Polyclitus studied under the great Argive sculptor Ageledas, and was a fellow-scholar with Phidias and Myron. He was the rival of Phidias in his chryselephantine works, and but little if at all inferior to him in his best works. He created the type of Hera, as Phidias did that of Athena; and his colossal statue of that goddess in ivory and gold at Argos was admitted to be unsurpassed even by the Athena of the Parthenon. Strabo asserts that though inferior in size and nobleness to the Athena and Zeus of Phidias, it equaled them in beauty, and in its artistic execution excelled them (τῇ μὲν τέχνῃ κάλλιστα τῶν πάντων). Dionysius of Halicarnassus accords to him, as to Phidias, τὸ σεμνὸν καὶ μεγαλότεχνον καὶ ἀξιωματικόν—the character of grandeur, dignity, and harmony of parts. Xenophon places him beside Homer, Sophocles, and Zeuxis as an artist. Among his bronze works, the most celebrated were the Diadumenos and the Doryphoros, the latter of which was called the Canon, on account of its beauty and perfection of proportion. If to Phidias was accorded the highest praise as the sculptor of divinities, Polyclitus was considered his superior in his statues of men. Nor was it only as a sculptor in bronze, gold, and ivory, that he was distinguished. He was celebrated also for his marble statues, among which may be mentioned the Apollo, Leto, and Artemis in the Temple of Artemis, and the Orthia in Argolis; as well as for his skill in the toreutic art. In this last art he excelled all others; and Pliny says of him that he developed and perfected it as Phidias had begun it—“toreuticen sic erudisse ut Phidias aperuisse.” Myron, his fellow-scholar, had scarcely a less reputation, though in a different way. He devoted himself to the representation of athletes, among which the most celebrated was the Discobolos; of animals, of which his Cow was the most famous; and of groups of satyrs, and sea-monsters, and mythical creatures. He excelled in the representation of life, action, and expression; and such was his skill, that Petronius says of him that he almost expressed the souls of men and animals in his bronzes.