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

eason why it can produce everything, because it touches or lays hold of only a small part
of the object and that a phantom; as, for example, a painter, we say, will paint us a
cobbler, a carpenter, and other craftsmen, though he himself has no expertness in any of
these arts, but nevertheless if he were a good painter, by exhibiting at a distance his
picture of a carpenter he would deceive children and foolish men, and make them believe
it to be a real carpenter.
151
Pliny 34.57-34.58 A.D. I
Text: H. Rackham, ed., tr., Pliny. Natural History IX. Books XXXIII-XXXV (Cambridge,
Mass. and London, 1952; repr. 1995).
Translation: J. J. Pollitt, The Art of Ancient Greece: Sources and Documents (1965;
second ed., Cambridge, 1990; repr. 1998).
Myronem Eleutheris natum, Hageladae et ipsum discipulum, bucula maxime nobilitavit
celebratis versibus laudata, quando alieno plerique ingenio magis quam suo
commendantur. Fecit et Ladam et discobolon et Perseum et pristas et Satyrum
admirantem tibias et Minervam, Delphicos pentathlos, pancratiastas, Herculem, qui est
apud circum maximum in aede Pompei Magni. Fecisse et cicadae monumentum ac
locustae carminibus suis Erinna significant.
Myron, who was born at Eleutherai, and was a pupil of Ageladas, was most renowned for
his statue of a heifer, a work which is praised in well-known verses—for many people
gain their reputations through someone else’s inventiveness rather than their own. He
also made a dog, a Discus-thrower, a Perseus and the sea-monster, a Satyr marveling at
the flutes, and an Athena, contestants in the pentathlon at Delphi, pankratiasts, and a
Herakles which is now in the round temple of Pompey the Great in the Circus Maximus.
He also made a monument to a cicada and a locust, as Erinna indicates in her poem.
152
Pliny 34.71 A.D. I
Text and translation: H. Rackham, ed., tr., Pliny. Natural History IX. Books XXXIII-
XXXV (Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1952; repr. 1995).
Calamidis enim quadrigae aurigam suum inposuit, ne melior in equorum effigie defecisse
in homine crederetur. Ipse Calamis et alias quadrigas bigasque fecit equis semper sine
aemulo expressis; sed, ne videatur in hominum effigie inferior, Alcmena nullius est
nobilior.
The kindness also of Praxiteles is represented in sculpture, as in the Chariot and Four of
Calamis he contributed the charioteer, in order that the sculptor might not be thought to
have failed in the human figure although more successful in representing horses. Calamis
himself also made other chariots, some with four horses and some with two, and in
executing the horses he was invariably unrivalled.
402