[209]The colleges of the priests and of the augurs being the first two associated bodies.
[211]Pisistratus. These statues are mentioned elsewhere by Pliny as being the workmanship of Praxiteles.
[212]The Luperci were the priests of Pan, who, at the celebration of their games, called Lupercalia, were in the habit of running about the streets of Rome, with no other covering than a goat’s skin tied about the loins.
[213]Pliny has forgotten the gilded chariot, with six horses, which Cneius Cornelius dedicated in the Capitol, two hundred years before Augustus; there is also an ancient inscription which mentions chariots of this description.
[215]The mode in which the fingers were placed, so as to serve the purpose here indicated, is supposed to have been by their forming the letters which were the Roman numerals for the figures in question.
[216]The Colossus at Rhodes was begun by Chares, but he committed suicide, in consequence of having made some mistake in the estimate; the work was completed by Laches, also an inhabitant of Lindos.
It remained on the spot where it was thrown down for nearly nine hundred years, until the year 653 A.D., when Moavia, khalif of the Saracens, after the capture of Rhodes, sold the materials; it is said that it required nine hundred camels to remove the pieces.
The Bartholdi statue of “Liberty enlightening the World” is even larger than the Colossus at Rhodes.
[217]St. Jerome informs us, that Vespasian removed the head of Nero, and substituted that of the Sun with seven rays.
[218]There is no work of Phidias now in existence; the sculptures in the Parthenon were, however, executed by his pupils and under his immediate directions, so that we may form some judgment of his genius and taste. There is a foot in the British Museum, said to be the work of Phidias.
[219]Praxiteles held a high rank among the ancient sculptors, and may be considered as second to Phidias alone.
[220]Pliny has here confounded two artists of the same name; the Polycletus who was the successor of Phidias, and was not much inferior to him in merit, and Polycletus of Argos, who lived 160 years later, and who also executed many capital works, some of which are here mentioned. It appears that Cicero, Vitruvius, Strabo, Quintilian, Plutarch, and Lucian have also confounded these two artists; but Pausanias, who is very correct in the account which he gives us of all subjects connected with works of art, was aware of the distinction; and it is from his observations that we have been enabled to correct the error into which so many eminent writers had fallen.
