9 8 Sir Humphry Davy’s experimeiits and observations 
ancient authors, and some idea of the manner and style of the 
Greek artists may be gained from the designs on the vases, 
improperly called Etruscan, which were executed by artists 
of Magna Graecia, and many of which are probably copies 
from celebrated works : and some faint notion of their execu- 
tion and colouring may be gained from the paintings in fresco 
found at Rome, Herculaneum, and Pompeii. 
These paintings, it is true, are not properly Greek, yet 
whatever may be said of the early existence of painting in 
Italy as a native art, we are certain, that at the period when 
Rome was the metropolis of the world, the fine arts were cul- 
tivated in that city exclusively by Greek artists, or by artists 
of the Greek schools. By comparing the descriptions of Vi- 
truvius* and Pliny with those of Theophrastus,^ we learn 
that the same materials for colouring were employed at Rome 
and at Athens ; and of thirty great painters that Plin}^ men- 
tions whose works were known to the Romans, two only are 
expressly mentioned as born in Italy, and the rest were 
Greeks. Ornamental fresco painting was indeed generally 
exercised by inferior artists ; and the designs on the walls of 
the houses of Herculaneum and Pompeii, towns of the third 
or fourth order, can hardly be supposed to offer fair specimens 
of excellence, even in this department of the art: but in Rome, 
in the time of her full glory, and in the ornaments of the 
imperial palace of the first Caesars, all the resources of the dis- 
tinguished artists of that age were probably employed. Pliny 
names Cornelius Pinus and Accius Priscus as the two 
artists of the greatest merit in his own time, and states that 
they painted the Temple of Honour and Virtue, £ “ Imperatori 
* De Architectura, Lib. vii. Cap. 5. -j- De Lapidibus. 
t Plin. Nat. Hist. Lib. xxxv, Cap. 37. 
