We can connect the names and the works of few of the earlier Rhodian artists, but Boethos of Chalcedon is now established as a worker in Rhodes,[77] where he received the honour of προξενία. Pliny mentions his Boy Strangling a Goose,[78] and the many copies of this statue in existence give us a good idea of its popularity. Boethos was apparently a silversmith and also a sculptor of boys. He was famous as a maker of elaborate couches, and we are possibly the possessors of such a couch in the fine bronze litter of the Conservatori Museum,[79] on which are little boys’ heads strikingly similar to the Boy with the Goose. This group is often quoted as an example of the new feeling for _genre_ or homely domestic detail in sculpture. It is, in fact, of great importance for its new recognition of the comic in art, and for the appearance of the fat chubby boy like the Erotes of Ephesos or the little statuettes of Alexandria. The small boy or girl now becomes a favourite subject of the sculptor, and we may compare closely with the Boy of Boethos the Eros and Psyche of the Capitol (Fig. 32), who are really a little boy and girl engaged in a children’s game. We must now turn to another very important side of Rhodian art--the delineation of female drapery. The followers of Lysippos favoured an austere style, and the nude female figure has no place in Rhodian art. But while the other sculptors of the Hellenistic world were modifying and to some extent vulgarizing the beautiful conceptions of Scopas and Praxiteles, the Rhodians were attacking the draped female figure as they inherited it from Praxiteles and Lysippos, and producing modifications just as interesting and important as those connected with the athletic statue. [Illustration: 31] [Illustration: 32] [Illustration: 33]