A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

2. Of Rhodes, a sculptor, several of whose works were placed in the temple of Apollo, adjoining the portico of Octavia at Rome. One of these statues was that of the god himself : the others were Latona and Diana, the nine Muses, and another statue of Apollo, without drapery. Within the portico, in the temple of Juno, was a statue of Venus, by the same artist (Plin. Nat. 36.5. s. 4.10). From this statement it is evident that Philiscus made some of the statues expressly for the temples, but whether at the time of their first erection by Metellus (B. C. 146), or of their restoration by Augustus more than a hundred years later, cannot be determined with certainty. Most of the writers on art place him at the earlier date ; but at all events he belonged to that period of the revival of art which, according to Pliny, began with the 155th Olympiad (B. C. 160), and which extended down to the time of the Antonines during which period the Rhodian school sent forth several of the best statuaries and sculptors, and Rome became a great seat of the arts. The group of Muses, found in the villa of Cassius at Tivoli, is supposed by Visconti to be a copy of that of Philiscus. Meyer takes the beautiful statue at Florence, known as the Apollino, for the naked Apollo of Philiscus; it is engraved in Müller's Denkmäler d. alten Kunst, vol. ii. pl. xi. fig. 126. (Meyer, Kunstgeschichte, vol. iii. pp. 35, 120; Hirt, Gesch. d. bild. Kiinste, p. 298; Müller, Archäol. d. Kunst, §§ 160. n. 2, 393, n. 2.)

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