84 



ture: and the painting of Panaenus, in the portico, was 

 accounted a full reward for the heroic exertions of Mil- 

 liades and his illustrious companions in arms!* 



When the Romans had established the fame of their mi- 

 litary prowess beyond dispute, and asserted their dominion 

 over the Avorld by the conquest of the Carthaginians and 

 the Greeks, they saw that a province yet remained un- 

 conquered; and it was then that they aimed at an equal 

 pre-eminence and dominion ui the fine arts. When Greece 

 yielded in arms, she made an ample reprisal in arts, and 

 enslaved her fierce conqueror; and Rome fixed her mind 

 and attention on a picture. In the succession of people 

 who appeared, from the destruction of the Roman empire 



in 



* In a country, not larger than some shires in England and Ireland, and 

 within the compass of a short period, it is surprising what a number of il-; 

 iustrious men arose, in the various provinces of the fine arts. In dramatic 

 poetry, Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, with many more, whose works 

 have perished, were nearly coteniporaries: then succeeded the comic writers, 

 Aristophanes, Menander, Philomon, and a cloud of others; of whom the reader 

 may find some account, in the entertaining papers on the subject, in Cum- 

 berland's Observer: in history, eloquence, and philosophy, came Thucydides, 

 Pericles, Demosthenes, Eschines, Lysias, Plato, and Xenophon: in sculpture, 

 Phidias, Praxiteles, Thymilus: in painting, Panconus, Polygnotus, Micon, 

 Pamphilus, Zeuxis, and Parrhasius. Nor are we left to conjecture, or the 

 relations of ancient writers, for a sense of the excellence of this admirable 

 people in architecture: the noble remains of ancient Athens, which have tri- 

 umphed over the rage of time and barbarism, bear testimony to their supe- 

 riority; and we must recollect that, at the same time, the Athenians carried 

 en great and expensive wars, and contended, by sea and land, for the sti- 

 preme dominion of Greece. 



