the depicted semblance. By painting whole populations
are led with fervent vows to seek the image of the deities, and not to
see the books of poets which represent the same deities in speech; by
painting animals are deceived. I once saw a picture which deceived a
dog by the image of its master, which the dog greeted with great joy;
and likewise I have seen dogs bark at and try to bite painted dogs; and
a monkey make a number of antics in front of a painted monkey. I have
seen swallows fly and alight on painted {68} iron-works which jut out
of the windows of buildings.

[Sidenote: Superiority of Painting to Philosophy]

12.

Painting includes in its range the surface, colour and shape of
anything created by nature; and philosophy penetrates into the same
bodies and takes note of their essential virtue, but it is not
satisfied with that truth, as is the painter, who seizes hold of the
primary truth of such bodies because the eye is less prone to deception.

[Sidenote: Painting & Poetry]

13.

Poetry surpasses painting in the representation of words, and in the
representation of actions painting excels poetry; and painting is to
poetry as actions are to words, because actions depend on the eye and
words on the ear; and thus the senses are in the same proportion one to
another as the objects on which they depend; and on this account I
consider painting to be superior to poetry. But since those who
practised painting were for long ignorant as to how to explain its
theory, it lacked advocates for a considerable time; because it does
not speak itself, but reveals itself and ends in action, and poetry
ends in words, which in its vainglory it employs for self-praise.

[Sidenote: Painting is Mute Poetry]

14.

What poet will place before thee in words, O {69} lover, the true
semblance of thy idea with such truth as will the painter? Who is he
who will show thee rivers, woods, valleys and plains, which will recall
to thee the pleasures of the past, with greater truth than the painter?
And if thou sayest that painting is mute poetry in itself, unless there
be some one to speak for it and tell what it represents--seest thou
not, then, that thy book is on a lower plane? Because even if it have
a man to speak for it, nothing of the subject which is related can be
seen, as it is seen when a picture is explained. And the pictures, if
the action represented and the mental attributes of the figures are in
the tru