Felix, supposed to have lived after Dioscorides, though preserving the same attitude, has endeavoured to make its violence more natural, by opposing to him the figure of Ulysses, who, as we are told, in order to bereave him of the honour of having seized the Palladion, offered to rob him of it, but being discovered, was repulsed by Diomedes; which being his supposed action on the gem, allows violence of attitude[28].
Diomedes cannot be a sitting figure, for the Contour of his buttock and thigh is free, and not in the least compressed: the foot of the bent leg is visible, and the leg itself not bent enough.
The Diomedes represented by Mariette is absurd; the left leg resembling a clasped pocket-knife, and the foot being drawn up so high as to make it impossible in nature that it should reach the pedestal[29].
Faults of this kind cannot be called negligences, and would not be forgiven in any modern artist.
Dioscorides, ’tis true, in this renowned performance did but copy Polycletus, whose Doryphorus (as is commonly agreed) was the best rule of human proportions[30]. But, though a copyist, Dioscorides escaped a fault which his master fell into. For the pedestal, over which the Diomedes of Polycletus leans, is contrary to the most common rules of perspective; its cornices, which should be parallel, forming two different lines.
I wonder at Perrault’s omitting to make objections against the ancient gems.
I mean not to do any thing derogatory to the author, when I trace some of his particular observations to their source.
The food prescribed to the young wrestlers, in the remoter times of Greece, is mentioned by Pausanias[31]. But if the author alluded to the passage which I have in view, why does he talk in general of milk-food, when Pausanias particularly mentions soft cheese? Dromeus of Stymphilos, we learn there, first introduced flesh meat.
My researches, concerning their mysterious art of changing blue eyes to black ones, have not succeeded to my wish. I find it mentioned but once, and that only by the bye by Dioscorides[32]. The author, by clearing up this art, might perhaps have thrown a greater lustre over his treatise, than by producing his new method of statuary. He had it in his power to fix the eyes of the Newtons and Algarotti’s, on a problem worth their attention, and to engage the fair sex, by a discovery so advantageous to their charms, especially in Germany, where, contrary to Greece, large, fine, blue eyes are more frequently met with than black ones.
There was a time when the fashion required to be green eyed: