viz., that of the Poet, also styled the Homeric House, the interior court of which was a complete Iliad illustrated.  There you could see the parting of Agamemnon and Chryseis, and also that of Briseis and Achilles, who, seated on a throne, with a look of angry resignation, is requesting the young girl to return to Agamemnon—­a fine picture, of deserved celebrity.  There, too, was beheld the lovely Venus which Gell has not hesitated to compare, as to form, with the Medicean statue, or for color, to Titian’s painting.  It will be remembered that she plays a conspicuous part in the poem.  A little further on we see Jupiter and Juno meeting on Mount Ida.

[Illustration:  Exedra of the House of Siricus.]

“At length” says Nicolini, in his sumptuous work on Pompeii, “in the natural sequence of these episodes, appears Thetis reclining on the Triton, and holding forth to her afflicted son the arms that Vulcan had forged for him in her presence.”

It was in the peristyle of this house that the copy of the famous picture by Timanthius of the sacrifice of Iphigenia was found.  “Having represented her standing near the altar on which she is to perish, the artist depicts profound grief on the faces of those who are present, especially of Menelaus; then, having exhausted all the symbols of sorrow, he veils the father’s countenance, finding it impossible to give a befitting expression.”  This was, according to Pliny, the work of Timanthus, and such is exactly the reproduction of it as it was found in the house of the poet at Pompeii.

This Iphigenia and the Medea in the house of Castor and Pollux, recalling the masterpiece of Timomachos the Byzantine are the only two Pompeian pictures which reproduce well-known paintings; but let us not, for that reason, conclude that the others are original.  The painters of the little city were neither creators nor copyists, but very free imitators, varying familiar subjects to suit themselves.  Hence, that variety which surprises us in their reproductions of the same subject.  Indeed, I have seen, at least ten Ariadnes surprised by Bacchus, and there are no two alike.  Hence, also, that ease and freedom of touch indicating that the decorative artists executing them felt quite at their ease.  Assuredly, their efforts, which are of quite unequal merit, are not models of correctness by any means; faults of drawing and proportion, traits of awkwardness and heedlessness, swarm in them; but let anybody pick out a sub-prefecture of 30,000 inhabitants, in France, and say to the painters of the district:  “Here, my good friends, just go to work and tear off those sheets of colored paper that you find pasted upon the walls of rooms and saloons in every direction, and paint there in place of them socles and friezes, devotional images, genre pictures, and historical pieces summing up the ideas, creeds, manners and tastes, of our time in such sort that were the Pyrenees, the Cevennes, or the Jura Alps, to crumble upon you to-morrow, future generations, on digging up your houses and your masterpieces, might there study the life of our period although it will be antiquity for them."...  What would the painters of the place be apt to do or say?  I think I may reply, with all respect to them, that they would at least be greatly embarrassed.