382 VIEWS OF NATURE. 



Love, forbidding the enjoyment of sensual pleasures; others 

 were of opinion that the dominion of Reason over the Passions 

 was here signified. The wiser preserved silence, and while 

 they conjectured that the painting was intended to represent 

 something of a sublimer character, delighted to linger in the 

 Poecile to admire the simple composition of the group. 



The question continued to remain undecided. Copies of 

 the painting, with various additions, were sent to Greece, but 

 without eliciting any explanation respecting its origin. At 

 length, however, when at the early rising of the Pleiades the 

 ^Egean Sea was again opened to navigation, ships from Rhodes 

 entered the port of Syracuse. They contained a treasure of 

 statues, altars, candelabras, and pictures, which a love of art 

 had caused the Dionysii to collect in Greece. Among the 

 paintings there was one which was instantly recognised as the 

 companion to the "Rhodian Genius." It was of the same 

 size, and exhibited a similar tone of colouring, although in a 

 better state of preservation. 



The Genius stood as before in the centre, but without 

 the butterfly; his head was drooping, his torch extin- 

 guished and reversed. The group of youths and maidens 

 thronged simultaneously around him in mutual embrace ; 

 their looks were no longer sad and submissive, but announced 

 a wild emancipation from restraint, and the gratification of 

 long-nourished passion. 



The Syracusan antiquaries had already begun to accommo- 

 date their former explanations of the "■Rhodian Genius'' to 

 the newly arrived painting, when the Tyrant ordered it to 

 be conveyed to the house of Epicharmus. This philosopher of 

 the school of Pythagoras dwelt in the remote part of Syracuse 

 called Tyche. He seldom visited the court of the Dionysii, 

 not but that learned men from all the Greek colonics as- 

 sembled there, but because proximity to princes is apt to rob 

 the most intellectual of their spirit and freedom. He occu- 

 pied himself unceasingly in studying the nature of things and 



