BOOK XXXV. XXXVI. 101-103 



Who his teacher was is believed to be unrecorded. 

 Some people say that until the age of fifty he was 

 also a ship-painter, and that this is proved by the 

 fact that when he was decorating with paintings, on 

 a very famous site at Athens, the gateway of the 

 Temple of Athene, where he depicted his famous 

 Paralus and Hammonias," which is by some people 

 called the Nausicaa, he added some small drawings 

 of battleships in what painters call the ' side-pieces,' ^ 

 in order to show from what commencement his work 

 had arrived at the pinnacle '^ of glorious display. 

 Among his pictures the palm is held by his lalysus,'' 

 which is consecrated in the Temple of Peace in Rome, 

 It is said that while painting this he lived on soaked 

 lupins, because he thus at the same time both 

 sustained his hunger and thirst and avoided blunting 

 his sensibilities by too luxurious a diet. For this 

 picture he used four coats of paint, to serve as three 

 protections against injury and old age, so that when 

 the upper coat disappeared the one below it would 

 take its place. In the picture there is a dog marvel- 

 lously executed, so as to appear to have been painted 

 by art and good fortune jointly: the artist's own 

 opinion was that he did not fully show in it the foam 

 of the panting dog, although in all the remaining 

 details he had satisfied himself, which was very 

 difficult. But the actual art displayed displeased 

 him, nor was he able to diminish it, and he thought 

 it was excessive and departed too far from reality — 

 the foam appeared to be painted, not to be the 

 natural product of the animars mouth ; vexed and 

 tormented, as he wanted his picture to contain the 

 truth and not merely a near-truth, he had 

 several times rubbed ofF the paint and used another 



337 



