Phradmon was a little-known sculptor from Argos

Argos

Argos is a city and a former municipality in Argolis, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Argos-Mykines, of which it is a municipal unit. It is 11 kilometres from Nafplion, which was its historic harbour...

, whom Pliny

Pliny the Elder

Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...

 places as the contemporary of Polykleitos

Polykleitos

Polykleitos ; called the Elder, was a Greek sculptor in bronze of the fifth and the early 4th century BCE...

, Myron

Myron

Myron of Eleutherae working circa 480-440 BC, was an Athenian sculptor from the mid-5th century BC. He was born in Eleutherae on the borders of Boeotia and Attica. According to Pliny's Natural History, Ageladas of Argos was his teacher....

, Pythagoras

Pythagoras (sculptor)

Pythagoras of Samos was a statuary from Samos whom Pliny the Elder expressly distinguishes from the more renowned Pythagoras from Samos, who was a mathematician. Pliny does however say that the sculptor bore a remarkable personal likeness to the mathematician. There is no precise indication of...

, Scopas

Scopas

Scopas or Skopas was an Ancient Greek sculptor and architect, born on the island of Paros. Scopas worked with Praxiteles, and he sculpted parts of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, especially the reliefs. He led the building of the new temple of Athena Alea at Tegea...

, and Perelius, at Olympiad

Olympiad

An Olympiad is a period of four years, associated with the Olympic Games of Classical Greece. In the Hellenistic period, beginning with Ephorus, Olympiads were used as calendar epoch....

 90 in 420 BC

420 BC

Year 420 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Tribunate of Cincinnatus, Vulso, Medullinus and Atratinus...

, in giving an anecdotal description of a competition for a Wounded Amazon

Amazon statue types

Pliny the Elder records five bronze statues of Amazons in the Artemision of Ephesus. He explains the existence of such a quantity of sculptures on the same theme in the same place by describing a 5th century BC competition between the artists Polyclitus, Phidias, Kresilas, "Kydon" and Phradmon;...

 for the temple of Artemis

Temple of Artemis

The Temple of Artemis , also known less precisely as the Temple of Diana, was a Greek temple dedicated to a goddess Greeks identified as Artemis and was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It was situated at Ephesus , and was completely rebuilt three times before its eventual destruction...

 at Ephesus

Ephesus

Ephesus was an ancient Greek city, and later a major Roman city, on the west coast of Asia Minor, near present-day Selçuk, Izmir Province, Turkey. It was one of the twelve cities of the Ionian League during the Classical Greek era...

: in Pliny's anecdote, the fifth place was won by Phradmon, whom Pliny admits was younger than any of the four who were preferred to him. Trusting in Pliny's anecdote, scholars have often hopefully assigned the "Lansdowne" type of Wounded Amazon

Amazon statue types

Pliny the Elder records five bronze statues of Amazons in the Artemision of Ephesus. He explains the existence of such a quantity of sculptures on the same theme in the same place by describing a 5th century BC competition between the artists Polyclitus, Phidias, Kresilas, "Kydon" and Phradmon;...

 to Phradmon.

Adolf Furtwängler

Adolf Furtwängler

Adolf Furtwängler was a famous German archaeologist, teacher, art historian and museum director. He was the father of the conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler and grandfather of the German archaeologist Andreas Furtwängler....

 identified the obscure Phradmon as a follower of Polykleitos

Polykleitos

Polykleitos ; called the Elder, was a Greek sculptor in bronze of the fifth and the early 4th century BCE...

, but Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway

Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway

Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway, born in 1929 in Chieti , is an art historian and specialist in ancient Greek sculpture.-Life:The daughter of an Italian officer, she spent her childhood in Ethiopia, where her father is stationed. After World War II, she studied classics at the University of Messina,...

 made a case for Phradmon's being a fourth-century sculptor, in which case, for those who are convinced, "the possibility of contemporaneity collapses and with it the entire anecdote of the contest".

Pausanias

Pausanias (geographer)

Pausanias was a Greek traveler and geographer of the 2nd century AD, who lived in the times of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. He is famous for his Description of Greece , a lengthy work that describes ancient Greece from firsthand observations, and is a crucial link between classical...

 mentions his statue of the Olympic victor Amertas of Elis

Elis

Elis, or Eleia is an ancient district that corresponds with the modern Elis peripheral unit...

, and there is an epigram

Epigram

An epigram is a brief, interesting, usually memorable and sometimes surprising statement. Derived from the epigramma "inscription" from ἐπιγράφειν epigraphein "to write on inscribe", this literary device has been employed for over two millennia....

 attributed to Theodoridas of Syracuse

Theodoridas of Syracuse

Theodoridas was a lyric and epigrammatic poet from Syracuse, who is supposed to have lived at the same time as Euphorion, that is, about 235 BC; for, on the one hand, Euphorion is mentioned in one of the epigrams of Theodoridas, and, on the other hand, Clement of Alexandria quotes a verse of...

, in the Greek Anthology

Greek Anthology

The Greek Anthology is a collection of poems, mostly epigrams, that span the classical and Byzantine periods of Greek literature...

, on a group of twelve bronze cows, made by Phradmon and dedicated to Athena

Athena

In Greek mythology, Athena, Athenê, or Athene , also referred to as Pallas Athena/Athene , is the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, warfare, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, justice, and skill. Minerva, Athena's Roman incarnation, embodies similar attributes. Athena is...

 Itonia

Itonia

Itonia, Itonias or Itonis was an epithet of the Greek goddess Athena worshiped widely in Thessaly and elsewhere...

, that is, Athena as worshiped at Iton in Thessaly

Thessaly

Thessaly is a traditional geographical region and an administrative region of Greece, comprising most of the ancient region of the same name. Before the Greek Dark Ages, Thessaly was known as Aeolia, and appears thus in Homer's Odyssey....

, after an Illyria

Illyria

In classical antiquity, Illyria was a region in the western part of the Balkan Peninsula inhabited by the Illyrians....

n campaign in 356 or 336 BCE. Phradmon is also mentioned by Columella

Columella

Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella is the most important writer on agriculture of the Roman empire. Little is known of his life. He was probably born in Gades , possibly of Roman parents. After a career in the army , he took up farming...

.

In 1969 three statue bases were discovered at Ostia Antica

Ostia Antica

Ostia Antica is a large archeological site, close to the modern suburb of Ostia , that was the location of the harbour city of ancient Rome, which is approximately 30 km to the northeast. "Ostia" in Latin means "mouth". At the mouth of the River Tiber, Ostia was Rome's seaport, but, due to...

, one of which hsad supported a statue of a certain Charite, priestess at Delphi

Delphi

Delphi is both an archaeological site and a modern town in Greece on the south-western spur of Mount Parnassus in the valley of Phocis.In Greek mythology, Delphi was the site of the Delphic oracle, the most important oracle in the classical Greek world, and a major site for the worship of the god...

, made by Phradmon of Argos; the inscriptions' form dates them to the first century BCE, suggesting that the sculptures had been re-erected on new bases repeating their former inscription.