- I age, and marble came into more general use for private as well as public works of art and sculpture. The names of Scopas, Praxiteles, and Lysippus adorn this age ; but few, if any, of the original works of these great masters have been preserved to us. The leading figures in the group of Niobe, which in 1583 was found at Rome, and is now in the Gallery of the Uffizi at Florence, are supposed to be imitations of the group of Scopas commemorated by Plmy. Ancient writers mention numerous works of Praxiteles, chiefly like those of Scopas, in marble; and they are described with sufficient minuteness to enable critics to identify some of those recovered from the ruins of Imperial Rome as free imitations, or copies. Of these may be mentioned the Satyr with the Flute in the Capitoline Museum ; Apollo slaying the Lizard, in the Villa Borghese at Rome; and the youthful Cupid, also preserved in Rome, and supposed to be an imitation of the Eros of Parion, or that of Thespiae. 1 The Venus de’ Medici, which once graced the villa of Hadrian at Tivoli, and now adorns one of the Florentine galleries, is the work of Cleomenes of Athens, who is supposed to have lived about a century and a half after Praxiteles. This is justly considered a work of exquisite grace and beauty ; to the same period may be referred the statue called the Fighting Gladiator, found early in the seventeenth century