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Mention may be made lastly of the Meleager sarcophagi, which, like the Etruscan urns, have much in common with Euripides’ Μελέαγρος^[61].

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Our knowledge of Greek painting is entirely literary. No vestige of this art has survived that one may study the real monuments. The wall paintings of Pompeii and Herculaneum are, however, a sort of recompense for this loss, and with these and the assistance of Pliny and a few other writers one can get some notion of certain masterpieces of ancient painting. But the records are at the most very scant, and the student has, after all, to allow his imagination to fill in many gaps.

The first probable point of contact between tragedy and painting is in the time of Polygnotos. The series of paintings mentioned by Pausanias as being in the Propylaia may be brought under the name of the great painter, since it is expressly stated that two of the ten were from his hand^[62]. Among the subjects were Odysseus fetching Philoktetes from Lemnos; Orestes slaying Aigisthos; Polyxena on the point of being sacrificed at Achilles’ tomb. The question arises, have these works any connexion with the drama? If Polygnotos was the author of all the paintings, the period of his activity excludes both Sophoklean and Euripidean influence in the Philoktetes scene. The Philoktetes of Sophokles is known to have been produced in 409 B.C., and the same play by Euripides appeared in the trilogy with the Medeia in 431 B.C. This leaves Aischylos’ tragedy, which could have served Polygnotos’ purpose. Orestes killing Aigisthos seems also a possible product of the Oresteia, but Pylades engaging the sons of Nauplios who came to the usurper’s assistance renders the Aischylean source improbable. Polyxena’s sacrifice is described by Euripides in the Hekabe^[63], and was the subject of Sophokles’ Polyxene^[64]. Nothing, however, can be made out of the few fragments belonging to the latter. The character of this picture, in which πάθος excluded ἦθος, led Robert to assign it to the fourth century and base it upon Euripides^[65]. All these subjects are from the Trojan Cycle, and agree well with what is known of Polygnotos’ taste in selecting his legends. One has but to recall the painting in the Lesche of the Knidians at Delphi—τὸ μὲν σύμπαν τὸ ἐν δεξιᾷ τῆς γραφῆς Ἴλιός τέ ἐστιν ἑαλωκυῖα καὶ ἀπόπλους ὁ Ἑλλήνων^[66]—to learn that the drama was not essential to inspire Polygnotos. On the other hand, a closer examination of the Philoktetes-Orestes legend reveals the fact that the crafty Ithacan’s part in bringing Philoktetes from Lemnos was an invention of the Attic drama^[67]. The tragedians placed Odysseus in the room occupied by Diomede in the Trojan Cycle. It is absolutely necessary therefore to place this painting under the influence of tragedy, whether it was by Polygnotos and inspired by Aischylos or by a later artist and inspired by one or more of the three tragedies. If the Polygnotos authorship be rejected (and as it is based on pure conjecture there is nothing to forbid placing it aside), one is at liberty to point out a relation between these works and later tragic literature, as has already been done in the case of the Polyxena scene.