While such was the fate of sculpture, that of painting was little better. Some of the Roman conquerors had introduced, from the eastern provinces, a taste for that gross kind of painting, Mosaic. One of the finest pieces executed in Italy was the great pavement in the Temple of Fortune, at Prænesti[60], by Egyptian artists in the service of Sylla the dictator; and, as a pavement, the coolness and cleanliness of that kind of work must have had strong recommendations, besides whatever merit the designs might possess. This luxury soon became so general, that, even in the remote province of Britain, specimens of mosaic pavements, of no common beauty, are from time to time discovered in the neighbourhood of Roman stations. To the workers in mosaic we are probably indebted for part of what little art outlived the five dull ages preceding the twelfth century; and for a larger part to the illuminators of books, whose miniatures certainly preserved much that was afterwards used to great advantage by the revivers of painting in Italy and Germany. Pliny mentions Aterius Labeo, a man of prætorian rank, who in his time was very skilful in small works of painting, which I conceive to have been miniature. He exercised his art in Gallia Narboniensis, where he was vice-consul; and I have sometimes fancied that his works might have assisted to form the early illuminators of missals in the southern provinces, nay, perhaps, the Monk of the Golden Isles himself. I cannot omit to mention here, that the first persons who illustrated books appear to have been Varro and Atticus. In the books of their noble libraries, they each of them inserted small portraits of the authors at the head of their works. This was within a century of our era; and so diligent had they been in seeking out the portraits of authors, that M. Varro published a collection of seven hundred[61]. Cornelius Nepos says, that under each of the heads in his collection, Atticus wrote four or five verses, describing the deeds and honours of the original. Had but a few of these miniatures come down to our times, how precious they would have been to the artist and the antiquary. Among the last names of ancient Italian painters given us by Pliny, is that of Turpilius, a noble Venetian, who painted at Verona in the first century, with considerable reputation; and it is remarkable that some of the earliest of modern painters appear at Verona, and that many of the most beautiful miniature illuminations extant were executed by very ancient monks of that city[62].