22
“On the right as you come in, you have a‘ combination of Argolic myth and Ethiopian romance. Perseus is killing the sea-monster and freeing Andromeda; in a little while he will marry her and go away with her. It is an incident to his winged quest of the Gorgons. The artist has represented much in little—the maid’s modesty and terror (for she is looking down on the fight from the cliff overhead), the lad’s fond courage and the beast’s unconquerable mien. ‘As he comes on bristling with spines and inspiring terror with his gaping jaws Perseus displays the Gorgon in his left hand, and with his right assails him with the sword: the part of the monster which has seen the Medusa is already stone, and the part that is still alive is feeling the hanger’s edge. Cf. Claudian (Gigantom. 113), of a giant slain by Athena: pars moritur ferro, partes periere videndo. An echo of the same source?
23
“Next to this picture is portrayed another righteous deed, for which the painter derived his model, I suppose, from Euripides or Sophocles, inasmuch as they have portrayed the subject in the same way. In the Electra of each. But tais description is modelled on Sophocles (1424 ff.). The two youthful comrades Pylades of Phocis and Orestes (supposed to be dead) have secretly entered the palace and are slaying Aegisthus. Clytemnestra is already slain and is stretched on a bed half-naked, and the whole household is stunned by tle deed— some are shouting, apparently, and others casting about for a way of escape. It was a noble device on the painter’s part simply to indicate the impious element in the undertaking and pass it over as an accomplished fact, and to represent the young men lingering over the slaying of the adulterer/
