Note 506 — Chapter II · GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF VICTOR STATUES AT OLYMPIA.

Klein, quoted by Jex-Blake, p. 14, footnote to line 7, believes Pliny’s statement apocryphal, an idea escaping all scholars except, perhaps, Bluemner in his commentary on the Laokoön (p. 503). Evidently Pliny, or his source, is explaining the discrepancy between ideal and portrait statues as the result of an improbable rule, since the ancients applied little historical criticism to art, and hence did not distinguish between works representing types and those representing individuals. Dio Chrysostom, in his treatise Περὶ κάλλους (Orat., XXI, 1, p. 501 R), tries to explain the difference between early and late statues on the ground of physical degeneration in the latter.