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At the period when Rome possessed itself by conquest of the principal works of Grecian art, her citizens only regarded them as household furniture of but little value. Polybius narrates that, after the siege of Corinth, he saw some Roman soldiers playing at dice upon a picture of Bacchus, by Aristides; a picture esteemed one of the finest in the world. When King Attalus offered 600,000 sesterces (£4,845 15s.) for this picture, Mummius, the Roman Consul, thinking there must be some magic property in it, to make it worth such an enormous sum, refused to sell it, and hung it up in the Temple of Ceres at Rome. So little were the Romans conscious of the real value of the treasures of Greek art, that Mummius covenanted with the masters of the ships, hired to convey the spoils of Corinth to Rome, that if any of the exquisite paintings and statuary should be lost, they should replace them with new ones!^[8]

It is not surprising, therefore, that Rome, although possessed of infinitely greater wealth, a larger population, and the splendid examples of Greece, not only produced no artist of merit, but receded far from the high standard which Greece, notwithstanding its internal divisions, its comparative poverty, small extent, and unassisted genius, had established. There is no way of accounting for these facts, but by the difference in their psychonomy. The genius of Rome was of a very different nature from that of Greece, and was incompetent to advance the great work which the latter had commenced.