far exceeded the supply of Greek statues that a veritable industry was
born to meet the call for Greek statuary to display in public places
and private villas alike. The copies usually were made in less costly
marble. The change in medium resulted in a different surface ap-
pearance. In most cases, the copyist also had to add an intrusive tree
trunk to support the great weight of the stone statue and struts be-
tween arms and body to strengthen weak points. The copies rarely
approach the quality of the originals, and the Roman sculptors
sometimes took liberties with their models to conform to their own
tastes and needs. Occasionally, for example, a mirror image of the
original was created for a specific setting. Nevertheless, the copies are
indispensable today. Without them it would be impossible to recon-
struct the history of Greek sculpture after the Archaic period.
Myron’s Diskobolos is a vigorous action statue, like the Artemi-
sion Zeus, but it is composed in an almost Archaic manner, with
profile limbs and a nearly frontal chest, suggesting the tension of a
coiled spring. Like the arm of a pendulum clock, the right arm of the
Diskobolos has reached the apex of its arc but has not yet begun to
swing down again. Myron froze the action and arranged the body
and limbs to form two intersecting arcs (one from the discus to the124 Chapter 5 ANCIENT GREECE
O
ne of the most influential philosophers of the ancient world
was Pythagoras of Samos, who lived during the latter part of
the sixth centuryBCE. A famous geometric theorem still bears his
name. Pythagoras also is said to have discovered that harmonic chords
in music are produced on the strings of a lyre at regular intervals
that may be expressed as ratios of whole numbers—2:1, 3:2, 4:3. He
and his followers, the Pythagoreans, believed more generally that
underlying harmonic proportions could be found in all of nature,
determining the form of the cosmos as well as of things on earth,
and that beauty resided in harmonious numerical ratios.
By this reasoning, a perfect statue would be one constructed ac-
cording to an all-encompassing mathematical formula. In the mid-
fifth centuryBCE, the sculptor Polykleitos of Argos set out to make
just such a statue (FIG. 5-40). He recorded the principles he followed
and the proportions he used in a treatise titled the Canon (that is, the
standard of perfection). His treatise is unfortunately lost, but Galen,
a physician who lived during the second centuryCE, summarized the
sculptor’s philosophy as follows:
[Beauty arises from] the commensurability [symmetria] of the parts,
such as that of finger to finger, and of all the fingers to the palm
and the wrist, and of these to the forearm, and of the forearm to the
upper arm, and, in fact, of everything to everything else, just as it is
written in the Canon ofPolykleitos....Polykleitos supported his
treatise [by making] a statue according to the tenets of his treatise,
and called the statue, like the work, the Canon.*This is why Pliny the Elder, writing in the first centuryCE, maintained
that Polykleitos “alone of men is deemed to have rendered art itself
[that is, the theoretical basis of art] in a work of art.Ӡ
Polykleitos’s belief that a successful statue resulted from the pre-
cise application of abstract principles is reflected in an anecdote (prob-
ably a later invention) told by the Roman historian Aelian:
Polykleitos made two statues at the same time, one which would be
pleasing to the crowd and the other according to the principles of
his art. In accordance with the opinion of each person who came
into his workshop, he altered something and changed its form, sub-mitting to the advice of each. Then he put both statues on display.
The one was marvelled at by everyone, and the other was laughed
at. Thereupon Polykleitos said, “But the one that you find fault with,
you made yourselves; while the one that you marvel at, I made.”‡Polykleitos’s Prescription
for the Perfect StatueWRITTEN SOURCES
*Galen,De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis,5. Translated by J. J. Pollitt,The Art of Ancient Greece: Sources and Documents (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 76.
†Pliny the Elder,Natural History,34.55. Translated by Pollitt, 75.
‡Aelian,Varia historia,14.8. Translated by Pollitt, 79.
5-40Polykleitos,
Doryphoros (Spear
Bearer). Roman marble
copy from Pompeii,
Italy, after a bronze
original of ca. 450–
440 bce, 6 11 high.
Museo Archeologico
Nazionale, Naples.
Polykleitos sought to
portray the perfect
man and to impose
order on human move-
ment. He achieved his
goals by employing
harmonic proportions
and a system of cross
balance for all parts of
the body.1 ft.