ABSTRACT
Denis Diderot One of the surest ways of raising a laugh during a lecture on classical sculpture is to recount some of the ancient anecdotes about statues and their makers. The source of amusement is invariably this: a naive accreditation of movement or feeling to patently immobile and emotionless objects of marble or bronze. So, of the statue of a heifer made by the early-fifth-century BC sculptor Myron which once stood on the Athenian Acropolis, one can quote a clutch of epigrams from The Greek Anthology: ‘I am Myron’s little heifer, set up on a base. Goad me, herdsman, and drive me off to the herd.’ ‘A calf died beside thy heifer, Myron, deceived into thinking that the bronze had milk inside.’ ‘In vain, bull, thou rushest up to this heifer, for it is lifeless. The sculptor of cows, Myron, deceived thee.’ ‘The lead and stone hold me fast, but otherwise, thanks to thee, sculptor Myron, I would be nibbling lotus and rushes.’
