BOOK XXXIV. VIII. 14-1X. 17 



lights arranged to look like apples haiiginfy on trees. 

 like the specimen in the temple ° of Apollo of the 

 Palatine which had been part of the booty taken by 

 Alexander the Great at the storming of Thebes 335^ b.c. 

 and dedicated by him to the same deity at Cyme. 



IX. But after a time this art in all places came to statues oj 

 be iisually devoted to statues of gods. I find that ^JTme!'*' 

 the first image of a god made of bronze at Rome 

 was that dedicated to Ceres and paid for out of the 

 propertv of Spurius Cassius who was put to death 485 b.c. 

 by his own father when trying to make himself king. 

 The practice passed over from the gods to statues 

 and representations of human beings also, in various 

 forms. In early days people used to stain statues 

 with bitumen,^ which makes it the more remarkable 

 that they afterwards became fond of covering them 

 with gold. This was perhaps a Roman invention, 

 but it certainly has a name of no long standing at 

 Rome. It was not customary to make effigies ofch-eekpor- 

 human beings unless they deserved lasting com- ""«''-*'<""* 

 memoration for some distinguished reason, in the 

 first case victory in the sacred contests and 

 particularly those at Olympia, where it was the 

 custom to dedicate statues of all who had won a 

 competition ; these statues, in the case of those who 

 had been victorious there three times, were modelled 

 as exact personal Hkenesses of the \dnners — what are 

 called iconicae,'^ portrait statues. I rather believe 

 that the first portrait statues^ officially erected at 

 Athens were those of the tyrannicides Harmodius 

 and Aristogeiton. This happened in the same year 510 b.c. 

 as that in which the Kings were also driven out 

 at Rome. The practice of erecting statues from 

 a most civilized sense of rivalry was afterwards 



139 



