Book 10
27.4
By the latter stands Antenor, and next to him Crino, a daughter of Antenor. Crino is carrying a baby. The look upon their faces is that of those on whom a calamity has fallen. Servants are lading an ass with a chest and other furniture. There is also sitting on the ass a small child. At this part of the painting there is also an elegiac couplet of SimonidesPolygnotus, a Thasian by birth, son of Aglaophon,Painted a picture of Troy's citadel being sacked.Simonides, unknown location.
28.1
The other part of the picture, the one on the left, shows Odysseus, who has descended into what is called Hades to inquire of the soul of Teiresias about his safe return home. The objects depicted are as follow. There is water like a river, clearly intended for Acheron, with reeds growing in it; the forms of the fishes appear so dim that you will take them to be shadows rather than fish. On the river is a boat, with the ferryman at the oars.
28.2
Polygnotus followed, I think, the poem called the Minyad. For in this poem occur lines referring to Theseus and Peirithous:—Then the boat on which embark the dead, that the oldFerryman, Charon, used to steer, they found not within its moorings.The Minyad, an unknown work.For this reason then Polygnotus too painted Charon as a man well stricken in years.
