Our body endeavouring to raise itself from a seat, moves always mechanically towards its sought-for centre of gravity, drawing back the legs, which were advanced in sitting[26]; instead of which the figure stretches out his right leg. Every erection begins with elevated heels, and in that moment all the weight of the body is supported only by the toes, which was observed by Felix[27], in his Diomedes: but here all rests on the sole. Nor can Diomedes, (if we suppose him to be a sitting figure, as he touches with his left leg the bottom of his thigh) find, in raising himself, the centre of his gravity, only by a retraction of his legs, and of course cannot rise in that posture. His left hand resting upon the bended leg, holds the palladion, whilst his right touches negligently the pedestal with the point of a short sword; consequently he cannot rise, neither moving his legs in the natural and easy manner required in any erection, nor making use of his arms to deliver himself from that uneasy situation. There is at the same time a fault committed against the rules of perspective. The foot of the left bended leg, touching the cornice of the pedestal, shews it over-reaching that part of the floor, on which the pedestal and the right foot are situated, consequently the line described by the hinder-foot is the fore on the gem, and _vice versa_. But allowing even a possibility to that situation, it is contrary to the Greek character, which is always distinguished by the natural and easy. Attributes neither to be met with in the contortions of Diomedes, nor in an attitude, the impossibility of which every one must be sensible of, in endeavouring to put himself in it, without the help of former sitting. Felix, supposed to have lived after Dioscorides, though preserving the same attitude, has endeavoured to make its violence more natural, by opposing to him the figure of Ulysses, who, as we are told, in order to bereave him of the honour of having seized the Palladion, offered to rob him of it, but being discovered, was repulsed by Diomedes; which being his supposed action on the gem, allows violence of attitude[28]. Diomedes cannot be a sitting figure, for the Contour of his buttock and thigh is free, and not in the least compressed: the foot of the bent leg is visible, and the leg itself not bent enough. The Diomedes represented by Mariette is absurd; the left leg resembling a clasped pocket-knife, and the foot being drawn up so high as to make it impossible in nature that it should reach the pedestal[29]. Faults of this kind cannot be called negligences, and would not be forgiven in any modern artist.