The daily morning journal and courier., 1897-07-20
PRICES OF ANCIENT ART.
How Artists and Rhetoricians Were Rewarded by the Greeks and Ro-

How Artists and Rhetoricians Were
 Rewarded by the Greeks and Ro-
 mans. o'.
 We were told in youth, says the Lon- don Standard, that to ask the prices of ornaments is. vulgar, and to declare 1t worse. The rule is good for children, but 1t does not apply to "grown-ups" without distinction. A comparison of the prices which works of art have commanded at various times is more than interesting. It gives us valuable and curious hints upon the civilization of different eras, though allowance must always be made for fashion. We see this clearly enough when collec- tion of modern paintings is sold off, and works which fetched thousands a gene ration ago are sold with difficulty for hundreds. The prices of ancient art have not this significance, because, for one reason, there is not probably sim gle piece of sculpture remaining, the original cost of which has been pre- served, while the famous pictures of antiquity have vanished altogether. But it is much to know what value was set upon the work of great masters in their own day. Perhaps there are books conveying that information in detail, compiled by laborlous enthusi- asts from notes scattered up and down in classic literature. But we never chanced to meet with them.
 The invaluable Pliny gives a number of facts moved by indignation against the luxurious trifling of his age. Ar lists did not hold any such position then as is granted them now, and Ro- man who clung to the old fashion re- garded the sums paid to them with dis gust. Plutarch, man of finished cul- ture shows the feeling even among Greeks. Industry in servile or me- chanic employment" he says, casually, lis proof of indifference to nobler mat ters. What yeung man of good birth and inquiring spirit would wish to be Phidias because he admires the Zeus at Pisa, or to be Pelycletus after seeing the Hera at Argos2-or Anacreon, or
 Philemon, or Archilochus because he loves their poems?" These few words show the gulf that divides ancient and modern notions upon the subject-not of art, but of artists. We assume, as a
 matter of course, that the study or masterpieces will urge young man of talent to emulate them; Plutarch would
 have indignantly denied that it could
 have that effect if the youth had pro- Der spirit. Even writing poetry is a 'servile or mechanic employment which he would disdain It was the
 trophies of Miltiades," or the victory
 of Chaeronaea, which could stir Greek boys.
 | Here are some casual notes on prices; it will be observed that many of the great artists named are actually un- known to us;Xeuxis made so much
 money that in the prime of life he re- fused to sell any more pictures, giving | them away henceforward. The single | priced work of Apelles we have noted
 was his Alexander with the Thunder bolt in the Temple at Ephesus," for
 which he received twenty talents of
 gold-a vague sum, for there were sev- eral gold talents. It may represent e4,- 120 or e60,000, or something between. But we get an idea of his prices incl
 dentally. When Apelles visited Proto- genes in Rhodes, he was shocked to