Imagines

POLYSTRATUS Well, inasmuch as you really and truly behaved like a stone in one way, at least, since you neither followed her nor questioned that Smyrniote, whoever he was, at least sketch her appearance in words as best you can. Perhaps in that way I might recognize her.

LYCINUS Are you aware what you have demanded? It is not in the power of words, not mine, certainly, to call into being a portrait so marvellous, to which hardly Apelles or Zeuxis or Parrhasius would have seemed equal, or even perhaps a Phidias or an Alcamenes. As for me, I shall but dim the lustre of the original by the feebleness of my skill.

POLYSTRATUS Nevertheless, Lycinus, what did she look like? It would not be dangerously bold if you should show your picture to a friend, no matter how well or ill it may be drawn.

LYCINUS But I think I shall act in a way that involves less risk for myself if I call in some of those famous artists of old for the undertaking, to model me a statue of the woman.

POLYSTRATUS What do you mean by that? How can they come to you when they died so many years ago?

LYCINUS Easily, if only you do not refuse to answer me a question or two.

POLYSTRATUS You have but to ask.

LYCINUS Were you ever in Cnidus, Polystratus ?

POLYSTRATUS Yes indeed !

LYCINUS Then you certainly saw the Aphrodite there ?

POLYSTRATUS Yes, by Zeus! The fairest of the creations of Praxiteles.[*](Furtwängler, Greek and Roman Sculpture, pl. xxv, opposite p. 91. ) LYCINUS Well, have you also heard the story that the natives tell about it—that someone fell in love with the statue, was left behind unnoticed in the temple, and embraced it to the best of his endeavours? But no matter about that.[*](The story, which can be traced back to Posidonius, is told at greater length in the Amores. )_ Since you have seen her, as you say, tell me whether you have also seen the Aphrodite in the Gardens, at Athens, by Alcamenes ?[*](Furtwängler’s suggestion that the well-known “Venus Genetrix” is a copy of this work is generally accepted. The head is well reproduced in Mitchell, History of Ancient Sculpture, opposite p. 320. The Gardens lay outside the walls, on the bank of the Ilissos, opposite the Stadium. ) POLYSTRATUS Surely I should be the laziest man in all the world

if I had neglected the most beautiful of the sculptures of Alcamenes.

LYCINUS One question, at all events, I shall not ask you, Polystratus—whether you have often gone up to the Acropolis to look at the Sosandra of Calamis ?[*](No copy of the Sosandra is known, nor is it clear whether she was a goddess or a woman. ) POLYSTRATUS I have often seen that, too.

LYCINUS So far, so good. But among the works of Phidias what did you praise most highly ?

POLYSTRATUS What could it be but the Lemnian Athena, on which Phidias deigned actually to inscribe his name?[*](For the beautiful head in Bologna that is believed to be copied from this statue (a work in bronze, dedicated on the Acropolis by certain Lemnians) see Furtwangler, Masterpieces of Greek Sculpture, pl. i-iii, and Fig. 3. ) Qh, yes! and the Amazon who leans upon her spear.[*](Copies of the Phidian Amazon have not been identified with any certainty. For the several types of Amazon statue that come into consideration, see Michaelis, Jahrbuch des k. deutschen Archaeologischen Instituts, i, p. 14.8qq., and Furtwangler, Masterpieces, p. 128 sqq. )