THE AGIAS AND APOXYOMENOS COMPARED. 289 
to classify our extant examples of ancient art as representing tendencies 
ratherthanmen.”! ‘The Lysippancharacter of the Vatican statue had not 
been seriously attacked until the discovery of the 4gias. Its original was 
certainly a work worthy of Lysippos. Its rhythm, proportions, and fine 
modeling have received praise of connoisseurs ever since its discovery. 
Its dificult pose had been remarkably well executed. While appearing 
at rest, the statue suggests vigorous action both by its supple limbs and 
the suppressed excitement indicated by the partly opened lips, an ex- 
citement befitting a victorious athlete. Perhaps it was the difficulty 
of such a pose that best explains why the 4poxyomenos has left no other 
copy.2. [he very excellence of the Vatican statue prejudiced us in 
favor of regarding it as an illustration of Lysippos’ ideal of bodily pro- 
portions. But we really knew very little of the original Apoxyomenos, 
only what we gathered from Pliny, that Lysippos made such a statue 
and that it was carried to Rome by M. Agrippa and was set up in front 
of his Therma, whence it was removed by the enamored Tiberius to 
his bed-chamber, only to be restored when the populace remonstrated. 
As for the proportions of the supposed copy in question, they only 
prove that this statue goes back to an original which was not earlier 
than Lysippos, but not that it was by the master himself.* The dis- 
covery of the 4gias showed us at last on what slender foundations our 
theory had been built. Despite certain well-marked similarities in the 
pose, proportions, and relatively small head—characteristics which were 
not even exclusively Lysippan, since they are just as prominent in cer- 
tain other works, ¢. g., in the warriors of the Mausoleion frieze—between 
the Agias and the Apoxyomenos, nevertheless just as striking differences 
appear, which make it difficult to keep both statues as examples of the 
artistic tendency of one and the same artist, even if we should assign 
them to different periods of his career. 
THE AGIAS AND THE APOXYOMENOS COMPARED, AND THE 
SDYLE OF LYSIPPOS. 
These differences are most apparent in the surface modeling and 
facial expression of the two works. In the 4gzas the muscles are not 
over-emphasized in detail, but show the simple observation of nature 
characteristic of artists who worked before the scientific study of 
anatomy at the Museum of Alexandria had reacted upon sculpture. In 
the Apoxyomenos, on the other hand, we see an intentional display of 
the new learning in the labored and detailed treatment of the muscles, 
which disclose a knowledge of anatomy unknown before the Hellenistic 
age. This academic treatment, culminating later in such realistic works 
as the Laocoon and the Farnese Herakles, can hardly have antedated the 
beginning of the third century B.C., when anatomy was studied by the 
10ne Hundred Masterpieces of Sculpture, 1909, p. 39. 
2Unless we except the Athenian torso to be mentioned infra, p. 290, n. 4. 
3Cf. Tarbell, Congress of Arts and Sciences, St. Louis, 1904, II, p. 614. 
