We know that Philiskos of Rhodes was the author of a group of Muses which was much admired in Rome. It has been suggested that the new type of female drapery which appears on an altar from Halicarnassos and on the relief of the Apotheosis of Homer by Archelaos of Priene, certainly a member of the Rhodian school, was his work.[80] This new type of drapery is to be seen also in a number of statues of Muses, of which we have a collection from Miletos in the museum of Constantinople.[81] It may be described most simply as an aggravation and exaggeration of the style of drapery introduced by the school of Praxiteles. The desire to get a series of folds at sharply contrasting angles leads to a very artificial arrangement of the dress, which produces an inharmonious effect. But there is a new development which deserves our attention. Transparent drapery had been elaborated by Alkamenes and the pupils of Pheidias, but always with the intention of displaying the body beneath it. The new drapery of the Muses is transparent with the desire to display other drapery beneath it. The earlier Greeks had used a thick mantle over a transparent chiton, but the Rhodian author of the new drapery used a transparent mantle over a clinging chiton. He thus doubles the subtlety of his technique, and provides himself with a series of new and intricate problems, just as the athletic sculptor does with his anatomical discoveries. This transparent mantle immediately obtained an immense vogue, and it comes down into Roman art as a strong rival of the late Praxitelean drapery, which, however, still prevails by the side of the other. The greater number of Roman female draped statues use one or the other type of garments. The Milesian Muses are not in themselves great works of art. The real technical possibilities of the new drapery are better displayed by a wonderful figure from Magnesia in Constantinople (Fig. 31), in which the new fashion is rendered with consummate skill. It is of considerable importance that we should date this change in drapery as accurately as possible. The date hitherto proposed for its supposed author Philiskos has been put about 220 B.C. The Apotheosis of Homer is taken to be about 210 judging from a portrait of Ptolemy IV appearing in it, and the Halicarnassos base is put about the same time. But the portrait is by no means certainly that of Ptolemy IV. It is more like Ptolemy II, and might belong to any period. Philiskos himself has nothing to do with it. A female figure by him with a signed base has been discovered in Thasos (Fig. 33). The drapery of this female figure follows the type of the Mantinean basis,[82] and the earlier Muses group of the Vatican. The inscription is not earlier than the first century B.C. Philiskos, then, was a late artist who used the Praxitelean drapery. As for the transparent drapery, it is highly improbable that it was invented before the frieze of the great altar at Pergamon.