Lord Frederick Leighton Nude on the Beach painting

Lord Frederick Leighton Nude on the Beach paintingLord Frederick Leighton Leighton Idyll paintingLord Frederick Leighton The Painter's Honeymoon painting
Now Tiberius had made a pet of the most extraordinary animal ever seen in Rome. Giraffes excited great admiration when first seen, and so did the rhinoceros, but this, though not so large was far more fabulous. It came from an island beyond India called Java, and it was like a lizard the size of a small calf, with an ugly head and a back like a saw. When Tiberius first looked at it he said that he would now no longer be sceptical about the monsters said to have been slain by Hercules and Theseus. It was called the Wingless Dragon and Tiberius fed it himself every day with cockroaches and dead mice and such-like vermin. It had a disgusting smell, dirty habits and a vicious temper. The dragon and Tiberius understood each other perfectly. He thought that Thrasyllus meant that the dragon would bite him one day, so he put it in a cage with bars too small for it to poke its ugly head through.
Tiberius was now seventy-eight years old, and constant use of myrrh and similar aphrodisiacs had made him very feeble; but he dressed sprucely