Among other fine works in sculpture which are supposed to havo been produced in the earlier part of this period, may particularly be mentioned the statue known as the Germanieus of the Louvre. It doubtless is intended for a figure of a Homan : but it seems to be agreed that it cannot be a portrait of the prince whose name it bears, but is of an earlier date. On the peile.stal, immediately under the falling folds of the drapery, is a tortoise. As this animal was sacred to Mercury, the god of eloquence, Visconti conjectured that the statue might represent some distinguished Roman orator. A Greek inscription declares it to he the work of Cleomenes, the son of Cleomenes the Athenian ; a name distinguished among those who illustrated Greece during the prosperous times of sculpture. The names of Apollonius of Athens, and of Glycon, also an Athenian (tbe sculptors, according to the inscriptions on the works, of the celebrated Torso and of the (Farnese) Hercules), do not occur in Pausanias ; which has occasioned a doubt whether they had executed many works remaining in Greece in the time of that writer. They are thought to have lived in the century before our iera.
Julius Ciesar gratified his taste for the fine arts by collecting statues, gems, and similar objects. His patronage extended itself even to remote places, and he not only embellished Rome, but many cities of Gaul, Spain, Greece, and Asia Minor participated in the advantages of his good taste.
A great impulse was given to the encouragement of sculpture by Augustus. He caused all the finest works that could be procured to be collected, and he had them placed in the public places of Rome. He is also said to have removed the statues of illustrious men from the area of the Capitol to the Campus Martins. (Suet., ` 34.) The example of Augustus was imitated by the wealthy Romans, and no expense was spared in adding new and admired productions to the different collections of statues and paintings. Among the most liberal of the patrons of this period, Agrippa stands pre-eminent for the munificence with which he devoted his fortune to the embellishment of Rome. The Pantheon is a monument of the taste and princely liberality of a Roman citizen. Agrippa employed an Athenian sculptor, called Diogenes, to enrich this temple. Pliny particularly alludes to some Caryatides by him, as well as to some figures in the pediment or front ( foatigio); but these Pliny (`Ilist. Nat.,' xxxvi. 4) says produced lees effect, owing to the height at which theX were placed. It is recorded that Agrippa constructed some aqueducts, which he decorated with three hundred statues in bronze and marble. During the age of Augustus the names of many very distinguished artists occur. Among them, Vitruvius, the architect, Posidonius, a native of Ephesus, and the celebrated Dioscorides, the engraver of gems, may be particularly mentioned.
The good effect of the example of Augustus seems to have been long felt In Rome, though it does not appear that Tiberius contributed much to preserve or nourish a taste for art. A circumstance however
is said to have occurred during this latter reign which shows that the Romans were alive to the value of tine public works. Tiberius ad mired a statue representing an athlete anointing his limbo, by Lysippus, which stood in the baths of Agrippa—a place, it seems, of public resort. Desiring to have exclusive possession of this work, he had it removed to his own palace ; but the dissatisfaction of the people was so great, and their indignation at the emperor's depriving them of what they considered public property so violently expressed, that Tiberius, fearing a revolt, ordered the favourite statue to be replaced in its original situation.
Caligula had works of art brought to Rome from Greece, but it does not appear that he had any admiration of them as objects of beauty or as memorials of an enlightened people, but rather that he considered them as means of gratifying his personal vanity. He ordered the heads of the gods and of illustrious men to be struck off their statues, and his own to be substituted. This paltry ambition, which could be exercised at a cheap rate, accounts for the mutilation of many statues that have reached our times, and in which a totally different character will often be observed in the heads and other portions of the work. Caligula is rewrded as the first emperor who was guilty of this species of sacrilege ; but he appears to have been imitated by many of his successors. It is a curious fact that, notwithstanding the efforts so unworthily made by Caligula to make himself known to posterity, portraits or busts of this emperor are extremely rare. The reigns of Claudius and of .Neto at first, gave promise of encouragement to the arts ; the latter emperor required decoration for his Golden Palace, which he constructed on the Palatine Hill; and although the vast number of works that had already been procured from Greece would seem to have robbed that country of all its treasures, he procured no fewer than five hundred bronze statues from the temple of Apollo at Delphi. Two of the best works of ancient sculpture, the Apollo Belvedere and the so-called Fighting Gladiator, were found among the ruins of a villa or palace of Nero at Antium. Zenodorus the sculptor was employed by Nero to make a colossal statue of him, of bronze, a hundred and ten or a hundred and twenty feet high. ` Hist. Nat,' xxxiv. 18; Suet., 'her.,' 31.) Zenodorus was called to Rome from Cisalpinc Gaul, where he had executed a colossal statue of Mercury, a work which had occupied him ten years. Menodorus, an Athenian sculptor, lived at this time. Ilia statues of athletic, and subjects of that class, are mentioned in terms of commendation. It is probable that there were two artists of this name.