POLYCLEITUS, the name of two Greek sculptors of the school of Argos ; the first belonging to the fifth century, the sec ond to the early part of the fourth.
I. The elder and best known Polycleitus was a contemporary of Pheidias, and in the opinion of the Greeks his equal. Whether he was actually a pupil of Ageladas is disputed ; at any rate he carried on the tradition. He made a figure of an Amazon for Ephesus which was regarded as superior to the Amazon of Pheidias made at the same time; and his colossal Hera of gold and ivory which stood in the temple near Argos was considered as worthy to rank with the Zeus of Pheidias. It would be hard for a modern critic to rate Polycleitus so high : the reason is that balance, rhythm and the minute perfection of bodily form, which were the great merits of this sculptor, do not appeal to us as they did to the Greeks of the 5th century. He worked mainly in bronze.
As regards his chronology we have data in a papyrus published by Grenfell and Hunt containing lists of athletic victors. From this it appears that he made a statue of Cyniscus, a victorious athlete of 464 or 46o B.C., of Pythocles (452) and Aristion (452). He thus can scarcely have been born as late as 48o B.C. His statue of Hera is dated by Pliny to 420 B.C. His artistic activity must thus have been long and prolific. His two great statues, ideal ath letic types rather than portraits, are the Diadumonos and the Doryphorus, copies of both of which are common. The Dory phorus was known as the Canon, because it embodied the correct proportions of the ideal male form. The completest copy is from Pompeii, and there is a copy of the Diadumonos from Vaison in the British Museum. Both are late Roman copies, unpleasantly heavy and square and in marble, thus giving little idea of the finish of Polycleitus' work in bronze. This has been enforced by the dis covery at Delos, by the French excavators, of a diadumenus of far more pleasing type and greater finish, which also goes back to Polycleitus. The excavations at Olympia have widened our knowl
edge of his early work. Among the bases of statues found on that site were three signed by Polycleitus, still bearing on their surface the marks of attachment of the feet of the statues. This at once gives us their pose ; and following up the clue, A. Furt wangler has identified several extant statues as copies of figures of boy athletes at Olympia set up by Polycleitus. Among these the Westmacott athlete in the British Museum is conspicuous.
The Amazon of Polycleitus survives in several copies, among the best of which is one in the British Museum. The masterpiece of Polycleitus, his Hera of gold and ivory, has of course totally disappeared. The coins of Argos give us only the general type. Waldstein has identified the head of a girl in the British Museum as belonging to this type.
The want of variety in the works of Polycleitus was brought as a reproach against him by ancient critics. Varro says that his statues were square and almost of one pattern. Except for the statue of Hera, which was the work of his old age, he produced scarcely any notable statue of a deity. His field was narrowly limited ; but in that field he was unsurpassed.
2. The younger Polycleitus was of the same family as the elder, and the works of the two are not easily to be distinguished. Some existing bases, however, bearing the name are inscribed in characters of the 4th century, at which time the elder sculptor cannot have been alive.
See A. Furtwangler, Masterpieces of Greek Sculpture (Eng. trans. 1895) ; P. Paris, Polyclete (Paris, 1895) ; Mahler, Polyklit and seine Schule (Athens, 1902).