The Statues That Ran Away

An older tradition attaches to his sculpture, and it is the strangest thing under his name. Greek writers describe his statues as looking ready to move — eyes open, one leg forward — and in the joke Plato gives Socrates they have to be tied down or they will run off. Aristotle reports a claim that he made a wooden figure of Aphrodite move by pouring quicksilver into it, and reports it as something said rather than as his own view. Underneath the joke sits a real change in Greek sculpture, from rigid figures to figures caught mid-step.