Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 3.djvu/470

Rh 458 POLYCLES. vol, ii. p. 440). It is not, however, certain that HoKvyvwToio is the right reading in this second case ; the blunder is very probably that of the author of the epigram. (Jacobs, Ardmadv. in Anth. Grace, ad loc.) Lastly, there are gems bearing the name of Po- lycleitus, respecting which it is doubtful whether the engraver was the same person as the great Argive statuary ; but it is more probable that he was a different person. (Bracci, tab. 9Q ; Stosch, de Gemm. 76 ; Lewezow, uberden Raub des Palla- dium, pp. 31, &c. ; Sillig, Catal. Artif. s. v.) [P. S.] POCYCLE'TUS (noAvwAeiTos), a favourite freedman of Nero, was sent by that emperor into Britain to inspect the state of the island. (Tac. Ann. xiv. 39, Hist. i. 37, ii. ^b ; Dion Cass, xliii. 12.) POLYCLES {UoXvKKTis). . A Macedonian general who was left in the command of Thessaly by Antipater, when the latter crossed over into Asia to the support of Craterus, b. c. 321. The Aetolians took advantage of the absence of An- tipater to invade Locris, and laid siege to Am- phissa ; whereupon Polycles hastened to its relief, but was totally defeated, his array utterly de- stroyed, and he himself slain. (Diod. xviii. 38.) 2. One of the partisans and counsellors of Eurydice, who shared in her defeat by Olympias (u. c. 317), and accompanied her on her flight to Amphipolis, where she was soon after taken pri- soner. (Id. xix. 11.) [E. H. B.] PO'LYCLES {noKvKKiis), artists. 1. 2. Two statuaries of this name are mentioned by Pliny {H. N. xxxiv. 8. s. 19) ; one, as flourishing in the i02d Olympiad (b. c. 370), contemporary with Cephisodotus, Leochares, and Hypatodorus ; the other, as one of a number of statuaries, who flou- rished at the revival of the art in the 156th Olym- piad (b. c. 153), and who, though far inferior to those who lived from the time of Pheidias down to the 120th Olympiad (b.c. 300), were nevertheless artists of reputation. In this list the name of Polycles is followed by the word Athenaeus, which is usually taken for the name of another artist, but which may perhaps, as Sillig has ob- served, indicate the city to which Polycles be- longed ; for it is not at all improbable that Pliny would copy the words IloAy/cATjs ^AdrjuaTos, which he found in his Greek authority, either through carelessness, or because he mistook the second for the name of a person. It is also extremely probable that the elder Polycles was an Athenian, and that he was, in fact, one of the artists of the later Athenian school, who obtained great celebrity by the sensual charms exhibited in their works. For not only does Pliny mention Polycles I. in connection with Cephisodotus I. and Leochares, whom we know to have been two of the most dis- tinguished artists of that school ; but he also ascribes to Polycles (without, however, specifying which of the two) a celebrated statue of an Her- maphrodite, a work precisely in keeping with the character of the school which produced the Gany- mede of Leochares. (Plin. I.e. § 20.) From the comparison, then, of these two statements, the in- ference is highly probable that the Hermaphrodite was the work of the elder Polycles, who was an artist of the later Athenian school of statuary. Mil Her strongly confinns this view by the inge- nious observation, that, in Pliny's alphabetical lists of artists, the names under each letter come POLYCLES. pretty much in the order of time ; and in the pre- sent instance, the name ol Polycles comes before those of Pyrrhus and of Phoenix, the disciple of Lysippus. (Arch'dol. d. Kunst, § 128, n. 2.) Respecting the Hermaphrodite of Polycles, it cannot be determined with certainty which of the extant works of this class represents its type, or whether it was a standing or a recumbent figure. The prevailing opinion among archaeologists is that the celebrated recumbent Hermaphrodite, of which we have two slightly different examples, in marble, the one in the Florentine Gallery, the other in the Louvre (formerly in the Villa Borghese), is copied from the bronze statue of Polycles. (Meyer, Kunsfgeschichte, vol. i. pp. 98, 99, and plate 9 ; Miiller, Arch'dol. d. Kunst., § 392, n. 2 ; Osann, Uel}er eine in Pompai Ausgegralene Hermajihrodi' tenslatue ; and Bcittiger, Ueber die Hermaphroditen- Fabel und Bildiing., in the AmaWiea, vol. i. pp. 342 —366.) The younger Polycles, from the date assigned to him by Pliny, and from the mention of a statue of Juno by Polycles in the portico of Octavia at Rome (Plin. H.N. xxxvi. 4. s. 5. § 10), would seem to have been one of the Greek artists who flourished at Rome about the time of the original erection of that portico by Metellus Macedonicus. But it is evident, on a careful examination of the latter passage of Pliny, and it is probable, from the nature of the case, that many, if not most of the works of art, with which Metellus decorated his portico, were not the original productions of living artists, but either the works of former masters, transported from Greece, or marble copies taken from such works. It contained, for example, works by Praxiteles, one of which stood in the very part of the edifice in which the statue by Polycles was placed. Hence arises the suspicion that this Polycles may be no other than the great Athenian artist already mentioned ; that, like other statuaries of that era (Praxiteles, for instance), he wrought in marble as well as in bronze, or else that the marble statue of Juno in the portico of Metellus was only a copy from one of his works, and that Pliny places him erroneously at the 156th Olympiad, because, finding him mentioned among the artists whose works stood in the portico of Metellus, he mistook him for an artist living at the period of its erection. It is true that this is uncertain conjecture ; but Pliny is very apt to make mistakes, and still more the copyists, espe- cially in lists of names, and a sound critic is very reluctant to consent to the unnecessary multiplica- tion of persons bearing distinguished names. The name, however, occurs in Pausanias as well as Pliny. In his enumeration of the statues of Olympic victors, after mentioning statues by Pheidias and Silanion, he says that another sta- tuary of the Athenians, Polycles, the disciple of Stadieus the Athenian, made an Ephesian boy, a pancratiast, Amyntas the son of Hellanicus. (Paus. vi. 4. § 3. 8. 5.) It is evident from this passage that this Polycles was a very distinguished Athe- nian artist, and the context seems to show that he flourished between the times of Pheidias and Ly- sippus, and nearer to the latter. If, therefore, there were two artists of the name, he is probably the same as the elder. In another passage he mentions the statue of the Olympic victor Age- sarchus, as the work of the sons of Polycles, whose names he does not give, but of whom he promises