. Pompeii : its life and art . right stands Calchas, deeply troubled, his sheath inhis left hand, his unsheathed sword in his right, his finger uponhis lips. The hapless maid with arms outstretched in supplica-tion is held by two men, one of whom is perhaps Ulysses. Atthe left is Agamemnon, with face averted and veiled head, over-come with grief. Beside him leans his sceptre, and on a pillarnear by we see an archaic statue of Artemis with a torch ineach hand, a dog on either side. Just as the girl is to be slain,Artemis appears in the sky at the right, and from the cloudsopposite a nymph emerg
. Pompeii : its life and art . right stands Calchas, deeply troubled, his sheath inhis left hand, his unsheathed sword in his right, his finger uponhis lips. The hapless maid with arms outstretched in supplica-tion is held by two men, one of whom is perhaps Ulysses. Atthe left is Agamemnon, with face averted and veiled head, over-come with grief. Beside him leans his sceptre, and on a pillarnear by we see an archaic statue of Artemis with a torch ineach hand, a dog on either side. Just as the girl is to be slain,Artemis appears in the sky at the right, and from the cloudsopposite a nymph emerges bringing a deer, which the goddessaccepts as a substitute. In this painting, also, though the style is entirely differentfrom that of the others, we perceive the limitations of the artist THE HOUSE OF THE TRAGIC POET 3*3 in the treatment of the background. Nevertheless the bold-ness of the conception, and the skill manifested in the handlingof several of the figures, seem to point to an original of morethan ordinary Fig. 149. — The sacrifice of Iphigenia. Wall painting. Not far from 400 the sacrifice of Iphigenia was madethe subject of a painting by Timanthes, in which the maidenwas represented as standing beside the altar. We are told thatthe artist painted Calchas sorrowful, Ulysses more sorrowful,Ajax lamenting, and Menelaus in sorrow so deep that deepersorrow could not be expressed ; finding it impossible to portraythe grief of the father, Agamemnon, Timanthes representedhim with veiled head. 314 POMPEII The veiled Agamemnon appears in our painting, and the fig-ure of Calchas perhaps reflects the conception of the rest, it is difficult to establish a relation between thetwo pictures ; even if we did not know that Iphigenia, in thepainting of Timanthes, stood beside an altar, we could scarcelybelieve that a great painter would have represented her thusawkwardly carried. Undoubtedly the Pompeian painting, or itsoriginal, is indebted to the mast
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