with painting[167], and bearing the inscription, Λυσὲᾳ ἐνθάδε σῆμα πατὴρ Σήμων ἐπέθηκεν. The colour has indeed disappeared with time, but the patience of Mr. Thiersch and of Dr. Loeschcke has succeeded in proving its former presence from the variety of preservation of the surface of the marble, the parts of it which were protected by colour having retained the original surface, while those which were not so protected suffered from corrosion. We can clearly trace the outlines of the figure of Lyseas, a bearded man, who stands, holding in one hand a winecup, in the other a bough for lustration. Below is a jockey, seated on a galloping horse, doubtless a memorial of some victory won in the great games. Lyseas is clad in civic dress, and in this respect he resembles another person of distinction whose stele reaches us from Boeotia, and was executed by the artist Alxenor of Naxos (Pl. IX B). This delightful monument represents a worthy Greek citizen in one of his lighter moods. Standing in a position of ease, he rests his weight on a staff which supports his shoulder, and holds out in sport a grasshopper to a favourite dog, who leaps up in an attitude somewhat constrained, and clearly resulting from the narrow limits of the monument. The inscription added by the artist is as delightfully simple as the representation itself: ‘Alxenor of Naxos fashioned me: only look!’ Alxenor was a native of Naxos, Aristocles probably of a Parian family; these are facts, among others, which confirm the view put forth by Loeschcke and Furtwängler, that the stele with portrait is of Ionian origin, and imported into Greece together with the marble of the islands of the Asiatic coast, and with the sculptors who came to exercise their hereditary skill in carving that marble. It is difficult to prove to demonstration any assertion in regard to the art of Ionia, as the remains which will finally establish or condemn such assertions still lie beneath the soil of Miletus, Ephesus, Phocaea, and the other great Ionian settlements of the coast. But we can assert with reasonable confidence, that as Greece owed conservatism and ancestor-worship to the rigid Dorians, so she owed progress in art and all the delights of life to the joyous Ionian strain; and portraiture has in it the human and individual character which belongs especially to the Ionians. [Illustration: FIG. 53. SEATED HERO.]