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 .