# Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology/Cephisodotus 2.

​CEPHISO′DOTUS. 1. A celebrated Athenian sculptor, whose sister was the first wife of Phocion. (Plut. Phoc. 19.) He is assigned by Pliny (xxxiv. 8. s. 19. §1) to the 102nd Olympiad (B.C. 372), an epoch chosen probably by his authorities because the general peace recommended by the Persian king was then adopted by all the Greek states except Thebes, which began to aspire to the first station in Greece. (Heyne, Antiq. Aufs. i. p. 208.) Cephisodotus belonged to that younger school of Attic artists, who had abandoned the stern and majestic beauty of Phidias and adopted a more animated and graceful style. It is difficult to distinguish him from a younger Cephisodotus, whom Sillig (p. 144), without the slightest reason, considers to have been more celebrated. But some works are expressly ascribed to the elder, others are probably his, and all prove him to have been a worthy contemporary of Praxiteles. Most of his works which are known to us were occasioned by public events, or at least dedicated in temples. This was the case with a group which, in company with Xenophon of Athens, he executed in Pentelian marble for the temple of Zeus Soter at Megalopolis, consisting of a sitting statue of Zeus Soter, with Artemis Soteira on one side and the town of Megalopolis on the other. (Paus. viii. 30. §5.) Now, as it is evident that the inhabitants of that town would erect a temple to the preserver of their new-built city immediately after its foundation, Cephisodotus most likely finished his work not long after Ol. 102. 2. (B.C. 371.) It seems that at the same time, after the congress of Sparta, B.C. 371, he executed for the Athenians a statue of Peace, holding Plutus the god of riches in her arms. (Paus. i. 8. §2, ix. 16. §2.) We ascribe this work to the elder Cephisodotus, although a statue of Enyo is mentioned as a work of Praxiteles' sons, because after Ol. 120 we know of no peace which the Athenians might boast of, and because in the latter passage Pausanias speaks of the plan of Cephisodotus as equally good with the work of his contemporary and companion Xenophon, which in the younger Cephisodotus would have been only an imitation. The most numerous group of his workmanship were the nine Muses on mount Helicon, and three of another group there, completed by Strongylion and Olympiosthenes. (Paus. ix. 30. §1.) They were probably the works of the elder artist, because Strongylion seems to have been a contemporary of Praxiteles, not of his sons. (Comp. Sillig. p. 432.)
Pliny mentions two other statues of Cephisodotus (xxxiv. 8. s. 19. §27), one a Mercury nursing the infant Bacchus, that is to say, holding him in his arms in order to entrust him to the care of the Nymphs, a subject also known by Praxiteles' statue (Paus. ix. 39. §3), and by some basso-relievos, and an unknown orator lifting his hand, which attitude of Hermes Logeos was adopted by his successors, for instance in the celebrated statue of Cleomenes in the Louvre, and in a colossus at Vienna. (Meyer's Note to Winckelmann, vii. 2, 26.) It is probable that the admirable statue of Athena and the altar of Zeus Soter in the Peiraeeus (Plin. xxxiv. 8. s. 19. §14) — perhaps the same which Demosthenes decorated after his return from exile, B.C. 323 (Plut. Dem. c. 27, Vit. X Orat. p. 846, d.) — were likewise his works, because they must have been erected soon after the restoration of the Peiraeeus by Conon, B.C. 393.
​2. The younger Cephisodotus, likewise of Athens, a son of the great Praxiteles, is mentioned by Pliny (xxxiv. 8. §19) with five other sculptors in bronze under the 120th Olympiad (B.C. 300), probably because the battle of Ipsus, B.C. 301, gave to the chronographers a convenient pause to enumerate the artists of distinction then alive; it is, therefore, not to be wondered at if we find Cephisodotus engaged before and probably after that time. Heir to the art of his father (Plin. xxxvi, 4. §6), and therefore always a sculptor in bronze and marble, never, as Sillig (p. 144) states, a painter, he was at first employed, together with his brother Timarchus, at Athens and Thebes in some works of importance. First, they executed wooden statues of the orator and statesman Lycurgus (who died B.C. 323), and of his three sons, Abron, Lycurgus, and Lycophron, which were probably ordered by the family of the Butadae, and dedicated in the temple of Erechtheus on the Acropolis, as well as the pictures on the walls placed there by Abron. (Paus. i. 26. §6; Plut. Vit. X Orat. p. 843.) Sillig confounds by a strange mistake the picture of Ismenias with the statues of Praxiteles' sons (πίναξ and εἰκόνες ξύλιναι). The marble basement of one of these statues has been discovered lately on the Acropolis, together with another pedestal dedicated by Cephisodotus and Timarchus to their uncle Theoxenides. (Ross, Kunstblatt, 1840, No. 12.) It is very likely that the artists performed their task so well, that the people, when they ordered a bronze statue to be erected to their benefactor, B.C. 307 (Psephism. ap. Plut. l. c. p. 852; Paus. i. 8. §2), committed it to them. The vicinity at least of the temple of Mars, where the sons of Praxiteles had wrought a statue of Enyo (Paus. l. c. §5), supports this supposition. Another work which they executed in common was the altar of the Cadmean Dionysus at Thebes (Paus. ix. 12. §3: βωμόν is the genuine reading, not the vulgate κάδμον), probably erected soon after the restoration of Thebes by Cassander, B.C. 315, in which the Athenians heartily concurred. This is the last work in which both artists are named.
The latter part of the life of Cephisodotus is quite unknown. Whether he remained at Athens or left the town after B.C. 303 in its disasters, for the brilliant courts of the successors of Alexander, or whether, for instance, as might be inferred from Pliny (xxxvi. 4. §6), he was employed at Pergamus, cannot be decided. It would seem, on account of Myros's portrait, that he had been at Alexandria at any rate. Of his statues of divinities four — Latona, Diana, Aesculapius, and Venus, were admired at Rome in various buildings. (Plin. l. c.) Cephisodotus was also distinguished in portrait-sculpture, especially of philosophers (Plin. xxxiv. 8. s. 19. §27), under which general term Pliny comprises perhaps all literary people. According to the common opinion of antiquarians (Sillig. l. c.; Meyer, Note to Winckelmann, l. c.; Hirt, Geschichte der bildenden Künste, p. 220), he portrayed likewise courtezans, for which they quote Tatian (advers. Graecos, c. 52, p. 114, ed. Worth.), and think probably of the well-known similar works of Praxiteles. But Tatian in that chapter does not speak of courtezans, but of poets and poetesses, whose endeavours were of no use to mankind; it is only in c. 53 that he speaks of dissipated men and women, and in c. 55 of all these idle people together. In fact the two ladies whom Cephisodotus is there stated to have represented, are very well known to us as poetesses, — Myro or Moero of Byzantium, mother of the tragic poet Homer (who flourished B.C. 284; see Suidas, s. v. Ὅμηρος), and Anyte. [Anyte.]
All the works of Cephisodotus are lost. One only, but one of the noblest, the Symplegma, praised by Pliny (xxxvi. 4. §6) and visible at his time at Pergamus, is considered by many antiquarians as still in existence in an imitation only, but a very good one, the celebrated group of two wrestling youths at Florence. (Gall. di Firenze Statue, iii. tavv. 121, 122.) Winckelmann seems to have changed his mind about its meaning, for in one place (Gesch. d. Kunst, ix. 2. 28) he refers it to the group of Niobe with which it was found, and in another (ix. 3. §19) he takes it to be a work either of Cephisodotus or of Heliodorus; and to the former artist it is ascribed by Maffei. (Collectan. Statuar. Antiq. tab. 29, p. 31; Meyer, in his Note to Winckelmann, Gesch. der bildenden Künste, vol. i. pp. 138, 304; Müller, Handb. d. Archäol. §126.4, §423.4, Denkmäler der alten Kunst, Heft, iii. 149.) Now this opinion is certainly more probable than the strange idea of Hirt (Gesch. d. bildend. Künste b. d. Alten. p. 187), that we see in the Florentine work an imitation of the wrestlers of Daedalus (Plin. xxxiv. 8. s. 19. §15), which were no group at all, but two isolated athletes. But still it is very far from being true. There is no doubt that the Florentine statues do not belong to the Niobids, although Wagner, in his able article respecting these master-works (Kunstblatt, 1830, No. 55), has tried to revive that old error of Winckelmann, and Krause (Gymnastik der Hellenen, vol. i. pp. 414, 540) admits it as possible. (Comp. Welcker, Rhein Museum, 1836, p. 264.) But they have nothing to do with the work of Cephisodotus, because Pliny's words point to a very different representation. He speaks of "digitis verius corpori, quam marmori impressis," and in the group of Florence there is no impression of fingers at all. This reason is advanced also by Zannoni (Gall. di Firenze, iii. p. 108, &c.), who, although he denies that Cephisodotus invented the group, persists in considering it as a combat between two athletes. The "alterum in terris symplegma nobile" (Plin. xxxvi. 4. §10) by Heliodorus shewed "Pana et Olympum luctantes." Now as there were but two famous symplegmata, one of which was certainly of an amorous description, that of Cephisodotus could not be a different one, but represented an amorous strife of two individuals. To this kind there belongs a group which is shewn by its frequent repetitions to have been one of the most celebrated of ancient art, namely, the beautiful though indecent contest of an old Satyr and a Hermaphrodite, of which two fine copies are in the Dresden museum, the print and description of which is contained in Böttiger's Archäologie und Kunst (p. 165, &c.). This seems to be the work of our artist, where the position of the hands in particular agrees perfectly with Pliny's description.[L. U.]
CEPHI′SOPHON (Κηφισοφῶν), a friend of Euripides, is said not only to have been the chief actor in his dramas, but also to have aided him with his advice in the composition of them. (Aristoph. Ran. 942, 1404, 1448, with the Scholia.) Traditionary scandal accuses him of an intrigue