A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

Πολύκλειτος, (in Latin writers, Polycletus and Polyclitus), artists. Some difficulty has arisen from the mention of two statuaries of this name, whom Pausanias expressly distinguishes from one another, who seem both to have lived about the same period, and who are both said to have been of Argos. (Paus. 6.6.1.) Moreover, Pliny speaks of the great Polycleitus as a Sicyonian, though several other writers. as well as Pausanias, call him an Argive. (H. N. 34.8. s. 19.2.) The question which thus arises, as to the number of artists of this name, is very fully discussed by Thiersch, but with more ingenuity than sound judgment. (Epochen, pp. 150, 203, &c.) He distinguishes three statuaries of the name (besides a fourth, of Thasos); namely, first, Polycleitus of Sicyon, the pupil of Ageladas, an artist of the beginning of the period of the perfection of art, and whose works partook much of the old occasion conventional style; secondly, Polycleitus the elder, of Argos, maker of the celebrated statue in the Heraeum at Argos; and, thirdly, Polycleitus, the younger, of Argos, the pupil of Naucydes. But the common opinion of other writers is both simpler and sounder, namely that, on account of the close connection between the schools of Argos and Sicyon, the elder Polycleitus might easily have been assigned to both, and, if a more precise distinction explanation be required, that he was a native of Sicyon, and was made a citizen of Argos, to which Sicyon was then subject, probably as an honour well earned by his statue in the Heraeum. We know the same thing to have happened with other artists; and we think that Thiersch himself could hardly have failed to accept this explanation, but for his perverse theory respecting the early date of Pheidias [PHEIDIAS], which imposed upon him the necessity of placing that artist's chief contemporaries also higher than their true dates. The questions which arise, respecting the assignment of particular works to either of the two Polycleiti of Argos, will be considered in their proper places.