“Here let us pause, e’en at the vestibule Of Theseus’s fane—with what stern majesty It rears its pond’rous and eternal strength, Still perfect, still unchang’d, as on the day When the assembled throng of multitudes With shouts proclaim’d th’ accomplish’d work and fell Prostrate upon their faces to adore Its marble splendor. How the golden gleam Of noonday floats upon its graceful forms, Tinging each grooved shaft, and storied frieze And Doric triglyph! How the rays amidst The op’ning columns glanc’d from point to point Stream down the gloom of the long portico; Where, link’d in moving mazes youths and maids Lead the light dance, as erst in joyous hour Of festival! How the broad pediment, Embrown’d with shadow frowns above and spreads Solemnity and reverential awe! Proud monument of old magnificence! Still thou survivest, nor has envious time Impair’d thy beauty, save that it has spread A deeper tint, and dimm’d the polished glare Of thy refulgent whiteness. Let mine eyes Feast on thy form, and find at every glance Themes for imagination, and for thought; Empires have fallen, yet art thou unchang’d; And destiny, whose tide engulphs proud man Has roll’d his harmless billows at thy base.” In the brilliant galaxy of great architects and sculptors of this age, none shines more deservedly conspicuous by reason of true merit and noble purpose than Polycletus of Argos, who is remembered more as a statuary than by reason of his achievements in architecture. He exercised his art between the years 452 and 412 B.C., and, like his distinguished contemporaries, Myron and Phidias, was a pupil of the Argive sculptor, Agelades. His celebrity has been compared to that of his most famous brother pupil, Phidias, for the reason that while Phidias gave the ideal standard in the portrayal of deities, Polycletus created for all ages the perfect canon of the human form in art. This he expressed in the figure of a youth holding in his hand a spear, which was called the Doryphorus. In this figure the sculptor laid down the rules of universal application with regard to the proportions of the human body in its mean standard of height, breadth of chest, length of limbs and so on. Socrates, according to Xenophon, went so far as to place Polycletus on a level as a statuary, with Homer, Sophocles and Xeuxis in their respective arts.