BOOK XXXV. XXXVI. 87-90 



Protogenes at Rhodes. Protogenes was held in low 

 esteem by his fellow-countrymen, as is usual with 

 home products, and, when Apelles asked him what 

 price he set on some works he had finished, he had 

 mentioned some small sum, but Apelles made him an 

 offer of fifty talents for them, and spread it about 

 that he was buying them with the intention of 

 selling them as works of his own. This device 

 aroused the people of Rhodes to appreciate the 

 artist, and Apelles only parted with the pictures to 

 them at an enhanced price. 



He also painted portraits so absolutely Ufehke 

 that, incredible as it sounds, the grammarian Apio 

 has left it on record that one of those persons called 

 ' physiognomists,' " who prophesy people's future 

 by their countenance, pronounced from their portraits 

 either the year of the subjects' deaths hereafter or 

 the number of years they had already lived. Apelles Apeiies anu 

 had been on bad terms with Ptolemy in Alexander's 

 retinue. When this Ptolemy ^ was King of Egypt, 

 Apelles on a voyage had been driven by a violent 

 storm into Alexandria. His rivals maliciously 

 suborned the King's jester to convey to him an 

 invitation to dinner, to which he came. Ptolemy 

 was very indignant, and paraded his hospitality- 

 stewards for Apelles to say which of them had given 

 him the invitation. Apelles picked up a piece of 

 extinguished charcoal from the hearth and drew a 

 likeness on the wall, the King recognizing the 

 features of the jester as soon as he began the sketch. 

 He also painted a portrait of King Antigonus ^ who Apeiiesand 

 was blind in one eye, and devised an original method of 

 concealing the defect, for he did the likeness in ' three- 

 quarter,' so that the feature that was lacking in the 



327 



Ptolerny 1. 



Anligonus. 



