The Judgment of Animals in Classical Greece: Animal Sculpture and ...

oundary between lifeless art and reality appears to be easily crossed. These inscriptions
indicate that what sustained the perceived aliveness of animals, when used as subjects of
works of art, was their furnishing with a voice through an interactive encounter with the
viewer.
Defined as aliveness, the lifelikeness of animal representations in art is further
demonstrated by an epigram, by Macedonius the Consul, dated to the first century A.D.
and preserved in the Greek Anthology:
This dog trained in every kind of hunting, was carved by Leucon, and
dedicated by Alcimenes. Alcimenes had no fault to find, but when he saw
the statue resembling the dog in every feature he came up to it, with a collar,
bidding Leucon to order the dog to walk, for as it looked to be barking, it
persuaded him it could walk too.
(Macedonius the Consul, Anth. Pal. 6.175) [132]
In this epigram, Alcimenes, a viewer, like Herodas’ Phile and Kynno, behaves toward the
statue of a dog as if it were alive. Like the herdsman of Myron’s cow who wanted to put
a yoke on his neck, Alcimenes wants to put a collar on Leucon’s dog. Like the viewers
of Myron’s cow who thought that the statue was ready to low and run off, Alcimenes is
persuaded that this dog is ready to walk and bark. It is the visual impression of potential
movement that forces Alcimenes to believe that this is a living dog, dissolving therefore
the idea of it as a lifeless image and allowing its experience as a real animal. This
evidence suggests that lifelikeness was again perceived as aliveness. The fact, however,
that Alcimenes was aware of looking at a work of art is sustained by the statements that
he could find “no fault” in the appearance of the lifeless statue, and that the latter
resembled a living dog “in every feature.” Both statements suggest that accurate
reproduction of (or representational fidelity to) a prototype was another way in which
lifelikeness in art was valued.
91