76 THE FINE ARTS. 
ingly seized a sword in his martial zeal, and was thus detected. On the 
shield which the crafty Ulysses has brought with him we see Achilles 
in the act of being instructed by the centaur Chiron in the use of arms. 
More peaceful scenes are depicted on two other wall-paintings from Pompeii 
(jigs. 8 and 9), taken from the edifice called the “‘ Pantheon,” which portray 
a priestess and a songstress surrounded by rich although fantastic architecture. 
In both pictures the drawing is excellent and the coloring beautiful; the 
combination of the colors too evinces much taste. Of the wall-paintings of 
Herculaneum we will instance only the picture of Warcissus (pl. 13, fig. 6), 
who, while gazing at his own image in the watery mirror, falls in love with 
himself, and wastes away with desire. In the background we perceive 
Cupid, who in silent sadness is casting away his torch, or an angel of 
death with his torch inverted. Another picture from Herculaneum (pl. 12, 
Jig. 10) is a monochrome (a picture of one color), which represents Z’heseus 
preventing the Rape of Huyppodamia by the Centaur Eurytos. The attitudes 
of Theseus and the Centaur remind one pretty strongly of Canova’s famous 
statue of Theseus slaying the Minotaur (now in Vienna). A pendant to 
this monochrome is found in a painting executed in several colors (pl. 13, 
Jig. 5), likewise from Herculaneum, which represents Theseus the slayer of 
the Minotaur receiving the thanks of the Athenian youth. As specimens 
of the manner in which the walls were divided for painting, we give (jig. 15) 
the painting on a ceiling, and (pl. 14, fig. 4) a wall in the sepulchral vault 
of the Naso family in the neighborhood of Rome. The former, which 
occupies about a third of the whole ceiling, shows in the central field, 
surrounded by rich ornaments, two dancing Bacchantes; and in the lateral 
fields a horse crossing a stream,and Mercury bringing the apple to Paris 
and summoning him to the famous judgment which resulted in the rape of 
Helen and the Trojan war. The wall-painting exhibits most probably in 
its principal field the forms of Ovid and his wife Perilla, accompanied by 
Mercury and the Muse Erato. 
In the age of Hadrian, painting, along with the other arts, must have 
revived for a brief period, for Lucian mentions as belonging to this time the 
pictures of Attion, which he ranks along with those of the best masters, 
and Hadrian himself was a rhyparographer. But after this the decline of 
painting becomes all the more rapid and perceptible ; the earlier luxuriance 
of composition and of arabesque disappears, and a clumsy and poor sim- 
plicity joimed to a sensual fondness for the delineation of the nude form 
takes its place. This is particularly conspicuous in the paintings of the 
time of the Antonines and of Constantine. We will here give some speci- 
mens of paintings from the baths of Titus and of Constantine. From the 
former are the two pictures in pl. 12, jigs. 13 and 14; the former of which 
represents a rural scene, a father letting his two boys ride on a goat, while 
the mother beats a tambourine before them. In the second picture is 
represented a game of ball, probably that called by the ancients pila 
trigonalis, which was a sort of exercise usually taken before the bath. 
From the ruins of the baths of Constantine we take two representations 
of Apollo, the Pythian (pl. 18, jig. 9) with his bow and arrow, and the 
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