193 Essay zipon the ^rl of the Foundry 



and it is not probable that their works penetrated into Greece 

 properly so called, becaus^e Pausanias assures us, that, al- 

 though no work in bronze had escaped his attention, he had 

 not found any thing belonging toTheodorus, and that he hud 

 only seen a single statue of Rhoecus in the temple of Diana 

 at Ephesus, in Asia Minor. 



The European Greeks were as vet so little advanced in the 

 arts, that the conquerors at the Olympic games had not sta- 

 tues assigned them until the Gist Olympiad, and they were 

 then of wood only ; but twenty years afterwards one Cle- 

 osteucs, an obs^cure individual, who had vanquished in the 

 66th Olympiad, caused himself to be represented in a cha- 

 riot with four bronze horses ; and, not concent with cn- 

 ^^raving upon it his own name and that of his squire, he 

 inscribed the names of his horses also. 



It was from this period that the sacred grove of Altis, near 

 Olympic, was filled with a number of bronze statues, in 

 order to do honour to the memory of the conquerors, while 



prove that the antients knew the use of dioptric glasses. See Dutens, Origine 

 des Dt'coitvertcs atlribiaes aux Moderna:, tgm. ii. cii. 10. § 278. 



Fashionable people of the present day wear upon their fingers a targe dia- 

 mond the lustre of which is often equalled by a piece of well polished glass 

 and completely outvied by the dew drops when the sun shines upon tliem; 

 while the antients employed a part of their riches in the purchase of rings 

 with a precious stone in them renre.seiuing the battles of the Centaurs, or 

 Ulysses traversing with Diomedcs the Trojan fluids in order to carry off 

 the Palladium. In laying out their mouey they recompensed an induslrious 

 artist, whose work astonishes the eye by its minuteness, and recalls to memory 

 an interesting history or a tradition consecrated by antiquity ; and thus con- 

 tributed at the same time, by the solidity of the materials, to the instruction 

 of the most distant posterity. If our descendants could dig up one of our 

 porcelain vases two thousand years hence, what instruction would it not af- 

 ford them ! — -Note lij the Author. 



In adopting the principal ideas consigned in this curious note by the author 

 of this dissertation I think, however, that some of his assertions are not well 

 founded. At first the antients did not endeavour, as he says, to brin;; the 

 greatest number of figures possible into n small space. On the contrary, they 

 took care not to multiply the figures, that they might not divide the attention 

 too much. This is demonstrated by the great number cf monuments which 

 have been handed down to us : one of the proofs which may incline us to re- 

 gard as modern tlie celebrated intaglio known by the name of Michel Angelo's 

 seal, is the great number of figures with which it is loaded. 



In my opinion, it is by no means demonstrated that the antients were ac- 

 quainted with, magnifying glasses. — NoU Ly M. Milti/i. 



Pindar 



