610 CLASSICAL ART 



to one view this is simply one of several copies of an early fifth-century 

 bronze statue. It is not the best copy, and its singular proportions 

 may be due to arbitrary modification of the original. According to the 

 other view, this work, while greatly influenced by the style of the 

 fifth century, is essentially a new creation, not necessarily of Ste- 

 phanus himself, but perhaps of Pasiteles. or at any rate of about his 

 time. Under all the circumstances of the case the former hypothesis 

 appears to me far more probable. But the side which we choose to 

 take in the controversy does not greatly affect our conception of 

 fifth-century art, though it does make considerable difference in our 

 estimate of the artistic conditions in Rome in the first century B. c. 

 And even if we allow an exception or two, it will still remain true 

 that in dealing with copies, excepting portraits of Roman emperors 

 and one or two other Roman personages, we are dealing in the vast 

 majority of cases with reproductions of much earlier originals. 



Let us now suppose that we are studying a piece of sculpture which 

 we suspect of being a copy and which we wish to assign to its proper 

 historical place. If we are equipped for the task, that is to say, if we 

 are endowed with good powers of observation and are extensively 

 acquainted with the monuments of Greek art, we shall of course 

 inevitably form a theory on the subject at the outset. But realizing 

 the fallibility of any copy, we shall search through the existing stock 

 of antiques for duplicates of the work under consideration. If there 

 are any, they must all be taken into account, just as all the manu- 

 scripts of an ancient author must be taken into account in the 

 attempt to reconstitute his original text. Let us suppose, to begin 

 with, that we find one or more such duplicates, agreeing with the first 

 piece in all principal features. Obviously either one of the number is 

 the original and the others are copies from it, or all are alike copies 

 of a lost original. The former alternative is possible enough in the 

 abstract, and there are some cases where it is actually held, more or 

 less confidently, by one or more archaeologists. The cases, however, 

 where it may be considered practically certain are extremely few. 

 In general no one of the duplicates has any claim to being regarded 

 as the original. All are alike copies. But copies are given to varying 

 among themselves according to the varying skill and conscientious- 

 ness of the copyists. Xo one of them, even though artistically it out- 

 rank the others, can be safely trusted to reproduce more faithfully 

 than they every detail of the original. Hence they must all be dili- 

 gently compared, in the hope of divining from their collective testi- 

 mony the prototype. In this undertaking a merely mechanical pro- 

 cedure, such as deciding by a majority vote of the -witnesses, will not 

 do. There must be a divinatory instinct. But alas! the faculty of 

 divination, however sure it may be of itself, cannot always impose its 

 results upon others. Its operation often seems arbitrary, and carries 



