After this, I find, it became a common practice to exhibit foreign pictures in the Forum; for it was to this circumstance that we are indebted for a joke of the orator Crassus. While pleading below the Old Shops,[1843] he was interrupted by a witness who had been summoned, with the question, “Tell me then, Crassus, what do you take me to be?” “Very much like him,” answered he, pointing to the figure of a Gaul in a picture, thrusting out his tongue in a very unbecoming manner.[1844] It was in the Forum, too, that was placed the picture of the Old Shepherd leaning on his staff; respecting which, when the envoy of the Teutones was asked what he thought was the value of it, he made answer that he would rather not have the original even, at a gift. CHAP. 9.—AT WHAT PERIOD PAINTING WAS FIRST HELD IN HIGH ESTEEM AT ROME, AND FROM WHAT CAUSES. But it was the Dictator Cæsar that first brought the public exhibition of pictures into such high estimation, by consecrating an Ajax and a Medea[1845] before the Temple of Venus Genetrix.[1846] After him there was M. Agrippa, a man who was naturally more attached to rustic simplicity than to refinement. Still, however, we have a magnificent oration of his, and one well worthy of the greatest of our citizens, on the advantage of exhibiting in public all pictures and statues; a practice which would have been far preferable to sending them into banishment at our country-houses. Severe as he was in his tastes, he paid the people of Cyzicus twelve hundred thousand sesterces for two paintings, an Ajax and a Venus. He also ordered small paintings to be set in marble in the very hottest part of his Warm Baths;[1847] where they remained until they were removed a short time since, when the building was repaired. CHAP. 10.—WHAT PICTURES THE EMPERORS HAVE EXHIBITED IN PUBLIC. The late Emperor Augustus did more than all the others; for he placed in the most conspicuous part of his Forum, two pictures, representing War and Triumph.[1848] He also placed in the Temple of his father,[1849] Cæsar, a picture of the Castors,[1850] and one of Victory, in addition to those which we shall mention in our account of the works of the different artists.[1851] He also inserted two pictures in the wall of the Curia[1852] which he consecrated in the Comitium;[1853] one of which was a Nemea[1854] seated upon a lion, and bearing a palm in her hand. Close to her is an Old Man, standing with a staff, and above his head hangs the picture of a chariot with two horses. Nicias[1855] has written upon this picture that he “inburned”[1856] it, such being the word he has employed.