1. 2. Two statuaries of this name are mentioned by Pliny (Plin.
Nat. 34.8. s. 19); one, as flourishing in the 102d Olympiad (B. C.
370), contemporary with Cephisodotus, Leochares, and Hypatodorus; the other, as one of
a number of statuaries, who flourished at the revival of the art in the 156th Olympiad (B. C. 155), and who, though far inferior to those who lived from the time
of Pheidias down to the 120th Olympiad (B. C. 300), were
nevertheless artists of reputation. In this list the name of Polycles is followed by the word
Athenaeus, which is usually taken for the name of another artist, but
which may perhaps, as Sillig has observed, indicate the city to which Polycles belonged ; for
it is not at all improbable that Pliny would copy the words Πολυκλῆς Ἀθηναῖος, which he found in his Greek authority, either through
carelessness, or because he mistook the second for the name of a person. It is also extremely
probable that the elder Polycles was an Athenian, and that he was, in fact, one of the artists
of the later Athenian school, who obtained great celebrity by the sensual charms exhibited in
their works. For not only does Pliny mention Polycles I. in connection with Cephisodotus I.
and Leochares, whom we know to have been two of the most distinguished artists of that school;
but he also ascribes to Polycles (without, however, specifying which of the two) a celebrated
statue of an Hermaphrodite, a work precisely in keeping with the character of the school which
produced the Ganymede of Leochares. (Plin. l.c. § 20.) From the
comparison, then, of these two statements, the inference is highly probable that the
Hermaphrodite was the work of the elder Polycles, who was an artist of the later Athenian
school of statuary. Müller strongly confirms this view by the ingenious observation,
that, in Pliny's alphabetical lists of artists, the names under each letter come pretty much
in the order of time; and in the present instance, the name ot Polycles comes before those of
Pyrrhus and of Phoenix, the disciple of Lysippus. (Archäol. d.
Kunst, § 128, n. 2.)
Respecting the Hermaphrodite of Polycles, it cannot be determined with certainty which of
the extant works of this class represents its type, or whether it was a standing or a
recumbent figure. The prevailing opinion among archaeologists is that the celebrated recumbent
Hermaphrodite, of which we have two slightly different examples, in marble, the one in the
Florentine Gallery, the other in the Louvre (formerly in the Villa Borghese), is copied from
the bronze statue of Polycles. (Meyer, Kunstgeschichte, vol. i. pp. 98,
99, and plate 9 ; Müller, Archäol. d. Kunst, § 392, n. 2;
Osann, Ueber eine in Pompeii Ausgegrabene Hermaphroditenstatue ; and
Böttiger, Ueber die Hermaphroditen-Fabel und Bildung, in the Amalthea, vol. i. pp. 342-366.)
The younger Polycles, from the date assigned to him by Pliny, and from the mention of a
statue of Juno by Polycles in the portico of Octavia at Rome (Plin. Nat. 36.4. s. 5.10), would seem to have been one of the Greek artists who
flourished at Rome about the time of the original erection of that portico by Metellus
Macedonicus. But it is evident, on a careful examination of the latter passage of Pliny, and
it is probable, from the nature of the case, that many, if not most of the works of art, with
which Metellus decorated his portico, were not the original productions of living artists, but
either the works of former masters, transported from Greece, or marble copies taken from such
works. It contained, for example, works by Praxiteles, one of which stood in the very part of
the edifice in which the statue by Polycles was placed. Hence arises the suspicion that this
Polycles may be no other than the great Athenian artist already mentioned; that, like other
statuaries of that era (Praxiteles, for instance), he wrought in marble as well as in bronze,
or else that the marble statue of Juno in the portico of Metellus was only a copy from one of
his works, and that Pliny places him erroneously at the 156th Olympiad, because, finding him
mentioned among the artists whose works stood in the portico of Metellus, he mistook him for
an artist living at the period of its erection. It is true that this is uncertain conjecture;
but Pliny is very apt to make mistakes, and still more the copyists, especially in lists of
names, and a sound critic is very reluctant to consent to the unnecessary multiplication of
persons bearing distinguished names.
The name, however, occurs in Pausanias as well as Pliny. In his enumeration of the statues
of Olympic victors, after mentioning statues by Pheidias and Silanion, he says that another
statuay of the Athenians, Polycles, the disciple of Stadieus the Athenian, made an Ephesian
boy, a pancratiast, Amyntas the son of Hellanicus. (Paus. 6.4.3.
s. 5.) It is evident from this passage that this Polycles was a very distinguished Athenian
artist, and the context seems to show that he flourished between the times of Pheidias and
Lysippus, and nearer to the latter. If, therefore, there were two artists of the name, he is
probably the same as the elder. In another passage he mentions the statue of the Olympic
victor Agesarchus, as the work of the sons of Polycles, whose names he does not give, but of
whom he promises to say more in a subsequent part of his work (6.12.3. s. 9).
Accordingly, at the end of the chapter in which he describes Elateia in Phocis, after
mentioning the temple of Asclepius, with the bearded statue of the god in it, made by Timocles
and Timarchides, who were of Athenian birth, he proceeds to give an account of the temple of
Athena Cranaea, in which was a statue of the goddess, equipped as if for battle, and with
works of art upon the shield in imitation of the shield of the Athena of the Parthenon; "and
this statue also," he says, "was made by the sons of Polycles." (Paus. 10.34.3. s. 6-8.) From this passage, taken in its connection,
it is evident that the sons of Polycles were no other than Timocles and Timarchides, and that
these were Athenian artists of considerable reputation. Now, reverting to Pliny, we find in
the same list of statuaries at the revival of the art in Ol. 156, in which the name of
Polycles occurs, the name of Timocles; and in the passage respecting the works in the portico
of Octavia, immediately after the mention of the statue of Juno by Polycles, he mentions that
of Jupiter by the sons of Timarchides, in the adjacent temple. It follows that, if there be no
mistake in Pliny, the Polycles of the two latter passages of Pausanias (and perhaps,
therefore, of the first) was the younger Polycles. At all events, we establish the existence
of a family of Athenian statuaries, Polycles, his sons Timocles and Timarchides, and the sons
of Timarchides, who either belonged (supposing Pliny to have made the mistake above suggested)
to the later Attic school of the times of Scopas and Praxiteles, or (if Pliny be right) to the
period of that revival of the art, about B. C. 155, which was
connected with the employment of Greek artists at Rome. (Comp. TIMARCHIDES and TIMOCLES.) There is still one more passage in
which the name of Polycles occurs, as the maker of some statues of the Muses, in bronze.
(Varro, apud Nonium, s. v. Ducere.)