320 PLINT's natural history. [Book XXX YI. 



temple, adorned with columns : it is the figure of a four-horse 

 chariot, with an Apollo and Diana, all sculptured from a single 

 block. I find it stated, also, that the Apollo by Calamis, the 

 chaser already'^ mentioned, the Pugilists by Dercylides, and 

 the statue of Callisthenes the historian, by Amphistratus,^^ all 

 of them now in the Gardens of Servilius, are works highly 

 esteemed. 



Beyond these, there are not many sculptors of high re- 

 pute ; for, in the case of several works of very great excellence, 

 the number of artists that have been engaged upon them has 

 proved a considerable obstacle to the fame of each, no individual 

 being able to engross the whole of the credit, and it being 

 impossible to award it in due proportion to the names of the 

 several artists combined. Such is the case with the Laocoon, 

 for example, in the palace of the Emperor Titus, a work that 

 may be looked upon as preferable to any other production of 

 the art of painting or of statuary. It is sculptured from a single 

 block, both the main figure as well as the children, and the ser- 

 pents with their marvellous folds. This group was made in con- 

 cert by three most eminent artists,^* Agesander, Polydorus, and 

 Athenodorus, natives of Rhodes. In similar manner also, the 

 palaces of the Cagsars, in the Palatium, have been filled with 

 most splendid statuary, the work of Craterus, in conjunction 



13 In B. xxxiii. c. 55, and B. xxxiv. c. 18. 



13 A sculptor of the age of Alexander the Great. He is also mentioned 

 by Tatian. For an account of Callisthenes, see end of B. xii. 



1* "Winckelmann supposes that these artists lived in the time of Ly- 

 eippus ; but, as may be discovered from an attentive examination of the 

 present passage, Lessing and Thiersch are probably right in considering 

 them to have been contemporaries of the Emperor Titus, This group is 

 generally supposed to have been identical with the Laocoon still to be seen 

 in the Court of the Belvedere, in the Vatican at Rome ; having been 

 found, in 1506, in a vault beneath the spot known as the Place de Sette 

 Sale, by Felix de Fredi, who surrendered it, in consideration of a pension, 

 to Pope Julius II. The group, however, is not made of a single block, 

 which has caused some to doubt its identity : but it is not improbable, that 

 when originally made, its joints were not perceptible to a common ob- 

 server. The spot, too, where it was found was actually part of the palace 

 of Titus. It is most probable that the artists had the beautiful episode 

 ol" Laocoon in view, as penned by Virgil, Mn. B. II. ; though Ajassou 

 doubts whether they derived any inspiration from it. Laocoon, in the 

 sublime expression of his countenance, is doing any thing, he says, but — 

 " Clamores simul horrendos ad sidera toUit." 

 " Sending dire outcries to the stars of heaven." 



