Ad veritatem Lysippum et Praxitelen accessisse optime affirmant. Nam Demetrius tamquam nimius in ea reprehenditur et fuit similitudinis quam pulchritudinis amantior (Quintillian, Instit. Orat., 12, 10, 9)
“Lysippus and Praxiteles are said to have achieved the best approximation to reality; Demetrius is criticized for carrying realism too far, for he was more concerned with likeness than with beauty” (trans. Donald A. Russell)

1Despite the fact that no works of the Athenian sculptor Demetrios of Alopeke survive, the desire to identify the realistic style in ancient Greek portraiture attributed to him by Quintilian continues to color every discussion of his career1. Lucian, also writing long after the fact, famously characterized Demetrios as an anthropopoios, a “maker of men”, and described one of his portrait statues displayed in the house of the “lover of lies” Eukrates in the following terms (Luc., Philops., 18-20): προγάστορα, φαλαντίαν, ἡμίγυμνον τῆν ἀναβολήν, ἡνεμωμένον τοῦ πώγονος τὰς τρίχας ἐνίας, ἐπΐσημον τὰς φλέβας, αὐτοανθρώπω ὢμοιον “potbellied, balding, half-naked in his mantle, with some hairs of his beard blowing in the wind, with prominent veins, like to the man himself”). According to Eukrates, this statue, “thought to be” the strategos Pellichos of Corinth, was a miraculous automaton with healing powers, splashing in a fountain, running around the house at all hours of the night, and punishing thieving servants. The thrust of Lucian’s satire seems to be that Pellichos was an aging, non-athletic type even less likely to be able to perform these sorts of gymnastics than the other works in Eukrates’s collection: Myron’s Discobolos, the Diadumenos of Polykleitos, and Kritios and Nesiotes’s Tyrannicides2.

2The only known Pellichos of Corinth is the father of Aristeus, a Corinthian strategos of 436/435 BC mentioned by Thucydides (1,29,2); we know of no reason why this Pellichos would have been represented by a portrait statue. Pliny the Elder (Nat. hist., 34,76) mentions three more of Demetrios’s works, two of which appear to have represented figures known from fifth-century history: Lysimachen quae sacerdos Minervae fuit LXIV annis, idem et Minervam quae musica [mystica?] appellatur, quoniam dracones in Gorgone eius ad ictus citharae tinnitu resonant, idem equitem Simonem qui primus de equitatu scripsit (“a statue of Lysimache, who was priestess of Athena for sixty-four years, and by the same man the Athena called “Musical” [or Mystical?] because the snakes of her Gorgon resound to the notes of the cithara, and an equestrian statue of Simon, the first writer on horsemanship”). D. M. Lewis long ago identified Lysimache with Lysistrata, the priestess of Athena Polias in Aristophanes’s play of the same name, produced in 411 BC. Simon may be identified as a hipparch in the chorus of Athenian cavalrymen in the Knights, produced in 424 BC3. At the very beginning of his own work on horsemanship, probably written in the 360s near the end of his life, Xenophon (Eq., 1.1) tells us that Simon dedicated a bronze statue of a horse in the Athenian Eleusinion that stood on a marble relief base depicting Simon’s own deeds (έργα).

3From the literary testimonia alone, one might conclude that Demetrios was a high Classical sculptor of the second half of the fifth century BC. Some scholars, eager to connect Demetrios’s realistic portraiture with the radical democratic ideals of Pericles and his successors, have done just that4. Proponents of a fifth-century date have cited as additional evidence an inscribed statue base from the Athenian Acropolis (Raubitschek 1949, no. 143 = IG, I³, 896 and 897), identified by A. E. Raubitschek as a dedication by Demetrios of Alopeke and dated to the last quarter of the fifth century. As the editors of IG, I^3, rightly noted, however, this dedication consists of two small fragments with very different lettering that by no means belong together, one showing the very end of the name [Demet] rios with the verb of dedication éançeqhken, and the other only the end of the demotic [Alo] pekethen. The association between Raubitschek 1949, no. 143 and the sculptor Demetrios of Alopeke should thus be rejected. The remaining epigraphical evidence for Demetrios’work, all of it from Athens, is unusually rich, and it brings with it prosopographical connections that date Demetrios’s career to the first half of the fourth century. Two of the six inscribed statue bases signed by Demetrios of Alopeke listed below, namely numbers 5 (IG, II², 4895) and 6 (SEG, 12, 61), will be discussed in greater detail in this paper.

41. EM 8802 (IG, II², 4322), from the Acropolis Small Pentelic marble column base for dedication to Athena by Aristogenes Nautelous Aixoneus, signed by Demetrios; ca. 400-350 BC? There is no indication that this base supported a portrait statue.

52. EM 8806 (IG, II², 4321), from the Acropolis Meritt 1947, 287-289; CEG, 2, no. 761; Loewy 1885, no. 62 = SEG, 30, 161.

6Pentelic marble base for portrait of unknown subject (a priest?) dedicated by the demos (?); signed by Demetrios; ca. 400-350 BC. The preserved portion of the dedicatory epigram takes the form of a prayer on behalf of the honorand and his family.

73. Acropolis (IG, II², 3453) Plin., Hist. Nat., 34,76; Paus., 1.27.4 [Demetrios not named]; CEG, 2, no. 757; Loewy 1885, no. 64; Lewis 1955; APF no. 4549; Mantis 1990, 70-74 and pl. 29; Kron 1996, 143-144.

8Round Pentelic marble base for portrait of Lysimache Drakontidou, signed by [Demetrios of Alopeke]; ca. 360 [cf. Lewis: soon after 380]. Though Lysimache’s name has been lost, her patronymic is preserved, as is the crucial mention of the 64 years she served Athena. A name label inscribed below the dedicatory epigram refers to Lysimache as “mother of--es Phlyeus”. The dedicator is not named in the preserved portion of the inscription. Demetrios’s name in the signature is not preserved, but has been restored on the basis of Plin., Hist. nat., 34, 76.

94. Acropolis, east of Parthenon near remains of Roma and Augustus temple (IG, II², 3828) Lambert 1999, 116-117; Löhr 2000, no. 111.

10Semi-circular base for portraits of Keph[isodotos] Kyna[rbou] Aithalides (signed by Demetri[os]) and–on Kephisodotou Aithalides (signed by-os). The inscribed blocks, made of Pentelic marble, belong to a stepped base consisting of three or more courses.
The monument may have stood in a semi-circular bedrock cutting east of the Propylaia, near the Athena Hygieia statue; ca. 400–350 BC [cf. Löhr, ca. 350]. The first portrait subject can be identified as the Kephisodotos Aithalides who leased mines in 367/366 BC, and the second as his son and the brother of [Apolexi] s? Kephisodotou Aithalides who leased mines in the late 340s. A Kephisodotos Aithalides also served as public arbitrator in 363/362 BC. S. D. Lambert has plausibly identified the subjects of this familial portrait group as descendants of the Kynarbos who dedicated Raubitschek 1949, no. 79 (= IG, I³, 745: 500-480 BC?) on behalf of his two daughters, Aristomache and Archestrate. [Ke] phisodotos Apolexido[s] [Aith] alides, the dedicator of IG, II², 4324, an unsigned pillar base also from the Acropolis, should be a relative (a cousin of Kephisodotos Kynarbou?). The sculptor of the portrait of the son--on Kephisodotou Aithalides may plausibly be identified as either Demetrios or Symenos (see below no. 5).

115. EM 10699 (IG, II², 4895), once built into the Beulé gate APF no. 1395; Loewy 1885, no. 63.

12Pentelic marble base dedicated by [Hippolochid] es Thrasymedous Lousieus, signed by [De] metrios; ca. 400-350 BC. The dedicator Hippolochides Thrasymedous Lousieus may be identified as the Hippolochides mentioned by Isaeus 7.23, a speech concerning Hippolochides’adoption of Thrasyboulos, nephew of Apollodoros III Eupoleos Leukonioieus, in ca. 353 BC. Apollodoros belonged to the same family as the brothers Thrasyllos and Gnathios Mnesonon ek Leukonoiou, dedicators of Raubitschek 1949, no. 112 (=IG, I³, 833) in the mid-fifth century. The dedicator’s son may be Hippolochides Hippolochidou Lousieus, a trierarch of 334/3 BC (IG, II², 1623, 236). The same dedicator made another dedication, found on the South slope of the Acropolis, signed by the sculptor Symenos (IG, II², 4898). A signature of Symenos Damostratou from Rhodes (Lindos II no. 41) has been dated ca. 350 BC. For Symenos, see also Plin., Hist. Nat., 34,91.

136. Agora I 5902 (SEG, 12, 61) Meritt 1948, 38-39, no. 24.

14Hymettian marble base inscribed with the signature of [Demetrios Alo] pekethen ca. 400 BC [cf. Meritt: ca. 403]

15The dedications of Kephisodotos Kynarbou Aithalides (4) and Hippolochides Thrasymedous Lousieus (5), both from the Acropolis, can be attributed to individuals from Athenian families dated securely to the mid-fourth century BC. Doubts that all of the literary and epigraphical testimonia refer to the same Demetrios, expressed most recently by W. Müller in the new Künstlerlexikon der Antike, who tentatively assigns my numbers 1 and 2 to a Demetrios II of the mid-fourth century, strike me as unnecessary5. In light of the fourth-century dates for 4 and 5, Lysimache’s posthumous portrait on the Acropolis can easily be dated as late as ca. 380 BC (where D. M. Lewis placed it) or even ca. 360 (Kirchner). As many scholars have already noted, the Pellichos of Corinth whose portrait appears in Lucian’s satire may have been an unknown son of Aristeus, strategos in 436/435 BC; Demetrios could equally well have made a posthumous portrait of Aristeus’s father Pellichos--if, indeed, Demetrios’s portrait of Pellichos should be taken literally at all. As evidence for the dates of Demetrios’s career, the passage in Lucian has undoubtedly been made to carry too much weight. Though the Athenian cavalryman Simon is first attested in 424 BC, he might easily have lived into the fourth century; I will have more to say about his dedication below.

16Neither letter forms nor spellings provide more secure indications of the dates of the statue bases signed by Demetrios. Stephen Tracy, in his work on Attic inscriptions, has emphasized the difficulty of identifying the letter cutters of dedications6. Perhaps the most we can say is that no two of the six extant bases signed by Demetrios were obviously inscribed by the same hand. On (5), the inscriptions follow the format that would become standard in Athens later in the fourth century (fig. 1): the signature of Demetrios is separated from the dedication by a vacat, indented, and written in smaller letters7. On four of the bases (no. 2, 3, 5, and 6), the verb of dedication is spelled éepçohsen without iota, an omission typical of the second half of fourth century, but used freely both earlier and later on private dedications in Athens8. The first half of the fourth century was still a transitional period in spelling in Athens, and for that reason we still see omicron for the diphthong omicron + upsilon on three of the six bases (no. 1, 2, and 3)9.

17The mixed use of both eta and epsilon to represent the long vowel on 6, a base found in the Athenian Agora excavations, led B. D. Meritt to date it to ca. 403 BC, the year that Athenian state documents officially adopted Ionic spelling with eta and omega. The use of epsilon for eta appears to have become very rare in Athenian state documents, which are also more securely datable than dedications, in the first quarter of the fourth century BC. The 403 BC dividing line is less exact for private inscriptions, which often present no other firm dating criteria: nearly all dedications and gravestones showing epsilon for the long vowel eta were dated before 403 and included in IG, I³, while those with eta were automatically dated after 403 and included in IG, II². Since 403 BC does not function as an absolute terminus ante quem for the use of epsilon for the long vowel in the demotic Alopekethen, (6) may date either before 403 or soon after10. As far as we can tell, it may be Demetrios’s earliest signature.

IG, II², 4895: a Family Portrait Group

18A drawing of the inscription on the base for the dedication of [Hippolochid]es Thrasymedous Lousieus in the Epigraphical Museum in Athens (5) was included by Loewy in his corpus of sculptor’s signatures (fig. 1). Two important features of this base have not been stressed. A joining surface looking much like architectural anathyrosis has been preserved on the intact left side of the base. What this suggests is that the Hippolochides dedication, like that of Kephisodotos Kynarbou Aithalides (4), was a familial portrait group composed of multiple figures with separate inscriptions; since the right side of the Hippolochides base shows signs of reworking, we cannot tell whether this was the right end of the base, or whether there were one or more additional blocks on the right. Either the Kephisodotos group or the Hippolochides group, both signed by Demetrios, might be the earliest example of a familial portrait group dedicated on the Athenian Acropolis11.

19The most important evidence the Hippolochides base provides is a pair of intact dowel holes for the attachment of the lost bronze statue by Demetrios (fig. 2)12. The preserved left foot dowel on the Lysimache base (3) and the holes on top of the Hippolochides base (5) constitute the only original evidence we have for Demetrios’s sculptures13. Both Loewy 1885 and Kirchner in IG, II², inexplicably claimed that the dowel holes on the Hippolochides base (5) belonged to the feet of two different bronze statues, perhaps because the left foot appears to have been longer than the right. It must be remembered that the foot-shaped dowel holes for the attachment of bronze statues’feet to statue bases do not accurately reproduce either the size or the shape of the feet: as much as one-third needs to be added to the length of the dowel hole to arrive at the length of the foot14.

20The lost portrait statue supported by the Hippolochides base (5) should be restored as lifesize. It stood in the true “Attic” stance, flat-footed with one foot in front of the other and both feet pointing outward at a slight angle15. On the Hippolochides base, the statue stood with right foot forward; the lost bronze portrait of Lysimache probably stood with left foot forward16. Ridgway sees the flat-footed Attic stance as an outgrowth of the typical pose of freestanding Severe Style or later “severizing” figures such as the Riace bronzes; an example of this pose from the Athenian Acropolis is the base for a lost bronze statue (probably an Athena) signed by Kritios and Nesiotes (Raubitschek 1949, no. 160)17. In the second half of the fifth century, the Polykleitan contrapposto, the weight leg/free leg stance, was introduced to Athens and may be seen most clearly on the base for the Athena Hygieia located just inside the Propylaia of the Acropolis, dedicated by the Athenians in the 420s BC and signed by the Athenian sculptor Pyrrhos (Raubitschek 1949, no. 166)18. Though the Polykleitan contrapposto, and modifications to it introduced by Polykleitos’s followers, continued to be used in Athens, so did the Attic stance, as may be seen on the base for a statue (Athena once again?) dedicated on the Acropolis by the prytaneis of 408/7 BC (Raubitschek 1949, no. 167)19.

21We encounter the Attic stance in first half of the fourth century not only on the Hippolochides base signed by Demetrios of Alopeke, but also in the Athena type known as the Athena Rospigliosi, dated to the first half of the fourth century by Geoffrey Waywell20. By the late fourth century, a variant of the Attic stance had been introduced in which one foot slides forward diagonally while the back foot remains straight and perpendicular to the front of the base: this stance may be seen most clearly in Roman marble copies of Polyeuktos’s portrait of Demosthenes, and also on statue bases, such as the lefthand block of the Atarbos base21. Though it seems unlikely that the Athena Rospigliosi can be a copy of Demetrios’s Athena “Musica” or “Mystica” because her small, diagonal aegis is largely obscured by the chiton draped over most of her body, it is tempting to speculate that, like the Lysimache portrait and the portrait supported by the Hippolochides base, Demetrios’s lost Athena also stood flat-footed in the traditional Attic stance.

SEG, 12, 61: Simon’s Dedication from the Athenian Eleusinion

22In 1948, B. D. Merritt published a fragmentary low base of Hymettian marble found in the Athenian Agora excavations in 1945. The text inscribed on one of the short sides of the base can be nothing other than a sculptor’s signature: [Δημήτριος ’Αλω]πεκεθέν έπόησεν (fig. 3). One obvious objection to associating Meritt's base with Demetrios of Alopeke is the absence of Demetrios's name, which has been completely restored. It was unusual in every period for Athenian sculptors to style themselves with the name and demotic in their signatures: the only other example from the fourth century I know of is Oiniades Sounieus, whose signature appears on a base built into the North wall of the Acropolis and the Chabrias monument in the Athenian Agora22. The Hellenistic Athenian sculptors Eucheir and Euboulides and other members of their family usually signed their works with the tria nomina (Loewy 1885, nos. 134, 228, 228a, and 229), but occasionally with the name alone (Loewy 1885, no. 226) or the name and demotic (Loewy 1885, nos. 135, 224, 225, and possibly 324)23. I accept the restoration of Demetrios’s name on (6) for two reasons: first, there is no other known Attic sculptor with the demotic Alopekethen, and second, Lucian (or his sources) must have had some source for Demetrios’s demotic, which appears in none of his five other known signatures.

23As Meritt noted, in addition to the face of the block inscribed with the signature, the top and bottom surfaces appear to be original; most of the right side has been cut back at an angle to the front face, and both the left side and the back face of the block were rough-picked for secondary use. The preserved maximum width (.30 m) and length (.64 m) may therefore represent only a small fraction of the base’s original dimensions. As the photograph of the top of the base shows (fig. 4), a single squarish dowel surrounded by lead has been preserved, located. 16 m from the preserved left side and. 34 m from the front. It appears to be of the type used to attach another block to the top of this one. We may conjecture that the lost dedicatory inscription was placed either on one of the long sides of this block, with Demetrios’s signature on one of the shorter ends, or on a lost upper block of the monument.

24I would suggest that this piece from the Agora excavations be identified as part of the base for Simon’s equestrian dedication described by Xenophon. Though Pliny refers to a portrait of Simon on horseback (equites) by Demetrios, Xenophon’s testimony as to the nature of Simon’s dedication is much clearer and nearly contemporary, though he does not name Demetrios as the sculptor: he calls it a bronze horse standing atop a base with scenes of Simon’s deeds carved in relief24. Xenophon places the dedication κατά τό ’Αθήνησιν ’Ελευσινιον, either inside or very close to the City Eleusinion in

25Athens, the sanctuary of Demeter and Kore located just southeast of the Agora. The Hymettian marble block with the signature was found not far away, in the northeast corner of section C of the Agora excavations, at coordinates Q-17 of the present-day plan, where it had been reused as a sidewalk paver in front of Asteroskopeiou Street no. 225.

26If the lost statue were in fact a horse rather than a portrait of Simon on horseback, we would expect the dedicatory inscription to appear on the long side of the base rather than the short side where Demetrios’s signature is preserved. Perhaps the most intriguing feature of the dedication as Xenophon describes it is the relief base illustrating Simon’s accomplishments. Relief statue bases became common in Athens in the final two decades of the fifth century BC, in the aftermath of Pheidias’s use of a relief base showing the birth of Pandora to support his cult statue of Athena Parthenos in the Parthenon. They came to be used both for private dedications and funerary monuments, and they took the form either of vertical orthostates modeled after the Parthenon cult statue base, or of solid blocks; the subject matter of the surviving relief bases for dedications from the late fifth and fourth centuries inclines toward the athletic and the military, with horses commonly represented26. The surviving dowel on top of the base from the Agora could have been used to attach a marble relief base of either the orthostate or the solid block type. In terms of iconography and subject matter, the closest parallel for the lost relief base representing Simon’s (έ'ργα may be a late fifth-century votive relief dedicated at Eleusis by the hipparch [Pythodoro] s son of Epizelos (IG, I³, 999), which depicts the Athenian cavalry in combat against hoplites in two horizontal registers27.

27Only the western portion of the Athenian Eleusinion has been excavated (fig. 5). This was almost certainly the part of the sanctuary accessible to the public; the temple has been identified by M. M. Miles as that of Triptolemos, completed ca. 480-450 BC and mentioned by Pausanias (1.14.3-4)28. Pausanias mentioned two statues standing inside the propylon and in front of Triptolemos’s temple--a bronze bull being led to sacrifice and a seated portrait of Epimenides of Crete--but not Simon’s dedication.

28Around the middle of the fifth century, a “monument base” 2.20 meters wide and up to 15.60 meters long was constructed east of the Triptolemos temple. It was originally thought that this base was used to display the Attic Stelai, the inscribed lists of property confiscated from Alcibiades and the other Athenians convicted of profaning the Eleusinian mysteries in 415 BC. The earlier date and the extraordinary size of the monument base, however, suggest instead that it was intended to support one or more monumental statue dedications, of which the earliest found in association with the Eleusinion was dedicated by a priestess of Demeter and Kore named Lysistrate in ca. 450 BC (IG, I³, 953)29. The monument base is both too early and far too long to have been designed for Simon’s dedication, reconstructed here following Xenophon’s testimony as a bronze horse standing on a marble relief base for which the inscribed base we have (6) served as a euthynteria30. In the absence of further evidence, Simon’s dedication can be placed either in an unknown spot in the vicinity of the Triptolemos temple, or just outside the sanctuary’s propylon. In either location, it would have been visible from the Panathenaic Way leading down to the Agora from the Acropolis.

29The Athenian sculptor Demetrios of Alopeke emerges from the literary and epigraphical testimonia as a transitional figure between the high Classical and late Classical periods in Greek sculpture, a member of what Andrew Stewart has dubbed the “postwar generation”. Though he was remembered in the Roman imperial period as a portraitist, his known works included at least one image of the goddess Athena. His familial portrait groups, attested by statue bases (4) and (5), brought a new type of dedication to the Athenian Acropolis in the first half of the fourth century BC.

30Though it has usually been ignored in discussions of Demetrios and his career, I believe that a base signed by Demetrios found in the Athenian Agora excavations in the 1940s may have supported the equestrian dedication by Simon described by Xenophon in the 360s BC.