The display of his own acquirements in various branches of art and science, and of his rhetorical powers of language in describing them, is indeed an object of which Achilles Tatius never loses sight; and continual digressions from the thread of the story for this purpose occur, often extremely mal-a-propos, and sometimes entirely without reference to the preceding narrative.  Thus, when Clitophon is relating the terms of an oracle addressed to the Byzantines, previous to their war with the Thracians, he breaks off at once into a dissertation on the wonderful qualities of the element of water, the inflammable springs of Sicily, the gold extracted from the lakes of Africa, &c.—­all which is supposed to be introduced into a conversation on the oracle between Sostratus and his colleague in command, and could only have come to the knowledge of Clitophon by being repeated to him verbatim, after a considerable interval of time, by Sostratus.  Again, in the midst of the hero’s perplexities at his threatened marriage with Calligone, we are favoured with a minute enumeration of the gems set in an ornament which his father purchased as part of the trousseau; and this again leads to an account of the discovery and application of the purple dye.  The description of objects of natural history is at all times a favourite topic; and the sojourn of the lovers in Egypt affords the author an opportunity of indulging in details relative to the habits and appearances of the various strange animals found in that country—­the crocodile, the hippopotamus, and the elephant, are described with considerable spirit and fidelity; and even the form and colours of the fabulous phoenix, are delineated with all the confidence of an eyewitness.

Many of these episodical sketches, though out of place when thus awkwardly inserted in the midst of the narrative, are in themselves curious and well written; but the most valuable and interesting among them are the frequent descriptions of paintings, a specimen of which has already been given.  On this subject especially, the author dwells con amore, and his remarks are generally characterised by a degree of good taste and correct feeling, which indicates a higher degree of appreciation of the pictorial art than is generally ascribed to the age in which Achilles Tatius wrote.  Even in the latter part of the first century of our era, Pliny, when enumerating the glorious names of the ancient Greek painters, laments over the total decline, in his own days, of what he terms (Nat.  Hist. xxxv. 11) “an aspiring art;” but the monarchs of the Macedonian dynasties in Asia, and, above all, the Egyptian Ptolemies, were both munificent patrons of the fine arts among their own subjects, and diligent collectors of the great works of past ages; and many of the chefs-d’oeuvres of the Grecian masters were thus transferred from their native country to adorn, the temples and palaces of Egypt and Syria.  We find, from Plutarch, that