ZESTHETIC JUDGMENTS OF CLASSICAL WRITERS. 6] 
art is small and his bias in favor of the two Sikyonian sculptors 
Lysippos and Xenokrates is very evident. His worst mistakes are in 
chronology. He puts Pythagoras after Myron, and both after Poly- 
kleitos, while Hagelaidas, who is made the teacher of Myron and 
Polykleitos, lives on to the beginning of the Peloponnesian war. 
His real criticism of sculpture is seen in his dictum of the Laokoon 
group, that it is a “‘work superior to all the pictures and bronzes of 
the world.”’ Our debt to Pausanias, especially for our knowledge 
of the victor monuments at Olympia, is immense. This debt may 
be gauged by the fact that he mentions in his work many times more 
statues than any other writer and that a large portion of the Schrift- 
quellen of Overbeck is concerned with him. However, he shows little 
real understanding for art. His interest in statues is confined almost 
entirely to those which are noted for their antiquity or sanctity, and 
his account of them is usually the pivot around which he spins religious 
or mythological stories. “Throughout his work his chief interest is 
religious; his interest in art for its own sake is very small. He devotes 
many pages to the throne of Zeus at Olympia, and describes the temple 
sculptures merely because the statue of Zeus is within. His detailed 
account of the athlete statues in the Altis is made chiefly because of 
his religious and antiquarian interest. Though imitating the style of 
Herodotos, he does it badly, so that his book is without much charm. 
In concluding this rough estimate of the ancient criticism of art, we 
might mention the fragmentary information to be gathered from many 
other writers, Dio Chrysostom, Quintilian,? Plutarch, and others, 
whose names occur frequently in the footnotes. All such references 
to works of art in ancient writers are conveniently collected in the 
great compilation of Overbeck so often quoted.’ 
As for esthetic judgments of the statues of victors at Olympia we 
have a few direct hints from different writers. The epigram from the 
base of the statue of the boy wrestler Theognetos by Ptolichos of 
Aegina reads in part: Ka\\uorov yey idety, d9detv 60d xelpova woplyns].* 
Pliny says of the sculptor Mikon, who made the statue of the 

XXXVI, 37. For careful judgments of Pliny’s work, see Jex-Blake, pp. xci f.: Kalkmann, Die 
Quellen der Kunstgeschichte des Plinius, 1898; Robert, Archaeologische Maerchen, 1886, pp. 28 f.; 
F. Muenzer, Hermes, XXX, 1895, pp. 499 f. (and Beitraege zur Kritik der Naturgesch. des Plinius, 
1897); Botsford and Sihler, Hellenic Civilization, 1915, pp. 551-8 (=Translation by Jex-Blake of 
Pliny, XXXIV, 53-84 [sculptors], revised by E. G. Sihler); pp. 558-567 (=Pliny, XX XV, 15, 
and 53-97 [painters], revised by E. G. S.). For short estimate of Pliny’s work, see Mackail, 
Latin Literatures, 1895, p. 197. 
*See his characterization of the great Greek painters and sculptors in Jnst. Orat., XII, Ch. 9. 
8Also in the work of H. Stuart Jones, Select Passages from Anc. Writers Illustrative of the Hist. of 
Gk. Sculpt., 1895; cf., A history of classical writers on art from Xenokrates to Pliny, in Jex-Blake, 
pp. xvi-xci; cf. Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, Antigonos von Karystos (Kiessling and Wilamowitz, 
Philolog. Untersuchungen, lV, 1881), pp. 7 f.; P. Gardner, Principles of Greek Art, Ch. II, pp. 13 f. 
(Ancient Critics on Art); etc. 
44. Pl., 2; Bergk, P. 1. G., III4, no. 149, p. 498. Theognetos won in Ol. 76 (=476 B. C.): 
P., VI, 9.1; Oxy. Pap., Hyde, 83; Foerster, 193 and 193 N. 
