Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/42

 Rex^ations of Persia with Greece. 27 goldsmith, Theodorus of Samos ? ^ Did not a vine 'of the same metal overshadow his couch ? * And if not the work of the same artist, we may yet suppose that it came out d an Ionian work- shop, inasmuch as it had been given to Darius by the Lydian Pythius.* Exquisite pieces of artistic furniture and costly orna- ments did not make up the. sum of objects which the art of Greece had revealed to the Persians. Out of Greece also had come bronze and marble statues, distributed about the capital of the empire, where the Macedonians found them, as lasting trophies of western campaigns that had been without a morrow. Some of these were from the best sculptors of the' sixth century ; but the Philesian Apollo, by Canachus, for instance, and the images of the tyrannicide Harmodius and Aristogeiton, by Antenor, were given back to Miletus and Athens respectively, by Susa or Ecbatana, where they had made a stay of two hundred years.* Numerous other specimens had doubtless been included in the spoil the Persians had taken away with them,' respecting which history is silent because their authors were unknown.* The battles of Plataea and Mycals put an end for ever to the aggressive policy of the Persians and their entering Grecian temples and extracting therefrom the statues that served to orna- ment them. But there was no veto against inviting to Persia the pupils of sculptors whose skill had been appreciated during the ravages of the Median wars. This would seem to have actually occurred more than once. We learn from a passage of Pliny that the eminent sculptor, Telephanes of Phocsea, the con- temporary of Polydetes and Myron, executed many important works for Darius and Xerxes. Was Telephanes the only artist whom the promise of high emolument induced to leave his country for the royal stone-yard ? * Nothing is more unlikely. Dark > Atheiueus, xii. p. 5x5 a. • HiM-tRius, EclogXt xxxi 8. • Herodotus, vii. 27. • Pausanias, L 16 ; Akrian, Anai., iit x6; Pausaaias, i. 8; Pliny, ffisi. AaA, xitv. 70. ' Thh was the case with the Aztemis bcilonging to the temple at Bimttonia, which Xerxes took away with him (Pausanias, viii. 46). Moses of Chorfine specifies statues of Apollo, Hercules, and Artemis which Cyrus found in Lydia, and which he despatched to Armenia {J/is/. Armenia, II. it p. 103, in the edition of W. and Geoige Whiston, London, 1736)1 ' Puny, Bis/. XXXIV. xix. f 9. Digitized by Google