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His great shoulders looked more than ever like those of the stone Doryphorus, who stands in his perfect, reposeful strength in the Louvre, and had often made her wonder if such men died forever with the youth of Greece. "How sweet the corn smells at night," said Margaret nervously. "Yes, like the flowers that grow in paradise, I think."
The attitude of the figure, especially the legs, is very like that of the Doryphorus, and the face is thought by many to show a family likeness to his. There are three other types of Amazon which seem to be connected with this one, but the mutual relations of the four types are too perplexing to be here discussed. It is a welcome change to turn from copies to originals.
After he had vented his furious passion upon them, he finished the play in the embraces of his freedman Doryphorus , to whom he was married in the same way that Sporus had been married to himself; imitating the cries and shrieks of young virgins, when they are ravished.
The figure is rather heavily built, firm, powerful, and yet graceful, though hardly light enough to justify the praise of perfection which has been lavished upon it. A companion statue to the Doryphorus of Polycleitos was his statue of the Diadumenos, or boy binding his head with a fillet. A supposed copy of this exists in the British Museum.
In truth, Argive and Attic art had so acted and reacted upon one another that it is small wonder if their productions are in some cases indistinguishable by us. The standing position, while not identical with that of the Doryphorus, the Diadumenos, and the wounded Amazon, is strikingly similar, as is also the form of the head.
He disgraced the imperial dignity by descending upon the stage, which was always infamous; he instituted demoralizing games; he was utterly insensible to national sentiments and feelings; he exceeded all his predecessors in extravagance and follies; he was suspected of poisoning Burrhus, by whom he was advanced to power; he executed men of the highest rank, whose crime was their riches; he destroyed the members of the imperial family; he murdered Doryphorus and Pallas, because they were averse to his marriage with Poppæa; he drove his chariot in the Circus Maximus, pleased with the acclamations of two hundred thousand spectators; he gave banquets in which the utmost excesses of bacchanalian debauchery were openly displayed; he is said to have kindled the conflagration of his own capital; he levied oppressive taxes to build his golden palace, and support his varied extravagance; he even destroyed his tutor and minister, Seneca, that he might be free from his expostulations, and take possession of the vast fortune which this philosopher had accumulated in his service; and he finally kicked his wife so savagely that she died from the violence he inflicted.
It presents the same general characteristics as the Doryphorus, a well-modelled but thick-set figure standing in an attitude of repose. What Polycleitos did for the male form in these two statues he did for the female form in his Amazon, which, according to a doubtful story, was adjudged in competition superior to a work by Pheidias.
Yet the private life of Sixtus rendered the most monstrous stories plausible, while his public treatment of these men recalled to mind the partiality of Nero for Doryphorus. We may, however, dwell upon the principal features of his nepotism; for Sixtus was the first Pontiff who deliberately organized a system for pillaging the Church in order to exalt his family to principalities.
His symmetrical figure, which looks slender in comparison with the Doryphorus of Polyclitus, is athletic without exaggeration, and is modeled with faultless skill. The attitude, with the weight supported chiefly by the right leg and left arm, gives to the body a graceful curve which Praxiteles loved. It is the last stage in the long development of an easy standing pose.
Philostrati were again the order of the day, and as to the statues, I believe that I have got on the track of the Olympian Zeus, on which so many preliminary studies have already been made, and also on that of the Hera of Samos, the Doryphorus of Polycletes, and especially on that of the Cow of Myron and of the bull that carried Europa.
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