A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. By various writers. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

STRONGYLION. STRONGYLION..927
four ships, and recovered Lampsacus, but was the Birds in n. c. 414. This date is confirmned by
unable either to persuade or compel Abydos to the characters of the inscription, which belong to
return to its allegiance; and accordingly he crossed the style in use before the archonship of Eucleides.
over to Sestos, and there established a garrison to For the publication of this inscription and the incommand the whole of the Hellespont. Hence he ferences drawn from it, we are indebted to Ross.
was soon after summoned to reinforce the Atheni- (Journal des Savants, 1841, pp. 245-247.)
ans at Samos, who were unable, before his arrival, Pausanias (i. 40. ~ 2) tells us that Strongylion
to make head against the superior force of the Pe- made the bronze statue of Artemis Soteira, in her
loponnesians under Astyochus. In Lysias we read temple at Megara. Sillig makes Pausanias say
that Strombichides was one of those friends of de- that this statue of Artemis was one of the statues
mocracy, who expressed their indignation at the of the Twelve Gods, which were ascribed to Praxiterms of peace with which Theramenes and his teles; and hence he infers, though by what process of
fellow-ambassadors returned to Athens from Lace- reasoning is not very evident, that Strongylion was
daemon in B. c. 404. Having thus rendered him- contemporary with Praxiteles. The fact is, howself obnoxious to the oligarchs, he was involved ever, that Pausanias expressly distinguishes " the
with the other prominent men of his party in the statues of the Twelve Gods, said to be the works
accusation brought against them by Agoratus be- of Praxiteles," from that of " Artemis herself,"
fore the council, of a conspiracy to oppose the that is, the chief statue of the temple, which, lie
peace. They were all accordingly thrown into distinctly affirms, was made by Strongylion; and,
prison, and not long after were put to death with so far is the passage from furnishing any evidence
the mockery of a trial under the government of that Strongylion was contemporary with Praxiteles,
the Thirty (Thuc. viii. 15, 16, 17, 30, 34, 38, 40, that it affords two arguments to prove that he
55, 60, 61, 62, 79; Lys. c. Agor. pp. 130-133). lived before him; for, in the first place, the statue
We may perhaps identify the subject of the pre- of the deity, to whom the temple was dedicated,
sent article with the father of Autocles. (Xen. would of course be made earlier than any others
Hell. vi. 3. ~ 2.) [E. E.] that might be placed in it, and, moreover, Pausanins
STRONGY'LION (Trpo'yyvXolv), a distin- tells us that the temple was built to commemorate
guished Greek statuary, mentioned by Pausanias a victory gained by the Megarians over a detachand Pliny, and in an important extant inscription. ment of the army of Mardonius, who had been
The inscription furnishes sufficient evidence for the struck by Artemis with a panic in the night; so
true date of the artist, which had previously been that the only sound inference to be drawn from
determined wrongly on the supposed testimony of this passage, respecting the artist's date, is that he
the writers referred to. should be placed as soon after the Persian wars as
The inscription referred to was discovered, in the other evidence will permit.
1840, near the entrance of the Acropolis at Athens, In another passage of Pausanias (ix. 30. ~ 1)
between the Propylaea and the Parthenon. It is we are informed that of the'statues composing one
engraved on two plates of Pentelic marble, and of the two groups of the Muses on Mount Helicon,
runs thus:- three were made by Cephisodotus, three by
XAIPEAEMOSETAAAE V O EKKOI VE5ANEOEKEN Strongylion, and the remaining three by Olym5TPOAATVIONEITOE5EN piosthenes; whence it has been inferred that these
three artists were contemporaries. This inference
that is, Xa1pEB3vpo5 EVa'yEy'ov e: Ko[XN-s &avOlcey,
vthat is, Xelios Edaeyyeov'ere v Kis by no means necessarily true, but, on the con-:LrTPO-Y-y~hVXLIW1 EWTOlrqG-Etrary, while it is quite possible that the three
Now, we read in the Sclholia on Aristophanes (Av. artists may have worked at the same time on the
1128), that there stood in the Acropolis a repre- different portions of the group, it is an equally
sentation of the Trojan horse (oshploo's Trros) in probable conjecture, that the group wvas left unfibronze, bearing the inscription, XaLpe'o7vpos EBay- nished by one of them, and completed by the
~yEAou EK KoiA?7s aiueOK7ye, and Pausanias describes others. If so, the order in which the names of the
this statue as standing at the exact part of the artists stand in Pausanias is not to be taken as,Acropolis where the inscription was found (i. 23. the order of time in which they lived; for the
~ 10): and though Pausanias does not mention preceding clause furnishes an obvious reason for
the name of the artist, he does tell us elsewhere his mentioning the name of Cephisodotus first.
that Strongylion excelled in the representation of Even if we suppose the parts of the group to have
oxen and horses (ix. 30. ~ i). But this is not all. been executed at the same time, it is quite possible,
The passage of Aristophanes, which gives occasion as Ross has argued, to bring back the date of
for the information furnished by the Scholiast, de- Cephisodotus I. high enough to admit of his having
scribes the walls of the city of the Birds as being been in part contemporary with Strongylion, about
so broad, that two chariots might race upon them the beginning of the fourth century B.C. At all
"' having horses as large as the Durian (6 3odpios)." events, it is clear that these passages do not
Now, considering how constantly the comic poets warrant Sillig in placing Strongylion with Cephiappeal to the senses rather than the imagination of sodotus I. and Praxiteles at 01. 103, B.c. 368, but
their audience, and how generally their illustra- that he flourished about B.c. 415, and probably for
tions are drawn from objects, especially novel ob- some time both before and after that date. Perhaps
jects, present before the eyes of the people, there we might safely assign as his period the last thirty
can be little doubt of the soundness of the remark or forty years of the fifth century B.c.
of the Scholiast, that " It is not credible that the Pliny mentions two other bronze statues by
poet says this merely in a general sense, but with Strongylion (H. N. xxxiv. 8. s. 19. ~ 21); the one
reference to the bronze statue in the Acropolis." of an Amazon, the beauty of whose legs obtained
If this reasoning be admitted, the date of Strongy- for it the epithet Eucnemos, and excited the adlion's colossal bronze horse in the Acropolis will be miration of Nero to such a degree that he had it
fixed at a period shortly before the exhibition of carried about with him in his travels; the other of