Note 1232 — Chapter VIII · Rome

There are the same two a priori possibilities about the Greek artists Gorgasus and Damophilus, said by Pliny (N.H. XXXV. 45) to have adorned the temple of Ceres in the Circus Maximus, which is said to have been dedicated in 494 B.C. In this case there is the further complication that the adornment may have been indefinitely later than the dedication. But there is no evidence that it was. Greek inscriptions on the temple recorded that the right side was the work of Demophilus, the left of Gorgasus. It is begging the question to say that these artists must be later than 390 B.C. because the inscriptions are mentioned by Pliny. Rayet (Mon. de l’Art Ant. I. p. 7 of chapter entitled “Louve en Bronze”) regards Pliny’s statement as confirming the extant archaeological evidence for Greek artistic influence on early republican Rome. This is going too far in the opposite direction: but Rayet’s view has no inherent impossibility. Nothing is said about restoration or reconstruction in the account of the work of these Greek artists on the Roman temple.