The Boys' and Girls' Pliny: Being parts of Pliny's "Natural History" edited for boys and girls, with an IntroductionPliny, the Elder
History
The Boys' and Girls' Pliny: Being parts of Pliny's "Natural History" edited for boys and girls, with an Introduction
Pliny, the Elder
Animals -- Juvenile literature; Natural history -- Juvenile literature; Physical sciences -- Juvenile literature
In the ninetieth Olympiad lived Aglaophon, Cephisodorus, Erillus, and
Evenor, the father of Parrhasius, one of the greatest of painters, and
of whom we shall have to speak when we come to the period at which he
flourished. All these were artists of note, but not sufficiently so to
detain us by any further details, in our haste to arrive at the
luminaries of the art; first among whom shone Apollodorus of Athens, in
the ninety-third Olympiad. He was the first to paint objects as they
really appeared; the first too, we may justly say, to confer glory by
the aid of the pencil.[230] Of this artist there is a Priest in
Adoration, and an Ajax struck by Lightning, a work to be seen at
Pergamus at the present day: before him, there is no painting of any
artist now to be seen which has the power of riveting the eye.
The gates of art being now thrown open by Apollodorus, Zeuxis of
Heraclea entered upon the scene, in the fourth year of the ninety-fifth
Olympiad, destined to lead the pencil, for which there was nothing too
arduous, to a very high pitch of glory. Of him Apollodorus wrote a verse
to the effect, that Zeuxis had stolen the art from others and had taken
it all to himself. Zeuxis also acquired such a vast amount of wealth,
that, in a spirit of ostentation, he went so far as to parade himself at
Olympia with his name embroidered on the checked pattern of his garments
in letters of gold. At a later period, he came to the determination to
give away his works, there being no price high enough to pay for them,
he said. He gave an Alcmena to the people of Agrigentum, and a Pan to
Archelaüs, King of Macedonia. He also painted a Penelope, in which the
peculiar character of that matron appears to be delineated to the very
life; and a figure of an athlete, with which he was so highly pleased,
that he wrote beneath it the line which has since become so famous, to
the effect that it would be easier to find fault with him than to
imitate him.[231] His Jupiter seated on the throne, with the other
Deities standing around him, is a magnificent production: as, also, is
his Infant Hercules strangling the Dragons, in presence of Amphitryon
and his mother Alcmena, who is struck with horror. Still, however,
Zeuxis is generally censured for making the heads and articulations of
his figures out of proportion. And yet, so scrupulously careful was he,
that on one occasion, when he was about to execute a painting for the
people of Agrigentum, to be consecrated in the Temple of the Lacinian
Juno there, he had the young maidens of the place stripped for
examination, and selected five of them as models, in order to adopt in
his picture the most commendable points in the form of each. He also
painted some monochromes in white.
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