seen in Rome.*

Winkelmann even says, that a long catalogue might be drawn up of such ancient works as were the production of more than a single hand, † Would Pliny have thought of no one besides Agesander, Polydorus and Athenodorus, if he had not expressly intended to confine his observations to the latest times?

If indeed that conjecture may be allowed to be the most probable, which gets rid of the most numerous and the greatest difficulties, it would be that the sculptors of the Laocoon flourished under the first emperors, though certainly in a very high rank. For, had they executed that work at the period in which Winkelmann places them; had the Laocoon itself existed of old in Greece, the profound silence observed by the Greeks regarding so splendid a work (opere omnibus et picture et statuariæ artis præponendo) would be a very extraordinary circumstance. It would be singular indeed if masters of such eminence had executed nothing else, or that, throughout the whole of Greece, Pausanias

* Plinius, lib. xxxvi. sect. 4.

+ Geschichte d. k., p. ii. p. 331.

should have seen as little of any of their other works as he did of the Laocoon. In Rome, on the contrary, the greatest masterpiece might remain long in obscurity; and were the Laocoon even executed so early as the time of Augustus, it ought not to excite surprise that Pliny should have been both the first and the last to mention it, when we reflect on what he says of a Venus by Scopas, which stood in a temple of Mars at Rome; "In the same building is seen a naked Venus, superior to that of Praxiteles, and calculated to ennoble any other place than Rome, where the magnificence of other works causes it to be overlooked, and the great throng of business and public duties draws people off from the contemplation of such things, which can only be properly enjoyed at leisure and in silence."

What I have hitherto said will be very much to the taste of those who are inclined to view the groupe of the Laocoon as an imitation of the Virgilian picture. Another idea occurs to

Plinius, lib. xxxvi.

me, of which they would be equally disposed to approve. It might perhaps be conjectured that

it was Asinius Pollio who ordered the Laocoon of Virgil to be executed by Greek artists. Pollio was a particular friend of the poet, whom he survived, and appears even to have written a work expressly on the subject of the Æneid; for where, except in such a work, could the isolated observations so naturally have found a place which Servius quotes from him? * Pollio was an amateur and a critic, and not only possessed a collection of the noblest works of the ancients, but also employed the artists of his own times to execute works for him. The spirited character of the groupe of Laocoon would be quite suited to the taste which he displayed in his choice of objects; †—" ut fuit acris vehementiæ, sic quoque spectari monumenta sua voluit." But as the cabinet of Pollio,

66

Ad vers. 7, lib. ii. Æneid., and particularly ad vers. 183, lib. xi. It might not therefore be improper to add to the catalogue of the lost writings of this author a work of this kind.

† Plinius, lib. xxxvi., sect. 4.

in the time of Pliny, when the Laocoon stood in the palace of Titus, seems still to have existed entire in its original locality, the probability of this conjecture is diminished. Yet, why might not Titus himself have done what is here ascribed to Pollio?

TWENTY-SEVENTH SECTION.

Criticism on Winkelmann's Remarks on a Passage of Pliny relative to the Inscriptions on ancient Works of Art.

I am confirmed in my opinion that the masters of the Laocoon flourished under the first emperors, or at least that they could not have been by any means of such ancient date as Winkelmann makes them, by a fact which he has himself been the first to relate. It is as

follows:-*

"At Nettuno, formerly Antium, the Cardinal Alessandro Albani discovered, in the year 1717, within a large vaulted chamber which lay sunk beneath the sea, a pedestal of a dark greyish marble, now called Bigio, on which a figure had formerly been fixed. On this pedestal is engraved the following inscription :—

Gesch. d. k., pa. ii, p. 347.