Again, why should not the great artists themselves, or their scholars, have made repliche of their famous statues? Nothing would have been easier had there been any casts from them. They were greatly coveted, and the prices paid for the original works were enormous,—so enormous that the largest prices of our day shrink into insignificance beside them. For the famous nude Venus by Praxiteles, Athens, in her extreme desire to possess it, offered in exchange to pay the whole public debt of the state to which it belonged. This offer, however, was peremptorily refused. Yet what could have been more easy, had a cast of it been in existence, or had they known how to make one, than for Praxiteles or his scholars to have made an exact replica, fully equal to the original or even superior to it, with additional touches of the master’s hand? That this was never done, or hinted at, proves that, the statue once having passed out of the artist’s hands, he could repeat it from memory only by aid of his sketch; and this would not only have cost him as much labor as making a new statue, but would in no sense have been identical. Again, is it to be supposed that if Polyclitus had an absolute cast of his life-size statue of the Doryphoros which would have enabled him to repeat it with exactness, the original would have commanded such a price as one hundred talents, or £25,000? Or is it possible to suppose that Arcesilaus would have received a gold talent (£250) for a plaster bowl which could have been repeated by casting, for almost nothing? It was because it was modeled, and the modern process of casting in a piece-mould was unknown, that it commanded such a price. Here making a rude stamp without under-cuttings would not suffice. The _finesse_ of the work could not be given, and the work would have been destroyed or greatly injured in the attempt.