We are not quite so destitute as to Greek painting, for we have at least a good many fresco pictures, by more or less obscure and incompetent workmen of the Hellenistic age, to show us what the Greeks aimed at; we have on the many beautiful examples of pottery preserved to us the representations of mythical or other scenes which must have had some analogy with the paintings of the same or similar scenes. Lastly, we have many descriptions and epigrams from those who admired the masterpieces of this art, and although these are inadequate, and are often the observations of incompetent rhetorical critics, they still give us far more definite ideas than any description of a musical work could possibly supply. As to the Golden Age of painting, we have nothing but these, for our specimens of frescoes on the walls are all either from pre-historic palaces, or from Græco-Roman houses. If we wish, therefore, to obtain any understanding of this side of Greek art, we must not be content with our poor and sporadic examples, but must enter upon some general considerations which will afford a larger and deeper basis for our judgment. For our inferences from the Pompeiian frescoes to the lost masterpieces are just as hazardous as if we had lost all the masterpieces of sculpture, and endeavoured to judge of their quality by reasoning from the terra cotta figurines of Tanagra and other places, which are often graceful, but almost always faulty in their modelling. Should we indeed have inferred that the modelling of statues in marble and in bronze was absolutely perfect?