, a celebrated Athenian, of whom Barthelemi has justly remarked,
, a celebrated Athenian, of whom Barthelemi has justly remarked, that some historians have stigmatized his memory with every reproach, and others have honoured it with every eulogium, without its being possible for us to charge the former with injustice, or the latter with partiality. He was born in the eighty-second olympiad, about the year 450 B. C. Clinias, his father, was descended from Ajax of Salamis, and his mother, the daughter of Megacles, was of the family of the Alcmteonides. In his person, while a youth, he was beautiful, and when a man, remarkable for his comeliness; his fortune was large beyond most of the nobility of Athens. His abilities were so great, that an ancient author (C. Nepos) has asserted that nature in him had exerted her utmost force, since, whether we consider his virtues or his vices, he was distinguished from all his fellow-citizens; he was learned, eloquent, indefatigable, liberal, magnificent, affable, and knew exactly how to comply with the times; that is, he could assume all those virtues when he thought proper; for, when he gave a loose to his passions, he was indolent, luxurious, dissolute, addicted to women, intemperate, and impious. Socrates had a great friendship for him, corrected in some degree his manners, and brought him to the knowledge of many things of which he would otherwise have remained ignorant: he also prevented the Athenians from resenting many of those wanton acts of pride and vanity which he committed when a lad. His family had always been on good terms with the Lacedemonians; Clinias, his father, indeed, disclaimed their friendship, but Alcibiades renewed it, and affected to shew great respect to people of that country, until he observed the ambassadors of Lacedemon applied themselves wholly to Nicias, his rival, and his dependants; he then resented it very much, and used every influence on the minds of the Athenians to the prejudice of that people.
, a celebrated Athenian painter, flourished about the year 408 before
, a celebrated Athenian painter, flourished about the year 408 before the Christian aera. He applied the essential principles of his predecessor Polygnotus to the delineation of the species, by investigating the leading forms that discriminate the various classes of human qualities and passions. The acuteness of his taste led him to discover that as all men were connected by one general form, so they were separated each by some predominant power, which fixed character, and bound them to a class: that in proportion as this specific power partook of individual peculiarities, the farther it was removed from a share in that harmonious system which constitutes nature, and consists in a due balance of all its parts: thence he drew his line of imitation, and personified the central form of the class, to which his object belonged; and to which the rest of its qualities administered without being absorbed: agility was not suffered to destroy firmness, solidity, or weight; nor strength and weight agility: elegance did not degenerate to effeminacy, or grandeur swell to hugeness. Such were his principles of style; his expression extended them to the mind, if we may judge from the two subjects mentioned by Pliny, in which he seems to have personified the characters of devotion and impiety: the former, in the adoring figure of a priest, perhaps of Chryses, expanding his gratitude at the shrine of the God whose arrows avenged his wrongs and restored his daughter: and the latter, in the figure of Ajax wrecked, and from the sea-swept rock hurling defiance unto the murky sky. As neither of these subjects can present themselves to a painter’s mind without a contrast of the most awful and the most terrific tones of colour, magic of light and shade, and unlimited command over the tools of art, we may with Pliny and with Plutarch consider Apollodorus as the first assertor of the pencil’s honours, as the first colourist of his age, and the man who opened the gates of art which Zeuxis entered.