But is it clear that Dibutades, according to Pliny, ever made even a stamp in clay from indented outlines on the wall? The passage is ordinarily so interpreted, but is this interpretation correct? Pliny says that Dibutades having traced the shadow on the wall in outline, his father impressed clay within that outline, and thus made a _typum_ which he baked with other articles of earth, and which was long afterwards preserved in the Nymphæum at Corinth. His words are, “quibus lineis pater ejus impressa argilla typum fecit.” What, then, is the meaning of “typum”? Evidently not a mould, or impression, but a relief. Had it been a mould, he could have stamped from it a hundred impressions, since it would have been merely a seal with an irregularly relieved outline; and in order to have the repetition of what was on the wall he must perforce have stamped from it an impression. This he evidently did not do, or at least nothing is said to indicate anything of the kind. He preserved and baked what he first obtained, which, if it was merely a mould, would have produced, to say the least, no effect. The true as well as the literal translation of this passage would seem to be, “within the outlines by putting on clay he made a relief.” This clay he probably modeled as well as he could, keeping within the lines, and then removed it from the wall and baked it. The same interpretation of this passage is given by Giovanni Battista Adriani, in a remarkable essay or rather letter addressed by him to Giorgio Vasari in 1567, in which he gives a summary of the most celebrated Greek artists and their works. “Typus” in Latin had the double significance of “intaglio” and “relievo,” as our word “type” has of the type itself and the printed impression; and sometimes it was used in one sense and sometimes in the other, but it was usually employed to mean a relief. Thus Cicero, in one of his letters to Atticus (lib. i. ep. 10), writes, “Præterea typos tibi mando quos in tectorio atrioli possim includere,”—I commission you also to procure me some reliefs to be inserted in the plaster of the anteroom. And Pliny in this passage would plainly seem to use the word in the same sense; otherwise he would probably have written “forma,” as he did in other cases when he meant a mould. Not that even that word would be free from all ambiguity, but it would more appropriately signify a mould. But however ingenious is the suggestion of Dr. Brunn that the passages relating to Lysistratus ought to belong to Dibutades, the fact is that in all editions of Pliny they are connected with Lysistratus; and as this suggestion does not dispose of all difficulties and clear up the matter, we will proceed to consider them in that relation, and see if anything can be made clearly out of them.