Chap. 36.] ARTISTS WHO PAINTED WITH THE PENCIL. 251 



determination to give away his works, there being no price 

 high enough to pay for them, he said. Thus, for instance, 

 he gave an Alcmena to the people of Agrigentum, and a Pan 

 to Archelaus.^^ He also painted a Penelope, in which the 

 peculiar character of that matron appears to he delineated to 

 the very life ; and a figure of an athlete, with which he was 

 so highly pleased, that he wrote beneath it the line which has 

 since become so famous, to the effect that it would be easier 

 to find fault with him than to imitate him.^'* His Jupiter 

 seated on the throne, with the other Deities standing around 

 him, is a magnificent production : the same, too, with his 

 Infant Hercules strangling the Dragons, in presence of Am- 

 phitryon and his mother Alcmena, who is struck with horror. 

 Still, however, Zeuxis is generally censured for making the 

 heads and articulations of his figures out of proportion. And 

 yet, so scrupulously careful was he, that on one occasion, when 

 he was about to execute a painting for the people of Agri- 

 gentum,^^ to be consecrated in the Temple of the Lacinian 

 Juno there, he had the young maidens of the place stripped 

 for examination, and selected five of them, in order to adopt 

 in his picture the most commendable points in the form of 

 each. He also painted some monochromes in white. ^® 



The contemporaries and rivals of Zeuxis were Timanthes, 

 Androcydes, Eupompus, and Parrhasius. (10.) This last, it 

 is said, entered into a pictorial contest with Zeuxis, who 

 represented some grapes, painted so naturally that the birds 

 flew towards the spot where the picture was exhibited. 

 Parrhasius, on the other hand, exhibited a curtain, drawn with 

 such singular truthfulness, that Zeuxis, elated with the 

 judgment which had been passed upon his work by the birds, 

 haughtily demanded that the curtain should be drawn aside to 

 let the picture be seen. Upon finding his mistake, with a great 

 degree of ingenuous candour he admitted that he had been 

 surpassed, for that whereas he himself had only deceived the 

 birds, Parrhasius had deceived him, an artist. 



13 King of Macedonia. 



1* MojfiijfTfrai ng fiaXkov rj fii[xrj(TtTai. This line is attributed by 

 Plutarch to ApoUodorus. 



15 Cicero and Dionysius of Halicarnassus say that this picture wy^ 

 executed at Crotona, and not at Agrigentum. It is generally supposed to 

 have been the painting of Helena, afterwards mentioned by Pliny. 



1" "Ex albo." "That is, in grey and grey, similar to the Chiariscuri 

 of the Italians."— "VYornum, in Smith's Diet. Antiq. Art. Fainting. 



