Two artists of the highest distinction now appear upon the scene.  They are Zeuxis and Parrhasius.  The rather vague remark of a Roman writer, that they both lived “about the time of the Peloponnesian War” (431-404 B.C.) is as definite a statement as can safely be made about their date.  Parrhasius was born at Ephesus, Zeuxis at some one or other of the numerous cities named Heraclea.  Both traveled freely from place to place, after the usual fashion of Greek artists, and both naturally made their home for a time in Athens.  Zeuxis availed himself of the innovation of Apollodorus and probably carried it farther.  Indeed, he is credited by one Roman writer with being the founder of the new method.  The strength of Parrhasius is said to have lain in subtlety of line, which would suggest that with him, as with Polygnotus, painting was essentially outline drawing.  Yet he too can hardly have remained unaffected by the new chiaroscuro.

Easel pictures now assumed a relative importance which they had not had a generation earlier.  Some of these were placed in temples and such conformed in their subjects to the requirements of religious art, as understood in Greece.  But many of the easel pictures by Zeuxis and his contemporaries can hardly have had any other destination than the private houses of wealthy connoisseurs.  Moreover, we hear first in this period of mural painting as applied to domestic interiors.  Alcibiades is said to have imprisoned a reluctant painter, Agatharchus (cf. page 278), in his house and to have forced him to decorate the walls.  The result of this sort of private demand was what we have seen taking place a hundred years later in the case of sculpture, viz.:  that artists became free to employ their talents on any subjects which would gratify the taste of patrons.  For example, a painting by Zeuxis of which Lucian has left us a description illustrates what may be called mythological genre.  It represented a female Centaur giving suck to two offspring, with the father of the family in the background, amusing himself by swinging a lion’s whelp above his head to scare his young.  This was, no doubt, admirable in its way, and it would be narrow-minded to disparage it because it did not stand on the ethical level of Polygnotus’s work.  But painters did not always keep within the limits of what is innocent.  No longer restrained by the conditions of monumental and religious art, they began to pander not merely to what is frivolous, but to what is vile in human nature.  The great Parrhasius is reported by Pliny to have painted licentious little pictures, “refreshing himself” (says the writer) by this means after more serious labors.  Thus at the same time that painting was making great technical advances, its nobility of purpose was on the average declining.