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

touch are perceived here as rival senses. At the same time, they provide an example of
the experience of lifelike art: it was not only viewed, but also touched.
The picture that emerges from the epigrams preserved in the Greek Anthology,
stresses the exceptional lifelikeness of Myron’s cow and its effect on viewers. By
implying an appreciation of animal cognition of natural forms, the epigrams present the
ancient view of animals as reliable judges of art that aimed at reproducing these forms,
therefore, of lifelikeness. The fact that Myron’s cow was so exceptionally lifelike that
succeeded in making animals think it as alive presents animals as a standard of evaluation
of images in which artistic skill competed with nature in its capacity to create life, and in
fact, succeeded in deceiving the eye that it did so. Simply put, by assuming the role of
reliable guides to lifelikeness in art, animals validate the deceptive capacity of art.
B. The Ox of Apelles
The link between animal representations and lifelikeness is also witnessed in a
third-century text—the fourth Mime of Herodas. In this text, reference to the perception
of a statue of an ox as if it were alive provides another example of the centrality of
animals in the ancient perception of artistic lifelikeness as aliveness. The main characters
of the mime are two women, Phile and Kynno, who, as visitors to the temple of
Asklepios at Cos, comment upon the various works of art they see:
PHILE. Don’t you see, dear Kynno, what works are here! You would say
that Athene carved these lovely thing—greetings, Lady. This naked
boy, I scratched him, won’t he have a wound, Kynno? For the flesh is
laid on him in the painting, pulsing like warm springs. And the silver
fire-tongs, if Myellos or Pataekiskos son of Lamprion sees them, won’t
they lose their eyes thinking they are really made of silver? And the ox,
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