At Corinth, too, the art of portrait painting is said to have been first practised. "Blest be the pencil! whose consoling power, Soothing soft Friendship in her pensive hour, Dispels the cloud, with melancholy fraught, That absence throws upon her tender thought. Blest be the pencil! whose enchantment gives To wounded Love the food on which he lives. Rich in this gift, though cruel ocean bear The youth to exile from his faithful fair, He in fond dreams hangs o'er her glowing cheek, Still owns her present, and still hears her speak. Oh! LOVE, it was thy glory to impart Its infant being to this sweetest art! Inspired by thee, the soft Corinthian maid, Her graceful lover's sleeping form portray'd; Her boding heart his near departure knew, Yet long'd to keep his image in her view. Pleased she beheld the steady shadow fall, By the clear lamp upon the even wall. The line she traced, with fond precision true, And, drawing, doted on the form she drew: Nor, as she glow'd with no forbidden fire, Conceal'd the simple picture from her sire. His kindred fancy, still to nature just, Copied her line, and form'd the mimic bust. Thus from thy inspiration, LOVE, we trace The modell'd image, and the pencill'd face!"[205] NO. XXX. CTESIPHON. The Parthian monarchs delighted in the pastoral life of their Scythian ancestors; and the royal camp was frequently pitched in the plain of Ctesiphon, on the eastern bank of the Tigris, at the distance of only three miles from Seleucia. It was, then, no other than a village. By the influx of innumerable attendants on luxury and despotism, who resorted to the court, this village insensibly swelled into a large city; and there the Parthian kings, acting by Seleucia as the Greeks, who built that place, had done by Babylon, built a town, in order to dispeople and impoverish Seleucia. Many of the materials, however, were taken from Babylon itself; so that from the time the anathema was pronounced against that city, "it seems," says Rollin, "as if those very persons, that ought to have protected her, were become her enemies; as if they had all thought it their duty to reduce her to a state of solitude, by indirect means, though without using any violence; that it might the more manifestly appear to be the hand of God, rather than the hand of man, that brought about her destruction."