the thermal sanctuary at Iasae, for example, depicts the familiar healing triad of Asclepius, Hygeia, and Telesphorus without any accompanying animal.

Telesphorus with Asclepius and Hygeia from Aquae Iasae courtesy of Archaeo Press.

Provincial coinage likewise often reduces Telesphorus to his characteristic hooded silhouette, although occasional issues depict him carrying other objects. The evidence therefore suggests that the hood—not the dog, scroll, or any other accessory—served as the essential identifier of the deity.

Coin issued by Commodus with Telesphorus clutching a votive object on the reverse dated to the 2nd century CE courtesy of Roman Provincial Coinage Online.

By the early fifth century CE, however, one remarkable ivory diptych from Liverpool depicts Telesphorus carrying a scroll while accompanying Asclepius. Produced within the Neoplatonic intellectual milieu of Late Antiquity, this image may represent a new interpretation of the deity rather than the preservation of an earlier canonical attribute.

Fifth century CE (400-430 CE) ivory diptych showing Telesphorus holding a scroll courtesy of National Museums Liverpool.

Conclusion

The evolution of the hooded figure's attributes reveals how flexible ancient religious imagery could be. The hood remained the essential marker of identity, while accompanying elements—puppy, objects, offerings, or scroll—shifted according to region, period, and context. The Nysa statuette therefore occupies an intriguing place within this long tradition: it preserves an unusually intimate image of a hooded child with an animal companion at a moment before the type became more standardized.

Perhaps that is why the "Little Refugee" continues to resonate. It is not only a survivor of antiquity or a witness to twentieth-century displacement; it is also a reminder that objects, like people, can carry histories far beyond the circumstances of their creation.

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