Among the Romans, portrait, decorative, and scene painting engrossed the art, much to the regret of such critics as Pliny and Vitruvius. Nothing could be in more execrable taste than a colossal painting of Nero, one hundred and twenty feet high. From the time of Augustus, landscape decorations were common, and were carried out with every species of license. Among the Greeks we do not read of landscape painting. This has been reserved for our age, and is much admired, as it was at Rome in its latter days. Mosaic gradually superseded painting in Rome. It was first used for floors, but finally walls and ceilings were ornamented with it, like St. Peter's at Rome. Many ancient mosaics have been preserved which attest beauty of design of the highest character, like the Battle of Issus, lately discovered at Pompeii. In fact, neither statuary nor painting was advanced by the Romans. They had no sensibility, or conception of ideal beauty. The divine spark of genius animated the Greeks alone. Still the wonders of Grecian art were possessed by the Romans, and were made to adorn those grand architectural monuments for which they had a taste. Greek productions were not merely matters of property, they were copied and reproduced in all the cities of the Mediterranean; and though no artist of original genius arose from Augustus to Constantine, galleries of art existed everywhere in which the masterpieces of Polygnotus, Pausias, Aristides, Timanthes, Zeuxis, Parrhasius, Pamphilus, Euphranor, Protogenes, Apelles, Timomachus, and of other illustrious men, were objects of as much praise as the galleries of Dresden and Florence. [Sidenote: Probable perfection of the ancients in painting.]