A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

(Κλεοίτας), a sculptor and architect, celebrated for the skilful construction of the ἄφεσις or starting place in the stadium at Olympia. (Paus. 6.20.7.) He was the author of a bronze statue of a warrior which existed at the acropolis of Athens at the time of Pausanias. (1.24.3.) As he was the son and father of an Aristocles (Visconti, Oeuvres diverses, vol. iii. p. 372), Thiersch (Epochen d. Bild. Kunst. p. 281, &c.) and Sillig (Catal. p. 153) reckon him as one of the Sicyonian artists, among whom Aristocles, the brother of Canachus, is a conspicuous name, and assign him therefore to Ol. 61. But this is a manifest error, as may be seen by comparing two passages of Pausanias (6.3.4, 6.9.1); and it is highly probable that Cleoetas was an Athenian. His name occurs (Ol. 86) in an inscription, from which we learn, that he was one of Phidias' assistants, that he accompanied his master to Olympias, and that thus he came to construct the the ἄφεσις. (Müller, de Phidia, 1.13; Böckh, Corp. Inscript. Graec. vol. i. pp. 39, 237, 884; Schultz, in Jahn's Jahrbücher für Philologie, 1829, p. 73; Brunn, Artific. liberae Graeciae tempora, p. 23.)

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