Many vases have been interpreted as portraying Sappho and Phaon,[119] but in every case there is uncertainty about the interpretation. On two beautiful vases (Pl. 4, 5), the hydria in Florence certainly by the Meidias painter himself, and the crater in Palermo of the school of the Meidias painter, the beautiful Phaon is definitely pictured.[120] The inscription on the latter, “Phaon is beautiful,” leaves no doubt in the matter. But the girl called Chryse or Philomele is perhaps wrongly interpreted as Sappho. These vases are probably older than the comedy on _Phaon_, by Plato (not to be confused with the philosopher). Phaon is painted as handsome; all the girls are adorning themselves and making love to him, but he has had too much attention from the ladies and is sick of them (cf. p. 40 above). On another crater,[121] in Bologna (Pl. 17), in style not far removed from the vase-painter Polygnotus, Phaon appears seated at the oar in a boat, about to take aboard the tall goddess, who was to give him a perennial antidote against old age. Before we leave ancient painting we ought to mention a picture of Sappho in a garb as a lutist which the encyclopaedic Pliny assigns to Leon.[122] We know nothing about him, but he was probably one of the numerous second rate artists of Hellenistic times. An epigram in the Anthology and the Christian Father Tatian[123] seem to have referred to this portrait. Several Pompeian frescoes, and one from Herculaneum representing a lady with a _stilus_ about to write her thoughts on a tablet, have been named Sappho. Only in the case of one[124] do I feel that there is any probability at all that Sappho was meant, and in that one Alcaeus appears standing by the side of the seated Lesbian poetess (Pl. 18).