(b Paros, fl c. 450-c. 420 BC). Greek sculptor. He was a prominent member of the group of artists led by Pheidias that executed the Periclean building programme on the Athenian Acropolis. Ancient literary sources provide little information on his career, and even this takes the form of later anecdotes, such as the story of his rivalry with Alkamenes in a competition to produce a statue of Aphrodite (Pliny: Natural History, XXXVI.iv.17), or has been distorted by the legends surrounding Pheidias, to whom two of his works were wrongly attributed: his statue of the Enthroned Mother of the Gods in the metroon in the Athenian Agora (Pausanias: Guide to Greece, I.iii.5) and his cult statue of Nemesis (c. 420 BC; Pausanias: I.xxxiii.3) for the temple at RHAMNOUS. The Nemesis was allegedly carved out of a colossal block of Parian marble brought to Marathon in 490 BC by the Persians, who intended to use it for a trophy after defeating the Athenians (Pausanias: I.xxxiii.2). Agorakritos was also credited with bronze statues of Athena and Zeus-Hades in the Boiotian Temple of Athena Itonia (Pausanias: IX.xxxiv.1).
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