He was undoubtedly a superior man technically.
Protogenes rivalled him, if we are to believe Petronius, by the foam
on a dog's mouth and the wonder in the eye of a startled pheasant.
Aetion, the painter of Alexander's Marriage to Roxana, was not able to
turn the aim of painting from this deceptive illusion. After
Alexander, painting passed still further into the imitative and the
theatrical, and when not grandiloquent was infinitely little over
cobbler-shops and huckster-stalls. Landscape for purposes of
decorative composition, and floor painting, done in mosaic, came in
during the time of the Diadochi. There were no great names in the
latter days, and such painters as still flourished passed on to Rome,
there to produce copies of the works of their predecessors.
It is hard to reconcile the unworthy motive attributed to Greek
painting by the ancient writers with the high aim of Greek sculpture.
It is easier to think (and it is more probable) that the writers knew
very little about art, and that they missed the spirit of Greek
painting in admiring its insignificant details.
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