The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c9.158

v1.c9.158

⁶⁶ By this remark it is not at all my wish altogether to exonerate the artists from some pruriency of imagination. Few artists of note have been above it. Even the renowed Phidias succumbed to it when he carved nude females resting in a pronate position on supine youths on the throne of his glorious Olympian Jupiter—a work of art, which according to the Stoic Epictetus, “it was still considered a misfortune for any of his contemporaries to die without having seen”. What the figures represented is not positively known. According to Pausánias they were Sphinxes seizing Theban youths; others took them to be Hercules and Theseus fighting with Amazons; but whatever they might have been, they were certainly not in very decent positions.