A little item first brought to my notice by Winkelmann himself confirms
me in my opinion that the sculptors of the Laocoon lived at the time of
the emperors, or at least could not date from so early a period as he
assigns them. It is this:[181] “In Nettuno, the ancient Antium, Cardinal
Alexander Albani discovered in 1717 in a deep vault, which lay buried
under the sea, a vase of the grayish black marble now called _bigio_,
wherein the Laocoon was inlaid. Upon this vase is the following
inscription:—
ΑΘΑΝΟΔΩΡΟΣ ΑΓΗΣΑΝΔΡΟΥ
ΡΟΔΙΟΣ ΕΠΟΙΗΣΕ.
“Athanodorus of Rhodes, son of Agesander, made it.” We learn from this
inscription that father and son worked on the Laocoon; and probably
Apollodorus (Polydorus) was also a son of Agesander, for this
Athanodorus can be no other than the one mentioned by Pliny. The
inscription also proves that more than three works of art have been
found—the number stated by Pliny—on which the artists have set the word
“made,” in definite past time, ἐποίησε, _fecit_. Other artists, he says,
from modesty, made use of indefinite time, “was making,” ἐποίει,
_faciebat_.
Few will contradict Winkelmann in his conclusion that the Athanodorus of
this inscription can be no other than the Athenodorus whom Pliny
mentions as among the sculptors of the Laocoon. Athanodorus and
Athenodorus are entirely synonymous; for the Rhodians used the Doric
dialect. But the other conclusions which he draws from the inscription
require further comment.
The first, that Athenodorus was a son of Agesander, may pass. It is
highly probable, though by no means certain. Some of the old artists, we
know, called themselves after their teachers instead of taking their
fathers’ names. What Pliny says of the brothers Apollonius and Tauriscus
cannot well be explained in any other way.[182]
But shall we say that this inscription contradicts the statement of
Pliny that there were only three works of art to which their masters had
set their names in definite past time (ἐποίησε instead of ἐποίει)? This
inscription! What need of this to teach us what we might have learned
long ago from a multitude of others? On the statue of Germanicus was
there not the inscription Κλεομένης—ἐποίησε, Cleomenes made? on the
so-called Apotheosis of Homer, Ἀρχέλαος ἐποίησε, Archelaus made? on the
well-known vase at Gaeta, Σαλπίων ἐποίησε, Salpion made? nor are other
instances wanting.[183]
Winkelmann may answer: “No one knows that better than I. So much the
worse for Pliny. His statement has been so much the oftener
contradicted, and is so much the more surely refuted.”
By no means. How if Winkelmann has made Pliny say more than he meant to
say? How if these examples contradict, not Pliny’s statement, but only
something which Winkelmann supposes him to have stated? And this is
actually the case. I must quote the whole passage. Pliny, in the
dedication of his work to Titus, speaks with the modesty of a man who
knows better than any one else how far what he has accomplished falls
short of perfection. He finds a noteworthy example of such modesty among
the Greeks, on the ambitious and boastful titles of whose books
(inscriptiones, propter quas vadimonium deseri possit) he dwells at some
length, and then says:[184]
Et ne in totum videar Græcos insectari, ex illis nos velim intelligi
pingendi fingendique conditoribus, quos in libellis his invenies,
absoluta opera, et illa quoque quæ mirando non satiamur, pendenti
titulo inscripsisse: ut APELLES FACIEBAT, aut POLYCLETUS: tanquam
inchoata semper arte et imperfecta: ut contra judiciorum varietates
superesset artifici regressus ad veniam, velut emendaturo quidquid
desideraretur, si non esset interceptus. Quare plenum verecundiæ illud
est, quod omnia opera tanquam novissima inscripsere, et tanquam
singulis fato adempti. Tria non amplius, ut opinor, absolute traduntur
inscripta, ILLE FECIT, quæ suis locis reddam: quo apparuit, summam
artis securitatem auctori placuisse, et ob id magna invidia fuere
omnia ea.
I desire to call particular attention to the words of Pliny, “pingendi
fingendique conditoribus” (the creators of the imitative arts). Pliny
does not say that it was the habit of all artists of every date to affix
their names to their works in indefinite past time. He says explicitly
that only the first of the old masters—those creators of the imitative
arts, Apelles, Polycletus, and their contemporaries—possessed this wise
modesty, and, by his mention of these alone, he gives plainly to be
understood, though he does not actually say it in words, that their
successors, particularly those of a late date, expressed themselves with
greater assurance.
With this interpretation, which is the only true one, we may fully
accept the inscription from the hand of one of the three sculptors of
the Laocoon without impugning the truth of what Pliny says, that but
three works existed whereon their creators had cut the inscription in
the finished past time; only three, that is, among all the older works,
of the time of Apelles, Polycletus, Nicias, and Lysippus. But then we
cannot accept the conclusion that Athenodorus and his assistants were
contemporaries of Apelles and Lysippus, as Winkelmann would make them.
We should reason thus. If it be true that among the works of the old
masters, Apelles, Polycletus, and others of that class, there were but
three whose inscriptions stood in definite past time, and if it be
further true that Pliny has mentioned these three by name,[185] then
Athenodorus, who had made neither of these three works, and who
nevertheless employs the definite past time in his inscriptions, cannot
belong among those old masters; he cannot be a contemporary of Apelles
and Lysippus, but must have a later date assigned him.
In short, we may, I think, take it as a safe criterion that all artists
who employed the ἐποίησε, the definite past tense, flourished long after
the time of Alexander the Great, either under the empire or shortly
before. Of Cleomenes this is unquestionably true; highly probable of
Archelaus; and of Salpion the contrary, at least, cannot be proved. So
also of the rest, not excepting Athenodorus.
Let Winkelmann himself decide. But I protest beforehand against the
converse of the proposition. If all who employed the ἐποίησε belong
among the later artists, not all who have used the ἐποίει are to be
reckoned among the earliest. Some of the more recent artists also may
have really possessed this becoming modesty, and by others it may have
been assumed.