2/6 pliny's natural histoet. [Book XXXY. 



Athens a representation of the j^ecyoraantea'^^ of Homer; 

 which last he declined to sell to King Attains for sixty 

 talents, and in preference, so rich was he, made a present of 

 it to his own native place. He also executed some large 

 pictures, among which there are a Calypso, an lo, an An- 

 dromeda, a very fine Alexander, in the Porticos'^ of Pompeius, 

 and a Calypso, seated. To this painter also there are some 

 pictures of cattle attributed, and in his dogs he has been re- 

 markably successful. It was this Nicias, with reference to 

 whom, Praxiteles, when asked with which of all his works in 

 marble he was the best pleased, made answer, *' Those to 

 which Kicias has set his hand," so highly did he esteem the 

 colouring of that artist. It has not been satisfactorily ascer- 

 tained whether it is this artist or another of the same name 

 that some writers have placed in the hundred and twelfth 

 Olympiad. 



"With I^Ticias has been compared, and indeed sometimes 

 preferred to him, Athenion of Muronea,'^^ a pupil of Glaucion 

 of Corinth. In his colouring he is more sombre than Mcias, 

 and yet, with all his sombreness, more pleasing ; so much so 

 indeed, that in his paintings shines forth the extensive know- 

 ledge which he possessed of the art. He painted, in the 

 Temple at Eleusis, a Phylarchus ;"^ and at Athens, a family 

 group, which has been known as the " Syngenicon ;"" an 

 Achilles also, concealed in a female dress, and Ulysses de- 

 tecting him ; a group of six whole-length figures, in one 

 picture ; and, a work which has contributed to his fame more 

 than any other, a Groom leading a Horse. Indeed, if he had 

 not died young, there would have been no one comparable to 

 Athenion in painting. 



Heraclides, too, of Macedon, had some repute as an artist. 

 At first he was a painter of ships, but afterwards, on the cap- 

 ture of King Perseus, he removed to Athens ; where at the 

 same period was also Metrodorus/^ who was both a painter 

 and a philosopher, and of considerable celebrity in both 



'3 " Place of the prophecies of the dead ;" in reference to the descrip- 

 tion of the Infernal Regions in the Fourth Book of the Odyssey. 



l^ See Chapter 37 of this Book. ''= See B. iv. c. 18. 



^ "^ Supposed by Hardouin to be the writer mentioned at the end of B. 

 vii. and B. x. : or perhaps, " a chief" of an Athenian tribe. 



'' A "group of kindred." "^ A disciple of Carneades. See 



the list of writers at the end of this Book. 



