Pausanias speaks, as Homer does in his description of the shield of
Achilles, of a kind and amount of expression in feature and gesture
certainly beyond the compass of any early art, and we may believe we
have in these touches only what the visitor heard from enthusiastic
exegetae, the interpreters or sacristans; though any one who has seen
the Bayeux tapestry, for instance, must recognise the pathos and
energy of which, when really prompted by genius, even the earliest
hand is capable. Some ingenious attempts have been made to restore
the grouping of the scenes, with a certain formal expansion or
balancing of subjects, their figures and dimensions, in true Assyrian
manner, on the front and sides. We notice some fine emblematic
figures, the germs of great artistic motives in after times, already
playing their parts there,--Death, and Sleep, and Night. "There was
a woman supporting on her right arm a white child sleeping; and on
the other arm she held a dark child, as if asleep; [228] and they lay
with their feet crossed. And the inscription shows, what might be
understood without it, that they are Death and Sleep, and Night, the
nurse of both of them.
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