Had this passage been generally known the dispute could never have maintained itself. There is nothing equivocal in the use of the word μιλτινον, which means “vermilion;” nothing which admits of doubt in the phrase ῳ τα παλαια των αγαλματων εχρωζον. And there are abundant notices extant which illustrate it. One will suffice. The celebrated marble statue of a Bacchante by Scopas is described as holding, in lieu of the Thyrsus, a dead roebuck which is cut open, and the marble represents living flesh. People have tried to explain this by saying that Scopas discovered coloured veins in the marble, which he used to indicate living flesh. The explanation is absurd. In the first place veins do not so run in marble as to represent flesh; in the second, unless statues _were_ usually coloured, such veins, if they existed, would be regarded as terrible blemishes, and the very thing the Greeks are supposed to have avoided—viz., colour as representing reality—would have been shown. But colour _was_ used, as we know, and Pausanias (“Arcad.” lib. viii., cap. 39) describes a statue of Bacchus as having all those portions not hidden by draperies, painted vermilion, the body being of gilded wood. He also distinctly says that the statues made of gypsum were painted, describing a statue of Bacchus γυψου πεποιημενον, which was—the language is explicit—“_ornamented_ with paint” επικεκοσμημενον γραφη. “This statue was apparently ithyphallic, and probably archaic. Not drapery, but ivy and laurel, concealed the lower part of it. The colour of the exposed part was not local, but applied to the whole of it.”—W. W. LLOYD. Virgil, in an epigram, not only offers Venus a _marble_ statue of Amor, the wings of which shall be many-coloured and the quiver painted, but he intimates that this shall be so because it is customary— Marmoreusque tibi, Dea, _versicoloribus alis In morem_ pictâ stabit Amor pharetrâ. And in the seventh Eclogue, Virgil, speaking of the statue of Diana, describes it as of marble with _scarlet_ sandals bound round the leg as high as the calf. Si proprium hoc fuerit, levi de marmore tota Puniceo stabis suras evincta cothurno. And there is a passage in Pliny which is decisive, as soon as we understand the allusion. Speaking of Nicias (lib. xxxv. cap. 11), he says, that Praxiteles, when asked which of his marble works best satisfied him, replied, “Those which Nicias has had under his hands.” “So much,” adds Pliny, “did he prize the finishing of Nicias”—_tantum circumlitioni ejus tribuebat_.