modifying the squareness of the figure of the old sculptors, and he used commonly
to say that whereas his predecessors had made men as they really were, he made
them as they appeared to be. A peculiarity of this sculptor’s work seems to be the
minute finish maintained in even the smallest details.
(Natural History, 34, 65)One of his most famous works, none of which survives in the original bronze, is the
apoxyomenos‘The Man Using a Body-scraper’ (c.320: fig. 66). The body scraper
called a strigil is an instrument with a curved blade used as a cleansing aid in scraping
sweat or dirt from the skin in the gymnasia or the hot baths of Greece and Rome.
Pliny goes on to tell us that Lysippus’ statue was shipped to Rome in the age of
Augustus, and that it was so admired by the Roman emperor Tiberius that he
removed it from its accustomed place before the Thermae ‘Warm Baths’ at Rome to
the bedroom of his private residence, until adverse public reaction caused him to
restore it. Statues of Greek athletes were very common, for a victor at one of the
famous games might have a statue of himself to mark his success, if he was rich or
had a wealthy patron. Most of these were likely to show the victor in the moment of
triumph and to perpetuate his fame by indicating the skill in which he excelled by
adding a discus or a javelin or whatever. The temple of Zeus at Olympia was replete
with such statues, according to the Greek travel writer Pausanias. Lysippus’ statue
seems to show the athlete not in triumphant mode but cleaning up after his exertions,
though its later erection outside the baths at Rome suggests the possibility that he
might not be an athlete at all but simply a beautiful youth coming out of the shower.
The bronze original must have been free-standing, whereas the heavier Roman
marble copy (fig. 66) needs a prop; nor can we gain any appreciation from the copy
ofwhat Pliny calls the sculptor’s ‘minute finish’. But even a damaged Roman copy
can illustrate what Pliny says about the sculptor’s different attitude to proportion when
compared to the doryphorosof Polyclitus (fig. 57); the head is indeed smaller (the ratio
to the body being 1.8 rather than 1.7), the body less square and the limbs longer.
Lysippus’ innovation is not so much in his choice of subject, for other examples
survive, but in the way that the subject is represented not only in its different approach
to proportion but also in the fully three-dimensional character of the result. This can
be immediately appreciated if the apoxymenosis put beside the discoboulosof Myron
(fig. 51). It is also clear that the doryphorostoo has been designed to be best viewed
from the front. In the case of Lysippus’ young man, there is some foreshortening of
the arms and a twofold effect in their positioning. The extension, accentuated by the
distant gaze and positioning of the head, reaches out into space; the bending of the
left arm cuts across the torso, so that, although there is the careful balance of weight
distribution brilliantly achieved in the doryphoros,it is not possible for the viewer to
contemplate the harmonious symmetry of the body from the front. The statue is
260 THE GREEKS