he celebrates the praises and critically characterizes the different manners and distinct merits of Zeuxis,* Apelles, Aristides the Theban,† Parrhasius, Protogenes and Timanthes? Parrhasius seems to have been the Correggio of antiquity; his talent, the pleasing, elegant, and rounded contour. Pliny, (lib. 35, c. 10,) in characterizing the paintings of this artist, commends chiefly in his figures the argutias vultus, elegantiam capilli, et venustatem oris,t and highly praises the correctness of his outline. The same writer mentions an allegorical painting of Parrhasius, representative of the character of the Athenians, in which the artist seems to have formed a just idea of that inconstant and fickle populace. "Pinxit et Demon Atheniensium, argumento quoque ingenioso: volebat namque varium, iracundum, injustum, inconstantem-eundem exorabilem, clementem, misericordem, excelsum, gloriosum, humilem, ferocem, fugacemque, et omnia pariter ostendere." It were to be wished that Pliny had given * Zeuxis flourished 397 B. C. The ancient authors are very high in their praises of the works of this great painter. He was peculiarly excellent in painting female beauty. † Aristides flourished in the age of Alexander the Great, and was contemporary with Apelles, Parrhasius, and Timanthes. Pliny says of Aristides, that his paintings were the first which gave the expression of the soul and the feelings: and as an instance, he mentions a celebrated picture of Aristides, in which, in a besieged city, a mother is represented dying of a wound in her breast, and holding back her child lest it should suck blood instead of milk; a picture which is supposed to be the subject of a beautiful epigram in the Anthologia, thus happily translated by Webb, in his Beauties of Painting : "Suck, little wretch, while yet thy mother lives, "The arch expression, the beauty of the hair, and charm of the mouth." "He painted also an ingenious allegorical picture of the Genius of the Athenians, representing a being at one and the us some idea of the composition of a picture so extraordinary in point of subject. If Parrhasius was the Correggio, Apelles was indisputably the Raphael of antiquity: "Omnes prius genitos, futurosque postea superavit Apelles,"* are the words of Pliny, who, in his estimates of the works of art, is generally supposed to speak less from his own taste than from the common opinion of the best judges of antiquity. The peculiar excellence of Apelles, as of Raphael, lay in that consummate gracefulness of air which he imparted to his figures, and in which he surpassed all his rivals in the arts. "Præcipua Apellis in arte venustas fuit, cum eâdem ætate maximi pictores essent; quorum opera quum admiraretur, collaudatis omnibus, deesse iis unam illam venerem dicebat quam Græci Xápira vocant: cætera omnia contigisse, sed hac soli sibi neminem parem."t-Plin. l. 35. c. 10. It is well known that Alexander the Great had the highest esteem of this artist; and having employed him to paint his mistress Campaspe, showed a singular example of generosity and self-command, in bestowing her as a gift on his friend the painter, who had fallen in love with his beautiful model. It was a high testimony to the merits of the artists, but it was at the same time a judicious policy for himself, that Alexander would suffer no other painter, statuary, or engraver to form his effigy, than Apelles, Lysippus, and Pyrgoteles; a fact which accounts for the singular same time fickle, irascible, unjust, inconstant, yet placable and compassionate, vainglorious yet humble, ferocious yet cowardly." * "Apelles surpassed all who had gone before, and all who will ever come after him.' "In the grace of his pictures Apelles surpassed all the great painters of his age: whatever praise was bestowed on their works, still that peculiar beauty which the Greeks term Charita (Grace) was wanting; in the other qualities of his art, others may have attained equal perfection, but in this he was unrivalled." beauty and excellence of all the figures yet remaining of that prince. To the merits of Protogenes, a critic of genuine taste among the ancients has borne a high testimony: I speak of Petronius Arbiter. That author, mentioning his having seen in the palace of Trimalchio (Nero) some sketches by the hand of Protogenes, says that on handling them, he felt a reverential awe, as if they had been something more than human.* It was to the high excellence of Protogenes as an artist, that the city of Rhodes, the place of his nativity, owed its preservation when besieged by Demetrius Poliorcetes. When that prince saw no other means of reducing the city than by setting it on fire in a particular quarter, in which there was a celebrated painting of Protogenes, he chose rather to abandon the enterprise than hazard the destruction of what was, in his opinion, of the highest value. On the whole, if we have not the same demonstrative evidence of the attainments of the Greeks in painting that we have of their eminence in sculpture, namely, the existing monuments of the art, we have every degree of presumptive evidence which the subject can admit to warrant an opinion of an equal degree of excellence. These arts require the same talents, their progress is influenced by the same moral causes, they owe their advancement to the same taste and genius; and it is impossible to suppose the one to have been successfully cultivated in any age or nation, while the other remained in a rude and imperfect state.† * In pinacothecam perveni vario genere tabularum mirabilem; nam et Zeuxidos manus vidi, nondum vetustatis injuria victas: et Protogenis rudimenta cum ipsius naturæ veritate certantia, non sine quodam horrore tractavi. Jam vero Apellis quam Græci monocnemon appellant, etiam adoravi. Tanta enim subtilitate extremitates imaginum erant ad similitudinem præcisæ, ut crederes etiam animorum esse picturam.-Pet. Arb. Satyr. + For a most ample account of the ancient painters, sculp If any apology were necessary for the length of the preceding observations on the state of the arts in Greece, I would remark, that as it is the province of history to exhibit the character and genius of nations, so the national character of the Greeks was in nothing more signally displayed than in those branches of art to which I have called the reader's attention in this chapter. In tracing the mutual relation of moral and political causes, this peculiar genius of the Greeks will be found to have extended its influence to the revolutions of their states, and to their fate as a nation. Its advancement marked the decline of the severer morals and the fall of the martial spirit; for the fine arts cannot exist in splendour, but in a soil of luxury and of ease. The taste for these supplanted the appetite for national glory, and at length ignominiously supplied the place of public virtue. The degenerate Greeks were consoled for the loss of their liberty by the flattering distinction of being the humanizers of their conquerors, the magistri et arbitri elegantiarium [masters and arbiters of refinement] to the unpolished Romans. CHAPTER VIII. Public games of Greece-Effects on character-MannersPoetical composition anterior to prose-Homer-HesiodArchilochus-Terpander-Sappho-Pindar-AnacreonThe Greek epigram-The Greek comedy, distinguished into the old, the middle, and the new-Aristophanes-MenanderGreek tragedy-Eschylus-Euripides-Sophocles-Mode of dramatic representation-The ancient drama set to music -The Mimes and Pantomimes-Of the Greek historiansHerodotus-Thucydides-Xenophon--Polybius-Diodorus Siculus-Dionysius of Halicarnassus-Arrian-Plutarch. UNDER the early part of the Grecian history, we had occasion to treat of the origin, and somewhat of the nature, of the public games of Greece. Among all nations, in that period of society when war is not reduced to a science, but every battle is a multitude of single combats, we find those exercises in frequent use which tend to increase the bodily strength and activity. The Greeks, however, seem to have been the first who reduced the athletic exercises to a system, and considered them as an object of general attention and impcrtance. The Panathenæan, and afterward the Olympic, the Pythian, the Nemæan, and the Isthmian games were under the sanction of the laws, and subject to the regulations laid down by the ablest statesmen and legislators. They were resorted to not only by the citizens of all the states of Greece, but even by the neighbouring nations. Thus not only was a spirit of union and good understanding kept up between the several states, which, in spite of their frequent dissensions and hostilities, made them always regard each other as countrymen, and unite cordially against a common enemy; but this partial intercourse which the games produced with the inhabitants of other countries induced an acquaintance with their manners and genius, and contributed very early to polish away the rust of barbarism. In those games, therefore, we may see the cause of two opposite effects: that Greece, in |