Latin Texts & Translations

But it was the Dictator Cæsar that first brought the public

exhibition of pictures into such high estimation, by consecrating an Ajax and a Medea ^[Note] before the Temple of Venus Genetrix. ^[Note] After him there was M. Agrippa, a man who was naturally more attached to rustic simplicity than to refinement. Still, however, we have a magnificent oration of his, and one well worthy of the greatest of our citizens, on the advantage of exhibiting in public all pictures and statues; a practice which would have been far preferable to sending them into banishment at our country-houses. Severe as he was in his tastes, he paid the people of Cyzicus twelve hundred thousand sesterces for two paintings, an Ajax and a Venus. He also ordered small paintings to be set in marble in the very hottest part of his Warm Baths; ^[Note] where they remained until they were removed a short time since, when the building was repaired.