Agasias son of Dositheus, was an ancient Greek

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...

 sculptor of 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...

. One of the productions of his chisel, the statue known by the name of the Borghese Gladiator

Borghese Gladiator

The Borghese Gladiator is a Hellenistic lifesize marble sculpture actually portraying a swordsman, created at Ephesus about 100 BCE. It is signed on the pedestal by Agasias, son of Dositheus, who is otherwise unknown.-Rediscovery:...

, is still preserved in the gallery of the Louvre

Louvre

The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...

. This statue was discovered among the ruins of a palace of the Roman emperors on the site of the ancient Antium

Anzio

Anzio is a city and comune on the coast of the Lazio region of Italy, about south of Rome.Well known for its seaside harbour setting, it is a fishing port and a departure point for ferries and hydroplanes to the Pontine Islands of Ponza, Palmarola and Ventotene...

. From the attitude

Attitude (art)

Attitude as a term of fine art refers to the posture or gesture given to a figure by a painter or sculptor. It applies to the body and not to a mental state, but the arrangement of the body is presumed to serve a communicative or expressive purpose...

 of the figure it is clear that the statue represents not a gladiator, but a warrior contending with a mounted combatant. Friedrich Thiersch

Friedrich Thiersch

Friedrich Wilhelm Thiersch , was a German classical scholar and educationist.-Biography:He was born at Kirchscheidungen...

 conjectured that it was intended to represent Achilles

Achilles

In Greek mythology, Achilles was a Greek hero of the Trojan War, the central character and the greatest warrior of Homer's Iliad.Plato named Achilles the handsomest of the heroes assembled against Troy....

 fighting with Penthesilea

Penthesilea

Penthesilea or Penthesileia was an Amazonian queen in Greek mythology, the daughter of Ares and Otrera and the sister of Hippolyta, Antiope and Melanippe...

.

The only record existing about the artist is the inscription on the pedestal of the statue; nor are there any data for ascertaining the age in which he lived, except the style of art displayed in the work itself, which competent judges think cannot have been produced earlier than the 4th century BC.

It is not quite clear whether the Agasias who is mentioned as the father of Heraclides was the same as the author of the Borghese statue, or a different person.

There was another sculptor of the same name, also an Ephesian, the son of Menophilus. He is mentioned in a Greek inscription, from which it appears that he exercised his art in Delos

Delos

The island of Delos , isolated in the centre of the roughly circular ring of islands called the Cyclades, near Mykonos, is one of the most important mythological, historical and archaeological sites in Greece...

 while that island was under Roman sway; probably some time about 100 BC

100 BC

Year 100 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar. At the time it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Marius and Flaccus...

.