But in hiding Agamemnon's face, Timanthes loses the honour of invention, as he is merely the imitator of Euripides, who did it before him?[18] I am not prepared with chronologic proofs to decide whether Euripides or Timanthes, who were contemporaries, about the period of the Peloponnesian war, fell first on this expedient; though the silence of Pliny and Quintilian on that head, seems to be in favour of the painter, neither of whom could be ignorant of the celebrated drama of Euripides, and would not willingly have suffered the honour of this master-stroke of an art they were so much better acquainted with than painting, to be transferred to another from its real author, had the poet's claim been prior: nor shall I urge that the picture of Timanthes was crowned with victory by those who were in daily habits of assisting at the dramas of Euripides, without having their verdict impeached by Colotes or his friends, who would not have failed to avail themselves of so flagrant a proof of inferiority as the want of invention, in the work of his rival:--I shall only ask, what is invention? if it be the combination of the most important moment of a fact with the most varied effects of the reigning passion on the characters introduced--the invention of Timanthes consisted in showing, by the gradation of that passion in the faces of the assistant mourners, the _reason why that of the principal one, was hid_. This he performed, and this the poet, whether prior or subsequent, did not and could not do, but left it with a silent appeal to our own mind and fancy.