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

discussion of the sculpture to which they belong is an indication of his recognition of
their significance as subjects in the visual repertoire of classical Greek art. Also, the fact
that Pausanias, like Pliny, belongs to the compilers of tradition regarding ancient art
history may suggest that recognizing this significance was a traditional rather than a later,
idiosyncratic trait of writing on ancient art. 30 Still, such a suggestion does not prove that
both Pliny and Pausanias were mere compilers of this tradition without actually affecting
it themselves.
The Classical period of Greek sculpture is additionally important for it provides
the most eloquent example of an animal statue’s generating and perpetuating the fame of
its artist. The fifth-century sculptor Myron, famed in modern scholarship and popular
culture for his statue of the Discus-Thrower, was mostly known in antiquity for his image
of a cow. 31 Two epigrams of Euenos, very probably dating to the fifth century B.C.,
praise the exceptional lifelikeness of Myron’s cow, and are the only contemporary
evidence available. The epigrams are given here, but will be discussed in detail later.
Either a complete hide of bronze clothes here a
real cow, or the bronze has soul in it.
(Euenos, Anth. Pal. 9.717) [91]
Perhaps Myron himself will say this: “I did not
30
For a discussion of Pausanias as a follower of the tradition in ancient writings on art, see Pollitt, Sources
and Documents 2.
31
The Discus-Thrower owes its present fame to the fact that it is the only statue of Myron that has been
identified with certainty in extant Roman copies, an identification based on a description of one similar
statue in Lucian’s Philopseudes 18: “Surely, I said, you do not speak of the discus-thrower, who is bent
over into the throwing position, is turned toward the hand that holds the discus, and has the opposite knee
gently flexed, like one who will straighten up again after the throw? Not that one, he said, for the
Discobolos of which you speak is one of the works of Myron.” For a brief discussion of this statue as “the
best known today,” and the translation of the above passage, see Pollitt, Sources and Documents 49; for
this statue, and also the attempt to match other works of Myron known from the literary record (e.g.,
Athena and Marsyas: Pliny, NH 34.57) with extant Roman copies, see B. S. Ridgway, The Severe Style in
Greek Sculpture (Princeton, 1970) 84-86; also A. Stewart, Greek Sculpture. An Exploration (New Haven
and London, 1990) 257, where he points out the discrepancy between ancient and modern views regarding
Myron’s fame as an artist: “one must remember that in antiquity, though his [Myron’s] statues of men were
justly renowned, his most famous work was not the Discobolos but his cow.”
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