Zeuxis: Poems

Chorus

Foster-sister of the Graces And of Cypris throned above, Holy Reconciliation, So much fairer than we knew, O that somehow as they paint him, With a wreath of roses, Love, Love might take our hands and join us, You to me and me to you!

Aristophanes Acharnians:

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“In the temple of Aphrodite at Athens the painter Zeuxis depicted Love as an extremely blooming youth wreathed with roses.” Scholiast on Aristophanes Acharnians: “… Zeuxis and Parrhasius … of whom the former is said to have discovered the principles of light and shade… For Zeuxis gave greater breadth than Parrhasius to the limbs of the body, holding that this produces a fuller and more majestic effect, and imitating, as is believed, Homer, who delights in all strong bodies even in the case of women.”

Quintilian Elements of Oratory [on painters]

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Inscriptions

Hear now another painter, in your opinion doubtless a braggart, but, according to those who know, a perfectly sensible man; and what says he?

Heraclea my birthplace, Zeuxis my name; and if any man say he holds the ends of my art,1 let him prove it ere he be believed …2 To my thinking, I hold no second place.

Aristides On the Extemporised

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Addition: “He painted … an athlete, and was so proud of his work that he wrote beneath it the line which has since become famous:

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship. more literally It is easier to find fault than to imitate （i.e. it is easier to say a thing's ill done than to do it as well）; or more particularly This will be found fault with rather than imitated; cf. Theogn. 369

Pliny Natural History [Zeuxis]

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1 i.e. has control of, is master of, such an art as mine: cf. Theogn. 140, Mimn. 2. 6 n, Archil. 55

2 two half-lines lost