After noticing the traditions preserved by Pliny and others as to the earliest painters, the lecturer passed on to the period after the Persian war. Polygnotos of Thasos was the earliest Greek painter of celebrity. He flourished B.C. 480-460. At Athens he decorated with paintings the portico called the Stoa Poikile, the Temple of the Dioscuri, the Temple of Theseus, and the Pinakotheke on the Akropolis. At Delphi he painted on the walls of the building called Lesche two celebrated pictures, the taking of Troy and the descent of Ulysses into Hades. All these were mural paintings; the subjects were partly mythical, partly historical. Thus in the Stoa Poikile were represented the taking of Troy, the battle of Theseus with the Amazons, the battle of Marathon. In the Temple of Theseus came the battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs and the battle of the Amazons again. In the other two Athenian temples he treated mythological subjects. These great public works were executed during the administration of Kimon, to whom Polygnotos stood in the same relation us Phidias did to Perikles, the successor of Kimon. The paintings in the Stoa Poikile were executed by Polygnotos gratuitously, for which service the Athenians rewarded him with the freedom of their city. His greatest and probably his earliest works were the two pictures in the Lesche at Delphi. Of these there was a very full description in Pausanias. The building called Lesche was thought to have been of elliptical form, with a colonnade on either side, separated by a wall in the middle, and to have been about 90 ft in length. The figures were probably life size.