ARISTIDES, a painter contemporary with Apelles, flourished at Thebes about the 122d Olympiad. He was the first, according to Pliny, who expressed character and passion, the human mind, and its several emotions; but he was not remarkable for softness of colouring. "His most celebrated picture was of an infant (on the taking of a town) at the mother's breast, who is wounded and expiring. The sensations of the mother were clearly marked, and her fear lest the child, upon failure of the milk, should suck her blood." "Alexander the Great (continues the same author) took this picture with him to Pella."
Junius (in his Treatise de Picturâ Veterum) conjectures that the following beautiful epigram of Æmilianus was written on this exquisite picture:
Ἔλπι, τάλαν, πᾶρα μήτηρ οὐκ ἔστι μᾶζον ἀμίδξας
Ἐλκυσθὴν ὕστατιον ἔκμα κατὰ φῦμιν.
Ἡ δὲ γὰρ ἐξίστην λικέπτος ἀλλὰ τὰ μήτρα
Φίλητα καὶ ἐν αὐτῷ παῖδικὸν μᾶνδρον.
Elegantly translated thus:
Suck, little wretch, while yet thy mother lives,
Suck the last drop her fainting bosom gives!
She dies! her tenderness survives her breath,
And her fond love is provident in death.
Webb's Inquiry, dial. vii. p. 161.