The art of sculpture is of much more ancient origin than those of painting and of statuary in bronze. Phidias himself worked in marble, and there is a Venus of his at Rome, a work of extraordinary beauty, in the buildings of Octavia. He was the instructor of Alcamenes, the Athenian, one of the most famous among the sculptors. By this last artist, there are numerous statues in the temples at Athens; as also, without the walls there, the celebrated Venus, known as the Aphrodite in the Gardens, a work to which Phidias himself, it is said, put the finishing hand. Another disciple also of Phidias was Agoracritus of Paros, a great favorite with his master, on account o............