Myron

“ Myron had battled against many fears, and knew, with the absolute certainty of conviction, that after the first triumph there would come a bitter reaction. She knew she would be forever at war with her own conscience. She knew that life held no prize high enough to pay for infidelity. There came suddenly athwart the dreary room the mirage of another scene: A wide stretch of sky and water, blended in a far-off blue, a mass of tossing tree-tops, a scent of fresh green ferns and flowering grasses, a swimming sense of light, exhilaration, freedom.... Homer was speaking. ”

“ In Myron's case had been made manifest one of those marvellous mysteries of the human mechanism that now and again thrills the scientist with a burning zeal to discover the real relation between mind and matter, to enter the penetralia of humanity and learn its secret. That desolate night in the cottage the mother-heart apprehended each pang of the choking child, and the mother endured in her own organism a like agony. How sad to think she had no Divine license to do so! How strange that such a love should spring from shame! ”

“ Beneath Myron's meekness and patience an iron will was strengthening.
Homer had said: "Don't give either of them any money. I'll give Clem tobacco when he needs it, but don't you begin giving them the money, or there'll be no stop to it."
That was enough. No persuasion moved Myron after that, either to yielding or to anger.
"She be a fair devil for obstinateness," said Clem upon one of these occasions.
"Yes," agreed Ann, venomously, "and who be she to lord it over the likes of us? We're decent, if we be poor." ”

“ Myron has dedicated something, but I by no means see that it is this statue."
"What!" he cried, "was not Myron a famous Greek sculptor? The talent was perpetuated in his family, and it must have been one of his descendants who executed this statue. Nothing can be more certain."
"But," I replied, "on this arm I see a small hole. I think it served to fasten something—a bracelet, for example—which this Myron, being an unhappy lover, gave to Venus as an expiatory offering. Venus was irritated against him; he appeased her by consecrating to her a gold bracelet. ”

“ The forenoon went on in a strange silence, save for the sound of the birds, and an occasional voice of neighbors calling to Herman as they passed. Myron had still that sickening sense of illness in the house. The breakfast dishes were, he knew, untouched upon the table. The cat came in, looked incidentally at the sofa as if she were accustomed to occupy it at that particular hour, and walked out again. Myron drew forth his watch, and looked at it with a stealthiness he could not explain.
"Why," said he, with a simulated wonder, "it's nigh half after eleven. ”

“ The plough horses splashed through mud, and the furrows filled with water behind the plough.
Myron had been working at a cousin's of Mrs. Warner's, whose baby was sick unto death. The child died, and its mother, in the first rebellion of grief, had said to Myron:
"'Tain't just—I can't think it is—nor right, neither—for my baby to be taken when there's so many left alive that ain't any use. There's old Humphries, and paralytic Henry Deans, and drunken Ann Lemon—what's the good of them to anybody—it's a shame!" ”

“ The words carried all the accusation of outraged motherhood in their tones. The woman shrank back, and Myron, taking her boy, set off to the village.
It began to rain before they were half way. Myron's thoughts turned to Homer. She never forgot him for long at a time. It falls to the lot of few to be so sincerely sorrowed for.
She and My were both wet through when they reached the cottage, and Myron was very weary with the boy's weight. She lit the fire, and My played about in the kitchen. ”

“ Though the cow was so much talked of, the artistic fame of Myron rests more upon the "Discobolus," or quoit-thrower. The original statue does not exist, but there are several copies of it. That in the Massimi Villa is [Pg 31] a very accurate one, and was found on the Esquiline Hill at Rome in A.D. 1782; our illustration is made from this statue. Myron's great skill in representing the human figure in excited action is well shown in the quoit-thrower. ”

“ Homer turned away abruptly. "Better keep his wonderment to himself," he muttered, with a frown. "They better all keep their amazement to themselves or——" his hand clinched in a very suggestive fashion. Then he had gone for the buffalo robe for Myron to stand on, and as he gazed at her forlorn figure his anger changed to deep and abiding pity, to stern and righteous wrath. So Homer drove Myron home to the empty cottage, with Clem Humphries sitting in the bottom of the wagon, with his feet dangling over the tailboard, a quid of tobacco in his mouth, peace within his bosom. ”

“ It is natural that a lover should see Venus in a dream and imagine that she commands him to give a gold bracelet to her statue. Myron consecrated the bracelet to her. Then the barbarians or some other sacrilegious thieves—"
"Ah! it is easy to see you have written romances!" cried my host, helping me down from the pedestal. "No, sir; it is a work of Myron's school. You have only to look at the workmanship to be convinced of that."
Having made it a rule never to contradict self-opinionated antiquarians, I bowed with an air of conviction, saying:
"It is an admirable piece of work." ”

“ The ancient critics say of Myron that, while he succeeded admirably in giving life and motion to his figures, he did not succeed in rendering the emotions of the mind. This agrees with the extant evidence, in a certain degree, though not perfectly. The bodies of his men are of far greater excellence than the heads. The face of the Marsyas is almost a mask; but from the attitude we gain a vivid impression of the passions which sway him. The face of the discus-thrower is calm and unruffled; but all the muscles of his body are concentrated in an effort. ”

“ That night Myron Dill came into the sitting-room after his chores were done, and lay down on the lounge between the two front windows. He composed himself on his back with his hands placidly folded, and there his wife found him when she came in after her own completed list of deeds. He did not look up at her, and she was glad. She did not know how her eyes gleamed behind the glittering plane of their glasses, nor how deep the red was in her cheeks; but she was conscious of an inward tumult which must, she knew, somehow betray itself. ”

“ There was the young man, strong in the choice of will and heart; the old man, drawing the last coverlet over the last sleep; and, severed from these by only a short depth of kindred substance, she who had passed, her bed rapidly rounding to a grave.
At last, Clem began patting the mound with the back of his spade; his work was nearly done. Each echoless blow struck upon Myron's heart; and, thinking of the shame she had wrought the dead woman, she dealt herself those blows that she had been accustomed to endure from her grandmother's bitterness. ”

“ Lysippus perished from hunger while in profound meditation upon the lines of a single statue, and Myron, who almost embodied the souls of men and beasts in bronze, could not find an heir. And we, sodden with wine and women, cannot even appreciate the arts already practiced, we only criticise the past! ”

“ It was this same spirit of life that caused Myron’s cow to be so celebrated in antiquity that no less than thirty-six epigrams have been handed down concerning it. Petronius, in praising this master, says that, in representing animals, Myron seemed to enclose the very breath of life in the bronze; and when Pliny says that he multiplied nature, he can have no other meaning than that the artist attained so life-like an effect that his works appeared rather to have grown than to have been an artistic creation. ”

“ But just there, in fact, precisely in such limitation, we find what authenticates Myron's peculiar value in the evolution of Greek art. It is of the essence of the athletic prizeman, involved in the very ideal of the quoit-player, the cricketer, not to give expression to mind, in any antagonism to, or invasion of, the body; to mind as anything more than a function of the body, whose healthful balance of functions it may so easily perturb;—to disavow that insidious enemy of the fairness of the bodily soul as such. ”

“ The frieze of the Temple of Apollo at Phigales has also been attributed to the school of Myron. The remnants of this frieze, now in the British Museum, show the battle of the Centaurs and Amazons. The figures have not the calm stateliness of bearing which characterizes those of the Parthenon frieze, but instead exhibit a wild vehemence of action which is, perhaps, directly due to the influence of Myron.
Another pupil of Ageladas, a somewhat younger contemporary of Pheidias, was Polycleitos. He excelled in representations of human, bodily beauty. ”

“ Myron Holder would not pay their price.
The dim gray dawn lighted the pain-scarred face of a sleeping mother, by whose side reposed a fair-haired child; a child the secret of whose parentage was still locked within its mother's heart.
* * * * * *
"Them kind always lives," Mrs. Warner said to her husband, when, on a June morning, she saw Myron Holder totter past her door. Mrs. Warner should have thanked the God she worshipped, fasting, that it was so: had Myron Holder died, no woman in all Jamestown would have been free from blood-guiltiness. ”

“ A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain."
Myron knelt by him, calling his name and imploring him to answer her. Rough hands pushed her aside. She fell, half-dazed. When she came to herself, My was crying by her, and a slow throng was moving towards Homer's wagon, where it stood before the harness-shop. ”

“ Tafef 32
65 KOPF EINER SIEGERSTATUE DES MYRON
Marmor. H. 23 cm.
Aus Palazzo Mondragone in Rom.
Der Kopf ist die am sorgfältigsten gearbeitete und am besten erhaltene Kopie eines Werkes des Myron, das bisher nur in den groben oder stark überarbeiteten Repliken bekannt ist, die von Polacco, L'athleta Cirene-Perinto, tav. 5- 8, abgebildet sind. Die Modellierung des vorliegenden Kopfes ist wesentlich feiner und nuancenreicher. Besonders sinnfällig ist das an der Stirnmitte. Die hier wiedergegebenen zarten Schwellungen zeigen
die bisher bekannten Repliken nicht. ”

“ Myron is doubtless right in stating that the Helots could not lay aside this dress at pleasure; indeed, a young Spartan could not assume the dress of an older man. Whilst in Athens the influence of democracy had produced an uniformity of dress, and even (according to Xenophon) 144 of bodily form, in citizens, resident aliens, and slaves; in Sparta the several orders were characterised by external differences. Now since Myron thus manifestly misinterpreted this circumstance, it is very probable that his other objections are founded in error ”

“ To make such a figure as this requires great power in a sculptor. No model could constantly repeat this action, and if he could there is but a flash of time in which the artist sees just the position he reproduces. This figure, however, is so true to life that one feels like keeping out of the range of the quoit when it flies (Fig. 22) . There are several other existing works attributed to Myron: they are a marble copy of his statue of Marsyas, in the Lateran at Rome; two torsi in the gallery at Florence; a figure called Diomed, and a bronze in the gallery at Munich. ”

“ A large number of athlete statues from his hand were to be seen at Olympia, Delphi, and perhaps elsewhere, and this side of his activity was certainly an important one. Perhaps it is a mere accident that we hear less of his statues of divinities and heroes.
The starting point in any study of Myron must be his Discobolus (Discus-thrower) . Fig. 104 reproduces the best copy. This statue was found in Rome in 1781, and is in an unusually good state of preservation. The head has never been broken from the body; the right arm has been broken off, but is substantially antique ”

“ Holder from all blame and relieving her of all responsibility for Myron's behavior, remarked that "It did seem as if bad was born in some people."
Old Mrs. Holder rose at that, and speedily made Mrs. Weaver aware that Myron's badness was purely sporadic, and that heredity had nothing to do with it. She did not express herself in this way, but conveyed the same idea much more forcibly.
It is possible that, being Myron's grandmother, she felt a slight reflection from Mrs. Weaver's well-meant suggestion that Myron had inherited vice as her birthright; be that as it may, she speedily made Mrs. ”

“ It must be remembered, however, that such enthusiasm was very often conventional. The work was very famous in literature (cf. Pliny, N. H. xxxiv. 57 ‘Myronem ... bucula maxime nobilitavit celebratis versibus laudata’) and Ausonius’s appreciation may be worth little more than that of the thirty-six epigrams on Myron’s heifer preserved in the Greek Anthology. That the appreciation of an epigram, however, need not necessarily be artificial is proved, e.g. by iv. ”

“ His son Actor married Ægina the daughter of the Asopus. He gave his name to his subjects, who dwelt near the river Peneus in Thessaly. According to some, the Myrmidons received their name from their having been originally ants, μυρμηκες. See: Æacus. According to Strabo, they received it from their industry, because they imitated the diligence of the ants, and like them were indefatigable, and were continually employed in cultivating the earth. Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk. 1, li. 654.—Strabo.—Hyginus, fable 52.
Myron, a tyrant of Sicyon.――A man of Priene, who wrote a history of Messenia. ”