Titidius Labeo, a person of prætorian rank, who had been formerly proconsul of the province of Gallia Narbonensis, and who lately died at a very advanced age, used to pride himself upon the little pictures which he executed, but it only caused him to be ridiculed and sneered at. I must not omit, too, to mention a celebrated consultation upon the subject of painting, which was held by some persons of the highest rank. Q. Pedius,[1833] who had been honoured with the consulship and a triumph, and who had been named by the Dictator Cæsar as co-heir with Augustus, had a grandson, who being dumb from his birth, the orator Messala, to whose family his grandmother belonged, recommended that he should be brought up as a painter, a proposal which was also approved of by the late Emperor Augustus. He died, however, in his youth, after having made great progress in the art. But the high estimation in which painting came to be held at Rome, was principally due, in my opinion, to M. Valerius Maximus Messala, who, in the year of the City, 490, was the first to exhibit a painting to the public; a picture, namely, of the battle in which he had defeated the Carthaginians and Hiero in Sicily, upon one side of the Curia Hostilia.[1834] The same thing was done, too, by L. Scipio,[1835] who placed in the Capitol a painting of the victory which he had gained in Asia; but his brother Africanus, it is said, was offended at it, and not without reason, for his son had been taken prisoner in the battle.[1836] Lucius Hostilius Mancinus,[1837] too, who had been the first to enter Carthage at the final attack, gave a very similar offence to Æmilianus,[1838] by exposing in the Forum a painting of that city and the attack upon it, he himself standing near the picture, and describing to the spectators the various details of the siege; a piece of complaisance which secured him the consulship at the ensuing Comitia. The stage, too, which was erected for the games celebrated by Claudius Pulcher,[1839] brought the art of painting into great admiration, it being observed that the ravens were so deceived by the resemblance, as to light upon the decorations which were painted in imitation of tiles. CHAP. 8.—AT WHAT PERIOD FOREIGN PAINTINGS WERE FIRST INTRODUCED AT ROME. The high estimation in which the paintings of foreigners were held at Rome commenced with Lucius Mummius, who, from his victories, acquired the surname of “Achaicus.” For upon the sale of the spoil on that occasion, King Attalus having purchased, at the price of six thousand denarii, a painting of Father Liber by Aristides,[1840] Mummius, feeling surprised at the price, and suspecting that there might be some merit in it of which he himself was unaware,[1841] in spite of the complaints of Attalus, broke off the bargain, and had the picture placed in the Temple of Ceres;[1842] the first instance, I conceive, of a foreign painting being publicly exhibited at Rome.