2. A Greek painter, lived at Rome in the time of Naevius, who mentions him in the following lines of his comedy entitled Tunieularia, which are preserved by Festus (s. v. Penem antiqui codam vocabant, p. 250, ed. Müller, p. 204, ed. Lindemann) : --
" Theodotum appellas, qui aras Compitalibus Sedens in cella circumtectus tegetibus Lares ludentes peni pinxit bubulo."
These verses describe a rude picture of the Lares at play, painted on an altar at the meeting of two streets, with a rude instrument, a brush made from the tail of an ox. The painting must, therefore, have resembled the daubs which are seen on the outer walls of the houses in Pompeii and Herculaneum, and those to which Juvenal refers in the line (Sat. 8.157) : --
" Eponam et facies olida ad praesepia pictas; "
and the artist may be classed with those painters of vulgar subjects whom the Greeks called ῥυπαρογράφοι or ῥωπογράφοι, or with our sign painters. (See PYREICUS, and Dict. of Antiq. s. v. Pictura, p. 912a. 2d ed.; R. Rochette, Lettre à M. Schorn, pp. 416, 417; and, especially, the full discussion of this comparatively unnoticed fragment of Naevius, by Panofka, in the Rhein. Mus. for 1846, vol. iv. pp. 133-138 : there is no ground for Bothe's alteration of the painter's name to Theodorus.)
[P.S]