walls, it appears that the painters took the lead, that the
initiative in art was theirs. The Alexandrian pictures perished long
ago, but the relics of Alexandrian style which remain in the buried
cities of Campania, in Pompeii especially, bear testimony to the
taste of the period. {0h} Out of nearly two thousand Pompeian
pictures, it is calculated that some fourteen hundred (roughly
speaking) are mythological in subject. The loves of the gods are
repeated in scores of designs, and these designs closely correspond
to the mythological poems of Theocritus and his younger
contemporaries Bion and Moschus. Take as an example the adventure of
Europa: Lord Tennyson's lines, in The Palace of Art are intended to
describe picture -


'Or sweet Europa's mantle blew unclasp'd,
From off her shoulder backward borne:
From one hand droop'd a crocus: one hand grasp'd
The mild bull's golden horn.'


The words of Moschus also seem as if they might have derived their
inspiration from a painting, the touches are so minute, and so
picturesque -

'Meanwhile Europa, riding on the back of the divine bull, with one
hand clasped the beast's great horn, and with the other caught up her
garment's purple fold, lest it might trail and be drenched in the
hoar sea's infinite spray. And her deep robe was blown out in the
wind, like the sail of a ship, and lightly ever it wafted the maiden
onward.'