Perry, Walter Copland: Greek and Roman sculpture: a popular introduction to the history of Greek and Roman sculpture (London, 1882)

CHARACTERISTICS OF MYRON'S STYLE. 161

CHAPTER XIV.
STYLE OF MYRON.

The loci classici on the character of Myron's art are found in Pliny,
Cicero, Ouintilian, Petronius, &c.1 The first says, 'he brought
more harmony into his art than Polycleitus, and was more careful
in his observation of rhythm ; but though he paid the greatest
attention to the representation of the forms of the body, he does not
seem to have expressed the feelings of the heart, nor did he make
any advance on the rudeness of ancient art in the treatment of the
hair.'

Pliny here expressly declares that Myron was not supposed to
possess the power of expressing the emotions in the faces of his
statues. Nor is this irreconcilable with the well-known passage in
Petronius:2 ' Myron, qui paene hominum animas ferarumque a;re
comprehenderat' (who had almost enclosed the life of men and
beasts in bronze) ; for all that we read and see of Myron's work
tends to show that it was full of animal life in the highest de-
gree of activity. The words of Petronius mean nothing more than
this, and do not at all imply that he made the body or the face the
mirror of the tender emotions of the heart or the aspirations of the
soul.

Cicero,3 again, says of him : ' Nondum Myronis (opera) satis ad
vcritatem adducta, jam tamen qua; non dubites pulchra dicerc,'

1 Plin. N. H. xxxiv. 58: ' Numcrosior in datius fecisse quam rudis antiquitas insti-

arte quam Polyclilus el in symmetria dili- tuisset.' Some w riters translate mimcrosior,

gentior, et ipse tamen corporum tenus ' introduced a greater variety of situations.'
curiosus animi sensus non expressisse vide- ' Satyr. 88.
tur, capillum quoque et pubem non emen- s Bmt. 18. 70.

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