PYTHAGORAS AND MYRON. 187 
toward the hand that holds the quoit, and bending the other knee 
gently beneath him, like one who will rise erect as he hurls the quoit ?’”! 
That the head of the original was turned back as in the Lancellotticopy, 
and not downwards, as in the Vatican, British Museum and other rep- 
licas, is shown by this description, which is corroborated by two bronze 
statuettes in Munich and Arolsen? and by a gemin the British Museum.? 
Myron chose the most difficult, but at the same time the most charac- 
teristic, moment in swinging the diskos, the moment which combines 
the idea of rest and motion. ‘The quoit has been swung back as far as 
it will go. ‘The momentary pause before it is hurled forward suggests 
rest and at the same time implies motion, both that which has preceded 
and that which is to follow. It is this short pause at the end of the 
backward swing which the sculptor has fixed inthe bronze. The right 
arm is stretched backwards as far as possible and draws with it the 
body with the left arm and head; in another instant the diskos will be 
hurled and the tension on the right leg relaxed. The original statue 
rested upon the right foot; the tree trunk is a necessary addition 
to the marble copies. As Greek art was mostly characterized by 
repose, we are not surprised that such a daring effect received the cen- 
sure of the ancient critics. Quintilian says that if any one blames the 
statue for its labored effect, he is wrong, since the novelty and the difh- 
culty of the work are its chief merits.’ For a statue of the transitional 
stage of Greek sculpture it is remarkably bold; only in imagination can 
we see the action by which the body has got into this position and by 
which it will recover its equilibrium. It illustrates a principle laid 
down by Lessing in the Laokoén: “‘Of ever changing nature the artist 
can use only a single moment and this from a single point of view. And 
as his work is meant to be looked at not for an instant, but with long 
consideration, he must choose the most fruitful moment, and the most 
fruitful point of view, that, to wit, which leaves the power of imagina- 
tion free.’”® 
Myron was the sculptor of five statues for four victors at Olympia, 
one of a pancratiast, another of a boxer, a third of a runner, and two of 
a victor in the hoplite-race and the chariot-race.® Pliny also says that 
1Philopseudes, 18; S. Q., §544; translation of H. Stuart Jones, Select Passages from Ancient 
Writers Illustrative of the History of Greek Sculpture, p. 69. 
2For the late Roman one in the Munich Antiquariun, see B. B., text to Pl. 567, fig. 1; F. W., 
453; for the one in Arolsen, see F. W., 1786. 
3B. M. Gems, no. 742, Pl. G; also givenin B. M. Sculpt., I, p. 91, fig. 5. 
4Inst. orat., II, 13.10: Quid tam distortum et elaboratum quam est tlle discobolos Myronis? si 
quis tamen, ut parum rectum, improbet opus, nonne ab intellectu artis abfuerit, in qua vel 
praecipue laudabilis est ipsa illa novitas ac difficultas? 
’Translation by G. F. Hill, in his One Hundred Masterpieces of Sculpture from the Sixth Century 
B.C. to the Time of Michelangelo, 1909, p. 10. 
6Enumerated above in Ch. III (Attic Sculptors), p. 129, n. 7. The Spartan Lykinos had 
two statues: P., VI, 2.1. As he won in both the hoplite-race and chariot-race, Foerster, 211 a, 
assumed that the two statues represented victor and charioteer, and that they stood upon the 
quadriga, which Pausanias does not mention. I follow Robert, O. S., p. 172, however, in assuming 
that the two statues represented the victor in the two events. 
