Beyond these, there are not many sculptors of high repute; for, in the case of several works of very great excellence, the number of artists that have been engaged upon them has proved a considerable obstacle to the fame of each, no individual being able to engross the whole of the credit, and it being impossible to award it in due proportion to the names of the several artists combined. Such is the case with the Laocoön, for example, in the palace of the Emperor Titus, a work that may be looked upon as preferable to any other production of the art of painting or of statuary. It is sculptured from a single block, both the main figure as well as the children, and the serpents with their marvellous folds. This group was made in concert by three most eminent artists,[2464] Agesander, Polydorus, and Athenodorus, natives of Rhodes. In similar manner also, the palaces of the Cæsars, in the Palatium, have been filled with most splendid statuary, the work of Craterus, in conjunction with Pythodorus, of Polydeuces with Hermoläus, and of another Pythodorus with Artemon; some of the statues, also, are by Aphrodisius of Tralles, who worked alone. The Pantheon of Agrippa has been decorated by Diogenes of Athens, and the Caryatides, by him, which form the columns of that temple, are looked upon as master-pieces of excellence: the same, too, with the statues that are placed upon the roof, though, in consequence of the height, they have not had an opportunity of being so well appreciated. Without glory, and excluded from every temple, is the statue of Hercules,[2465] in honour of whom the Carthaginians were accustomed to sacrifice human victims every year: it stands upon the ground before the entrance of the Portico of the Nations.[2466] There were erected, too, near the Temple of Felicity, the statues of the Thespian[2467] Muses; of one of which, according to Varro, Junius Pisciculus, a Roman of equestrian rank, became enamoured. Pasiteles,[2468] too, speaks in terms of high admiration of them, the artist who wrote five Books on the most celebrated works throughout the world. Born upon the Grecian[2469] shores of Italy, and presented with the Roman citizenship granted to the cities of those parts, Pasiteles constructed the ivory statue of Jupiter which is now in the Temple of Metellus,[2470] on the road to the Campus Martius. It so happened, that being one day at the Docks,[2471] where there were some wild beasts from Africa, while he was viewing through the bars of a cage a lion which he was engaged in drawing, a panther made its escape from another cage, to the no small danger of this most careful artist. He executed many other works, it is said, but we do not find the names of them specifically mentioned.