We now reach a name of commanding importance, and one with which we are fortunately able to associate some definite ideas.  It is the name of Myron of Athens, who ranks among the six most illustrious sculptors of Greece.  It is worth remarking, as an illustration of the scantiness of our knowledge regarding the lives of Greek artists, that Myron’s name is not so much as mentioned in extant literature before the third century B.C.  Except for a precise, but certainly false, notice in Pliny, who represents him as flourishing in 420-416, our literary sources yield only vague indications as to his date.  These indications, such as they are, point to the “Transitional period.”  This inference is strengthened by the recent discovery on the Athenian Acropolis of a pair of pedestals inscribed with the name of Myron’s son and probably datable about 446.  Finally, the argument is clinched by the style of Myron’s most certainly identifiable work.

Pliny makes Myron the pupil of an influential Argive master, Ageladas, who belongs in the late archaic period.  Whether or not such a relation actually existed, the statement is useful as a reminder of the probability that Argos and Athens were artistically in touch with one another.  Beyond this, we get no direct testimony as to the circumstances of Myron’s life.  We can only infer that his genius was widely recognized in his lifetime, seeing that commissions came to him, not from Athens only, but also from other cities of Greece proper, as well as from distant Samos and Ephesus.  His chief material was bronze, and colossal figures of gold and ivory are also ascribed to him.  So far as we know, he did not work in marble at all.  His range of subjects included divinities, heroes, men, and animals.  Of no work of his do we hear so often or in terms of such high praise as of a certain figure of a cow, which stood on or near the Athenian Acropolis.  A large number of athlete statues from his hand were to be seen at Olympia, Delphi, and perhaps elsewhere, and this side of his activity was certainly an important one.  Perhaps it is a mere accident that we hear less of his statues of divinities and heroes.

The starting point in any study of Myron must be his Discobolus (Discus-thrower).  Fig. 104 reproduces the best copy.  This statue was found in Rome in 1781, and is in an unusually good state of preservation.  The head has never been broken from the body; the right arm has been broken off, but is substantially antique; and the only considerable restoration is the right leg from the knee to the ankle.  The two other most important copies were found together in 1791 on the site of Hadrian’s villa at Tibur (Tivoli).  One of these is now in the British Museum, the other in the Vatican; neither has its original head.  A fourth copy of the body, a good deal disguised by “restoration,” exists in the Museum of the Capitol in Rome.  There are also other copies of the head besides the one on the Lancellotti statue.