Among the nations bordering upon European Greece, Macedonia was most like it in manners, language, and physical circumstances; yet the Macedonians were generally looked upon as barbarians by those proud Republicans, who claimed the exclusive name of Greeks.

Alexander, the eldest son of Amyntas, King of Macedon, desirous of distinction in Greece, proposed himself as a competitor in some of the Olympic games; but the Greeks rejected him at first with scorn as a Barbarian[118]. However, he brought proofs of his descent from an Argive family, and was thereupon admitted by the Hellanodicæ[119] to an equal participation with other Greeks in those sacred games. He obtained a victory in one of the races, and dedicated a golden statue in the temple of Olympia.

The title of the Macedonians to appear as Greeks at the Olympic games, was asserted by the successors of Alexander in person or by proxy, and Philip received the news that his horses had won the prize in the race at Olympus, on the very day when the tidings reached him of the birth of Alexander the Great.

In truth, the kings of Macedon had been for many generations eager to civilise their people, by introducing among them some of the refinements of Greece, when they could snatch an interval of peace from the wars they were continually forced to wage against their rude neighbours to the north. They had employed the sculptors and painters of Athens and Sicyon; and the forced residence of Philip with the Thebans during the civil wars in Macedon, had rendered him at least intimate with the literature and philosophy of Greece.

In choosing Aristotle for one of the tutors of his son, Philip probably had a view to improving his taste, as well as cultivating those higher qualities, which, though they may exist without it, derive from it a grace and a spirit which double their value.

The same feeling which led “the stern Emathian conqueror” to

made him the friend of Apelles and the patron of Lysippus and Pyrgoteles[120].

I am not certain whether it was to Alexander or to his father, though probably to the latter, that Pamphilus the Macedonian, a disciple of Eupompus, owed the protection which enabled him to re-establish the school of Sicyon, with such enlargement as suited the time. In the public course of instruction he procured painting to be ranked in the first degree of liberal sciences[121]; and, consequently, all youths of honourable birth were understood to learn at least the elements of drawing as part of their education[122].

Pamphilus had cultivated the severe sciences as well as the agreeable ones, including music and poetry. I have already mentioned that he required from his pupils a knowledge of arithmetic and geometry. His course of study, besides, appears to have been exact, if not severe. “No day without a line,” was a precept learnt by Apelles in his school, where he studied for ten years, paying a silver talent for each year[123], according to some, while others imagine the talent was paid for the whole ten years[124]. At any rate, Pamphilus set a high value upon his art, and maintained that none but the free could practise it.

His own pictures were much prized: Pliny names one of the battle of Phlius; another, of Ulysses in a small vessel at sea; and a third picture, containing, as I imagine, several family portraits. Quintilian praises the beautiful designs of Pamphilus; and as many of his original works were in Rome when Quintilian wrote, he had an opportunity of judging of them for himself. But it is Apelles whose name spreads lustre over the most refined and polished æra of painting in Greece. Admired, beloved, and consulted in his own time, and praised by every writer among the ancients, we have to lament not only that no picture of his has come down to us, but that those letters to his pupils, and those more connected works in which he is said to have laid down all the rules and principles—nay, the very secrets of art, have perished.

Apelles was born in Cos, though Lucian, in one of his dialogues, talks of him as a native of Ephesus[125]. He seems to have been endowed with the sweetest temper and disposition, as well as the finest genius. He was generously eager to set forth the merits of others, and the urbanity of his manners was such, that while he used perfect freedom, he could not give offence.

As an instance of this, Pliny relates that Alexander, who frequently visited his workshop, allowed himself great licence and liberty of jesting. Apelles gently reproved him, entreating him to forbear, lest his pupils and the boys who ground his colours should repeat his words and make a jest of the king.

The freedom of the painter was so far from displeasing, that Alexander appears to have cultivated an intimacy with him, little usual between a king and conqueror, and an artist.

Besides employing him to paint his own portrait, and forbidding any other painter to attempt it, he took so great an interest in the Venus Anadyomene, which Apelles was at work upon when he arrived at Athens, that he sent him the most beautiful of his Theban captives, named Campaspe, with whom he is reported to have been deeply in love, to serve as a model. Apelles, moved by her misfortunes and her loveliness, conceived a passion for her which could not be concealed, and Alexander perceiving that his captive returned the painter’s affection, instantly resigned her to him[126].

But the favour of Apelles with Alexander seems to have procured him the ill-will of some of the courtiers, particularly of Ptolemy, as was shown some years afterwards, when Apelles, being on a voyage to Rhodes, was shipwrecked at the mouth of the Nile; and on getting ashore repaired to Alexandria, where Ptolemy, who had become King of Egypt on Alexander’s death, then held his court. It appears that several Greek painters had already established themselves there, and that jealous of the motives of Apelles’ visit, they, in conjunction with a painter of Alexandria, named Antiphilus, planned his ruin by the following artifice.

They bribed the court jester to invite Apelles formally to sup with the king. On his presenting himself, Ptolemy, remembering his ancient enmity, was extremely enraged, and threatened him with death, unless he instantly informed him of the name and quality of his inviter. Apelles being entirely ignorant of both, and unacquainted with any person at court, took a piece of charcoal and drew the face of the jester, which was recognised instantly; the life of the painter was spared; but his treatment was such that he hastened to escape from Egypt, and soon after painted, in memorial of his danger, the allegory of Calumny, which has been highly praised by the ancients, and has furnished several modern painters with a theme[127].

Apelles’ first voyage to Rhodes was expressly to visit Protogenes, at that time extremely poor, and living in obscurity. Some of his works having been brought to Athens for sale, and publicly exhibited, Apelles instantly resolved to make acquaintance with the painter, and embarked accordingly. On landing, he ran eagerly to the house of Protogenes, and, finding that he was abroad, took up his pencil, and drew a fine pure line, such as he thought only himself could draw. He left it and returned, when he hoped Protogenes might be found; but he had been obliged to leave home again, not, however, without acknowledging the line of Apelles, for he drew another still finer within it. Apelles now added a third finer than either, which Protogenes seeing, now made it his business to discover the stranger, with whom he contracted a lasting friendship[128].

The proverb that a prophet is not honoured in his own country, was not, it seems, falsified in the case of Protogenes, whose fellow-townsmen, the Rhodians, esteemed his pictures but lightly, and paid him a very inadequate price for them. Apelles, however, on inquiring the cost of some works he was engaged upon, declared he thought the sum much too small, and immediately engaged to give fifty talents for them[129]. The Rhodians, astonished at the price, imagined that Apelles had purchased them for the purpose of selling again as his own. They therefore began to open their eyes to his merit, and the reputation of Protogenes rose nearly to an equality with that of Apelles himself.

In a former Essay I have mentioned the compliment paid to Protogenes by Demetrius, who refused to attack the quarter of the city of Rhodes, where his famous picture of Ialysus then hung. It is of that painting that we are told that accident produced one of its greatest beauties. Protogenes, being anxious to represent the foam from the mouth of one of the overtired dogs, found it so difficult, that, losing patience, he threw his sponge at it. The softness of the sponge just obliterated so much of the form as the foam might naturally have hidden, and the painter, improving the accident, rendered the picture perfect[130].

But Apelles, however he might admire and assist Protogenes, used to find one fault with him, he said he never knew when to have done, and that he sometimes injured his works by over-anxiety. In this matter he preferred himself to his friend, as of better judgment.

Yet Apelles was careful beyond what we know of modern painters, as we learn from the well known story of his publicly exhibiting his pictures, and hiding himself behind them, that he might profit by the unrestrained criticism of the multitude. On one occasion, a shoemaker passing, remarked that something was wanting to the sandal of the principal figure. In the evening, Apelles altered the faulty sandal, and when the shoemaker passed the next morning, he was so charmed with the attention paid to his observations, that he extended them farther, and began to find fault with the limbs; upon which, Apelles broke out of his hiding place, exclaiming, “Let not the shoemaker go beyond his last,” which words have passed into a proverb.

The most noted work of Apelles was his Venus Anadyomene, which was afterwards carried to Rome, and so greatly injured in the carriage, that it could not be restored.

He had undertaken to make a duplicate of this celebrated figure, but died before it was finished, and the imperfect work is said to have been valued as highly as his more perfect paintings, because it was the last thing upon which that skilful hand had rested.

In the Greek Anthology there are the following lines of Leonidas, which inform us how the painter had treated the subject:

After the Venus, the ancient critics seem to have prized the famous portrait of Alexander, in the character of Jupiter the Thunderer, which was hung in the temple of Diana of Ephesus, and cost no less than twenty talents of gold, according to Pliny. This picture is praised as much for grandeur and majesty as the Venus for loveliness. Nor was it the only portrait of Alexander he painted, for we are told that he represented him in every action and character, and that the pictures of King Philip, by Apelles, were almost equally numerous. The portrait of Clytus he painted in armour, and that of Megabyzus, the priest of Diana, in his priestly robes, performing a sacrifice. Of other remarkable portraits by him, we have the names of Antiochus, the king, whom he painted in profile to conceal the want of an eye, which disfigured him; of Menander, king of the Rhodians; of Gorgosthenes, the tragedian; and of one Ancæus, a Samian.

At Rome there was an allegorical picture painted by him, in which Castor and Pollux, Alexander, and a winged victory were introduced; and also that picture of war in chains, which was afterwards so cruelly defaced by Claudius, who, as I have already mentioned, had the head of Alexander scraped out, and that of Augustus substituted for it[131].

Other subjects on which he employed his pencil have been named by various authors: for instance, a Hercules nearly turned from the spectator; a Hero and Leander; Archelaus with his wife and daughter; and a most beautiful picture of Diana, with her attendant virgins preparing a sacrifice. This last was esteemed by the connoisseurs of Greece as one of his very finest works, though a few preferred a picture of Antigonus on horseback. He had painted the same king in armour, on foot, with his horse led by a soldier, but this work was not esteemed nearly so much as the other. He seems to have been fond of painting horses, and carried away the prize from several rivals in subjects where they were treated, either alone, or along with their riders. I am not clear whether it were a solitary horse, or one on which he had mounted Neoptolemus armed, and charging some Persian soldiers, that, according to Pliny, procured him the compliment of a greeting from a real horse that was passing by[132].

It is evident, I think, from what the ancients have related concerning his works, that he never painted in fresco, nor do I find any mention made of drawings on parchment, like those of Zeuxis and Parrhasius. He must then have painted upon pannel with the usual preparation of chalk or carbonate of lime, with size. Of the peculiar glaze or varnish, which he is said to have first used, I shall have occasion to speak in a future Essay.

Protogenes, the friend and rival of Apelles, was born at Caunus, in Cilicia; but Rhodes was his adopted country. His poverty was such, that he was a ship painter during the early part of his life. Now the ships of the ancients, though coloured generally red or black, laid on with pitch, wax, and oil, at the bottoms and the seams, had always a figure painted at the prow, representing the tutelary deity, or hero of the vessel, much after the manner of our figure-heads. On the stern it was customary to paint marine subjects, such as Neptune and Amphitrite, the Tritons, the birth of Venus, and so on[133]. In the course of this practice Protogenes acquired great knowledge and skill in shipping, and became a considerable marine painter.

Perhaps the sight of some of the ships painted by him might have induced the Athenians to invite him to paint some of their favourite ships of war, in the Portico near Minerva’s temple. The great praises bestowed on his pictures by Apelles, was another temptation to a people so eager after every kind of elegance, to engage him in the service of the city. Accordingly, about the fiftieth year of his age, he accepted an invitation to work for the Republic, and having painted the Thesmothetæ of the time[134] in the chamber of the council of five hundred, he painted the two galleys, Paralus and Hemionis, in the portico near Minerva’s Temple. The Greek painters were occasionally in the habit of surrounding their pictures with a border of subjects, executed on a smaller scale than the main action of the picture; this they called Parerga[135]. The parerga to the Paralus and Hemionis consisted of small vessels, of various kinds and dimensions. Pliny says that the painter intended thereby to show from what small beginnings, he, a painter of ships and boats, had arisen to eminence. But I think it more likely that he only made his border to suit his subject, which was dedicated to the service of the state and commerce of Athens[136].

It is said that while Protogenes remained in Athens, Aristotle urged him, without success, to paint the triumphs of Alexander. But he painted some portraits which were highly esteemed, particularly one of Aristotle’s mother. He also painted Antigonus and some other men of note in his time. None of his pictures, however, were so much admired as his Ialysus; though the Anapomenes or Satyrs at rest, the Cydippe, the Tlepolemus, and the Pan, were greatly esteemed. Protogenes acquired as great a reputation for his bronze statues as his pictures.

Aristides of Thebes is the next great name in the third era of Greek painting. He was remarkable for the intense expression he threw into his figures. His battle pieces, his hunting scenes, and his chariot races, painted for foreign kings and public halls, though highly prized, were far below the pathetic groups of his smaller pictures, in general esteem. There was a suppliant sueing so earnestly for grace that his very voice seemed to be heard; there was Byblis expiring for love; also a tragic actor, with his attendant on the scene, and some other pictures, which were carried to Rome, and hung in the most honourable places[137]. His great merit seems to have been a close attention to nature, not only in form but in action and expression; else, whence arose the strong attraction of his Dying Man? But the most touching of all his works was that picture of the storming of a town, in which the foremost group consisted of a dying mother and her infant. The child was creeping towards the breast, she anxiously watching its weak movements, and endeavouring to guide it aright. None could look on this painting without a tender horror; few without shedding tears. It was found in Thebes, when the place was sacked by Alexander. He took it for his own, and sent it to Pella. The following lines, by Emilianus Nicœus, convey the sentiments of the painter.

Nichomachus was a painter, formed in the same school with Aristides. But his mind had a freer and more cheerful turn; and we find in Pliny’s list of his pictures some of even a playful cast. For instance, one of a procession of the priestesses of Bacchus, in their habits, which having attracted the notice of the sylvan deities, they are peeping from the woods, and creeping as near as they dare. The rape of Proserpine was another of his subjects. The sea monster Scylla another. He is also known to have painted Ulysses on his raft; several pictures of the gods, an Apotheosis, and other works, which were carried to Rome.

He had the reputation of painting with greater celerity than any other man of his time, in proof of which, we have the following anecdote. He had undertaken to paint, for a certain sum of money, the tomb which Anstrœtus, tyrant of Sicyon, had built in memory of Telestes the poet. The work was to be finished by a certain day; but four days before the time appointed, the painter had not even arrived at Sicyon to begin. Upon learning this, Anstrœtus threatened him with exemplary punishment. But, to the tyrant’s surprise, when the day came round, instead of punishment, he had to bestow both the promised reward and the highest praise, for the excellency of the work.

I come now to the last great painters of Greece, Pausias and Euphranor, who were a little after the time of Apelles and Aristides.

Timomachus, of Byzantium; Nicias, of Athens; and Theon of Samos, indeed, attained to considerable fame; and there were some painters of familiar life and other subjects, that appear to deserve notice for their reputation, even were it less curious to observe how ancient and modern art have followed the same paths.

Pausias was the son and pupil of Brietes, of Sicyon, and appears to have been dexterous in the use of every kind of material and tool then known. He was particularly celebrated for his pictures in encaustic, of the origin of which method of painting Pliny himself was in doubt. His skill in the more ancient methods of painting was such, that he was chosen to repair the pictures of Polygnotus, at Thespiæ, which had suffered greatly from time and damp. It is true that his work was considered greatly inferior to that of the original picture; not, indeed, as Fuseli says, because he used a different method and different tools, but because he wrought in a manner to which he was unaccustomed. May we not also say, because his gay, cheerful disposition, delighting in painting children and flowers, did not and could not enter into the high and solemn feelings which seem to have constantly guided the pencil of Polygnotus?

The exceeding beauty of colour which is said to have distinguished the pictures of Pausias, he owed to love. There lived in Sicyon an exceedingly beautiful girl, called Glycera, a garland maker, celebrated for the taste and elegance with which she wove the coronals, then worn universally at religious festivals and banquets, public and private. At first, Pausias resorted to her for the sake of painting the fresh flowers, and catching their combinations of colour and form; but he soon began to love Glycera more than her flowers; and the picture that he painted of her, while wreathing a garland, was the finest work that ever came from his hand[139].

Akin to this, was his Hemerosis, a small picture of a child, reported to have been painted in a single day, though executed with the greatest care and nicety, to prove how falsely those accused him of idleness who said his love of painting children arose from the little necessity there was for care and diligence in such subjects.

A very remarkable picture of his is mentioned, representing a sacrifice, in which a number of oxen are introduced. The foreshortening of one of these is said to have been imitated, though without success, by many rivals; the manner of casting the shadows also, upon the more distant groups, was a distinguishing excellence of Pausias.

This sacrifice, and other works of this most eminent man, were carried to Rome, when all the pictures at Sycyon were seized during the Edileship of Scaurus, as I have already mentioned.

Euphranor, the Isthmean, was the most accomplished of all the ancient painters after the time of Pausias. He was equally celebrated as a sculptor in marble and bronze, and the bowls and vases of his embossing always fetched a high price.

The great public work of Euphranor was a portico, in that part of Athens called the Ceramicus. One of the subjects was an allegorical picture of the early political state of Athens.

The Athenian people, Theseus, and the personage of Democracy, were introduced; but Pausanias, who mentions the subject, gives no account of its treatment, though he says it signified that Theseus first established equal rights of citizenship among the Athenians. In the same portico, Euphranor also painted the battle of Mantinea, in which the most remarkable group was an encounter of cavalry. Epaminondas was at the head of the Bœotians, and Gryllus, the son of Xenophon, led the Athenian horse.

One end of the portico Euphranor sanctified by paintings of the twelve superior gods. Perhaps some slight judgment of the tone of these pictures may be formed from the expression of Euphranor himself—that, while the Theseus of Parrhasius looked as if he had fed upon roses, his own showed that he lived upon flesh.

The other principal pictures of Euphranor appear to have belonged to the temple of Diana at Ephesus, the most remarkable of which was the feigned madness of Ulysses, who was harnessing a horse and an ox to the same yoke.

Before I proceed to the painters of less note, I will use the words of Quintillian to sum up the general character of some of the greatest men who distinguished the third period of Greek art.

“Protogenes distinguished himself by his accuracy: Pamphilus and Melanthus by beauty of design: Antiphilus by the easy and natural strokes of his pencil: Theon of Samos by his lively imagination: and Apelles by his ingenuity, and the graces which he boasted he had excelled in: Euphranor made himself admirable by being possessed of these different qualities in as eminent a degree as the best masters.”

The great encouragement of art about the time of Philip, and in the reign of Alexander and his immediate successors, called out abundance of talent of various kinds and degrees; from that of the Egyptian, or rather Alexandrian Antiphilus, whose attention to nature must have been of singular use to him in those scenes for the theatre on which he loved to employ himself, to that pupil of Apelles to whom his master said sarcastically, “As you have not been able to paint your Venus beautiful, you have made her fine;” in allusion to a profusion of gold chain and other ornaments with which he had loaded her. The serious pictures of Antiphilus which were carried to Rome, were the death of Hippolytus; several votive pictures of Greek divinities, and some few heroes. He painted grotesques so perfectly, that from one of his figures, a fool named Gryllus, with a cap and bells, such subjects got the name of Grylli.

Antiphilus is, besides, the first painter, whose name has come down to us, who painted fire-light effects. His most famous work of this kind was a boy blowing a fire with his mouth, in which the natural character of the boy, and the effect of the light throughout the room, were greatly admired. Another favourite picture represented a number of women spinning and gossiping, highly valued for its truth.

Pliny seems doubtful whether it be not beneath the dignity of painting to praise Pyreicus, who loved to paint interiors, especially the shops of tailors, shoemakers, and sempstresses; giving every thing its true nature and character, to a degree that attracted much admiration and many purchasers; and as he delighted in making pictures of the houses of the humble classes of men, he loved also to paint the animals that especially belong to them. The nickname of Rhyparographus, was given him, on account of his skill in painting asses bringing vegetables and fruit to market. These pictures were of small size, and very highly finished, and were sold for large prices. Serapion, the contemporary of Pyreicus, on the contrary, painted nothing but play-house scenes, mock architecture, and other things of enormous size, but was incapable of drawing either men or animals.

Heraclides the Macedonian was celebrated as a marine painter. His friend Metrodorus, I conjecture to have been a scene painter, and as he combined considerable knowledge of the arts, with the science requisite for a tutor to young men, he was employed by Lucius Paulus both to bring up his sons, and to paint his triumphs.

But I will close my account of the painters of Greece with two names of greater eminence, Nicias and Timomachus, who lived in the time of Julius Cæsar. Nicias was an Athenian of considerable private fortune, so that having painted a picture of the descent of Ulysses to the infernal regions, he refused to sell it at a very high price to a foreign prince, and presented it to his native city. He was famous above all for the beauty of his women, and the bold relief of his figures, which are said to have appeared ready to leave the ground they were painted upon, and to walk out of their frames. I have mentioned in the last Essay the subjects of some of his principal pictures which were carried to Rome, and highly prized by Augustus Cæsar. There seems to have been another painter of the same name[140], who was also a sculptor and pupil of Praxiteles, who esteemed him highly on account of the exquisite finish of his works.

Timomachus of Byzantium seems to have delighted most in tragic subjects, though a picture of his, containing excellent portraits of several generations of one and the same family, is mentioned. His most successful work is said to have been a Gorgon’s head. He painted Iphigenia in Aulis, Orestes and Clytæmnestra; and, for Julius Cæsar, an Ajax and a Medea. The treatment of the latter we may gather from the following lines, by Antiphilus, preserved in the Greek anthology.

ON THE MEDEA OF TIMOMACHUS.

I think it best to close my account of ancient Greek painting here, while it was still practised by great masters in their own land, not yet quite enslaved. From the time of Augustus, Italy attracted the best artists of all kinds, but, as I have already shown, it was not under the Cæsars that the liberal arts flourished most.

I have now given a sketch of the history of painting and painters in Greece—very imperfect, I acknowledge, but such as I can collect from the authors who either treat on the subject of pictures and artists, or who have left incidental remarks on them, in such
works as have come down to us.

The first efforts of painting in Greece appear to have been as rude as we found them among the savages of Polynesia. The earliest steps of art in Egypt and Etruria elude our observation, but the nature of the improvements attributed to Eumanus of Athens, teach us what they were in Greece.

The art once exercised, however, neither halted nor tarried. It was sublime in its simplicity in the hands of Polygnotus and his cotemporaries. It served their gods and their country. Much improved in beauty, but still grave and dignified, it grew popular in the time of Parrhasius and Zeuxis. Under Apelles and his followers it was devoted to the graces, revelled in beauty, and ministered to the refined pleasures of taste, rather than as at first, to the gratification of higher moral feelings.

Brought down thus to the commoner tone of general society, more various subjects were thought worthy of it. Pyreicus anticipated the subjects of the modern Dutch painters, and it should seem with kindred success. The natural desire for novelty, and the anxiety for individual distinction, produced fire-light scenes, pictures of still life and other varieties. Fashion, rather than taste, became the guide of purchasers, and it may truly be said, that the decline of painting began with the Macedonian conquests, which altered the character of the Greeks, and, consequently, of their arts.