But all these gigantic statues have been surpassed in our own age by the Mercury, made by Zenodotus for the city of the Arverni in Gaul, which was ten years in completing, and cost four hundred thousand sesterces. Having given sufficient proof there of his artistic skill, he was sent for by Nero to Rome, where he made a colossal statue intended to represent that prince, one hundred and ten feet in height. In consequence, however, of the public detestation of Nero’s crimes, this statue was consecrated to the Sun.[217] We used to admire in his studio the accurate likeness not only in the model of clay, but in the small sketches which served as the first foundation of the work. This statue proves that the art of fusing precious bronze was then lost, for Nero was prepared to furnish the requisite gold and silver, and Zenodotus was inferior to none of the ancients, either as a designer or as an engraver. At the time that he was working at the statue for the Arverni, he copied for Dubius Avitus, the governor of the province, two drinking-cups, chased by the hand of Calamis, which had been highly prized by Germanicus Cæsar, and had been given by him to his preceptor Cassius Silanus, the uncle of Avitus; and this with such exactness, that they could scarcely be distinguished from the originals. CHAPTER XI. AN ACCOUNT OF THE MOST CELEBRATED WORKS IN BRONZE, AND OF THE ARTISTS WHO EXECUTED THEM. An almost innumerable multitude of artists have been rendered famous by their statues and figures of smaller size. Before all others is Phidias, the Athenian,[218] who executed the Jupiter at Olympia, in ivory and gold, but who also made figures in bronze as well. He flourished in the eighty-third Olympiad, about the year of our City, 300. In the ninetieth Olympiad there were Polycletus, Phradmon, Myron, Pythagoras, Scopas, and Perellus. In the hundred and fourth Olympiad, flourished Praxiteles[219] and Euphranor; in the hundred and thirteenth, Lysippus of Sicyon, who was the contemporary of Alexander the Great, his brother Lysistratus, and Silanion, who was remarkable for having acquired great celebrity without any instructor: Zeuxis was his pupil. The most celebrated of these artists, though born at different epochs, have joined in a trial of skill in the Amazons which they have respectively made. When these statues were dedicated in the Temple of Diana at Ephesus, it was agreed, in order to ascertain which was the best, that it should be left to the judgment of the artists themselves who were then present: upon which, it was evident that that was the best, which all the artists agreed in considering as the next best to his own. Accordingly, the first rank was assigned to Polycletus, the second to Phidias, the third to Cresilas, the fourth to Cydon, and the fifth to Phradmon.