3
POLYSTRATUS You have but to ask.
4
LYCINUS Were you ever in Cnidus, Polystratus?
4
POLYSTRATUS Yes indeed!
4
LYCINUS Then you certainly saw the Aphrodite there?
4
POLYSTRATUS Yes, by Zeus! The fairest of the creations of Praxiteles.Furtwängler, Greek and Roman Sculpture, pl. xxv, opposite p. 91. LYCINUS Well, have you also heard the story that the natives tell about it—that someone fell in love with the statue, was left behind unnoticed in the temple, and embraced it to the best of his endeavours? But no matter about that.The story, which can be traced back to Posidonius, is told at greater length in the Amores. _ Since you have seen her, as you say, tell me whether you have also seen the Aphrodite in the Gardens, at Athens, by Alcamenes?Furtwängler’s suggestion that the well-known “Venus Genetrix” is a copy of this work is generally accepted. The head is well reproduced in Mitchell, History of Ancient Sculpture, opposite p. 320. The Gardens lay outside the walls, on the bank of the Ilissos, opposite the Stadium. POLYSTRATUS Surely I should be the laziest man in all the world if I had neglected the most beautiful of the sculptures of Alcamenes.
4
LYCINUS One question, at all events, I shall not ask you, Polystratus—whether you have often gone up to the Acropolis to look at the Sosandra of Calamis?No copy of the Sosandra is known, nor is it clear whether she was a goddess or a woman. POLYSTRATUS I have often seen that, too.
4
LYCINUS So far, so good. But among the works of Phidias what did you praise most highly?
