| Pliny the Elder, Natural History (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Plin. Nat.]. | ||
| <<Plin. Nat. 7.38 | Plin. Nat. 7.39 (Latin) | >>Plin. Nat. 7.40 |
King Attalus gave one hundred talents, [Note] at a public auction, for a single picture of Aristides, the Theban painter. [Note] Cæsar, the Dictator, purchased two pictures, the Medea and the Ajax of Timomachus, for eighty talents, [Note] it being his intention to dedicate them in the temple of Venus Genetrix. King Candaules gave its weight in gold for a large picture by Bularchus, the subject of which was the destruction of the Magnetes. Demetrius, who was surnamed the "taker of cities," [Note] refused to
set fire to the city of Rhodes, lest he should chance to destroy a picture of Protogenes, which was placed on that side of the walls against which his attack was directed. Praxiteles [Note] has been ennobled by his works in marble, and more especially by his Cnidian Venus, which became remarkable from the insane love which it inspired in a certain young man, [Note] and the high value set upon it by King Nicomedes, who endeavoured to procure it from the Cnidians, by offering to pay for them a large debt which they owed. The Olympian Jupiter day by day bears testimony to the talents of Phidias, [Note] and the Capitoline Jupiter and the Diana of Ephesus to those of Mentor; [Note] to which deities, also, were consecrated vases made by this artist.
| Pliny the Elder, Natural History (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Plin. Nat.]. | ||
| <<Plin. Nat. 7.38 | Plin. Nat. 7.39 (Latin) | >>Plin. Nat. 7.40 |
