It's also worth noting that the anatomic accuracy of the art of Tom of Finland, depicting men with penises in an anatomically accurate position, indicates that there were men with enormous bulging dicks in the early 1960s, enormous bulging dicks of a size and heft typically unequalled by the average man today. Could he have imagined a penis larger than he had ever actually seen? Impossible, of course. The human brain is incapable of bringing to mind anything that it has not seen actually put in its eyes' field of vision.
A large penis looks the same as a small penis, only larger. Hypertrophied muscles do not look like bigger versions of normal muscles; they have a significantly different shape. A muscular person with normal-to-high body fat also looks very different than a muscular person with low body fat (look at heavyweight or superheavyweight powerlifters compared to bodybuilders). Classical sculptures of Greek heroes display high muscle mass and very low body fat.
Indeed, all humans must have been as big as Michaelangelo's David: 17 feet tall, since anyone who acquires the skill of accurate detailed sculpting automatically loses their ability to do anything but a 1:1 scale. :p
Are you kidding? Even if you're a very skilled sculptor, you don't get an extremely accurate sculpture of a human body without a living reference in front of you. A muscular person doesn't look like a non-muscular person with various regions puffed up
Well, my response was slightly tongue in cheek. I was just struck by the implied theory that because works of art depict something, that automatically means that thing actually existed.
Regarding your specific example, I'd actually say that "a non-muscular person with various regions puffed up" is a fairly good description of what a muscular person looks like! And, further, I would be fairly confident that an ancient Greek sculptor, having observed numerous models, would be able to ramp the dials up to 12, producing a figure with a degree of outlandish magnificence never actually quite seen in real life, while still appearing anatomically accurate enough not to look weird.
As to how buff the Greeks really were, I admit we'd need a time machine.
I can imagine big dicks all I want, if I've never seen one, it's hard to sculpt it accurately. Indeed, me sculpting a perfectly accurate huge dick, veins and all, almost certainly means I've seen at least one.
