"And who can deny," added Papias, "that if talent is the father, and meat
the mother of all productiveness, practice must be the artist's teacher!
Since Hadrian took to sculpture and painting it has become the universal
fashion here to practise these arts, and among the wealthier youth who
come to my workroom, many have very good abilities; but not one of them
brings anything to any good issue, because so much of their time is taken
up by the gymnasium, the bath, the quail-fights, the suppers, and I know
not what besides, so that they do nothing by way of practice."

"True," said a painter. "Without the restraint and worry of
apprenticeship no one can ever rise to happy and independent
creativeness; and in the schools of rhetoric or in hunting or fighting no
one can study drawing. It is not till a pupil has learned to sit steady
and worry himself over his work for six hours on end that I begin to
believe he will ever do any good work. Have you any of you seen the
Emperor's work?"

"I have," answered a mosaic worker. "Many years ago Hadrian sent a
picture to me that he had painted; I was to make a mosaic from it.
It was a fruit piece. Melons, gourds, apples, and green leaves. The
drawing was but so-so, and the color impossibly vivid, still the
composition was pleasing from its solidity and richness. And after all,
when one sees it, one cannot but feel that such superfluity is better
than meagreness and feebleness. The larger fruits, especially under the
exuberant sappy foliage, were so huge that they might have been grown in
the garden of luxury itself, still the whole had a look of reality. I
mitigated the colors somewhat in my transcript; you may still see a copy
of the picture at my house, it hangs in the studio where my men draw.
Nealkes, the rich hanging-maker, has had a tapestry woven from it which
Pontius proposes to use as a hanging for a wall of the work-room, but I