United States or Senegal ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
We read of celebrated schools, like the modern schools of Florence, Rome, Bologna, Venice, and Naples. The schools of Sicyon, Corinth, Athens, and Rhodes were as famous in their day as the modern schools to which I have alluded. Painting, being strictly a decoration, did not reach a high degree of art, like sculpture, until architecture was perfected. But painting is very ancient.
For, as the great Florentine has well observed, "To found well a government, one man is the best once established, the care and execution of the laws should be transferred to many." That of Orthagoras and his sons in Sicyon. "Of all governments," says Aristotle, "that of an oligarchy, or of a tyrant, is the least permanent."
The Achaeans would not venture to engage in war, until their ambassadors should come back from Rome, and acquaint them with the sentiments of the senate: but as soon as these returned, they summoned a council at Sicyon, and also sent deputies to Titus Quinctius to ask his advice.
The most famous of all was Apelles. He was a Greek of Asia Minor and received his early training at Ephesus. He then betook himself to Sicyon, in order to profit by the instruction of Pamphilus and by association with the other painters gathered there. It seems likely that his next move was to Pella, the capital of Macedon, then ruled over by Philip, the father of Alexander.
In that expedition in which he fought with the plundering party near Sicyon, being carried by the fury of his horse against a tree, he broke off the extremity of one of the horns of his helmet against a projecting branch; which being found by a certain Aetolian and carried into Aetolia to Scerdilaedus, who knew it to be the ornament of his helmet, spread the report that the king was killed.
However it is very right to believe that a god can feel friendship for a man, and from this may spring a love which watches over him and guides him in the path of virtue. There is truth in the myths of Phorbas, of Hyacinthus, and of Admetus, who were all loved by Apollo, as was also Hippolytus of Sicyon.
The men of Sicyon alone ventured to meet him at Nemea, and them he overthrew in a pitched battle, and erected a trophy.
On these conditions they surrendered and came out, and the Athenians broke down the long walls at their point of junction with Megara, took possession of Nisaea, and went on with their other preparations. Just at this time the Lacedaemonian Brasidas, son of Tellis, happened to be in the neighbourhood of Sicyon and Corinth, getting ready an army for Thrace.
These were not always nine in number. Three Muses were also recognized at Delphi and Sicyon. Four are mentioned as daughters of Jupiter and Plusia, while some accounts speak of seven Muses, daughters of Pierus. Eight was the number known in Athens, until finally the Thracian worship of nine spread over the whole of Greece.
The usurpations in Sicyon, Corinth, and Megara furnish illustrations of what occurred in nearly all of the Grecian states during the seventh and sixth centuries before the Christian era. Some of those of a later period will be noticed in a subsequent chapter.
Word Of The Day