The Hall (21-22)

"Is not then a hall so beautiful and admirable a dangerous adversary to a speaker? But I ,have not yet mentioned the principal point. You yourselves, gentlemen of the jury, have been regarding the roof as we spoke, admiring the walls and examining the pictures, turning toward each of them. Do not be ashamed! It is excusable if you have felt a touch of human nature, especially in the presence of pictures so beautiful and so varied. The exactness of their technique and the combination of antiquarian interest and instructiveness in their subjects are truly seductive and call for a cultivated ‘spectator. That you may not look exclusively in that direction and leave us in the lurch, I will do my best to paint you a word-picture of them, for I think you will be glad to hear about things which you look at with admiration. Perhaps you will even applaud me for it and prefer me to my opponent, saying. that I have displayed my powers as well as he, and that I have made your pleasure double. But the difficulty of the task is patent, to represent so many pictures without colour, form or space. Word-painting is but a bald thing.

“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. [*]