adds to this name, "sculptor, de quo Plinius," he must have written at hap hazard; for Pliny does not mention any artist of this name. Even," continues Winkelmann, "the name of "the saddler, as we should call him, who made Ajax's “leather shield has been preserved." But he cannot have derived this statement from the authority to which he refers his reader, viz. from Herodotus' life of Homer. Certainly two lines of the Iliad are there quoted, in which the poet applies the name of Tychius to this worker in leather; but it is expressly stated that properly a leather worker of Homer's acquaintance was so called, and that his name was inserted as a proof of friendship and gratitude.' ̓Απέδωκε δὲ χάριν καὶ Τυχίῳ τῷ σκύτει. ὁς εδέξατο αυτὸν ἐν τῷ Νέῳ τείχει, προσελθόντα πρὸς τὸ σκυτείον, ἐν τοῖς ἔπεσι καταζεύξας ἐν τῇ Ιλιάδι τοῖς δε : ̓Αίας δ' ἐγγύθεν ἦλθε φέρων σάκος ηύτε πύργον, χάλκεον ἑπταβόειον· ὃ δι Τυχιος κάμε τεύχων Σκυτοτόμων ὄχ ̓ ἄριστος, Ὕλῃ ἔνι ὄικια νάιων. This quotation favours a position therefore exactly opposite to that which Winkelmann intended to confirm. The name of the saddler who made Ajax's shield was in Homer's time already so entirely forgotten that the poet used the license of substituting a completely strange name in its stead. Various other trifling faults are mere errors of f Herodotus de vita Homeri, p. 756. Р Edit. Wessel. memory, or refer to subjects which he only introduces cursorily as illustrations. e. g. It was Hercules, and not Bacchus that Parrhasius boasted had appeared to him in a vision in the same form in which he had painted him." Tauriscus was not a native of Rhodes but of Tralles in Lydia.h The Antigone was not the first of Sophocles' tragedies(56). But I must desist, lest I should seem to be multiplying such trifles. For censure it could not be taken; but to those who know my high esteem for Winkelmann it might appear trifling. History of Art, vol. i. p. 176. sect. 36. Athenæus, lib. xii. p. 543. h 4, 10. Plinius, lib. xxxv. History of Art, vol. ii. p. 353. Plinius, lib. xxxvi. "Taurisci, non cœlatoris illius, sed Tralliani." NOTES TO THE LAOCOON. NOTE (1) page 8. ANTIOCHUS (Antholog. lib. ii. cap. 4). Hardouin, in his commentary on Pliny (lib. xxxv. sect. 36.) attributes this epigram to a certain Piso; but no such name is to be found in the catalogue of Greek epigrammatists. NOTE (2) p. 9. It is for this reason that Aristotle forbids his pictures to be shown to young people, viz., that their imaginations may be preserved from any acquaintance with ugly forms, (Polit. lib. viii. cap 5). Boden proposes to read Pausanias, instead of Pauson, in this passage, because he is well known to have painted licentious pictures; (de umbra poetica, Comment. i. p. 13.) as though a philosophical lawgiver were required to teach us, that such voluptuous allurements were to be kept out of the reach of young people. Had he but referred to the well known passage in the Poetics, (cap. 11), he would never have put forward his hypothesis. Some commentators (e.g. Külm in Ælian. Var. Hist. lib. iv. cap. 3.) maintain that the distinction which Aristotle there draws between Polygnotus, Dionysius, and Pauson, consisted in Polygnotus having painted gods and heroes, whilst Dionysius painted men, and Pauson beasts. They all, however, painted the human figure; and Pauson's having once painted a horse does not prove that he was an animal painter, as Boden supposes him to have been. Their rank was decided by the degrees of beauty with which they endowed their human forms. Dionysius could paint nothing but men, and was called, par excellence as it were, the "Anthropographus," or "Man-painter," because he copied nature too slavishly, and was unable to rise to the ideal; while to have painted gods and heroes under meaner influences than this, would have been a profanity. |