id and did many vain and foolish things. Near the end of his life he
considered his pictures as beyond any price, and so gave them away. Upon
one of his works he wrote, "Easier to carp at than to copy." It is said
that he actually laughed himself to death from amusement at one of his own
pictures, which represented an old woman.

Zeuxis had a rival in the painter Parrhasius, and their names are often
associated. On one occasion they made trial of their artistic skill.
Zeuxis painted a bunch of grapes so naturally that the birds came to peck
at them. Then Parrhasius painted a hanging curtain, and when his picture
was exposed to the public Zeuxis asked him to draw aside his curtain,
fully believing it to be of cloth and concealing a picture behind it. Thus
it was judged that Parrhasius was the best artist, for he had deceived
Zeuxis, while the latter had only deceived the birds.

From these stories it appears that these artists tried to imitate objects
with great exactness. Parrhasius, too, was a vain man, and went about in
a purple robe with a gold wreath about his head and gold clasps on his
sandals; he painted his own portrait, and called it the god Hermes, or
Mercury; he wrote praises of himself in which he called himself by many
high-sounding names, for all of which he was much ridiculed by others.

However, both these artists were surpassed by Timanthes, according to the
ancient writers, who relate that he engaged in a trial of skill with
Parrhasius, and came off the victor in it. The fame of his picture of the
"Sacrifice of Iphigenia" was very great, and its one excellence seems to
have been in the varied expression of its faces. The descriptions of this
great work lead to the belief that this Pompeian wall-painting, from which
we give a cut, closely resembles that of Timanthes, which no longer
exists.

The story of Iphigenia says that when her father, King Agamemnon, killed
a hart which was sacred to Diana, or Artemis, that goddess becalmed his
fleet so that he could not sail to Troy. Then the seer, Calchas, advised
the king to sacrifice his daughter in order to appease the wrath of Diana.
Agamemnon consented; but it is said that the goddess was so sorry for the
maiden that she bore her away to Tauris, and made her a priestess, and
left a hart to be sacrificed instead of Iphigenia. In our cut you see
Calchas on the right; two men are bearing the maiden to her doom, while
her father stands on the left with his he