Such was the advice of Eupompus: less lofty, less ambitious than what
the departed epoch of genius would have dictated, but better suited to
the times, and better to his pupil's mind. When the spirit of liberty
forsook the public, grandeur had left the private mind of Greece:
subdued by Philip, the gods of Athens and Olympia had migrated to Pella,
and Alexander was become the representative of Jupiter; still those who
had lost the substance fondled the shadow of liberty; rhetoric mimicked
the thunders of oratory, sophistry and metaphysic debate that
philosophy, which had guided life, and the grand taste that had dictated
to art the monumental style, invested gods with human form and raised
individuals to heroes, began to give way to refinements in appreciating
the degrees of elegance or of resemblance in imitation: the advice of
Eupompus however, far from implying the abolition of the old system,
recalled his pupil to the examen of the great principle on which it had
established its excellence, and to the resources which its inexhaustible
variety offered for new combinations.
That Lysippus considered it in that light, his devotion to the
Doryphorus of Polycletus, known even to Tully, sufficiently proved. That
figure which comprised the pure proportions of juvenile vigour,
furnished the readiest application for those additional refinements of
variety, character, and fleshy charms, that made the base of his
invention: its symmetry directing his researches amid the insidious play
of accidental charms, and the claims of inherent grace, never suffered
imitation to deviate into incorrectness; whilst its squareness and
elemental beauty melted in more familiar forms on the eye, and from an
object of cold admiration became the glowing one of sympathy. Such was
probably the method formed by Lysippus on the advice of Eupompus, more
perplexed than explained by the superficial extract and the rapid phrase
of Pliny.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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