It has seemed necessary, in the case of a statue of so much importance, to touch upon these learned perplexities; but let them not greatly trouble the reader or turn him aside from enjoying the superb qualities of the work.  One of the Aphrodites of Scopas or Praxiteles, if we had it in the original, would perhaps reveal to us a still diviner beauty.  As it is, this is the worthiest existing embodiment of the goddess of Love.  The ideal is chaste and noble, echoing the sentiment of the fourth century at its best; and the execution is worthy of a work which is in some sense a Greek original.

The Apollo of the Belvedere (Fig. 174), on the other hand, is only a copy of a bronze original.  The principal restorations are the left hand and the right fore-arm and hand.  The most natural explanation of the god’s attitude is that he held a bow in his left hand and has just let fly an arrow against some foe.  His figure is slender, according to the fashion which prevailed from the middle of the fourth century onward, and he moves over the ground with marvelous lightness.  His appearance has an effect of almost dandified elegance, and critics to-day cannot feel the reverent raptures which this statue used to evoke.  Yet still the Apollo of the Belvedere remains a radiant apparition.  An attempt has recently been made to promote the figure, or rather its original, to the middle of the fourth century.

As a specimen of the portrait-sculpture of the Hellenistic period I have selected the seated statue of Posidippus (Fig. 175), an Athenian dramatist of the so-called New Comedy, who flourished in the early part of the third century.  The preservation of the statue is extraordinary; there is nothing modern about it except the thumb of the left hand.  It produces strongly the impression of being an original work and also of being a speaking likeness.  It may have been modeled in the actual presence of the subject, but in that case the name on the front of the plinth was doubtless inscribed later, when the figure was removed from its pedestal and taken to Rome.  Posidippus is clean-shaven, according to the fashion that came in about the time of Alexander.  There is a companion statue of equal merit, which commonly goes by the name of Menander.  The two men are strongly contrasted with one another by the sculptor in features, expression, and bodily carriage.  Both statues show, as do many others of the period, how mistaken it would be to form our idea of the actual appearance of the Greeks from the purely ideal creations of Greek sculpture.

Besides real portraits, imaginary portraits of great excellence were produced in the Hellenistic period.  Fig. 176 is a good specimen of these.  Only the head is antique, and there are some restorations, including the nose.  This is one of a considerable number of heads which reproduce an ideal portrait of Homer, conceived as a blind old man.  The marks of age and blindness are rendered with great fidelity.  There is a variant type of this head which is much more suggestive of poetical inspiration.