FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTIONS AND METHODS 575 



It has been made clear that very little except a few outbursts of 

 enthusiasm are the thoughts of Pliny himself. The greater part 

 was soon traced to Varro, who, though he had been swallowed by 

 Pliny, was already fat with what he had swallowed from others. 

 The interest really began when it was made out that Varro 's work 

 was largely taken from Xenocrates of Sikyon, who lived in the first 

 part of the third century B. c. 



To Xenocrates may be ascribed the praise of his townsman Lysip- 

 pos as the head of an ascending scale, who, guided by another 

 Sikyonian, Eupompos the painter, took nature as his teacher. Phi- 

 dias, Polykleitos, Myron, and Pythagoras 1 had made each his own 

 advances in art, but Lysippos gained the summit. To Xenocrates 

 also is usually ascribed the ascending scale of painters, ending in 

 Apelles. 



Antigonos of Karystos, a contemporary of Xenocrates, also pre- 

 pared a history of art, adding to his work many of the things which 

 pleased him from Xenocrates' works. Features that are supposed to 

 be characteristic of him are passages with epigrammatical and art- 

 historical points. He probably set the proud Zeuxis and Parrhasios 

 over against the mild Apelles and Protogcnes; the poor Protogenes 

 against the rich Apelles; Polygnotos taking no pay for his painting 

 in the Stoa Poikile while Mikon took it. He is also supposed to be the 

 contributor of the criticism of the story that Hipponax's satire drove 

 ihe sculptors Bupalos and Athenis to suicide, adducing inscriptions 

 later than the time of the alleged suicide which showed that they were 

 still producing works which were the pride of Chios. 



Duris of Samos, who lived in the fourth century B. c., was the most 

 prominent citizen of Samos in his time, being the tyrant and at the 

 same time the historian of the island. He was a literary personality. 

 Xenocrates and Antigonos of Carystos drew so strongly on him that 

 it' we had the books of all three we should probably see that these two 

 later writers indulged in one of the most gigantic literary thefts that 

 was ever practiced. In Pliny 34, Gl, we read that Duris declared that 

 Lysippos was nobody's pupil. Much of the anecdotical element of 

 Pliny may probably be traced to him. An example is the story of the 

 money-box into which it was Lysippos's custom to drop a gold -piece 

 every time that he made one of the fifteen hundred statues that are 

 ascribed to him, and the astonishment of the heir when he came to 

 break open the box. It was the contrast between the poor worker in 

 bronze and the famous and rich sculptor that tickled Duris's fancy. 



1 It lias been thought that Pythagoras and perhaps Mvron also, were chrono- 

 logically misplaced in order to create this climax: but it appears from the recently 

 discovered table of Olympic victors, discussed by Robert (Hermes, lOOCH, that 

 in all probability no such violence need be assumed. Polykleitos was active in 

 460 B. c., Myron in 448, Pythagoras also in -448. The table also shows that Poly- 

 kleitos and Myron could have been pupils of Ageladas as well as Phidias. 



