Many again are to be found among the miscellaneous section of
epideictic epigrams. Instances which deal with literature directly are
the noble lines of Alpheus on Homer, the interesting epigram on the
authorship of the /Phaedo/, the lovely couplet on the bucolic
poets.[2] Some are inscriptions for libraries or collections;[3]
others are on particular works of art. Among these last, epigrams on
statues or pictures dealing with the power of music are specially
notable; the conjunction, in this way, of the three arts seems to have
given peculiar pleasure to the refined and eclectic culture of the
Graeco-Roman period. The contest of Apollo and Marsyas, the piping of
Pan to Echo, and the celebrated subject of the Faun listening for the
sound of his own flute,[4] are among the most favourite and the most
gracefully treated of this class. Even more beautiful, however, than
these, and worthy to take rank with the finest "sonnets on pictures"
of modern poets, is the epigram ascribed to Theocritus, and almost
certainly written for a picture,[5] which seems to place the whole
world of ancient pastoral before our eyes. The grouping of the figures
is like that in the famous Venetian Pastoral of Giorgione; in both
alike are the shadowed grass, the slim pipes, the hand trailing upon
the viol-string. But the execution has the matchless simplicity, the
incredible purity of outline, that distinguishes Greek work from that
of all other races.

A different view of art and literature, and one which adds
considerably to our knowledge of the ancient feeling about them, is
given by another class of pieces, the irrisory epigrams of the
Anthology. Then, as now, people were amused by bad and bored by
successful artists, and delighted to laugh at both; then, as now, the
life of the scholar or the artist had its meaner side, and lent itself