Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 3.djvu/338

Rh 326 PHILOSTRATUS. Heroica furnishes instances of this : one will suffice. In the fifth year of the war Antilochus requests Achilles to intercede for him with Nestor, that he may be allowed to take a share in the en- terprize. Achilles obtains permission for him, and Nestor, proud of his son, introduces him to Aga- memnon. Then occurs the following picture : — " Antilochus stood close beside and lower than his father (uiro -rep Trarpi), blushing and looking down on the ground, and gazed on by the Greeks, with ro less admiration than that which Achilles him- self inspired. The godlike appearance of the one overawed, that of the other was pleasing and gentle" (iii. 2). The first edition of this work was that already stated under the Bioi aocpLffrwu. It was translated into Latin by Stephanus Niger, Milan, 1517. There is an edition by Boissonade, Paris, 1806. IV. Imagines (etwroVes). This is certainly the author's most pleasing work, exhibiting great rich- ness of fancy, power and variety of description, and a rich exuberance of style. The subject was suited to him, and he to the subject. He has escaped from the trammels of an artificial criticism by which he is fettered in the Heroica. Alike in grouping and in depicting single objects, he mani- fests a complete mastery of what a picture ought to be. The frame-work of the dissertation, which consists of two books (Suidas erroneously says four), is briefly as follows. After an introduction in which he compares poetry to painting and sta- tuary, he represents himself as having gone to Naples, with no intention of practising his art as a rhetorician. He lived in a villa out of the city, where there was an excellent collection of paint- ings. His host had a son who used to watch him while examining the pictures. At once to gratify him, and to free himself from the importunities of some youths that had besought him to exercise his art, he employed himself in explaining the subjects of the paintings ; and this explanation forms the work. The paintings present various subjects in which he can display his acquaintance both with poets and historians, — they are mytho- logical, historical, biographical, landscapes with figures, and allegorical. They consist of thirty-one in the first, and thirty-three in the second book. Though Sillig (s. V. Euphranor I.) gives an un- favourable view of Philostratus as a judge of paintings, the opinion of critics seems to be all but unanimous in his favour. He is fond of referring to works of art, and his writings abound with proofs that he had studied the subject carefully. It is less certain whether his description refers to an actual collection, or whether he had not in- vented the subjects. The question is a difficult one to decide. On the one hand is the great dis- tinctness and vividness of the details ; on the other he mentions no artist's name — he alludes to no picture which is certainly known or described by any other, and in his description of Pantheia (ii. 9) he shows how any man may follow out the mere statement of an historical fact (in this case made by Xenophon), so as to draw a picture of each incident. We may therefore expect that his object was to rival the painter's art by the rhetori- cian's, as he rivals the poet's by the painter's. On the other hand, it has been properly remarked by Kayser that no objection to the reality of the pictures can be drawn from the fact that a few of the description^ contain two or more simultaneous PHILOSTRATUS. actions, for that was not unknown to the ancient artists. (Praefat. p. iv.) The first edition of the Greek text has been already noticed. It was translated into Latin by Stephanus Niger, along with the Heroica and parts of other authors, and published at Milan in 1521. It was translated into French along with the similar work of the younger Philostratus, and the eKcppdaeis of Callistratus. with engravings and a commentary by Blaise de Vigenere in 1578, and often reprinted. But Olearius speaks slightingly of all that Vigenere has done. These three works have generally gone together. The best edition is that of Jacobs and Welcker, Leipzig, 1825, in which the latter explained the artistical details illustrative of the archaeological department. The text is revised, and a commentary of great value added by Jacobs. Heyne published illustrations of Philostratus and Callistratus, Gottingen, 1786 — 1801. The following list of illustrative works is taken from Kayser's Prooemium : — Torkill Baden, Comment, de Arte, S^c Philostrati in describ. Imagin. Hafn. 1792 ; C. 0. Mliller, in Archaeo- logia, passim, e. g. 18, 702 ; Welcker, Rlieinisches Museum, 1834, p. 411; Raoul-Rochette, Peint. Ant inedit. 160 ; Creuzer, Symbolik, ii. 82, iii. 427, &c. 3d edit. ; Gerhard, Aeusserl. Vasengem. i. 12 ; Heyne, Opusc. Acad. v. pp. 15, 28, 193 ; Gothe, Werke, vol. xxx. p. 426, Stuttgart, 1840 ; Fr. Passow, Zeitschift fur die Alterthumswissen- schafi., 1836, p. 571, &c. The practicability of painting from the descriptions of Philostratus has been proved by Giulio Romano and by M. de Schvvind, the latter of whom has adorned the walls of the Museum of Carlsruhe with several paintings borrowed from them. (Kayser, I.e.) V. Epistolae (J-n-KTroKai). These were probably composed before he settled in Rome, as the best MSS. bear the title ^iKoarpaTov 'Adrjvaiov. They are seventy-three in number, and are chiefly specimens of amatory letters ; hence Suidas calls them epwTiKas ; or perhaps he had not the full collection. Kayser thinks that he published in his life-time two editions, the one in his youth, of which the letters are full of fire, and the other more contemplative, and issued in his old age. The cast of them, however, seems to be no other- wise varied than to suit his aim of showing the versatility of his powers. They present, in general, the same subjects, and are treated in the same ways as amatory epigrams, with a few that are satirical, and one to Julia Domna in defence of the sophists. To these is added a letter on letter- writing, which Olearius attributes to Philostratus Lemnius, and Kayser to our Philostratus, with a fragment on the union of Nature and Art, which is probably a portion of a rhetorical exercise. Sixty-three of these letters, including the letter to Aspasius, were published by Aldus, 1499. Meursius added eight, which he published, with a dissertation on the Philostrati, at the Elzevir press in 1616, and supplied the lacunae of several others. Olearius added three more in his edition of the collected works. There is a separate edition of these letters by Jo. Fr. Boissonade, Paris and Leipzig, 1842. Of the collected works of Philostratus, there is :— 1. The edition of Fed. Morellius, Paris, 1608, containing all the works above mentioned, along with Eusebius contra Hieroclem., the Et/coj'es of the younger Philostratus, and the iK<ppdarci5 of Callis-