The artists repository and drawing magazine: exhibiting the principles of the polite arts in their various branches (4.1790)

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vanced age, the additional felicity of enjoying the fruit
of the virtuous education he had given his children, he
being carried round the (radium, on the Shoulders of his
two victorious fons, amidff. the acclamations of the peo-
ple of Greece. Cicero, Plutarch, and other great men,
have taken notice of this incident, and one of them men-
tions the faying of a Spartan on this occafion, which
jftrongly marks the great eftimation in which thofe vic-
tories were held. [Now die, Diagoras, for thou canSt
not be a god.] The Spectators for the moft part, con-
fift of all thofe celebrated characters of Greece, who liv«
ed nearly about that time, and might have been pre Sent
on the occafion.

At one end of the picture is a ftatue of Minerva, at
the other, a ftatue of Hercules treading down envy,
which are comprehenfive exemplars of that ftrength of
body, and ftrength of mind, which were the two great
objects of Grecian education. In the Minerva I have
followed the original paffage in Homer and Paufanias's
defcription of her ftatue by Phidias : not to mention
other matters, it is not a little furprifing to find that cir-
cum Stance fo proper and fo truly terrific„of the rim of fer-
pfents rolling round the egis, omitted in all the Statue's I
have feen of her, except one which is in the Capitol at
Rome, though this ftatue is in the other, and more eSfen-
tial refpects, of no great worth, as the majefty, grandeur,
and ftyle of proportions of Minerva, are her particular
characteristics, and not merely her helmet and egis.
As to the Hercules treading down envy, on the other fide,

Horace