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

translates boi/dion as “heifer.” 117 The poet praises the perceived aliveness of the statue,
by noting that “it was never formed in a mould”; but his reference to it as one that has
been “turned into bronze owing to old age,” although it admits its inanimate status, does
not fit well with its identification as a heifer, that is, a young cow. Although the meaning
of this phrase remains unclear, the epigram is important, for it signals the beginning of
the variety of terms used for the identification of the statue by the poets.
Unlike the previous ones, the fifth epigram, by Antipater of Sidon, from the first
century B.C., refers to the statue as da&malin, which translates as “heifer.” The poet
instructs the viewer, a coward, to treat the heifer as a statue and not as a real animal,
while making reference to its aliveness. The heifer, by definition a young cow that has
not produced a calf, is described as a mother waiting for her calf to suckle it, thus
suggesting no attention to such a conflicting detail. Taken together, the evidence from
these epigrams indicates that they are different versions of a basic theme, and do not
depend on direct knowledge of the statue. Thus, whether the statue is a cow, a little cow,
or a heifer, is of no a concern to the poet; instead, what he focuses on is the praise of its
exceptional lifelikeness, which is perceived as aliveness.
Two further epigrams show that inconsistencies were not confined to the identity
of the statue, but extended also to its appearance, without, however, affecting the praise
of its conventionally assumed aliveness. Thus, in an epigram, by Philippus, dated to the
117 Paton, Greek Anthology III 395. Anacreon was a lyric poet of the late sixth and early fifth centuries
B.C., that is, earlier that Myron’s floruit. His work is known to have inspired a corpus of frivolous
imitations in and after the Hellenistic period (between the first century B.C. or A.D. and the fifth or sixth
century A.D.): M. L. West, “Anacreontea,” in S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth, eds., The Oxford Classical
Dictionary (third ed.; Oxford and New York, 1996) 80. The epigram may be part of this corpus.
70