e had great fertility in expressing his own
ideas, that his genius was creative and his works original. He
represented the gods which the earlier sculptors had shown in their
works in quite a new manner, and he was the first to show the goddess
Venus in all the beauty which imagination could attribute to her. His
representations of nymphs of wood and sea, of monsters, and all sorts of
strange, imaginary beings were numberless, and he made his sculptured
figures to express every emotion that can be fancied or felt, from the
tenderest and sweetest affection to the wildest passions of the soul.

[Illustration: FIG. 41--FROM THE FRIEZE OF THE MAUSOLEUM.]

His works were always representations of gods or of sentiments as shown
by some superhuman beings; he never portrayed a hero, with the
exception of Hercules, and was ever busy with the ideal rather than with
realities about him. He worked in marble only, which is far more suited
to the elegant beauty of his style than are bronze and gold or ivory.

We are accustomed to call PRAXITELES the greatest sculptor of the second
school of Greek art, just as we give that place to Phidias in the first.
We have no fixed dates concerning Praxiteles. We know that he was the
son of a Cephisodotus, who was a bronze worker, and was thought to be a
son of Alcamenes, thus making Praxiteles a grandson of the latter.
Praxiteles was first instructed by his father. Later he came under the
influence of Scopas, who was much older than he; and by Scopas he was
persuaded to give up working in bronze and confine himself to marble.
Perhaps the most authentic date we have concerning him is that given by
Pliny, who says that he was in his prime from B.C. 364-360.

It is impossible to praise a sculptor more than Praxiteles was praised
by the Greek authors; and, although Athens was the place where he lived
and labored most, yet he was known to all Greece, and even to other
countries, and the number of his works was marvellous. There are
trustworthy accounts of forty-seven groups, reliefs, and statues by his
hand, and it is not probable that these are all that he executed.

Praxiteles represented youth and beauty and such subjects as are most
pleasing to popular taste. Thus it happened that his male figures were
the young Apollo, Eros, and youthful satyrs, while a large proportion of
his statues represented lovely women. Venus was frequently repeated by
him, and there is a story that he made two statues