[128] The antique vulgar was no more exempt from the love of the marvellous rather than the beautiful, than the modern. When the pannel on which the rival lines were drawn, was afterwards carried to Rome, it attracted more visitors than the finest works of art which hung along with it in the palace of the Cæsars, where they and it were burned in one of those calamitous fires which destroyed the choicest libraries of Rome, as well as the most precious works of art, collected from the conquered countries. [129] If these were Attic talents, the sum was 9687_l._ 10_s._, certainly a prodigious sum for one painter to expend upon the works of another. [130] The story is repeated and applied to several other painters in their horses and dogs; but I believe Protogenes has the prior claim, and it seems his friend Nealces was his first imitator. He dashed his sponge at a horse’s month, and produced foam in imitation of that of Protogenes’ dog. [131] See Essay II. This practice of defacing ancient pictures continues even to our own times. During the civil wars in England it was very notorious. Canova kept two faces for the sitting statue of Maria Louisa, one for her family, and one for the world of taste. The modern changes are generally confined to prints of the heroes of the day, whose faces, like their names, drive one another out of the market. [132] This story is a charge upon the Grapes of Zeuxis, and furnished the French with the hint for that of the ass attempting to eat some thistles, in a picture of Le Sueur, or Le Brun, I forget which. [133] The mariner, when storms around him rise, No longer on a _painted stern_ relies. FRANCIS’ HORACE, B. I. ODE 14. [134] These Magistrates chiefly superintended the police of Athens. [135] _Parerga._ This bordering remained in use among the Greek painters till the revival of art. There is, in the collection of the _Belle Arti_, at Florence, a Greek picture of Mary Magdalene, the _parerga_ of which is made up of small groups, representing her history, from the raising of Lazarus to her death. Among the early Fleming or Burgundian painters, the Van Eyks followed this practice with good effect, and the earlier miniature painters, in the borders of the pages of their missals, did the same. [136] Some modern writers have thought that a picture of shipping was beneath the dignity of the Portico of Minerva; and have laboured hard to prove that Paralus was a hero; Hemionis a heroine. But Paralus invented long ships, and the Athenians named their favourite galley, which was a trireme, after him. Hemionis is another name for Nausicaa, a sea nymph, or the daughter of a sea king. The vessel named after her was a long ship, a trireme also; and as the vessels of war of Athens were sacred to Minerva, what could be a more appropriate ornament for her portico, than a picture of ships?