The Greek sculptor invested his work with an inexpressible serenity, as if it were a spirit without a passion, as appears in the Apollo and Antinous. Pride and scorn are strongly marked in these, yet over the whole figure is thrown a heavenly calm and placidness; there is no swelling vein, no contorted muscle, but a general smoothness and unperturbed dignity. The same subdued air and tone prevailed in the paintings of the best age. Achilles appears grieved at having slain Penthesilea; the brave beauty, bathed in her own blood so heroically shed, demands the esteem of her mightier antagonist, and elicits the exclamations of both compassion and love. The Greeks never painted a Fury, nor did extravagant rage or frightful despair degrade any of their productions. Indignant Jupiter hurled his lightnings with a serene brow; and Timanthes, in painting the sacrifice of Iphigenia, rather than over-pass the limits within which the Graces moved, when he knew that the grief of Agamemnon, the father, would spread contortions over the face of the hero, concealed the extreme of distress, and perfected at once the merit of the picture and the purity of his taste. The Philoctetes of Pythagoras of Leontini, appeared to impart his pain to the beholder; but this was telegraphed to the soul by the magnetic sympathy latent in all the work, and not by means of ugly features. Hercules in the poisoned garment, depicted by an unknown master of that age, was not the Hercules whom Sophocles described, shrieking so horridly that the rocks of Locris and headlands of Eubœa resounded therewith. What was truthful and appropriate in language, was not attempted to be adequately expressed through the distortions of inappropriate art. Zeuxis derived his inspiration from Homer, and when he had painted his Helen, he had the courage to write at her feet the renowned verses, in which the enraptured elders confess their admiration. This contest between poetry and painting was so remarkable, that the victory remained undecided, as both the poet and painter were deemed worthy of a crown. The Diana of Apelles also followed Homer closely, with the Graces mingling in the accompanying train of her Nymphs. In these instances, as with Phidias in his own loftier sphere, the imagination of the artist was fired by the exalted image of the poet, and thus became more capable of just and captivating representation.