ng these, both the public and the householder would feel
relieved of any danger of betraying the wrong taste. The workshops or
studios of Greek artists turned out large numbers of a given
masterpiece--a Faun, a Venus, or a Discobolus--at prices from L50 or
so upwards. It followed also that there were numerous imitations
passed off as originals, and many a wealthy man boasted of possessing
an "original" or a genuine "old master"--a Praxiteles or a
Lysippus--when he owned but a clever reproduction. The same remark
applies, not only to the statues, but to the genre-groups and animal
forms of which such fine examples can be seen in the Vatican Museum,
and also to silver cups by "Mentor" or to bronzes of Corinth.
Petronius, the coarse but witty "arbiter of taste" under Nero, mocks
at the vulgar _nouveau riche_ who imagined that the Corinthian bronzes
were the work of an artist named Corinthus.

[Illustration: FIG. 117.--WALL-PAINTING. (Woman with Tablets.)]

[Illustration: FIG. 118.--WALL-PAINTING FROM HERCULANEUM. (Women
playing with Knuckle-Bones.)]

Next to sculpture came painting, and in this art Romans themselves
appear to have often acquired a technical skill which rivalled that of
the Greeks. There is also plenty of evidence that among the pictorial
artists there were no few women. For us practically the only painting
of the time which has been preserved is that upon the walls of private
houses, and it is probable that we see some of the worst specimens of
the kind as well as some of a high order of excellence. It is not
difficult to distinguish between the truly artistic design and
colouring of wall-pictures in the House of Vettii or of the "Tragic
Poet" and the crude journeyman work in sundry other Pompeian houses
which must have belonged to anything but connoisseurs. Paintings, it
must be remembered, were the ancient wall-papers, as well as the
ancient pictures. Here, as in sculpture, we find the same or similar
motives and groupings repeated in a way which shows that the
painter--or rather the collaborating painters--must have been
reproducing or adapting an original which was particularly admired or
had obtained a fashionable vogue. The wall-pictures, done in fresco or
distemper and in various dimensions, fall into four main classes.
There are landscapes, from a pretty realistic garden scene to a
fantastic stretch of sea and land diversified with woods, rocks,
figures, and buildings. There are subjects from my