CHAP. 9.—AT WHAT PERIOD PAINTING WAS FIRST HELD IN HIGH ESTEEM AT ROME, AND FROM WHAT CAUSES.
But it was the Dictator Cæsar that first brought the public exhibition of pictures into such high estimation, by consecrating an Ajax and a Medea1845 before the Temple of Venus Genetrix.1846 After him there was M. Agrippa, a man who was naturally more attached to rustic simplicity than to refinement. Still, however, we have a magnificent oration of his, and one well worthy of the greatest of our citizens, on the advantage of exhibiting in public all pictures and statues; a practice which would have been far preferable to sending them into banishment at our country-houses. Severe as he was in his tastes, he paid the people of Cyzicus twelve hundred thousand sesterces for two paintings, an Ajax and a Venus. He also ordered small paintings to be set in marble in the very hottest part of his Warm Baths;1847 where they remained until they were removed a short time since, when the building was repaired.