BOOK XXXV. XXXI. 49-xxxiii. 52 



sort of process which cannot be applied to walls but 

 is common for ships of the navy, and indeed nowadays 

 also for cargo vessels, since we even decorate vehicles 

 with paintings, so that no one need be surprised 

 that even logs for funeral pyres are painted ; and we 

 Hke gladiators going into the fray to ride in splendour 

 to the scene of their death or at all events of carnage. 

 Thus to contemplate all these numbers and great 

 variety of colours prompts us to marvel at former 

 generations. 



XXXII. Four colours '^ only were used by the 

 ilUistrious painters Apelles, Aetion, Melanthius and 

 Nicomachus to execute their immortal works — of 

 whites, MeUnum ; of yellow ochres, Attic ; of reds, 

 Pontic Sinopis ; of blacks, atramentum — although 

 their pictures each sold for the wealth of a whole 

 town. Nowadays when purple finds its way even 

 on to party-walls and when India contributes ^ the 

 mud of her rivers and the gore of her snakes and 

 elephants, there is no such thing as high-class 

 painting. Everything in fact was superior in the 

 days when resources were scantier. The reason 

 for this is that, as we said before, it is values of§4, 

 material and not of genius that people are now on the 

 look-out for. 



XXXIII. One folly of our generation also in the coiossa' 

 matter of painting I will not leave out. The Emperor ^y^^y^^ 

 Nero had ordered his portrait to be painted on a 54-68. 

 colossal scale, on linen 120 ft. high, a thing un- 

 known hitherto ; this picture when finished, in the 

 Gardens of Maius, was struck by Hghtning and 

 destroyed by fire, together with the best part of the 

 Gardens. When a freedman of Nero was giving at 

 Anzio a gladiatorial show, the pubUc porticoes were 



299 



