172 On tfie Animals represented 



compositions generally present nothing agreeable nor gracefuL 

 So thoroughly is it based in reason, that it is truth alone that 

 delights, and, to avail ourselves of the expression of the poet, 

 " nothing is beautiful but the truth/' 



The Greek and Roman artists have not confined themselves 

 to the representation of the different terrestrial mammiferas which 

 were known to them. They have given the same attention to 

 the figures which they have left us of reptiles, birds, fishes, the 

 Crustacea, and the insects which had attracted their regards. 

 They have given the same attention to vegetables, and especially 

 to trees. The slightest attention suffices to recognise upon these 

 monuments the olive, the oak, the palm, the pomegranate, the 

 laurel, different kinds of pine, the vine, ivy, barley, wheat, the 

 lotus, the melon, many kinds of poppy, amongst which we may 

 mention the wild-poppy, and a crowd of others which it would 

 be too tedious to enumerate. 



These artists carried their precision so far, that, for example, 

 the astragalus of different of the ruminating animals — the lit- 

 tle bones (tali) which they used in their minor games (ludi mi- 

 nores), have been exhibited by them in such exact fidelity, that 

 we may, by the help of this bone alone, recognise the species to 

 which it had belonged*. So likewise the bdlemnites, which are 

 called thunder-stones, had so attracted their attention, that we 

 find them on their monuments, along with the different animals 

 and vegetables of which we have been treating. 



II. Of real beings, actually/ existing, painted or sculptured 

 on the monuments of antiquity, whose species can he recognised. 



The assiduity with which the ancients have followed nature 

 even in the composition of their mythological beings, manifests 

 how much care they must have given to the representation of the 

 real beings they had continually before their eyes. So it is that we 

 find it easy to recognise the species when we direct our atten- 

 tion to the figures of the animals which they have left us. 

 This pursuit had already exercised the learning of several anti- 

 quaries, particularly of Winckelman and of Millin-[-, and in 



• See especially a letter upon bronze medals, published at Rome in 1778, 

 under the title, " Nummis aliquot sereis uncialibus epistola," and forming a 

 volume in 4to. 



t Description des pierres gravies du Baron Stosch ; par Winkelman, 



