Stypax
or STIPAX, of Cyprus, a statuary, to whom Pliny ascribes the execution of a celebrated statue called
Splanchnoptes, because it represented a person roasting the entrails of the victim at a sacrifice, and blowing the fire with his breath. (
H. N. 34.8. 19. s. 21.)
According to Pliny, the person represented was a slave of Pericles, evidently the same as the one of whom he elsewhere relates the story, that he fell from the summit of the Parthenon, but was healed by the virtue of a herb which Minerva showed to Pericles in a dream (
H. N. 22.17. s. 20), a story which Plutarch tells of the architect MNESICLES. Among the recent discoveries on the Acropolis, fragments have been found which Ross supposes to have belonged to the base of the
Splanchnoptes, and he has put forth the conjecture that the name
Stipax in Pliny is only a corruption of STRABAX ; but these matters are too doubtful and intricate to be discussed here. (Ross, in the
Kunstblatt, 1840, No. 37, and in Gerhard's
Archäol. Zeitung, 1844, p. 243.)
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