2C2 PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY. [Book XXX V^ 



Alexandria, a Gorgosthcnes,theTragcdian; and at Home, aCastor 

 and Pollux, with figures of Vietory 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 78 and good taste, consecrated in the most fre- 

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

 thought it advisable to efface 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 Iler- 

 culcs, with the face averted, now in the Temple of Anna, 7 '- 1 was 

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

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

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

 naked' Hero," 1 a picture ill 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. Pur, 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 

 thvin. Accordingly, it w;is only at the sight of the. horse 

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

 always been the ease since, whenever this test of his artistic 

 skill has been employed, lie also painted a Neoptolemus 82 ou 

 horse-back, fighting with the Persians ; an Archel;ius, M with 

 his "Wife and Daughter ; and an Antigonus on foot, with a 



Boar, or else, which is the most probable, a King 1 of the Lelcgesin Samos, 

 with whom, according to the Scholiast on Apollonius Khodius, 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. 



;s Shown in his forbearing to appropriate them to his own nsf. 



" 9 Anna Perenna, probably, a human divinity of obscure origin, the 

 legends about whom are related in the Fasti of Ovid, li. iii. 1. 523 ct set/. 

 See also Macrobius, Sat. I. 1*J. Her saered grove was near the Tiber, but 

 of her temple nothing whatcvr-r is known. " Antoniu/ 1 is another reading, 

 but no such divinity is mentioned by any other author. 



* J Siliig (I)ict. A*nc. Art.) is of opinion that the reading is corrupt litre, 

 and that the meaning is, that Apdles " painted a Hero and LeandcT." 



11 Or Demigod. 



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

 Armenia. b &i lj of Macedonia. 



