No original works of Myron are extant. His best known work, the Discobolos, is preserved in copies, one of which is described below. The bronze statuette of Marsyas in the Bronze Room may be studied after a group of Athenè and Marsyas by Myron.
Fig. 5.
250. Graeco-Roman copy of the bronze Discobolos of Myron. A young athlete is represented in the act of hurling the disk. He has swung it back, and is about to throw it to the furthest possible distance before him. The head, as here attached, looks straight to the ground, but in the original it looked more backwards as in a copy formerly in the Massimi palace at Rome. (Cf. Lucian, Philopseud. 18.) Compare a gem in the British Museum (Fig. 5; Cat. of Gems, No. 742, pl. G), which is inscribed ΥΑΚΙΝΘΟϹ. According to a judgment of Quintilian, the laboured complexity of the statue is extreme, but any one who should blame it on this ground would do so under a misapprehension of its purpose, inasmuch as the merit of the work lies in its novelty and difficulty. "Quid tam distortum et elaboratum, quam est ille discobolos Myronis? si quis tamen, ut parum rectum, improbet opus, nonne ab intellectu artis abfuerit, in qua vel praecipue laudabilis est ipsa illa novitas ac difficultas?"—Quint. Inst. Orat., ii., 13. 10.—Found in 1791 in Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli. Townley Coll.
Marble; height, 5 feet 5 inches. Restorations:—Nose, lips, chin, piece in neck, part of disk and r. hand; l. hand; piece under r. arm; pubis; r. knee; a small piece in r. leg, and parts of the toes. Specimens, I., pl. 29; Mus. Marbles, XI., pl. 44; Clarac, V., pl. 860, No. 2194 b; Ellis, Townley Gallery, I., p. 241; Guide to Graeco-Roman Sculptures, I., No. 135; Stereoscopic, No. 149; Wolters, No. 452.
PHEIDIAS AND THE SCULPTURES OF THE PARTHENON.
The sculptures of the Parthenon illustrate the style of Pheidias, the greatest of Greek sculptors.
Pheidias, son of Charmides, the Athenian, was born about 500 b.c. He was a pupil of the sculptor Ageladas, of Argos, or, according to others, of Hegias or Hegesias, of Athens. His youth was passed during the period of the Persian wars, and his maturity was principally devoted to the adornment of Athens, from the funds contributed by the allied Greek states during the administration of Pericles.
Among the chief of the works of this period was the Parthenon, or temple of the virgin Goddess Athenè. The architect was Ictinos, but the sculptural decorations, and probably the design of the temple, were planned and executed under the superintendence of Pheidias. The building was probably begun about b.c. 447 (according to Michaelis, b.c. 454). It was sufficiently advanced to receive the statue of the Parthenos in b.c. 438, and was probably completed either in that year or a little later. It stood on the Acropolis of Athens, on a site which had been already occupied by a more ancient temple, commonly supposed to have been an ancient Parthenon, which was burnt on the sacking of Athens by the Persians, b.c. 480. Recently, however, the foundations of an early temple have been discovered between the Parthenon and the Erechtheion. It has been thought that this is the Pre-Persian Parthenon, and that the traces of an older foundation below the existing Parthenon only date from the time immediately following the Persian wars. A building is supposed to have then been begun, on a plan somewhat different from that which was carried out by Ictinos and Pericles.