Damophon, son of Philip of Messene, is the best-known sculptor of the mature Hellenistic period in Southern Greece. He specialized in creating statues depicting exclusively gods and heroes. The classical elements of his divine and heroic figures were, to a certain extent, dictated by the traditional, conservative nature of this category of works. He worked primarily in marble, but also in wood and bronze. In his marble works, which were usually colossal in size, he occasionally used the technique of acrolith, but more commonly that of segmental construction. In other words, he constructed his figures from many separately carved pieces of marble, which he assembled using metal fasteners and adhesive. The technique of segmental construction, which makes use of even the smallest pieces of this precious material, was unavoidable for colossal and boldly designed works, since it was impossible to quarry a sufficiently large single block of marble. Thanks to the traveler Pausanias, who held Damophon’s art in particularly high regard, we know of at least fifteen of his works (five of which are polychromatic compositions), erected in the sanctuaries of four cities in the Peloponnese. Nine of his religious sculptures were located in the sculptor’s birthplace, Messene, two in Aegion, the seat of the Achaean League, three of his works in the Arcadian capital of Megalopolis, and one religious composition in the Arcadian town of Lycosura. Among these works, the colossal tetramorphic group from the Temple of the Virgin Mary in Lycosura was discovered during an excavation in 1910.

A representative work of his artistry and skill in rendering delicate, translucent fabric while simultaneously highlighting the plasticity of soft, feminine flesh is the surviving members of the marine troupe—a Triton and two Tritonides—from the armrests and backrest of the marble throne of the goddesses at Lycosura. Damophon was summoned by the Eleans to Olympia to restore the gold-and-ivory cult statue of Zeus, the work of the great Phidias, which was renowned in antiquity, and was particularly honored for his work by the Elean council. Recent excavations in Messene have unearthed trunks and fragments from all of his works that were once housed in the Asclepieion of Messene: the triad of Asclepius, Machaon, and Podaleirios, the ten-figure composition of Apollo and the Muses, Thebe and Heracles, Tyche, as well as Artemis Phosphorus. An epigraphic monument from the 2nd century B.C. from Messene provides new information (beyond what Pausanias provides) regarding his artistic activity both in Lycosura in Arcadia and in other cities of the Peloponnese, Central Greece, and the islands. Damophon was a prominent figure with financial power and political influence in the city of Messene. His reputation as a great sculptor and master of all forms of statuary extended beyond the borders not only of Messenia but also of the Peloponnese. His heyday appears to be reasonably well-defined as falling between the years 210 and 180 B.C. His works should not be regarded as a classical reaction following the Asian Baroque, but rather as original neoclassical creations, which appeared contemporaneously with—or even earlier than—the great achievements of Pergamon. His heyday coincided with the heyday of his hometown, Messene, before it was forced, by Roman intervention, to join the Achaean League permanently in 182 B.C. to the Achaean League against its will.