With Nicias has been compared, and indeed sometimes preferred to him, Athenion of Maronea,[2126] a pupil of Glaucion of Corinth. In his colouring he is more sombre than Nicias, and yet, with all his sombreness, more pleasing; so much so indeed, that in his paintings shines forth the extensive knowledge which he possessed of the art. He painted, in the Temple at Eleusis, a Phylarchus;[2127] and at Athens, a family group, which has been known as the “Syngenicon;”[2128] an Achilles also, concealed in a female dress, and Ulysses detecting him; a group of six whole-length figures, in one picture; and, a work which has contributed to his fame more than any other, a Groom leading a Horse. Indeed, if he had not died young, there would have been no one comparable to Athenion in painting.
Heraclides, too, of Macedon, had some repute as an artist. At first he was a painter of ships, but afterwards, on the capture of King Perseus, he removed to Athens; where at the same period was also Metrodorus,[2129] who was both a painter and a philosopher, and of considerable celebrity in both branches. Hence it was, that when L. Paulus Æmilius, after the conquest of Perseus,[2130] requested the Athenians to send him the most esteemed philosopher for the education of his children, and a painter to represent his triumph, they made choice of Metrodorus, declaring that he was eminently suited for either purpose; a thing which Paulus admitted to be the case.
Timomachus of Byzantium, in the time of the Dictator Cæsar, painted an Ajax[2131] and a Medea, which were placed by Cæsar in the Temple of Venus Genetrix, having been purchased at the price of eighty talents; the value of the Attic talent being, according to M. Varro, equivalent to six thousand denarii. An Orestes, also by Timomachus, an Iphigenia in Tauris, and a Lecythion, a teacher of gymnastics, are equally praised; a Noble Family also; and Two Men clothed in the pallium,[2132] and about to enter into conversation, the one standing, the other in a sitting posture. It is in his picture, however of the Gorgon,[2133] that the art appears to have favoured him most highly.
Aristolaüs, the son and pupil of Pausias, was one of the painters in a more severe style: there are by him an Epaminondas, a Pericles, a Medea, a Theseus, an emblematical picture of the Athenian People, and a Sacrifice of Oxen. Some persons, too, are pleased with the careful style of Nicophanes,[2134] who was also a pupil of Pausias; a carefulness, however, which only artists can appreciate, as in other respects he was harsh in his colours, and too lavish of sil;[2135] as in his picture, for example, of Æsculapius with his daughters, Hygia,[2136] Ægle, and Panacea, his Jason, and his Sluggard, known as the “Ocnos,”[2137] a man twisting a rope at one end as an ass gnaws it at the other. As to Socrates,[2138] his pictures are, with good reason, universally esteemed.