So'sicles

(Σωσικλῆς), artists.

1. A sculptor of unknown age and country, whose name is found inscribed on a statue of an Amazon in the Capitoline Museum. (Mus. Cap. vol. iii. pl. 46.) The execution of the statue, we are told by Raoul Rochette, is very good, although the form of the letters of the inscription belongs to the later Roman empire. The inscription is of the following form, ΞωΞΙΚΛΗ,

where the meaning of the sign

below the name has never been satisfactorily explained.

We owe to the same writer the publication of a discovery by which the artist's name again appears. This is a plinth to which adhere the two feet and one leg of the statue of a man, which it once supported. The execution of these remaining portions is said by R. Rochette to correspond to that of the Amazon. The plinth bears the following inscription, in large characters, ΞωΞΙΚΛ... The fragment was discovered at Tusculum, in 1842, in the course of the excavations undertaken by M. Canina, at the expense of the queen dowager of Sardinia ; and it was to form (and now, we suppose, forms) a part of the collection of ancient marbles found at Tusculum, and preserved in the Villa della Rufinella. (R. Rochette, Lettre à M. Schorn, p. 403, 2d ed.)