Gérôme had a sincere and profound love for antiquity; with him it was not the enjoyment of a contemplative mind, a tranquil amateur art, but that of an historian, an archaeologist coupled with the instinct of a dramatist, a psychologue, let us say, who is eager to discover, in any scene whatever, in the graceful or violent gestures of such and such personages of bygone days, some general application. He was certainly most anxious to suggest interesting or amusing parallels to modern life, for, in spite of the dissimilarity of the settings, the tinsels, the decorations, over which the artist laboured with an almost devout care of minute detail, human nature to-day is always more or less close to the human nature of Greece or Rome. "Exhibit that picture, it will bring you honour," said Paul Delaroche to his pupil, who had shown him, with much misgiving, the _Young Greeks Occupied in Cock Fighting_. "It shows originality and style." And that was his first success (1847). The grace of the young figures won much admiration. Planche praised the harmony of the composition as a whole. As to Théophile Gautier, he showed himself, as we have already said, highly enthusiastic; he declared that the features of the boy were drawn with extreme subtlety. "As to the cocks," he added, "they are true prodigies of drawing, animation, and colour; neither Snyders, nor Woenic, nor Oudry, nor Desportes, nor Rousseau, nor any of the known animal painters have attained, after twenty years of labour, the perfection which M. Gérôme has reached at the first attempt." Let us note immediately that Gérôme was, as a matter of fact, a very great painter of animals. His dogs, his horses, and his lions are the work of a masterly observer. Closely following upon the _Cock Fight_, we must recall _Anacreon with Bacchus and Cupid_ (1848, Toulouse Museum) which Gérôme himself characterized as a "lifeless picture," and which nevertheless earned him a second class medal. Later on he was destined to treat this same subject in marble (Salon of 1881). The polished and somewhat affected grace of _Anacreon_ must have especially pleased the painter, because in 1889 he produced a whole series of compositions of delicious daintiness, entitled _Cupid Tipsy_. On the same order of ideas, mention must be made of _Bacchus and Cupid Intoxicated_ (1850, Bordeaux Museum), and in addition to these, under the head of what may be called his Hellenic canvases,--in which he succeeded in conjuring up with magic skill the splendours and graces of that immortal mother of letters and arts, Greece beloved by the gods,--the following pictures, _The Idyll_ (1853), full of charm and solid erudition; _The Greek Interior_ (1856), of sure and penetrating art; _King Candaules_ (1859), in which the sumptuous beauty of Nyssia illumines the bed-chamber of a Heraclid, 700 years B.C., and in which the interest of the picturesque anecdote is enhanced by the artist's marvellous documentary knowledge.