execute new ones for him. Besides so bold a group as the Laocoon was admirably suited to the taste, which he displayed in his selection; "ut fuit acris vehementiæ sic quoque spectari monumenta sua voluit." Still, as the cabinet of Pollio at the time of Pliny, when the Laocoon stood in the palace of Titus, was not at all broken up, and appears to have had a place especially allotted to it, this supposition loses a good deal of its probability. Yet after all I do not see why Titus himself should not have done what we are so anxious to ascribe to Pollio.

iPlinius, xxxvi. 4. 10.

CHAPTER XXVII.

I AM confirmed in my opinion, that the sculptors of the Laocoon flourished under the first Cæsars, or at any rate cannot be of such antiquity as Winkelmann believes, by a piece of information which he himself has been the first to make known. It is this:a

"At Nettuno, formerly Antium, Cardinal Alex“ander Albani, in the year 1717, discovered in a "great vault, which had been buried beneath the sea,

tr

a vase of greyish black marble, now called bigio, "in which the group of the Laocoon was inlaid; "upon it was the following inscription:

66 ΑΘΑΝΟΔΩΡΟΣ ΑΓΗΣΑΝΔΡΟΥ

ΡΟΔΙΟΣ ΕΠΟΙΗΣΕ.

"ATHANODORUS, THE SON OF AGESANDER, OF

RHODES, MADE IT. We gather from this inscrip"tion, that father and son executed the Laocoon, and 'probably Apollodorus, (Polydorus) was also a son "of Agesander; for there can be no doubt that this "Athanodorus is identical with the one mentioned "by Pliny. This inscription further proves that History of Art, vol. ii. page 347.

a

"other works of art, besides the three Pliny names, "have been found, on which the artists have in"scribed the word made in the perfect and definite "tense, eroinoe, fecit; where he informs us that all "the rest out of modesty expressed it in the "indefinite, moleɩ, faciebat.”

Winkelmann will find few to gainsay his assertion, that the Athanodorus in this inscription can be no other than the Athenodorus mentioned by Pliny as one of the sculptors of the Laocoon. Athanodorus and Athenodorus are doubtless the same name; for the Rhodians spoke the Doric dialect. But upon the other conclusions, which Winkelmann draws from this inscription, I must beg leave to offer a few remarks.

His first inference that Athenodorus was a son of Agesander, may pass. It is very probable, but not indisputable; for it is well known that many ancient artists abandoned the name of their father, and adopted that of their master. At least what Pliny says of the brothers Apollonius and Tauriscus hardly admits of any other interpretation."

But how! Does this inscription really contradict the assertion of Pliny, that only three works of art were to be found on which the artists had acknowledged their productions in a completed tense, (by émoinσe, instead of eroíet)? This inscription indeed! Why should we first learn from this inscription b Lib. xxxvi. 4. 10.

what we might have long ago learnt from many others? Had not Kλeoμevns étoiŋσe been already found upon the statue of Germanicus? 'Apxéλaos émoinσe upon the so-called deification of Homer? And Σαλπιων ἐποίησε upon the famous vase at Caieta? (53).

Winkelmann can truly say, "who knows this better than I?" But will he also add? "So much "the worse for Pliny; the oftener his assertion is contradicted, the more undeniably it is refuted." Not at all. What if Winkelmann makes Pliny say more than he really does? If therefore the examples I adduced refute not the assertion of Pliny, but the addition which Winkelmann has made to it? Now this is really the case. I must quote the whole passage. Pliny, in his dedication to Titus, wishes to speak of his work with the modesty of a man, who himself best knows how far it falls short of perfection. He discovers a remarkable example of such modesty among the Greeks, in the boastful promises of whose title pages, (inscriptiones, propter quas vadimonium deseri possit) he has for a short while found entertainment; and goes on to say: "Et ne in totum videar Græcos insectari, ex illis nos “velim intelligi pingendi fingendique conditoribus, quos in libellis his invenies, absoluta opera, et illa quoque quæ mirando non satiamur, pendenti titulo "inscripsisse: ut APELLES FACIEBAT, aut POLY

c Lib. i.

:

CLETUS: tanquam inchoata semper arte et imper"fecta ut contra judiciorum varietates superesset "artifici regressus ad veniam, velut emendaturo quidquid desideraretur, si non esset interceptus. Quare plenum verecundiæ illud est, quod omnia 'opera tanquam novissima inscripsere, et tanquam "singulis fato adempti. Tria, non amplius, ut "opinor, absolute traduntur inscripta, ILLE FECIT,

quæ suis locis reddam : quo apparuit, summam "artis securitatem auctori placuisse, et ob id magna "invidia fuere omnia ea." I beg the reader to pay attention to Pliny's expression, "pingendi fingendique conditoribus." Pliny does not say that the custom of acknowledging their productions in the imperfect tense was universal among artists, or that all in every age had observed it; he expressly states that only the earliest masters, the creators of the plastic arts, pingendi fingendique conditores, Apelles, Polycletus, and their contemporaries, had made use of this modest conceit; and since he only names these, he intimates quietly, but distinctly enough, that their successors, especially in later times, expressed greater confidence in themselves.

But if we allow this, as I think every one must, the inscription of one of the three artists of Laocoon, which has been discovered may be perfectly correct, without involving any untruth in Pliny's assertion that only three works were extant, in the inscriptions on which their authors made use of a perfect tense,