Apollodorus was a sculptor of ancient Greece, who made statues in bronze. He was so fastidious that he often broke his works in pieces after they were finished, and hence he obtained the surname of "the madman", in which character he was represented by the sculptor Silanion. [1] Assuming from this that the two artists were contemporary, Apollodorus flourished about 324 BCE.
A little further on, Pliny names an Apollodorus among the artists who had made bronze statues of philosophers. [2]
On the base of the Venus de' Medici, Apollodorus is mentioned as the father of the sculptor Cleomenes. Classicist Friedrich Thiersch suggests that he may have been the same person as the subject of this article, for that the statue of the latter by Silanion may have been made from tradition at any time after his death. [3] Apollodorus, however, is so common a Greek name that no such conclusion can be drawn from the mere mention of it.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : Smith, William (1870). "Apollodorus". In Smith, William (ed.). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology . Vol. 1. p. 236.
In Greek mythology, Daedalus was a skillful architect and craftsman, seen as a symbol of wisdom, knowledge and power. He is the father of Icarus, the uncle of Perdix, and possibly also the father of Iapyx. Among his most famous creations are the wooden cow for Pasiphaë, the Labyrinth for King Minos of Crete which imprisoned the Minotaur, and wings that he and his son Icarus used to attempt to escape Crete. It was during this escape that Icarus did not heed his father's warnings and flew too close to the sun; the wax holding his wings together melted and Icarus fell to his death.
The Colossus of Rhodes was a statue of the Greek sun god Helios, erected in the city of Rhodes, on the Greek island of the same name, by Chares of Lindos in 280 BC. One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, it was constructed to celebrate the successful defence of Rhodes city against an attack by Demetrius I of Macedon, who had besieged it for a year with a large army and navy.
The Natural History is a Latin work by Pliny the Elder. The largest single work to have survived from the Roman Empire to the modern day, the Natural History compiles information gleaned from other ancient authors. Despite the work's title, its subject area is not limited to what is today understood by natural history; Pliny himself defines his scope as "the natural world, or life". It is encyclopedic in scope, but its structure is not like that of a modern encyclopedia. It is the only work by Pliny to have survived, and the last that he published. He published the first 10 books in AD 77, but had not made a final revision of the remainder at the time of his death during the AD 79 eruption of Vesuvius. The rest was published posthumously by Pliny's nephew, Pliny the Younger.
Argius was a sculptor of ancient Greece who was the disciple of Polykleitos, and therefore flourished about 388 BCE.
Ageladas or Hagelaedas was a celebrated Greek (Argive) sculptor, who flourished in the latter part of the 6th and the early part of the 5th century BC.
In Greek mythology, Thamyris was a Thracian singer. He is notable in Greek mythology for reportedly being a lover of Hyacinth and thus to have been the first male to have loved another male, but when his songs failed to win his love from the god Apollo, he challenged the Nine Muses to a competition and lost.
Polykleitos was an ancient Greek sculptor, active in the 5th century BCE. Alongside the Athenian sculptors Pheidias, Myron and Praxiteles, he is considered as one of the most important sculptors of classical antiquity. The 4th century BCE catalogue attributed to Xenocrates, which was Pliny's guide in matters of art, ranked him between Pheidias and Myron. He is particularly known for his lost treatise, the Canon of Polykleitos, which set out his mathematical basis of an idealised male body shape.
The statue of Laocoön and His Sons, also called the Laocoön Group, has been one of the most famous ancient sculptures since it was excavated in Rome in 1506 and put on public display in the Vatican Museums, where it remains today. The statue is very likely the same one that was praised in the highest terms by Pliny the Elder, the main Roman writer on art, who attributed it to Greek sculptors but did not say when it was created. The figures in the statue are nearly life-sized, with the entire group measuring just over 2 m in height. The sculpture depicts the Trojan priest Laocoön and his sons Antiphantes and Thymbraeus being attacked by sea serpents.
Evenor is the name of a character from the myth of Atlantis and of several historical figures.
Phradmon was a little-known sculptor from Argos, whom Pliny places as the contemporary of Polykleitos, Myron, Pythagoras, Scopas, and Perelius, at Olympiad 90 in 420 BCE, in giving an anecdotal description of a competition for a Wounded Amazon for the temple of Artemis at Ephesus: in Pliny's anecdote, the fifth place was won by Phradmon, whom Pliny admits was younger than any of the four who were preferred to him. Trusting in Pliny's anecdote, scholars have often hopefully assigned the "Lansdowne" type of Wounded Amazon to Phradmon.
Pythagoras of Samos or Pythagoras of Rhegion was an Ancient Greek sculptor from Samos. Pliny the Elder describes two different sculptors who bore a remarkable personal likeness to each other. In the nineteenth century Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, Philip Smith accepted the opinion of Karl Julius Sillig (1801–1855) that Pliny's date of Olympiad 87 ought to be referred to a Pythagoras of Samos but not a Pythagoras of Rhegium; other writers considered it possible Pythagoras of Samos lived closer to the beginning of the 5th century BC. Modern writers consider it certain these two were the same artist, and that this Pythagoras was one of the Samian exiles who moved to Zankle at the beginning of the 5th century BC and came under the power of the tyrant Anaxilas in Rhegium. While a Samian by birth, he was a pupil of Clearchus of Rhegium.
Alexis was an ancient Greek sculptor mentioned by Pliny as one of the pupils of Polykleitos. Pausanias mentions an artist of the same name, a native of Sicyon, and father of the sculptor Cantharus. It cannot be satisfactorily settled whether these are the same, or different persons. Pliny's account implies that he had the elder Polykleitos in mind, in which case Alexis could not have flourished later than Olympiad 95 in 400 BC, whereas Eutychides, under whom Cantharus studied, flourished about Olympiad 120 in 300. If the two were identical, as German classicist Friedrich Thiersch thinks, we must suppose either that Pliny made a mistake, and that Alexis studied instead under Polykleitos the Younger, or else that Eutychides, whose date is given by Pliny, was not the artist under whom Cantharus studied.
Androbulus was a sculptor in classical antiquity. He was mentioned by Pliny the Elder as having been celebrated as a maker of statues of philosophers.
Antigonus was a sculptor of ancient Greece, and an eminent writer upon his art, was one of the artists who represented the battles of Attalus I and Eumenes against the Gauls. He lived, therefore, about 239 BCE, when Attalus I, king of Pergamus, conquered the Gauls. According to Pliny, Antigonus sculpted statues of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, and a "Perixyomenos" – probably a sculpture of a man scraping himself. He may have been the same Antigonus who wrote on the art of painting and was mentioned by Diogenes Laërtius.
Apellas was a sculptor of ancient Greece who made, in bronze, statues of worshipping females (ad orantes feminas. He made the statue of Cynisca, who conquered in the chariot race at Olympia. Cynisca was sister to Agesilaus II, king of Sparta, who died at the age of 84, in 362 BCE. Therefore, the victory of Cynisca, and the time when Apellas flourished, may be placed about 400. His name indicates his Doric origin.
Aristeides was a sculptor of ancient Greece who was celebrated for his statues of four-horsed and two-horsed chariots. Since he was the disciple of Polykleitos the Younger, he must have flourished around 388 BCE. Perhaps he was the same person as the Aristeides who made some improvements in the goals of the Olympic stadium.
Aristoclides was a painter mentioned by Pliny the Elder as one of those who deserved to be ranked next to the "masters" in their art. His age and country are unknown. He painted the temple of Apollo at Delphi. It is said that he was famous before the public of Athens, and attracted many great artists to himself.
Deinomenes was a sculptor listed by Pliny the Elder as one of the most celebrated brass sculptors and dates him as flourishing in the 95th Olympiad, B. C. 400. Pliny credits him with the creation of two sculptures: the first is of Protesilaus - a figure from the Iliad believed to be the first Greek to die at Troy. The second was of a wrestler named Pythodemus. He was also responsible for two statues located in the Acropolis in the lifetime of Pausanias. The statues are of Io and Callisto.
Aristonidas was a sculptor of ancient Greece, one of whose productions is mentioned by Pliny the Elder as extant at Thebes in his time. This work was a statue of Athamas – the mythological Boeotian king who murdered his own son – in which bronze and iron had been mixed together, that the rust of the latter, showing through the brightness of the bronze, might have the appearance of a blush, and so might indicate the remorse of Athamas.