he falling drops of water from her hair gave the appearance of a
transparent silver veil over her form. This picture cost one hundred
talents, was painted for the Temple of Aesculapius at Cos, and afterward
placed by Augustus in the temple which he dedicated to Julius Caesar.
The lower part of it becoming injured, no one could be found to repair
it; nor was there an artist who could complete an unfinished picture
which Apelles left. He feared no criticism, and was unenvious of the
fame of rivals.

After Apelles, the art of painting declined, although great painters
occasionally appeared, especially from the school of Sicyon, which was
renowned for nearly two hundred years. The destruction of Corinth by
Mummius, 146 B.C., gave a severe blow to Grecian art. This general
destroyed, or carried to Rome, more works than all his predecessors
combined. Sulla, when he spoiled Athens, inflicted a still greater
injury; and from that time artists resorted to Rome and Alexandria and
other flourishing cities for patronage and remuneration. The
masterpieces of famous artists brought enormous prices, and Greece and
Asia were ransacked for old pictures. The paintings which Aemilius
Paulus brought from Greece required two hundred and fifty wagons to
carry them in the triumphal procession. With the spoliation of Greece,
the migration of artists began; and this spoliation of Greece, Asia, and
Sicily continued for two centuries. We have already said that such was
the wealth of Rhodes in works of art that three thousand statues were
found there by the conquerors; nor could there have been less at Athens,
Olympia, and Delphi. Scaurus had all the public pictures of Sicyon
transported to Rome. Verres plundered every temple and public building
in Sicily.

Thus Rome was possessed of the finest paintings in the world, without
the slightest claim to the advancement of the art. And if the opinion of
Sir Joshua Reynolds is correct, art could advance no higher in the realm
of painting, as well as of statuary, than the Greeks had already borne
it. Yet the Romans learned to place as high value on the works of
Grecian genius as the English do on the paintings of the old masters of
Italy and Flanders. And if they did not add to the art, they gave such
encouragement that under the emperors it may be said to have been
flourishing. Varro had a gallery of seven hundred portraits of eminent
men. The portraits as well as the statues of the great were placed in