A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

(Ἀγοράκριτος), a famous statuary and sculptor, born in the island of Paros, who flourished from about Ol. 85 to Ol. 88. (Plin. Nat. 36.5. s. 4.) He was the favourite pupil of Phidias (Paus. 9.34.1), who is even said by Pliny to have inscribed some of his own works with the name of his disciple. Only four of his productions are mentioned, viz. a statue of Zeus and one of the Itonian Athene in the temple of that goddess at Athens (Paus. l.c.); a statue, probably of Cybele, in the temple of the Great Goddess at Athens (Plin. l.c.); and the Rhamnusian Nemesis. Respecting this last work there has been a great deal of discussion. The account which Pliny gives of it is, that Agoracritus contended with Alcamenes (another distinguished disciple of Phidias) in making a statue of Venus ; and that the Athenians, through an undue partiality towards their countryman, awarded the victory to Alcamenes. Agoracritus, indignant at his defeat, made some slight alterations so as to change his Venus into a Nemesis, and sold it to the people of Rhamnus, on condition that it should not be set up in Athens. Pausanias (1.33.2), without saying a word about Agoracritus, says that the Rhamnusian Nemesis was the work of Phidias, and was made out of the block of Parian marble which the Persians under Datis and Artaphernes brought with then for the purpose of setting up a trophy. (See Theætetus and Parmenio, Anthol. Gr. Planud. 4.12, 221, 222.) This account however has been rejected as involving a confusion of the ideas connected by the Greeks with the goddess Nemesis. The statue moreover was not of Parian, but of Pentelic marble. ( Unedited Antiquities of Attica, p. 43.) Strabo (ix. p.396), Tzetzes (Chiliad. 7.154), Suidas and Photius give other variations in speaking of this statue. It seems generally agreed that Pliny's account of the matter is right in the main; and there have been various dissertations on the way in which a statue of Venus could have been changed into one of Nemesis. (Winckelmann, Sämmtliche Werke von J. Eiselein, vol. v. p. 364 ; Zoega, Abhandlungen, pp. 56-62; K. O. Müller, Arch. d. Kunst, p. 102.)

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