172 pltnt's natural histoet. [Book XXXIV. 



they study the lineaments : so that he, of all men, is thought in 

 one work of art to have exhausted all the resources of art. 

 He also made statues of a man using the body-scraper,®^ and 

 of a naked man challenging to play at dice ;^ as also of two 

 naked boys playing at dice, and known as the Astragalizontes f^ 

 they are now in the atrium of the Emperor Titus, and it is gene- 

 rally considered, that there can be no work more perfect than 

 this. He also executed a Mercury, which was formerly at Lysi- 

 machia ; a Hercules Ageter,*^® seizing his arms, which is now at 

 Eome ; and an Artemon, which has received the name of 

 Periphoretos.®^ Polycletus is generally considered as having 

 attained the highest excellence in statuary, and as having per- 

 fected the toreutic^" art, which Phidias invented. A discovery 

 which was entirely his own, was the art of placing statues on 

 one leg. It is remarked, however, by Yarro, that his statues 

 are all square-built,^^ and made very much, after the same 

 model.^^ 



85 Or '• strigil." Visconti says that this was a statue of Tydeus puri- 

 fying himself from the murder of his brother. It is represented on gems 

 still in existence. 



86 " Talc incessentem." " Gesner (Chrestom. Plin.) has strangely ex- 

 plained these words as intimating a person in the act of kicking another. 

 He seems to confound the Avords talus and calx." — Sillig, Diet. Ancient 

 Artists. 



8^ "The players at dice." This is the subject of a painting found at 

 Hercidaneum. — B. 



^8 The " Leader.'' A name given also to Mercury, in Pausanias, B. 

 viii. c. 31. See Sillig, Diet. Ancient Artists. 



^^ " Carried about." It has been supposed by some commentators, 

 that Artemon acquired this surname from his being carried about in a 

 litter, in consequence of his lameness; a very different derivation has been 

 assigned by others to the word, on the authority of Anacreon, as quoted 

 by Heraclides Ponticus, that it was applied to Artemon in consequence of 

 his excessively luxurious and effeminate habits of life. — B. It was evi- 

 dently a recumbent figure. Ajasson compares this voluptuous person to 

 ** le gentleman Anglais aux hides'' — " The English Gentleman in India !" 



90 See Note 80 above. 



^^ *' Quadrata." Brotero quotes a passage from Celsus, B. ii. c. 1, 

 which serves to explain the use of this term as applied to the form of a 

 statue ; " Corpus autem habilissimum quadratum est, neque gracile, neque 

 obesum." — B. " The body best adapted for activity is square-built, and 

 neither slender nor obese." 



32 *' A-d unum exemplum." Having a sort of family likeness, similarly 

 to our pictures by Francia the Goldsmith, and Angelica Kaufmann. 



