one of the most celebrated statuaries of the ancient world, was named of Sicyon, probably by birth, and of Argos, probably by citizenship. This celebrated sculptor, architect, and artist is said to have been the pupil of the great Argive statuary Ageladas, where he had Phidias and Migron for his fellow-disciples. Of his personal history nothing is known. As an artist he stood at the head of the schools of Argos and Sicyon; and he was judged to have surpassed his great Athenian rival Phidias on one occasion (if only on one)—the famous competition of the Amazons. The essential difference between these artists lay in this, that Phidias was unsurpassed in making the images of the gods, Polycleitus in those of men.

The praises heaped upon Polycleitus by ancient critics are numerous, and of the very highest order. Pliny has recorded of him that he brought the art of statuary to perfection, and Cicero supports the judgment. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Quintilian, Lucian, and the poets of the Anthology, are all loud in his praise; while Xenophon, Plato, and Lysippus speak of him in terms implying an equality with Phidias. As a torcetic artist, Pliny believed him to have perfected the art which Phidias had begun. As an architect, Polycleitus designed the theatre, and the circular building which he raised in the sacred inclosure of Æsculapius at Epidaurus. The former Pausanias thought the best worth seeing of all the theatres, whether of the Greeks or of the Romans. The work which he probably designed to be the greatest of all his performances was his statue of Hera in ivory and gold, in her temple between Argos and Mycenae. It was doubtless meant to rival Phidias's chryselephantine statues of Athena and Zeus, which, in the judgment of Strabo (viii., p. 372), it equalled in beauty, though surpassed by them in costliness and size. The goddess was seated on a throne, her head crowned with a garland, on which were worked the Graces and the Hours,—the one hand holding the symbolical pomegranate, the other a sceptre surmounted by a cuckoo. The lower part of the figure was robed from the waist downwards. In short, she was the white-armed goddess of Homer, with beautiful eyes, a splendid robe, a queen-like figure, and seated on a golden throne. (See an excellent essay on this statue by Böttiger, Andentungen, pp. 122-128.)