Note 39 — Chapter VI
Reading edition
Hujus (viz. Aristidis) pictura est, oppido capto, ad matris morientis e vulnere mammam adrepens infans; intelligiturque sentire mater et timere, ne emortuo lacte sanguinem infans lambat. Plin. Nat. Hist. l. 35, c. 10.—If the epigram was made on the subject of this picture, Pliny’s idea of the expression of the painting is somewhat more refined than that of the epigrammatist, though certainly not so natural. As a complicated feeling can never be clearly expressed in painting, it is not improbable that the same picture should have suggested ideas somewhat different to different observers.