In portraits, Apelles was unrivalled. He is said to have enjoyed the exclusive privilege of painting Philip and Alexander the Great, both of whom he painted many times. In one of his portraits of Alexander, which was preserved in the temple of Diana at Ephesus, he represented him wielding the thunderbolts of Jupiter: Pliny says the hand and lightning appeared to start from the picture; and, judging from an observation in Plutarch, the figure of the king was lighted solely by the radiance of the lightning. Apelles received for this picture, termed the Alexander Ceraunophorus, twenty talents of gold (about $20,000). The criticism of Lysippus, upon this picture, which has been approved by ancients and moderns, that a lance, as he had himself given the king, would have been a more appropriate weapon in the hands of Alexander, than the lightnings of Jupiter; is the criticism of a sculptor who overlooked the pictorial value of the color, and of light and shade. The lightning would certainly have had little effect in a work of sculpture, but had a lance been substituted in its place in the picture of Apelles, a totally different production would have been the result. This picture gave rise to a saying, that there were two Alexanders, the one of Philip, the invincible, the other of Apelles, the inimitable. Competent judges, says Pliny, decided the portrait of Antigonus (king of Asia Minor) on horseback, the master-piece of Apelles. He excelled greatly in painting horses, which he frequently introduced into his pictures. The most celebrated of all his works was the Venus Anadyomene, which was painted for the people of Coös, and was placed in the temple of Æsculapius on that island, where it remained until it was removed by Augustus, who took it in lieu of 100 talents tribute, and dedicated it in the temple of Julius Cæsar. It was unfortunately damaged on the voyage, and was in such a decayed state in the time of Nero, that the Emperor replaced it with a copy by a painter named Dorotheus. This happened about 350 years after it was executed, and what then became of it is not known. This celebrated painting, upon which every writer who has noticed it has bestowed unqualified praise, represented Venus naked, rising out of the ocean, squeezing the water from her hair with her fingers, while her only veil was the silver shower that fell from her shining locks. This picture is said to have been painted from Campaspe, a beautiful slave of Apelles, formerly the favorite of Alexander. The king had ordered Apelles to paint her naked portrait, and perceiving that the painter was smitten with the charms of his beautiful model, he gave her to him, contenting himself with the painting. He commenced a second Venus for the people of Coös, which, according to Pliny, would have surpassed the first, had not its completion been interrupted by the death of the painter: the only parts finished were the head and bust.