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 Among the paintings was one which was immediately recognised as the companion or pendent of the Rhodian Genius: the dimensions were the same, and the colouring similar, but in a better state of preservation: the Genius was still the central figure, but the butterfly was no longer on his shoulder; his head was drooping, and his torch extinguished and inverted. The youths and maidens pressing around him had met and embraced; their glance, no longer subdued or sad, announced, on the contrary, emancipation from restraint, and the fulfilment of long-cherished desires.

The Syracusan antiquaries were already seeking to modify the explanations they had previously proposed, so as to adapt them to the newly-arrived picture, when Dionysius commanded the latter to be carried to the house of Epicharmus, a philosopher of the Pythagorean school, who dwelt in a remote part of Syracuse called Tyche. Epicharmus rarely presented himself at the court of Dionysius, for although the latter was fond of calling around him the most distinguished men from all the Greek colonial cities, yet the philosopher found that the proximity of princes takes even from men of the greatest intellectual power part of their spirit and their freedom. He devoted himself unceasingly to the study of natural things, their forces or powers, the origin of animals and plants, and the harmonious laws in accordance with which the heavenly bodies, as well as the grains of hail and the flakes of snow, assume their distinctive forms. Oppressed with age, and unable to proceed far without assistance, he caused himself to be conducted daily to the Pœcile, and thence to the entrance of the port, where,