curious and well written; but the most valuable and interesting among
them are the frequent descriptions of paintings, a specimen of which
has already been given. On this subject especially, the author dwells
_con amore_, and his remarks are generally characterised by a degree
of good taste and correct feeling, which indicates a higher degree of
appreciation of the pictorial art than is generally ascribed to the
age in which Achilles Tatius wrote. Even in the latter part of the
first century of our era, Pliny, when enumerating the glorious names
of the ancient Greek painters, laments over the total decline, in his
own days, of what he terms (_Nat. Hist_. xxxv. 11) "an aspiring art;"
but the monarchs of the Macedonian dynasties in Asia, and, above all,
the Egyptian Ptolemies, were both munificent patrons of the fine arts
among their own subjects, and diligent collectors of the great works
of past ages; and many of the _chefs-d'oeuvres_ of the Grecian masters
were thus transferred from their native country to adorn, the temples
and palaces of Egypt and Syria. We find, from Plutarch, that when
Aratus was exerting himself to gain for the Achæan league the powerful
alliance of Ptolemy Euergetes, he found no means so effectual in
conciliating the good-will of the monarch, as the procuring for him
some of the master-pieces of Pamphilus[7] and Melanthius, the most
renowned of the famous school of Sicyon; and the knowledge of the high
estimation in which the arts were held, under the Egyptian kings,
gives an additional value to the accounts given by Tatius of these
treasures of a past age, his notices of which are the latest, in
point of time, which have come down to us from an eyewitness. We have
already quoted the author's vivid description of the painting of
Europa at Sidon--we shall now subjoin, as a pendant to the former
notice, his remarks on a pair of pictures at Pelusium:--

[7] Pamphilus was a Macedonian by birth, and a pupil of