It is the variety of models, in a word, which best explains the variety of styles among painters of vases. As we remarked above, no vase painter is of greater interest in this respect than Douris. If any one wishes to estimate at a single glance his often puzzling versatility, he need only look at the mythological painting on a large receptacle for wine in the British Museum (Fig. 14). The choice of the subject, _The Bacchic Thiasos_, repeated to satiety upon black-figured amphoræ of the sixth century, leads us to expect only a commonplace painting, but the artist instead brings us face to face with one of the most spirited sketches Greek art has left to us. Douris shows himself daring, amusing, free almost to indecency, and one asks how the same brush which painted many little paintings, rather stiff in their symmetry, could become animated to the point of inventing these funambulistic movements of wild beasts let loose. These are Sileni playing and dancing. Arranged in a row, like mountebanks upon their stage, they abandon themselves to frantic sports under the leadership of a herald costumed as Hermes, on his head the petasos, and in his hand the caduceus. One lowers his head to drink from a cup placed on the floor; a second, in a half-lying position, has the contents of a goat skin and a wine jug poured together into his mouth by two of his companions; others toy in a ludicrous fashion with kantharoi, or dance on one foot, and try by bending forward to reach a full cup. Even expurgated, this painting sufficiently shows the unbridled gaiety and fun which the Greek designer allowed himself. In that again he resembles the Japanese draughtsman, in love with buffooneries and acrobatic postures. Those who only like to think of Greek art as serious and moralizing, can take their own view. Greek art knew all and dared all--works such as were placed upon school walls to elevate thought, and such as were hidden under a cloak. The same brush drew the touching image of _Eos and Memnon_, and this scene of a pagan, _Kermesse_.