vil and military servants of the crown, who enjoyed the lucrative
employments of receiving the taxes, hearing the lawsuits by appeal, and
repressing rebellions. With these men the philosophers mixed, not as
equals, but partaking of their wealth and luxuries, and paying their
score with wit and conversation. There were no landholders in the city,
as the soil of the country was owned by Egyptians; and the wealthy
trading classes, of all nations and languages, could bestow little
patronage on Greek learning, and therefore little independence on its
professors.

Philadelphus was not less fond of paintings and statues than of books;
and he seems to have joined the Achaian league as much for the sake of
the pictures which Aratus, its general, was in the habit of sending
to him, as for political reasons. Aratus, the chief of Sicyon, was an
acknowledged judge of paintings, and Sicyon was then the first school
of Greece. The pieces which he sent to Philadelphus were mostly those of
Pamphilus, the master, and of Melanthius, the fellow-pupil, of Apelles.
Pamphilus was famed for his perspective; and he is said to have received
from every pupil the large sum of ten talents, or seven thousand five
hundred dollars, a year. His best known pieces were, Ulysses in his
ship, and the victory of the Athenians near the town of Phlius. It was
through Pamphilus that, at first in Sicyon, and afterwards throughout
all Greece, drawing was taught to boys as part of a liberal education.
Neacles also painted for Aratus; and we might almost suppose that it was
as a gift to the King of Egypt that he painted his Sea-fight between the
Egyptians and the Persians, in which the painter shows us that it was
fought within the mouth of the Nile by making a crocodile bite at an ass
drinking on the shore.

Helena, the daughter of Timon, was a painter of some note at this time,
at Alexandria; but the only piece of hers known to us by name is the
Battle of Issus, which three hundred years afterwards was hung up by
Vespasian in the Temple of Peace at Rome. We must wonder at a woman
choosing to paint the horrors and pains of a battle-piece; but, as we
are not told what point of time was chosen, we may hope that it was
after the battle, when Alexander, in his tent, raised up from their
knees the wife and lovely daughter of Darius, who had been found among
the prisoners. As for the Egyptians, they showed no taste in painting.

[Illustration: 137.jpg METHOD OF EGYPT