painting is Schedius, who led the Phocians to Troy, with a dagger in his hand, and a garland of grass on his head. And next him sits Pelias, with beard and head all hoary, gazing at Orpheus. And Thamyris sitting near Pelias is blind and dejected in mien, with thick hair and beard, his lyre is broken and the strings torn asunder. Above him is Marsyas, seated on a stone, and near him Olympus, a handsome boy, learning to play on the pipe. The Phrygians at Celænæ represent that the river flowing through their town was formerly this piper Marsyas, and that the piping in honour of Cybele was his invention: they say also that they repulsed the army of the Galati through his aid, as he assisted them both with the water of the river and his melody. [136] Odyssey, xx. 63 _sq._ [137] Odyssey, x. 509, 510. CHAPTER XXXI. If you look again at the upper part of the painting, you will see next Actæon Salaminian Ajax Palamedes and Thersites playing with dice, which were the invention of Palamedes. And the other Ajax is looking at them playing: he looks like a shipwrecked man, and his body is wet with the foam of the sea. Polygnotus seems to have purposely collected together the enemies of Odysseus. And Ajax the son of Oileus hated Odysseus, because he urged the Greeks to stone him for his rape of Cassandra. And I have read in the Cyprian Poems that Palamedes going a fishing was drowned by Diomede and Odysseus. And a little above Ajax the son of Oileus is Meleager painted, looking at Ajax. All these except Palamedes have beards. As to the death of Meleager, Homer informs us that a Fury heard Althæa cursing him, and that this was the cause of his death. But the poems called the Great Eœæ and the Minyad agree in stating that Apollo assisted the Curetes against the Ætolians, and killed Meleager. As to the famous tradition about the firebrand; how it was given to Althæa by the Fates, and how Meleager was fated not to die till it was consumed by fire, and how Althæa set it on fire in a rage, all this was first described by Phrynichus, the son of Polyphradmon, in his play called Pleuroniæ: “He escaped not dread fate, but was consumed by the swift flame, as soon as the ill-contrived firebrand was set on fire by his stern mother.” Phrynichus does not however seem to introduce the legend as his own invention, but only to allude to it as one well-known throughout Greece.