Chapter 7　After Phidias

Do you have a Greek nose?Do you know what a Greek nose is?It's a nose that, when seen from the side, forms a straight line from the forehead. Look at the people around you and see if any have Greek noses.Very few people have them nowadays and not all of the ancient Greeks had them either.But the Greek sculptors thought this kind of nose was the most beautiful and so they made Greek noses on their statues.A statue of Hermes, the messenger of the gods, shows a perfect Greek nose.

The statue is of a strong and athletic youth. In his arms, Hermes is holding a little boy who Zeus had given him to take care of.Hermes looks thoughtful as he tenderly holds the baby, and you can almost imagine that the baby is reaching up to pull Hermes'curly hair.What the baby is really reaching for is a bunch of grapes that Hermes once held in his hand.This statue has lost parts of its arms and legs, but the head and body are still perfect and probably no broken piece of sculpture in the world is more charming or more beautiful than this.It was made by a Greek sculptor named Praxiteles.If he had made nothing else in his life, this one statue was great enough to make him famous through the ages.

Praxiteles is thought to have made several other statues. One was of a faun-a half-man, half-goat Roman creature, which inspired the title of a book by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Marble Faun.But we are not sure that there are any other sculptures in existence that he himself made.