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

viewer to put himself in the place of a herdsman too young or foolish not to recognize a
statue, yet the identification of passersby as herdsmen implies their good knowledge of
the appearance and behavior of real heifers, a fact, which serves to demonstrate the
heightened sense of aliveness conveyed by the statue. Like the previous ones, this
epigram shows the centrality of animals in viewers’ perceiving lifelikeness in art as
aliveness while maintaining awareness of looking at art.
The second epigram, perhaps by Anacreon, praises the aliveness of the statue by
urging a herdsman not to mix its herd with Myron’s heifer. The poet fears that, despite
his knowledge of cows, not even a herdsman will be able to distinguish the bronze heifer
from a real one:
Herdsman, pasture thy herd far from here, lest
taking Myron’s heifer to be alive thou drive it off
with the rest. (Anacreon (?), Anth. Pal. 9.715) [12]
The third epigram, an anonymous, has the poet again urging a herdsman to stop
treating Myron’s bronze heifer as if it were alive:
Thou strikest the bronze heifer. Art deceived
thee much, herdsman: Myron did not add life.
(Anonymous, Anth. Pal. 9.737) [27]
The poet informs a herdsman that he has been deceived into believing that
Myron’s bronze heifer is alive. The poet notes the response of the deceived herdsman to
the statue: striking it as if it were a living cow, while stating, at the same time, that this is
a work of art made by Myron. Further, by noting the punishment of the bronze statue, the
epigram indicates that animal subjects were parts of the general body of thought and
literary conceits and practices.
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