[2456] “Pasiteles” would appear to be a preferable reading; for Pliny would surely have devoted more space to a description of these works of Praxiteles.
[2457] The same artist that is previously mentioned, Sillig thinks.
[2458] Of Jupiter.
[2460] “Symplegma.” See Note [2401], page 314.
[2461] The first being in a stooping posture, washing herself.
[2462] In B. xxxiii. c. [55], and B. xxxiv. c. [18].
[2463] A sculptor of the age of Alexander the Great. He is also mentioned by Tatian. For an account of Callisthenes, see end of B. xii.
[2464] Winckelmann supposes that these artists lived in the time of Lysippus; but, as may be discovered from an attentive examination of the present passage, Lessing and Thiersch are probably right in considering them to have been contemporaries of the Emperor Titus. This group is generally supposed to have been identical with the Laocoön still to be seen in the Court of the Belvedere, in the Vatican at Rome; having been found, in 1506, in a vault beneath the spot known as the Place de Sette Sale, by Felix de Fredi, who surrendered it, in consideration of a pension, to Pope Julius II. The group, however, is not made of a single block, which has caused some to doubt its identity: but it is not improbable, that when originally made, its joints were not perceptible to a common observer. The spot, too, where it was found was actually part of the palace of Titus. It is most probable that the artists had the beautiful episode of Laocoön in view, as penned by Virgil, Æn. B. II.; though Ajasson doubts whether they derived any inspiration from it. Laocoön, in the sublime expression of his countenance, is doing any thing, he says, but—