Elegy and Iambus, Volume II
J. M. Edmonds, Ed.

PARRHASIUS

---

“Next come Zeuxis and Parrhasius who are nearly contemporaries, being both of the time of the Peloponnesian War —for a conversation of Socrates with Parrhasius may be found in Xenophon —, and did much to advance their art. The former is said ..., and the latter to have paid particular attention to line; indeed Parrhasius so systematised the art that he is known as the lawgiver, because the representations of Gods and heroes deriving from him are followed by other painters as though of necessity.” Quintilian Elements of Oratory [on painters] “Parrhasius:—According to Juba in the 8th Book of his treatise On the Painters ... he was the son and pupil of Euenor, and by extraction an Ephesian.” Harpocration Lexicon to the Attic Orators: “In the 90th Olympiad （420-17 B.C.） flourished ... Euenor, father and teacher of the great painter Parrhasius.” Pliny Natural History:

---

Inscriptions

---

“Luxury and extravagance were so much practised among the ancients that even the painter Parrhasius wore a purple cloak and a golden crown, as we may learn from the Lives of Clearchus. Though he was given to a luxury entirely out of keeping with his art, he paid lip-service to virtue and inscribed upon his works the line:

The painter of this lived in style and worshipped virtue;

CURFRAG.tlg-1567.1

and somebody, highly indignant, changed it to lived by stile [an instrument used in encaustic painting]. Indeed he inscribed many of his works with the following lines:

The painter of this lived in style and worshipped virtue, his name Parrhasius, his birthplace far-famed Ephesus; nor was he forgetful of Euenor who not only begot him in wedlock but made him the first artist in Greece.

CURFRAG.tlg-1567.2

He also made the following quite unobjectionalbe boast:

Believe it or not, I tell you this: The limits, I say, of this art have now been discovered plain by my hand, and the bounds are fixed that none may pass. Yet is nothing without blame in the world of men.¹

CURFRAG.tlg-1567.3

And when he was painting the Heracles of Lindus he made the very strange claim that the God was appearing to him in his dreams and posing for him, and indeed he wrote upon the picture:

And such you may see him as he appeared often to Parrhasius in his sleep at night.²

CURFRAG.tlg-1567.4

”

Athenaeus Doctors at Dinner