call _tone_. He was the first who conferred
due honor on the pencil,--_primusque gloriam penicillo jure contulit_.

This great painter was succeeded by Zeuxis, who belonged to his school,
but who surpassed him in the power to give ideal form to rich effects.
He began his great career four hundred and twenty-four years before
Christ, and was most remarkable for his female figures. His Helen,
painted from five of the most beautiful women of Croton, was one of the
most renowned productions of antiquity, to see which the painter
demanded money. He gave away his pictures, because, with an artist's
pride, he maintained that their price could not be estimated. There is
a tradition that Zeuxis laughed himself to death over an old woman
painted by him. He arrived at illusion of the senses, regarded as a high
attainment in art,--as in the instance recorded of his grapes, at which
the birds pecked. He belonged to the Asiatic school, whose headquarters
were at Ephesus,--the peculiarities of which were accuracy of imitation,
the exhibition of sensuous charms, and the gratification of sensual
tastes. He went to Athens about the time that the sculpture of Phidias
was completed, which modified his style. His marvellous powers were
displayed in the contrast of light and shade, which he learned from
Apollodorus. He gave ideal beauty to his figures, but it was in form
rather than in expression. He taught the true method of grouping, by
making each figure the perfect representation of the class to which it
belonged. His works were deficient in those qualities which elevate the
feelings and the character. He was the Euripides rather than the Homer
of his art. He exactly imitated natural objects, which are incapable of
ideal representation. His works were not so numerous as they were
perfect in their way, in some of which, as in the Infant Hercules
strangling the Serpent, he displayed great dramatic power. Lucian highly
praises his Female Centaur as one of the most remarkable paintings of
the world, in which he showed great ingenuity of contrasts. His Jupiter
Enthroned is also extolled by Pliny, as one of his finest works. Zeuxis
acquired a great fortune, and lived ostentatiously.

Contemporaneous with Zeuxis, and equal in fame, was Parrhasius, a native
of Ephesus, whose skill lay in accuracy of drawing and power of
expression. He gave to painting true proportion, and attended to minute
details of the countenance and the hair. In his gods a