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One of the most celebrated Greek artists of Eleutherae, in Attica, an older contemporary of Phidias and Polyclitus, and, like them, a pupil of Ageladas. His works, chiefly in bronze, were numerous and very varied in subject--gods, heroes, and especially athletes and representations of animals, which were admired by the ancients for their life-like truth to nature. Most famous among these were his statue of the Argive runner Ladas; of Marsyas, of which a marble copy is now in the Lateran at Rome; his "Discobolus," or quoit-thrower, which we are enabled to appreciate in several copies in marble, the best being that in the Palazzo Massimi and one in bronze in the Palazzo Lancelotti in Rome; and his "Cow on the Market-place at Athens," which received the very highest praise among the ancients, was celebrated in thirty-six extant epigrams in the Greek anthology, all quoted in Overbeck's Schriftquellen. 550-588, and may be regarded as his masterpiece. He was also the first to represent what is really a genre portrait in his "Drunken Old Woman"; but this is now attributed to another artist, one Socrates.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Dec 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Myron of Eleutherai
Eleutherai was just inside Attica on the Boeotian border, which is
why Pausanias (6.8.4, etc.) calls him an Athenian. Once again the only synoptic
account of his oeuvre is Pliny's:
Myron was born at Eleutherae and was a pupil of Hageladas. He was particularly
famous for his statue of a heifer, celebrated in well-known epigrams -- for most
people owe their reputations more to someone else's talent than their own. He
also made a dog, a discobolus, a Perseus and the sea-monsters (?), a satyr marveling
at the flutes and a Minerva, pentathletes at Delphi, pancratiasts, and a Hercules
now in the shrine dedicated by Pompey the Great at the Circus Maximus. Erinna
also mentions in her poems that he made a cicada and a locust. He also made an
Apollo which Antony the triumvir took from the Ephesians, but the deified Augustus
restored it again after being warned in a dream. He seems to have been the first
to extend the representation of natural truth, being more rhythmical in his art
than Polykleitos and more careful over proportion (symmetria); yet though he was
very attentive to the bodies of his figures he does not seem to have expressed
the feelings of the mind, and also did not treat the hair and the pubes any more
correctly than did the rude art of old.(Pliny, N.H. 34.57-8)
Pliny places him third in the "Xenokratic" sequence of bronze-workers,
between Polykleitos (Pliny,
N.H. 34.55-6) and Pythagoras (Pliny,
N.H. 34.59), and consequently the late Hellenistic source (Pliny,
N.H. 35.49-52) gave him a floruit of 420-417; for an explanation as to why,
see the commentary (Pliny,
N.H. 34.59), above. Contradicted by (a) his supposed apprenticeship to Hageladas
(Pausanias
10.10.6); (b) the "histories" of Cicero
and Quintilian; (c) his Aeginetan commission (no. 1), presumably pre-dating
the Athenian conquest of 457/6; and (d) the activities of his son Lykios in the
440s and 430s (Jeffery 1980b), this erroneous chronology also suggests that his
allegedly greater attentiveness to symmetria than -- of all people! -- Polykleitos
(Pliny,
N.H. 34.57-8) could simply be a rationalization introduced by Xenokrates or
Varro (Pliny,
N.H. 34.55-6) to save this evolutionary scheme, rigidly formalistic as it
apparently was.
The full list of his works, all bronzes except possibly no. 1 (a xoanon , Paus.
2.30.2) is as follows:
Divinities and mythological groups
- Hekate (single-bodied) in Aegina
- Colossal Zeus, Athena, and Herakles in the Heraion at Samos; removed by Mark
Antony; the Athena and Herakles returned by Augustus
- Apollo at Ephesos, removed by Antony but returned by Augustus (Pliny,
N.H. 34.57-8)
- Apollo at Akragas, stolen by Verres in 73-70
- Dionysos at Orchomenos, later re-dedicated on Mt. Helikon by Sulla
- Nike killing a bull
- Athena and Marsyas
Heroes
- Erechtheus at Athens
- Herakles at Messana, stolen by Verres
- Herakles, later in Rome (Pliny,
N.H. 34.57-8)
- Perseus, on the Akropolis
Victor statues
- The runner Ladas, perhaps at Argos (Anthologia
Palatina 16.54)
- A diskobolos (Pliny,
N.H. 34.57-8) & (Lucian,
Philopseudes 18)
- The horse breeder Lykinos of Sparta, at Olympia (twice)
- The pankratiast Timanthes of Kleonai, at Olympia
- The boy-boxer Philippos of Pellana, at Olympia
- The hoplite-runner Chionis of Sparta, at Olympia
- Pentathletes and pankratiasts, at Delphi (Pliny,
N.H. 34.57-8)
Animals
- A dog (Pliny,
N.H. 34.57-8)
- A cow, on the Akropolis (Pliny,
N.H. 34.57-8), later taken to Rome
- Four oxen, later in Rome
Varia
- A sea-monster
- Embossed vessels in silver
The Diskobolos (no. 13; Rome, Terme
126371; Stewart 1990, fig. 300) is the only work identified beyond doubt in
the copies, owing to a rare detailed description of one allegedly displayed with
the Tyrannicides, Polykleitos's Diadoumenos, and Demetrios' Pellichos (Stewart
1990, figs. 227-31; 383-85; Lucian, Philopseudes 18, with commentary) in a house
in Athens:
"When you came in the hall," he said, "didn't you notice a totally gorgeous statue
up there, by Demetrios the portraitist?" "Surely you don't mean the discus-thrower,"
said I, "the one bent over into the throwing-position, with his head turned back
to the hand that holds the discus, and the opposite knee slightly flexed, like
one who will spring up again after the throw?" "Not that one, he said, that's
one of Myron's works, that Diskobolos you speak of..." (Lucian, Philopseudes 18)
On the Athena and Marsyas, often identified as a group after Paus.
1.24.1, see Stewart 1990, 147, figs. 290-91, and the copy Louvre 2208; as for
the others, optimists have recognized nos. 2, 8, 10, and 11 in Roman copies (though
the Perseus is just as regularly given to Pythagoras), while Mingazzini 1972-3
and others attribute nos. 12 and 16 to namesakes of the Hellenistic period (contra
e.g. Moretti 1957, nos. 260, 319, 529, 535). These individuals are shadowy figures
at best: one, the Myron "of Thebes" whose signatures graced a dedication at Pergamon
(along with Praxiteles' and Xenokrates': Pergamon, 8.1, nos. 135-140) and another
found in Rome may well be a Hellenistic fiction perpetuated by locals charged
with furnishing new bases for war-booty, for Eleutherai was disputed between Athens
and Boeotia. Certainly, the epigrams describing the Ladas are by no means incompatible
with early classical experimentation:
Just as you were in life, Ladas, flying before wind-footed Thymos, touching the
ground with the tips of your toes, So did Myron cast you in bronze, on all of
your body Stamping your expectation of an Olympian crown.(Anthologia Palatina
16.54)
On the other hand, Pliny's attribution of a marble "Drunken old Woman"
at Smyrna (N.H. 36.32) has been universally rejected, not least because its most
unclassical theme recurs in a copy of a work of advanced Hellenistic date, in
Rome (Munich 437; Bieber 1961b, 81; Laubscher 1982, 118-21; Stewart 1990, figs.
753-54). To connect this with the Myron of Athens who worked on Delos ca. 140
(Marcade 1957, 57) is tempting but purely arbitrary.
Many have pondered over Myron's signal contribution to Greek sculpture; yet one
must remember that in antiquity, though his statues of men were justly renowned
(Laterculi
Alexandrini 7.3-9), his most famous work was not the Diskobolos but his cow
(no. 20), whose realism inspired countless epigrams (Overbeck 1868/1959, nos.
550-591, etc.), mostly vacuous in the extreme. His son Lykios carried on his work,
also gaining major commissions at Olympia and Athens.
(Select bibliography: in the URL below)
This extract is from: Andrew Stewart, One Hundred Greek Sculptors: Their Careers and Extant Works. Cited August 2004 from Perseus Project URL below, which contains extracts from the ancient literature, bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
The strength and malleability of bronze allowed innovative sculptors like the Athenian Myron and Polyclitus of Argos to push the development of the free-standing statue to its physical limits. Myron, for example, sculpted a discus thrower crouched at the top of his backswing, a pose far from the relaxed and serene symmetry of early archaic statuary. The figure not only assumes an asymmetrical pose but also seems to burst with the tension of the athlete's effort. Polyclitus' renowned statue of a walking man carrying a spear is posed to give a different impression from every angle of viewing. The feeling of motion it conveys is palpable. The same is true of the famous statue by an unknown sculptor of a female (perhaps the goddess of love Aphrodite) adjusting her diaphanous robe with one upraised arm. The message these statues conveyed to their ancient audience was one of energy, motion, and asymmetry in delicate balance. Archaic statues impressed a viewer with their appearance of stability; not even a hard shove looked likely to budge them. Free-standing statues of the classical period, by contrast, showed greater range in a variety of poses and impressions. The spirited movement of some of these statues suggests the energy of the times but also the possibility of change and instability.
Myron was a Greek sculptor of the middle of the 5th century BC. He
was born at Eleutherae on the borders of Boeotia
and Attica.
He worked almost exclusively in bronze: and though he made some statues
of gods and heroes, his fame rested principally upon his representations of athletes,
in which he made a revolution, by introducing greater boldness of pose and a more
perfect rhythm. His most famous works according to Pliny were a cow, Ladas the
runner, who fell dead at the moment of victory, and a discus thrower. We are fortunate
in possessing several copies of the discobolus, of which the best is in the Massimi
palace at Rome. The athlete
is represented at the moment when he has swung back the discus with the full stretch
of his arm, and is about to hurl it with the full weight of his body.
The ancient critics say of Myron that, while he succeeded admirably
in giving life and motion to his figures, he did not succeed in rendering the
emotions of the mind. This agrees with the extant evidence, in a certain degree,
though not perfectly. The bodies of his men are of far greater excellence than
the heads. The face of the Marsyas is almost a mask; but from the attitude we
gain a vivid impression of the passions which sway him. The face of the discus-thrower
is calm and unruffled; but all the muscles of his body are concentrated in an
effort.
A recently discovered papyrus from Egypt
informs us that Myron made statues of the athlete Timanthes, victorious at Olympia
in 456 BC, and of Lycinus, victorious in 448 and 444. This helps us to fix his
date. He was a somewhat older contemporary of Pheidias and Polyclitus.
This extract is cited July 2003 from the Malaspina Great Books URL below, which contains image.
Myron (Muron), one of the most celebrated of the Greek statuaries, and also a
sculptor and engraver, was born at Eleutherae, in Boeotia, about B. C. 480. (Plin.
H. N. xxxiv. 8. s. 19.3) Pausanias calls him an Athenian, because Eleutherae had
been admitted to the Athenian franchise. He was the disciple of Ageladas, the
fellow-disciple of Polycleitus, and a younger contemporary of Phi dias. Pliny
gives for the time when he flourished the 87th Olympiad, or B. C. 431, the time
of the beginning of the Peloponnesian war. (H. N. xxxiv. 8. s. 19.)
The chief characteristic of Myron seems to have been his power of
expressing a great variety of forms. Not content with the human figure in its
most difficult and momentary attitudes, he directed his art towards various other
animals, and he seems to have been the first great artist who did so. To this
characteristic Pliny no doubt refers, when he says, Primus hic nmultiplicasse
veritatem videtur, numerosior quam Polycletus (l. c.3). To this love of variety
he seems in some degree to have sacrificed accuracy of proportion and intellectual
expression. (Plin. l. c.; comp. Cic. Brut. 18.) Neither did he pay much attention
to minute details, distinct from the general effect, such as the hair, in which
he seems to have followed, almost closely, the ancient conventional forms.
Quinctilian (xii. 10) speaks of his works as softer than those of
Callon, Hegesias, and Calamis. The author of the Rhetorica ad Herennium (iv. 6)
speaks of his heads as especially admirable.
Myron's great works were nearly all in bronze, of which he used the
variety called Delian, while Polycleitus preferred the Aeginetan. (Plin. H. N.
xxxiv. 2. s. 5; Dict. of Antiq. s. v. ues.)
The most celebrated of his statues were his Discobolus and his Cow.
The encomiums lavished by various ancient writers on the latter work might surprise
us if we did not remember how much more admiration is excited in a certain stage
of taste by the accurate imitation of an object out of the usual range of high
art, than by the most beautiful ideal representation of men or gods; and there
can be no doubt that it was almost a perfect work of its kind. Still the novelty
of the subject was undoubtedly its great charm, which caused it to be placed at
the head of Myron's works, and celebrated in many popular verses. Pliny says of
it: " Myronem bucula maxime nobilitavit, celebratis versibus laudata." The Greek
Anthology contains no less than thirty-six epigrams upon it, which, with other
passages in its praise, are collected by Sontag in the Unterhaltungen fur Freunde
der alten Literatur, pp. 100-119. Perhaps the best, at least the most expressive
of the kind of admiration it excited, is the following epigram, which is one out
of several epigrams on Myron's Cow by Ausonius (Epig. 58.):--
"Bucula sum, caelo gentoris facta Myronis Aerea;
nec factam me puto, sed genitam.
Sic me taurus init: sic proxinma bucula mugit :
Sic vitulus sitiens ubera nostra petit.
Miraris, quod fallo gregem? Greis ipse magister
Inter pascentes me numerare solet.'
These epigrams give us some of the details of the figure. The cow was represented
as lowing and the statue was placed on a marble base, in the centre of the largest
open place in Athens, where it still stood in the time of Cicero (Cic. in Verr.
iv. 60). In the time of Pausanias it was no longer there; it must have been removed
to Rome, where it was still to be seen in the temple of Peace, in the time of
Procopius (Bell. Goth. iv. 21).
A work of higher art, and far more interesting to us, was his Discobolus,
of which there are several marble copies in existence. It is true that we cannot
prove by testimony that any of these alleged copies were really taken from Myron's
work, or from imitations of it; but the resemblance between them, the fame of
the original, and the well-known frequency of the practice of making such marble
copies of celebrated bronzes, all concur to put the question beyond reasonable
doubt. Of these copies we have the good fortune to possess one, in the Townley
Gallery of the British Museum, which was found in the grounds of Hadrian's Tiburtine
Villa, in 1791: another, found on the Esquiline in 1782, is in the Villa Massimi
at Rome: a third, found in Hadrian's Villa, in 1793, is in the Vatican Museum;
a fourth, restored as a gladiator, is in the Capitoline Museum. To these may,
in all probability, be added (5) a torso, restored as one of the sons of Niobe,
in the gallery at Florence; (6) the torso of an Endymion in the same gallery;
(7) a figure restored as a Diomed, and (8) a bronze in the gallery at Munich (Muller,
in the Amalthea, vol. iii. p. 243). The original statue is mentioned by Quinctilian
and Lucian. The former dilates upon the novelty and difficulty of its attitude,
and the triumph of the artist in representing such an attitude, even though the
work may not be in all respects accurate (ii. 13). Lucian gives a much more exact
description: -Mon ton diskeuonta, en d ego, pheis, ton epikeknphota kata to chema
tes apheseos, apestrammenon eis to diskophoron, erema oklazonta doi heteroi, eoikota
xunastesomenoi meta tes boles ; ouk ekeinon, n d hos, epei kai Muronos ergon en
kai touto estin, ho diskthbolos dn legeis. We have given the passage at length
in order to make manifest the absurdity of supposing that the figure was not in
the action of throwing the quoit, but merely stretching back the hand to receive
the quoit from some imaginary attendant who held it (ton diskophoron). The real
meaning is that the head was turned round backwards towards the hand which held
the quoit. The two most perfect copies, the Townley and the Massimi, agree with
Lucian's description, except that the former has the head in quite a different
position, bending down forwards. Barry preferred this position; but the attitude
described by Lucian, and seen in the Massimi statue, gives a better balance to
the figure. There is, also, great reason to doubt whether the head of the Townley
statue really belongs to it. On the whole, the Massimi copy is the best of all,
and probably the most faithful to the original.
Of Myron's other works Pliny (xxxiv. 8. s. 19.3) enumerates the following
: a dog; Perseus, which Pausanias saw in the Acropolis at Athens (i. 23.8); sea-monsters
(pristas, see Bottiger, inf. cit.); a satyr admiring a double flute and Minerva,
probably a group descriptive of the story of Marsyas; Delphic pentathletes; pancratiasts;
a Hercules, which, in Pliny's time, was in the temple of Pompey, by the Circus
Maximus; and an Apollo, which was taken away from the Ephesians by M. Antonius,
and restored to them by Augustus, in obedience to an admonition in a dream. The
words in the passage of Pliny, fecisse et cicadae monumentum ac locustae carminibus
suis Erinna siynifieat, are a gross blunder, which Pliny made by mistaking the
name of the poetess Myro in an epigram by Anyte (or Erinna, Anth. Pal. vii. 190)
for that of the sculptor Myron.
In addition to Pliny's account, the following works of Myron are mentioned
by other writers: Colossal statues of Zeus, Hera, and Heracles, at Samos, the
three statues on one base. They were removed by M. Antonius, but restored by Augustus,
except the Zeus, which he placed on the Capitol and built a shrine for it (Strab.
xiv.). A Dionysius in Helicon, dedicated by Sulla (Paus. ix. 30.1). A Hercules,
which Verres took from Heius the Mamertine (Cic. Verr. iv. 3). A bronze Apollo,
with the name of the artist worked into the thigh, in minute silver letters, dedicated
in the shrine of Aesculapius at Agrigentum by P. Scipio, and taken away by Verres
(Cic. Verr. iv. 43). A wooden statue of Hecate, in Aegina. (Paus. ii. 20.2). Several
statues of athletes (See Sillig, s. v.). Lastly, a striking indication how far
Myron's love of variety led him beyond the true limits of art, a drunken old woman,
in marble, at Smyrna, which of course, according to Pliny, was inprimis inclyta
(Plin. H. N. xxxvi. 5. s. 4). His Cow was not his only celebrated work of the
kind: there were four oxen, which Augustus dedicated in the portico of the temple
of Apollo on the Palatine, B. C. 28 (Propert. ii. 23. 7); and a calf carrying
Victory, derided by Tatian.
He was also an engraver in metals: a celebrated patera of his is mentioned
by Martial (vi. 92).
Nothing is known of Myron's life except that, according to Petronius (88), he
died in great poverty. He had a son, Lyclus, who was a distinguished artist.
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited July 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
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