How to represent abstract ideas I do not yet distinctly conceive. There may be the same difficulties which attend the endeavours of representing to the senses a mathematical point—perhaps nothing less than impossibility; and Theodoretus[61] has some reason in confining painting to the senses. For those Hieroglyphicks which hint at abstract ideas, in such a manner as to express, for instance[62], youth by the number XVI; impossibility by two feet standing on water: those, I say, are monograms, not images: to indulge them in painting is fostering chimæras, is adding to Chinese pictures Chinese explications.
An adversary of allegory believes that Parrhasius, without any help from it, could represent the contradictions in the character of the Athenians; that he did it perhaps in several pictures. Supposing which
Et sapit, & mecum facit, & Jove judicat æquo.
Hor.
The sentence of death pronounced against the leaders of the Athenian navy, after their victory over the Spartans near the Arginuses, afforded the artist a very sensible and rich image, to represent the Athenians, at the same time, merciful and cruel.
The famous Theramenes, one of the leaders, accused his fellow-chieftains of having neglected to gather and bury the bodies of their slain countrymen: a charge sufficient to rouse the rage of the mob against the victors; only six of whom had returned to Athens, the rest having declined the storm.
Theramenes harangued the people in the most pathetick manner; intermixing his speech with frequent pauses, in order to give vent to the loud plaints of those who, in the battle, had lost their parents or relations. He, at the same time, produced a man, who protested he had heard the last words of the drowned, imprecating the publick revenge on their leaders. In vain did Socrates, then a member of the council, with a few others, oppose the accusation: the brave chieftains, instead of the honours they hoped for, were condemned to die. One of them was the only son of Pericles and Aspasia.
Was it not in the power of Parrhasius, who was then alive, to enlarge the meaning of his picture beyond the extent of bare history, only by drawing the true characters of the authors of this scene, without the least help from allegory? It would have been in his power, had he lived in our days.