[Copied in Th.  Schrieber’s The Head of the Gaul in the Museum of
   Ghizeh in Cairo.  Leipsic, 1896.  With appendix.  By H. Curschmann.]

Hermon also took other subjects in Pergamus from the domain of real life, though, in most of his work he crossed the limits which he had formerly imposed upon himself.  But one barrier, often as he rushed forward to its outermost verge, he never dared to pass—­moderation, the noblest demand, to which his liberty-loving race subjected themselves willingly in life as well as in art.  The whole infinite, limitless world of the ideal had opened itself to the blind man.

He made himself at home in it by remaining faithful to the rule which he had found in the desert for his creative work, and the genuine happiness which he enjoyed through Daphne’s love and the great fame his sculptures brought him increased the strong individuality of his power.

The fruits of his tireless industry, the much-admired god of light, Phoebus Apollo, slaying the dragons of darkness, as well as his bewitching Arachne, gazing proudly at the fabric with which she thinks she has surpassed the skill of the goddess, were overtaken by destruction.  In this statue Bias recognised his countrywoman Ledscha, and often gazed long at it with devout ecstasy.  Even Hermon’s works of colossal size vanished from the earth:  the Battle of the Amazons and the relief containing numerous figures:  the Sea Gods, which the Regent Eumenes ordered for the Temple of Poseidon in Pergamus.

The works of his grandson and grandson’s pupils, however, are preserved on the great altar of victory in Pergamus.

The power and energy natural to Hermon, the skill he had acquired in Rhodes, everything in the changeful life of Alexandria which had induced him to consecrate his art to reality, and to that alone, and whatever he had, finally, in quiet seclusion, recognised as right and in harmony with the Greek nature and his own, blend in those works of his successor, which a gracious dispensation of Providence permits us still to admire at the present day, and which we call in its entirety, the art of Pergamus.

The city was a second beloved home to him, as well as to his wife and Myrtilus.  The rulers of the country took the old Alexandrian Archias into their confidence and knew how to honour him by many a distinction.  He understood how to value the happiness of his only daughter, the beautiful development of his grandchildren, and the high place that Hermon and Myrtilus, whom he loved as if they were his own sons, attained among the artists of their time.  Yet he struggled vainly against the longing for his dear old home.  Therefore Hermon deemed it one of the best days of his life when his turn came to make Daphne’s father a happy man.

King Ptolemy Philadelphus had sent laurel to the artist who had fallen under suspicion in Egypt, and his messenger invited him and Myrtilus, and with them also the exiled merchant, to return to his presence.  In gratitude for the pleasure which Hermon’s creation afforded him and his wife, the cause that kept the fugitive Archias from his home should be forgiven and forgotten.