F. B. Tarbell, A History of Ancient Greek Art

The Great Age of Greek Sculpture. Second Period 400-323 B.C.

The Mausoleum

Reference was made above to the Mausoleum. The artists engaged on the sculptures which adorned that magnificent monument were, according to Pliny, Scopas, Leochares, Bryaxis, and Timotheus.[1] There seem to have been at least three sculptured friezes, but of only one have considerable remains been preserved. This has for its subject a battle of Greeks and Amazons, a theme which Greek sculptors and painters never wearied of reproducing. The preserved portions of this frieze amount in all to about eighty feet, but the slabs are not consecutive. Figs. 160 and 161 give two of the best pieces. The design falls into groups of two or three combatants, and these groups are varied with inexhaustible fertility and liveliness of imagination. Among the points which distinguish this from a work of the fifth century may be noted the slenderer forms of men and women and the more expressive faces. The existing slabs, moreover, differ among themselves in style and merit, and an earnest attempt has been made to distribute them among the four artists named by Pliny, but without conclusive results.

[1] The tradition on this point was not quite uniform Vitruvius names Praxiteles as the fourth artist, but adds that some believed that Timotheus also was engaged.

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