The next step of the art was the monogram, which is the outline of figures without light or shade, with the addition, however, of parts within the outline. From this the monochrom, or painting with a single color, and a white ground, then covered with punic wax, first amalgamated with a resinous pigment generally of a red, sometimes of a dark brown or black color, was the next advance. Through this inky ground, the outlines were traced with a firm though plyant style, called a cestrum: the line could be altered by the finger or a sponge, and easily replaced by a new one. When the whole was settled, it was suffered to dry, and covered with a brown encaustic varnish; the lights were worked over again, and rendered more brilliant with a more delicate point, according to the gradual advance from mere outline to some indication; and at last to masses of light and shade--thence to the superinduction of different colors, or the invention of polychrom, which, by the addition of the pencil to the style, raised the stained drawing to a legitimate picture, and at length produced that vaunted harmony--"the magic scale of Grecian color." The period at which the pencil supplanted the cestrum cannot be ascertained. Apollodorus in the 93d Olympiad, and Zeuxis, in the 94th, are said to have used it with freedom and power. Parrhasins painted the battle of the Lapithtæ and centaurs on the shield of Minerva for Phidias, to enable Mys to chase it. It was nearly a century after this that Appelles and Protogenes had a competition in drawing lines with the pencil, in which "delicacy and evanescent subtlety being the characteristic, some notion of their mechanical skill may be formed." Encaustic painting was accomplished by using the colors in wax, as they are used now in oil, drying them by a fire, and polishing the surface by dry friction. Polygnotus is the first great name that appears in history, that any satisfactory data of the arts may be commenced from. He lived about 400 years B. C. So great was his success in the Poecile at Athens, and the Desche, or public hall at Delphi, that in a great council of the Amphyctons, it was solemnly decreed "that his expenses, whenever he travelled in Greece, should be borne at the public charge." His pictures were admired by Pliny, at the distance of six hundred years. The first painting on record is the battle of Magnete, by Balarchus, and purchased by Candaules, King of Lydia, for its weight in gold, or, as some say, a quantity of gold coins equal to its surface.