Sculptors and Physicians in Fifth-Century Greece: A Preliminary Study

Richard C. Smith is a professor in the Classics Department of the
University of Alberta.

This interesting study focuses on the indications in the sculpture of
Greece from the end of the Persian Wars to around 450 BC that reflect
the development of medical and philosophic ideas during the same period.
Though other examples are noted, the study concentrates on four examples
of the “Severe” style of this period: the Omphalos Apollo, a
funerary stele from Paros of a young girl, and two bronze statues called
the Riace warriors.

Using these examples, the author demonstrates in a most ingenious
manner how the ideas of Hippocrates and other medical writers created
stylistic patterns for sculptors as well as influencing (and being
influenced by) such philosophers as Anaxagoras. To a great extent, this
demonstration rests on the reasonable but not fully provable assumption
that the ideas we find in the Hippocratic texts were current in the
early 5th century, since most, if not all, such texts were written after
400 BC. The second chapter of the book deals with this methodological
issue: Métraux firmly rejects the later Socratic idea of the soul as
having had any influence in the early classical period and labels the
earlier concept as “animating force.”

In the third chapter, after pointing to the similarity of stance in
figures of the period, Métraux notes the depiction of respiration and
(in the male figures) veins and how both phenomena are related to the
physicians’ and philosophers’ ideas of animating force. Chapter 4
points out the period’s new presentation of motion and stance as
contrasted with the figures of pre-classical Greece and how this new
presentation related to philosophic ideas of motion. The chapter
concludes with a second area of major change in sculpture, that of faces
and expression, to indicate what was uniquely human.

The final chapter summarizes these conclusions and suggests fields of
further investigation in the relationship of art and thought in the
classical and, especially, the Roman periods, as Métraux illustrates
the recognition by the poet Virgil of the ideas he has presented.