In making large statues, a skeleton framework of wood was often employed, called κίνναβος, or κάναβος, which was covered with solid material,—clay, plaster, brick, pitch, etc., all welded together to form a solid core over which the surface was finished in clay, plaster, pitch, ivory, or gold. In the “Somnium, seu Gallus” of Lucian, Gallus says, speaking of himself, “If he were king, he should be like one of the colossi of Phidias, Praxiteles, or Myron, which though externally like Neptune or Jupiter,—splendid with ivory and gold, bearing the trident or the thunderbolt,—yet if you look inside you will find them composed of beams and bolts and nails traversing them everywhere, and braces and ridges, and pitch and clay, and other ugly and misshapen things.” It is a curious fact bearing generally on this subject that no allusion is ever made to such a person as a caster in plaster. Plutarch, enumerating the various trades and occupations to which the great public works of his time gave employment, speaks of operatives, modelers, brass-workers, stone-workers, gold and ivory workers, weavers, and engravers, but never mentions a caster. Philostratus also, enumerating the different classes of workmen in the plastic art, makes no mention of casters. Pliny never speaks of them. Indeed, their existence is never mentioned by any ancient writer. All things considered, then, in conclusion, it seems impossible to believe that Pliny intended, in the passage relating to Lysistratus, to declare that he invented any method of casting in plaster, but rather that he intended to say that Lysistratus either modeled likenesses in wax over a core of gypsum, or, what is much more probable, that he colored his likenesses in imitation of life; and that his specialty was making accurate and literal likenesses in the round with color, thus uniting the two arts of the painter and the sculptor.