Arion riding on his dolphin, as unmeaningly represented upon a Sopra-porta, in a new treatise on architecture[308], though a significant image in the apartments of a French Dauphin, would be a very poor one in any place where Philanthropy, or the protection of artists like him, could not immediately be hinted at. On the contrary, he would even to this day, though without his lyre, be an ornament to any publick building at Tarentum, because the ancient Tarentines, stamped on their coins the image of Taras, one of the sons of Neptune, riding on a dolphin, on a supposition of his being their first founder. The allegorical decorations of a building, raised by the contributions of a whole nation, I mean the Duke of Marlborough’s palace at Blenheim, are absurd: enormous lions of massy stone, above two portals, tearing to pieces a little cock[309]. The hint sprung from a poor pun. Nor can it be denied that antiquity furnishes some ideas seemingly analogous to this: as for instance, the lioness on the tomb of Leæna, the mistress of Aristogiton, raised in honour of her constancy amidst the torments applied by the tyrant, in order to extort from her a confession of the conspirators against him. But from this, I am afraid, nothing can arise in behalf of the above pitiful decoration: that mistress of the martyr of liberty having been a notorious woman, and whose name could not decently stand a publick trial. Of the same nature are the lizards and frogs on a temple[310], alluding to the names of the two architects, Saurus and Batrachus[311]: the above-mentioned lioness having no tongue, made the allegory still more expressive. The lioness on the tomb of the famous Lais[312], holding with her fore-paws a ram, as a symbol of her manners[313], was perhaps an imitation of the former. The lion was, in general, set upon the tombs of the brave.