262 PLINTHS NATURAL HISTORY. [Book XXXV. 



Alexandria, aGorgosthenes, theTragedian; and at Rome, a Castor 

 and Pollux, with figures of Victory and Alexander the Great, 

 and an emblematical figure of War with her hands tied be- 

 hind her, and Alexander seated in a triumphal car ; both of 

 which pictures the late Emperor Augustus, with a great degree 

 of moderation'^ and good taste, consecrated in the most fre- 

 quented parts of his Forum : the Emperor Claudius, however, 

 thought it advisable to eiface the head of Alexander in both 

 pictures, and substitute likenesses of his predecessor Augustus. 

 It is by his hand too, it is generally supposed, that the Her- 

 cules, with the face averted, now in the Temple of Anna,'''® was 

 painted ; a picture in which, one of the greatest difficulties in 

 the art, the face, though hidden, may be said to be seen rather 

 than left to the imagination. He also painted a figure of a 

 naked^" Hero,^' a picture in which he has challenged Nature 

 herself. 



There exists too, or did exist, a Horse that was painted by 

 him for a pictorial contest ; as to the merits of which, Apelles 

 appealed from the judgment of his fellow-men to that of the 

 dumb quadrupeds. Eor, finding that by their intrigues his 

 rivals were likely to get the better of him, he had some horses 

 brought, and the picture of each artist successively shown to 

 them. Accordingly, it was only at the sight of the horse 

 painted by Apelles that they began to neigh ; a thing that has 

 alwaj's been the case since, whenever this test of his artistic 

 skill has been employed. He also painted a Neoptolemus^ on 

 horse-back, fighting with the Persians ; an Archelaus,®^ with 

 his AVife and Daughter ; and an Antigonus on foot, with a 



Boar, or else, which is tlie most probable, a King of the Lelegesin Saraos, 

 with wliom, according to the Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius, originated 

 the saying, " There is many a slip between the cup and the lip ;" in refer- 

 ence to his death, by a wild boar, when he was about to put a cup of wine 

 to his mouth. 



■'^ Shown in his forbearing to appropriate them to his own use. 



''^ Anna Perenna, probably, a lloman divinity of obscure origin, the 

 legends about whom are related in the Fasti of Ovid, B. iii. 1. 523. et seq. 

 Sec also Macrobius, Sat. I. 12. Her sacred grove was near the Tiber, but 

 of her temple nothing whatever is known. " Antonipe" is another reading, 

 but no such divinity is mentioned by any other author. 



•^'^ Sillig (Diet. Anc. Art.) is of opinion that the reading is corrupt here, 

 and that the meaning is, that Apelles " painted a Hero and Leander." 



*^ Or Demigod. 



82 One of the followers of Alexander, ultimately slain by Eumenes in 

 Arraeuia. ^ -•r- -. ^.r 



