Critius

Critius and NESIOTES, two Greek sculptors of uncertain school, of the time of the Persian Wars. When Xerxes carried away to Persia the statues of Harmodius and Aristogiton made by Antenor, Critius and Nesiotes were commissioned to replace them. By the help of coins and reliefs, two statues at Naples, wrongly restored as gladiators, have been identified as copies of the tyrannicides of Critius; and to them well apply the words in which Lucian (Rhetor. praecepta, 9) describes the works of Critius and Nesiotes, “closely knit and sinewy, and hard and severe in outline.” Critius also made a statue of the armed runner Epicharinus.