Timomachus of Byzantium seems to have delighted most in tragic subjects, though a picture of his, containing excellent portraits of several generations of one and the same family, is mentioned. His most successful work is said to have been a Gorgon’s head. He painted Iphigenia in Aulis, Orestes and Clytæmnestra; and, for Julius Cæsar, an Ajax and a Medea. The treatment of the latter we may gather from the following lines, by Antiphilus, preserved in the Greek anthology. ON THE MEDEA OF TIMOMACHUS. When bold Timomachus essayed to trace The soul’s emotions in the varying face, With patient thought, and faithful hand, he strove To blend with jealous rage maternal love. Behold Medea! Envy must confess In both the passions his complete success; Tears in each threat--a threat in every tear; The mind with pity warm, or chill with fear. The dread suspense I praise, the critic cries, Here all the judgment, all the pathos lies; To stain with filial blood the guilty scene Had marr’d the artist, but became the queen[141]. I think it best to close my account of ancient Greek painting here, while it was still practised by great masters in their own land, not yet quite enslaved. From the time of Augustus, Italy attracted the best artists of all kinds, but, as I have already shown, it was not under the Cæsars that the liberal arts flourished most. I have now given a sketch of the history of painting and painters in Greece--very imperfect, I acknowledge, but such as I can collect from the authors who either treat on the subject of pictures and artists, or who have left incidental remarks on them, in such works as have come down to us. The first efforts of painting in Greece appear to have been as rude as we found them among the savages of Polynesia. The earliest steps of art in Egypt and Etruria elude our observation, but the nature of the improvements attributed to Eumanus of Athens, teach us what they were in Greece. The art once exercised, however, neither halted nor tarried. It was sublime in its simplicity in the hands of Polygnotus and his cotemporaries. It served their gods and their country. Much improved in beauty, but still grave and dignified, it grew popular in the time of Parrhasius and Zeuxis. Under Apelles and his followers it was devoted to the graces, revelled in beauty, and ministered to the refined pleasures of taste, rather than as at first, to the gratification of higher moral feelings.