DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.42779#0216
154 BRONZEWORK
Egyptian had little or nothing that they could teach the
Greeks, for they had not themselves learned how to cast
bronzes or how to rivet them at a period before the Greeks
practised casting and riveting.
The invention of casting bronzes of large scale or even of
more than life-size must inevitably be attributed to the
Greeks. But the invention was a great one and marked an
enormous step forward in technique over the relatively
simple methods of the o-cpupfiAorrov process. It seems almost
certain that the Samian artists Rhoikos, Telekles, and Theo-
doros must be credited with the invention. We are indeed
told as much by Pausanias,1 and the fact that both Rhoikos
and Theodoros were men of extreme ability and of an in-
ventive turn of mind gives colour to an attribution in which
sheer inventiveness and mechanical knowledge played a
primary part. The mere fact that Theodoros introduced a
system of central-heating into the temple at Ephesus by
means of coal fires, marks him out as an inventor in this line
who had no worthy successor in Greece until Roman times
and is significant in that it shows that he had developed an
interest in furnaces.
Whichever of the three made the invention of bronze cast-
ing for large bronzes is of no material importance. But that
it began in Samos there seems little reason to doubt, and that
it began in the middle or soon after the second half of the
sixth century is certain. Nor can antecedents for the tech-
nique be discovered outside Greece.
It has hitherto been assumed in the text-books that the
process so discovered by the Samian artists was that of cire
perdue. But recently very weighty reasons have been adduced
by Kurt Kluge 2 which make it very difficult to believe that
this was the case. He has called attention to the fact that the
immediate technical predecessors of bronze statues were the
plated figures fitted on to wooden cores referred to above.
Consequently wood-carving was deeply involved in the
1 viii. 14. 8. 2 Op. cit. and Die Antiken Grossbronzen, i.
Egyptian had little or nothing that they could teach the
Greeks, for they had not themselves learned how to cast
bronzes or how to rivet them at a period before the Greeks
practised casting and riveting.
The invention of casting bronzes of large scale or even of
more than life-size must inevitably be attributed to the
Greeks. But the invention was a great one and marked an
enormous step forward in technique over the relatively
simple methods of the o-cpupfiAorrov process. It seems almost
certain that the Samian artists Rhoikos, Telekles, and Theo-
doros must be credited with the invention. We are indeed
told as much by Pausanias,1 and the fact that both Rhoikos
and Theodoros were men of extreme ability and of an in-
ventive turn of mind gives colour to an attribution in which
sheer inventiveness and mechanical knowledge played a
primary part. The mere fact that Theodoros introduced a
system of central-heating into the temple at Ephesus by
means of coal fires, marks him out as an inventor in this line
who had no worthy successor in Greece until Roman times
and is significant in that it shows that he had developed an
interest in furnaces.
Whichever of the three made the invention of bronze cast-
ing for large bronzes is of no material importance. But that
it began in Samos there seems little reason to doubt, and that
it began in the middle or soon after the second half of the
sixth century is certain. Nor can antecedents for the tech-
nique be discovered outside Greece.
It has hitherto been assumed in the text-books that the
process so discovered by the Samian artists was that of cire
perdue. But recently very weighty reasons have been adduced
by Kurt Kluge 2 which make it very difficult to believe that
this was the case. He has called attention to the fact that the
immediate technical predecessors of bronze statues were the
plated figures fitted on to wooden cores referred to above.
Consequently wood-carving was deeply involved in the
1 viii. 14. 8. 2 Op. cit. and Die Antiken Grossbronzen, i.