Читать книгу The Natural History of Pliny (Vol. 1-6) - Pliny the Elder - Страница 353

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King Attalus gave one hundred talents,1176 at a public auction, for a single picture of Aristides, the Theban painter.1177 Cæsar, the Dictator, purchased two pictures, the Medea and the Ajax of Timomachus, for eighty talents,1178 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,”1179 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. Praxiteles1180 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,1181 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,1182 and the Capitoline Jupiter and the Diana of Ephesus to those of Mentor;1183 to which deities, also, were consecrated vases made by this artist.