The Boys' and Girls' Pliny: Being parts of Pliny's "Natural History" edited for boys and girls, with an IntroductionPliny, the Elder
History
The Boys' and Girls' Pliny: Being parts of Pliny's "Natural History" edited for boys and girls, with an Introduction
Pliny, the Elder
Animals -- Juvenile literature; Natural history -- Juvenile literature; Physical sciences -- Juvenile literature
Besides the Olympian Jupiter, which no one has ever equalled, Phidias
also executed in ivory the erect statue of Minerva, which is in the
Parthenon at Athens. He also made in bronze, beside the Amazon above
mentioned, a Minerva, of such exquisite beauty, that it received its
name from its fine proportions. He also made the Cliduchus, and another
Minerva, which Paulus Æmilius dedicated at Rome in the Temple of Fortune
of the present day. Also the two statues, draped with the pallium, which
Catulus erected in the same temple; and a nude colossal statue.
Polycletus of Sicyon,[220] the pupil of Agelades, executed the
Diadumenos, the statue of an effeminate youth, and remarkable for having
cost one hundred talents; also the statue of a youth full of manly
vigor, and called the spear-bearer. In this he made what the artists
have called the Model statue, from which, as from a sort of standard,
they study the lineaments: so that he, of all men, is thought in one
work of art to have exhausted all the resources of art. He also made
statues of a man using the body-scraper, and of a naked man challenging
to play at dice; as also of two naked boys playing at dice, and known as
the Astragalizontes; they are now in the atrium of the Emperor Titus,
and it is generally considered, that there can be no work more perfect
than this. He also executed a Mercury, which was formerly at Lysimachia;
a Hercules seizing his arms, which is now at Rome. Polycletus is
generally considered as having attained the highest excellence in
statuary, and as having perfected the art, which Phidias invented. A
discovery which was entirely his own, was the art of placing statues on
one leg. It is remarked, however, by Varro, that his statues are all
square-built, and made very much after the same model.
Myron of Eleutheræ,[221] who was also the pupil of Agelades, was
rendered more particularly famous by his statue of a heifer, celebrated
in many well-known lines. He also made the figure of a dog, a
Discobolus, a Perseus, the wood-sawyers, a Satyr admiring a flute, and a
Minerva, the Delphic Pentathletes,[222] the Pancratiastæ,[223] and a
Hercules, which is at the Circus Maximus, in the house of Pompey. Erinna
of Teios makes allusion in her poems to a monument which he erected to a
cricket and a locust. He also executed the Apollo, which, after being
taken from the Ephesians by the Triumvir Antonius, was restored by the
Emperor Augustus, from a warning received in a dream. Myron appears to
have been the first to give a varied development to his art, having made
a greater number of designs than Polycletus, and shown more attention to
symmetry. And yet, though he was very accurate in the proportions of his
figures, he has neglected to give much expression.
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