The carnage was great, and all the Galatians were either killed or captured, with the exception of a quite small band which got off to the mountains; Antiochus’s Macedonians sang the Paean, gathered round, and garlanded him with acclamations on the glorious victory. But the King—so the story goes—was in tears; ‘My men,’ he said, ‘we have more reason for shame; saved by those sixteen brutes! if their strangeness had not produced the panic, where should we have been?’ And on the trophy he would have nothing carved except just an elephant.

Gentlemen, de me fabula; are my resources like those of Antiochus—quite unfit for battle on the whole, but including some elephants, some queer impositions, some jugglery, in fact? That is what all the praise I hear points at. The things I really relied upon seem to be of little account; the mere fact that my picture is of a female Centaur exercises fascination; it passes for a novelty and a marvel, as indeed it is. The rest of Zeuxis’s pains is thrown away, I suppose. But ah, no, not thrown away; you are connoisseurs, and judge by the rules of art. I only hope the show may be worthy of the spectators.