Falkener, Edward: Daedalus or the causes and principles of the excellence of Greek sculpture (London, 1860)

120

ANCIENT ART.

while Haydon in his chapters on Composition and
Colour, proves that they practised processes in art,
believed to be the peculiarities of modern times.
We have only to read of the great value set upon
paintings by the ancients to be persuaded of the
high state of art -which they had reached. Many
examples might be quoted in proof of this, but it
will be sufficient here to refer to the instance of
the Rhodians, who esteemed their paintings of
Ialysus and the Satyr as of greater value than all
their one hundred colossal statues, and other
masterpieces which they possessed,1 among which
we know to have been included the Colossus, the
Laocoon, and the Dirce, (Toro Farnese,) besides
three thousand other statues. Indeed, Ehodes
was so celebrated for its paintings, that Anacreon
addresses a painter as

" Sovereign of the art which they practise at Ehodes."

Even in the infancy of art, so early as the time of
Candaules, king of Lydia, 725 B.C., a picture
representing the battle of the Magnesians in de-
fence of Ionia and Lydia, was bought by that
monarch at its weight in gold. But in the

than those in his time. Levesque observes to those who deny the
merit of ancient painting, " We might as well say that Homer
could not compose an epic poem, and that neither Sophocles,
Euripides, nor yet iEschylus, could write tragedies."
1 See page 62, note 2.