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Pythagoras of Rhegion
( fl c. 475–c. 450 BC). Greek sculptor. According to ancient writers, there were two sculptors named Pythagoras, one from Rhegion, the other from Samos (Pliny: Natural History, XXXIV.xix.59–60; Diogenes Laertius: VIII.xlvii). They were said to have been contemporaries and identical in appearance. Modern scholars, however, generally equate the two, supposing that Pythagoras was among the Samians who migrated to Zankle-Messana in 494 BC and became subject to Anaxilas of Rhegion (Herodotus: Histories, VI.xxii–xxiii). Pythagoras was the student of Klearchos of Rhegion (Pausanias: Guide to Greece, VI.iv.3) and the teacher of Sostratos (Pliny: XXXIV.xix.60). Ancient authors credited him with victory monuments for Olympic and Pythian athletes, a statue of the citharode Kleon of Thebes, and various mythological works, including Europa and the Bull, Eteokles and Polyneikes, Apollo Killing Python and a Winged Perseus. No copies of his works, all bronzes, have been identified with certainty, although a statue base for the victor Euthymos at Olympia preserves the name Pythagoras of Samos. An interest in evoking pathos is evinced by his statue of a lame man at Syracuse that was said to arouse sympathetic pain in the viewer. Pliny claimed that he was the first to represent sinews and veins, and to pay attention to the treatment of the hair (XXXIV.xix.59). An interest in artistic theory is attested by Diogenes Laertius’ assertion that he may have been the first to strive for rhythm and balance (VIII.xlvii).
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