Hellenistische Kunst: Apollo

The young Apollo Sauroktonos, a copy and my individual color reconstruction

Praxiteles also, though more successful and consequently better known as a worker in marble, created admirable works in bronze ...He made a young Apollo with an arrow watching a lizard as it creeps up with intent to slay it close at hand; this is known as the sauroktonos or Lizard-slayer. Pliny the Elder, Natural History

Why is Apollo trying to kill a small innocent lizard? Is he so brutal? Or is some story behind this sculpture? Probably Praxiteles work is a parody of the history of Apollo killing the giant dragon Pytho in Delphi and Praxiteles uses a small lizard instead of Pytho.

Maybe it just a small lizard which often can be seen in Greece for example in Delos