Among those men by whom Phidias was surrounded, and who were in these various branches of art his rivals or his peers, may be named Agoracritos, Alcamenes, Myron, Pæonios, Kolotes, Socrates, Praxias, Androsthenes, Polyclitus, and Kalamis,—all sculptors in marble. Besides these there were Hegias, Nestocles, Pythagoras, Kallimachus, Kallon, Phradmon, Gorgias, Lacon, Kleoitas, and others of less note, who were more specially toreutic artists and sculptors in bronze. Here is a wonderful constellation of genius, and in it are many stars of the first magnitude. Some of these men were peers of Phidias in chryselephantine art. Some contended with him and won the prize over him. Let us take a glance at some of the most eminent.
Polyclitus studied under the great Argive sculptor Ageledas, and was a fellow-scholar with Phidias and Myron. He was the rival of Phidias in his chryselephantine works, and but little if at all inferior to him in his best works. He created the type of Hera, as Phidias did that of Athena; and his colossal statue of that goddess in ivory and gold at Argos was admitted to be unsurpassed even by the Athena of the Parthenon. Strabo asserts that though inferior in size and nobleness to the Athena and Zeus of Phidias, it equaled them in beauty, and in its artistic execution excelled them (τῇ μὲν τέχνῃ κάλλιστα τῶν πάντων). Dionysius of Halicarnassus accords to him, as to Phidias, τὸ σεμνὸν καὶ μεγαλότεχνον καὶ ἀξιωματικόν—the character of grandeur, dignity, and harmony of parts. Xenophon places him beside Homer, Sophocles, and Zeuxis as an artist. Among his bronze works, the most celebrated were the Diadumenos and the Doryphoros, the latter of which was called the Canon, on account of its beauty and perfection of proportion. If to Phidias was accorded the highest praise as the sculptor of divinities, Polyclitus was considered his superior in his statues of men.
Nor was it only as a sculptor in bronze, gold, and ivory, that he was distinguished. He was celebrated also for his marble statues, among which may be mentioned the Apollo, Leto, and Artemis in the Temple of Artemis, and the Orthia in Argolis; as well as for his skill in the toreutic art. In this last art he excelled all others; and Pliny says of him that he developed and perfected it as Phidias had begun it—“toreuticen sic erudisse ut Phidias aperuisse.”
Myron, his fellow-scholar, had scarcely a less reputation, though in a different way. He devoted himself to the representation of athletes, among which the most celebrated was the Discobolos; of animals, of which his Cow was the most famous; and of groups of satyrs, and sea-monsters, and mythical creatures. He excelled in the representation of life, action, and expression; and such was his skill, that Petronius says of him that he almost expressed the souls of men and animals in his bronzes.
Agoracritos and Alcamenes had a still higher distinction than Myron. The famous Aphrodite of the Gardens (ἐν κήποις), a marble statue by Alcamenes, enjoyed a reputation among the ancients scarcely if at all below that of the Aphrodite of Praxiteles. Pliny, writing five hundred years after, says that Phidias “is said to have given the finishing touches to this statue.” But this is one of those common and absurd traditions that attach to the work of almost every great artist long after his death, and it may be dismissed at once. Lucian gives the statue directly and solely to Alcamenes—and to him undoubtedly it belongs. He had no need of the help of Phidias, being himself a much more accomplished worker in marble, even should we grant that Phidias ever worked at all in this material. Indeed, it was specially as a sculptor in marble that he was distinguished; and among other works which he executed in this material were the colossal statues of Hercules and Minerva, a group of Procne and Itys, and the statue of Æsculapius. But what is the more significant in this connection is the fact, stated by Pausanias, that it was he who executed the statues representing the Centaurs and Lapithæ at the marriage of Pirithous, which adorned the back tympanum of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, where the great Zeus of Phidias stood. Pausanias speaks of him as an artist “who lived in the age of Phidias, and was the next to him in the art of making statues.”
Agoracritos is called by Pausanias “the pupil and beloved friend of Phidias,” and it is most probable that he worked with him on the Athena and the Zeus. His most famous statue was the Nemesis at Rhamnus, which, as we have seen, is attributed to Phidias by Pausanias, but which clearly belongs to Agoracritos. The statue of the Mother of the Gods, which Arrian and Pausanias give to Phidias, was also made by him, according to Pliny.
Kolotes, who was also a pupil and assistant of Phidias at one time, was a sculptor in marble as well as a celebrated artist in ivory and gold. Among other works, he probably made a statue in gold and ivory of Athena at Elis, which Pausanias attributes to Phidias, but which Pliny asserts to be by Kolotes. There is no dispute that he made the statue of Asclepius in gold and ivory, which is much praised by Strabo; and he is said by Pliny to have assisted Phidias in the Zeus, and to have executed the interior of the shield of the Athena at Elis, which was painted by Panæus.
Pæonios, a Thracian by birth, was a celebrated sculptor in marble as well as bronze; and, among other things, he executed the figures in the front tympanum of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia. In character and composition these figures resemble those of the Parthenon, and they are executed in the same spirit. A fragment from the Temple of Zeus may be seen in the Louvre, standing beside a fragment of one of the metopes of the Parthenon. The fragment from the Temple of Zeus represents Heracles with the Bull. It is fuller and larger in style than the fragment from the Parthenon, which, seen beside it, looks stiff and meagre in character, and the body of the Centaur in the one is decidedly inferior to the body of the Bull in the other. This is probably a portion of the work of Pæonios.
Praxias and Androsthenes, too, worked in marble in the same style, and the figures in the tympana of the Delphic temple were executed by them. The metopes also, of which five are alluded to in the Chorus of Euripides, were probably their work.
Theocosmos, too, a contemporary of Phidias, worked with him, according to Pausanias, on the Zeus at Megara, which was afterwards left unfinished, on account of the Peloponnesian war: only the head was of ivory and gold, the rest of the body being of plastic clay and wood.