FOOTNOTES

THE SO-CALLED VENUS OF MELOS. (DRAWN BY BIRCH FROM A PHOTOGRAPH.)

I landed, and, as usual, went to the little café, where the magnates of the village were discussing the arrival and the storm—the worst, they said, for many years. I called, ofcourse, on Brest, who, to my surprise, remembered me after eighteen years; and we made an appointment to revisit together the sites I knew, and to see those I had not known before,—important excavations having been made since my former visit.

We went first to the new port, where some admirable statues, since taken to Athens, had been recently found. The owner of the little field by the water, which occupies the site of the inner port, having occasion to sink a well, struck the ruins of a temple of Neptune, and three statues were found, one of Neptune, a female goddess draped, but lacking the head, and a mounted warrior, apparently Perseus.

The Greek Government, according to their laws, forbade the exportation of them by any foreign government, and finally purchased them for thirty thousand francs—certainly a very small price. I succeeded in seeing them later, still in their boxes at Athens, and though not equal to the Venus, or of the same epoch, they are very fine works.

But there the excavations stop; the owner had no means to pump out the water that flooded his diggings, the Government had no more, and as no one is allowed to dig unless for the Greek museum, whatever remains under ground and water is likely to remain there another generation.

We then climbed up the zigzag road to the theatre. It is, as I have said, of late times, probably Roman, and was never complete. Fragments of unfinished ornament lie still where the stage should have been, but it had clearly never been carried up above the seven ranges of seats now existing. It was just outside the wall of the inner city, on the brow of the hill, and overlooked the spacious harbor and looked out to sea. There is no record of any sculpture having been found there. It was purchased and excavated by the King of Bavaria.

Less than half a mile beyond, going with the sea at ourbacks, was the field where the statue was found. The Greeks have entertained a great deal of indignation at the rape, which they affect to call robbery; but the civilized world may thank the French captain who, coming to get it, and finding it already half-embarked on board a Turkish vessel, destined for Constantinople, made the most legitimate use that was ever made offorce majeure, and took it away from the Turk to transfer it to the hold of his own ship. Otherwise, no one knows what vile uses it might have gone to, or what oblivion and destruction. All the world knows it now, but Greek genius would have forever lacked one of its greatest triumphs in modern times if it had disappeared in the slums of Stamboul.

STREET IN CASTRO.

As I have said, there is now no trace of any construction of any kind to be seen at the locality. The wall in which was the niche was gone, and the field of the present owner has encroached considerably on the space beyond, thedébrisbeing piled up in huge masses like walls, and two or three terraces above runs the citadel wall, a mass of Hellenic masonry built of blocks of lava. The Pelasgic walls, of which some authors speak, do not exist anywhere in the island. Brest took up a stone, and as we stood on the wall ofdébrisabove, cast it into the field, and said, “There stood the Venus!” In the illustration I have put a white cross on the spot.

There cannot remain the slightest doubt that the statue had been concealed, and to my mind, the circumstances indicated for its concealment are these: The niche, judging fromits character, had been built in Roman times; as the rubbly nature of the masonry indicated, probably covered with stucco, as it would have been if intended for ornament, and was designed as a shelter for an altar, or for the statue of some divinity—Terminus, Hermes, Pan or Faunus, the more Roman companion of him. Here the inscription and the Hermes found furnish a plausible clew, and agree with the indication of the masonry in pointing out the epoch of this conjunction of circumstances as subsequent to the second century before Christ; how long after we cannot in any wise indicate.

THE SITE OF OLD MELOS, FROM THE PORT. (WHITE CROSS SHOWS WHERE THE “VENUS” WAS FOUND.)

Now as to the epoch of the statue there can be no doubt that it was of the immediately post-Phidian epoch; and all the most authoritative opinions attribute it to the Attic school, and probably of the time and school of Scopas—and some of the weightiest authorities have accepted Scopas himself as the author.

Anything more definite than this it is impossible to establish by any now known evidence. The concealment of the statue, then, was several centuries later than the execution of it.

The Greeks of the classical epoch, even down to the first century after Christ, retained, amidst all the degradation of their contemporary art, a distinct recognition of the excellence of the elder work, as the enormous artistic as well as pecuniary value of some of the masters’chefs d’œuvreprove. That this was one of them, and of one of the chief masters, all civilization agrees, and, although we have lost the name of the author, the people who hid it must have known it well. The availing themselves of the niche, ready-made to their hands, indicates that the possessors of the statue worked in haste, piling up stones in front of the niche, instead of walling it up.

This indicates the haste of impending attack, or work done in secret. In either case, if the statue had a temple in that locality, it would be concealed near it, or near the place where it was accustomed to stand; but no such temple is known. We may remember the contrast with the colossal and magnificent Hercules found in a drain at Rome, carefully covered over with good masonry. Concealment was the object in both cases, and the greater haste and furtiveness with the Melian statue indicate rather that it was brought from a distance than that it could be a divinity of the island.

Conjecture as to the origin of the statue, if my hypothesis is true, points to Athens, not only because the work is Attic, but because we know by the coins of Melos, which in all the latest coinages still bear the owl of Athens, that Melos belonged to that city as late as she had any Greek allegiance, which must have been some time into the Empire, as the Romans long made it a policy to preserve a certain kind of autonomy in the Greek states, even when their subjection was complete. That it is Attic, no one can doubt in face of the evidence I shall show. That Athens was the only city likely to send to Melos a treasure of this kind, concealment of which was impossible in Athens, is almost certain.

I conclude that it was a highly valued statue of Athens, sent to Melos in time of great danger, to be concealed and preserved. What period this might have been is only to be guessed at; it is therefore hardly worth while to say more about it, except to indicate that four periods in late Athenian history might furnish the motive requisite: when the army of Mithridates, under Archelaus, took Athens; the wars between the factions of Marius and Sylla; the Lacedemonian war, and the invasions of the Iconoclasts. The Romans do not appear, in spite of all their plundering and the enormous quantity of statues carried away from Greece, to have desecrated the temples of the Greek gods, as we see that Pausanias, in the century after Christ, found the most valuable of themin situ, as, for instance, the Diana Brauronia of Praxiteles, the Perseus of Myron, with others of great fame. The above conclusion, considering all the known and reasonably conjecturable details of the discovery and concealment, seems to me justifiable,—as well as that it was concealed at some time between the century or two centuries before Christ and the end of the first century after.

Now, what was the statue? We have so long been in the habit of accepting all female statues, not distinguished by well-known symbols of their divinity, as Venuses, that we make no distinction even in cases where the type demands it. And yet the dominant characteristic of Greek sculpture is this close adherence to established types. We are never at a loss to distinguish Diana, Minerva, Juno, or even Ceres and the lesser deities. Venus, it is true, came into vogue as subject for the sculptors of sacred statues later than some of the others; but all that we know of the Venus of the artists indicates that it waspar excellencethe womanly type. The treatment of the head in Greek sculpture was a point apparently of doctrine, as it was in Byzantine and in the later ecclesiastical art of Greece. It is always in a conventional type, utterly separated from the individual.

MEDICEAN VENUS.

VENUS URANIA.

CAPITOLINE VENUS.

VENUS OF THE VATICAN.

VENUS ANADYOMENE.

VENUS VICTRIX OF THE LOUVRE.

This unquestionable fact should have taught us to reject from the Venus category many statues which are now included in it, as for instance, the Callipyge, and all in which a trace of portraiture is to be found, besides diminishing that category by all the statues of the heroic type, as in none of the legends of beliefs of the Greek faith was Venus ever endowed with a heroic quality. The preconceived notion that the Melian statue was a Venus has been a continual cause of confusion. This was, as I have shown, the first hypothesis of the French officers, none of whom appear to have been possessed of any archæological knowledge, and who had the commonly prevailing notion that any nude statue must be a Venus. I have taken the pains to collect a number of representations of the various so-called Venuses, and most of which the type, or symbols, justify us in so classifying; and a comparison of their character will show what is the Venus type,—making this proviso, however, that we have no other than internal evidence for denominating most of them Venuses. The chief of these, in what we seek for most,i. e., the impersonal type, which was inseparable from the Greek deities down through the decline of art, which began in the time of Alexander, are: the Medici, a distinctly marked Attic work, later, however, than the Melian statue; the Capitoline, apparently a still later reminiscence of the Medici and one of many similar reminiscences; and the “Venus coming out of the bath,” at Naples, a better work than the last, but still already widely separated from the purely conventional type of the Medicean, which we may authoritatively accept as the Venus type of the best period of the Venus sculpture. The close comparison of the heads and details of the flesh will give those who do not know the originals an invaluable lesson in the treatment of the figure in Greek art. The so-called “Venus Urania,” at Florence, marks, to my mind, a distinct departure from the Venus type,—so marked, indeed, as to make me decline to accept it as a Venus, while the still typical character of the face is one which must place it in a good period of art, before ideality of treatment had entirely given way to individuality. The art is of too good an epoch to have departed so far from the type of Venus, if intended for her, and indicates rather a nymph, or some inferior deity. The Venusof the Vatican is too late and too low down in the scale of art to be an authoritative witness in the matter; while the Venus Anadyomene, while still reserving the ideal character, resembles the Urania rather, in a separation of the type from the Venus. Later still, and perhaps at the end of that period which may be called the ideal period of antique sculpture, most probably of Græco-Roman art, is the Venus Victrix of the Louvre; unquestionably a Venus, for she bears in her hand the apple—symbol of fruitfulness. But how far from the type of our Melian treasure! In that is the most distinct approach to the Athena type—a purely heroic ideal. I cannot believe that its sculptor intended it for a Venus.

VENUS OF CAPUA.

RESTORATION OF THE STATUE AS PROPOSED BY MR. TARRAL.

The patient German admirer of our statue, which Von Ravensburg is, has gone through all the literature and all the conjectures which it has given rise to, as to the chief problem which gives interest to any investigation,i. e., the restoration of the statue. No attempt will satisfy all the investigators; but that which Von Ravensburg accepts with approval—viz., the restoration of Mr. Tarral (an Englishman residing in Paris for many years, who has given his chief attention to this problem)—showsso entire a want of appreciation of the character of antique design, which is, after all, our only clew, that I shall not hesitate to put aside, not only the solution proposed, but the judgment that could accept as satisfactory such a solution of one of the most interesting of artistic problems. I give the figure which Von Ravensburg publishes as Tarral’s restoration of the statue, that one may see how absolutely its inanity is at variance with the spirit of Greek design. The mere completion of the statue, in this sense, destroys the dignity and unity of the work so completely that to look at it is enough for a cultivated judgment to decide that, whatever it may have been, this it wasnot. The author gives, also, photographs of the fragments found—fragments so imperfect and corroded that we can only say that they appear to be from a very low period of art, and are utterly worthless as data for measure or opinion, from their extremely fragmentary state.

FRAGMENTS FOUND AT MELOS ATTRIBUTED TO THE STATUE.

Besides, I have shown, from the records of discovery, that there is no further reason to connect them with the statue than that they were also found at Melos.

In following the whole course of the demonstration which Von Ravensburg attempts of this solution of the problem, I arrive at the conclusion that, with all his patience and research, his judgment is utterly untrustworthy on a problem which requires not only freedom from preconception, but long cultivation of artistic perception and general critical ability. Mr. Tarral’s attempt proves, to my mind, only that this was not the solution.

VICTORY OF BRESCIA—FRONT.

VICTORY OF BRESCIA—SIDE.

The various suggestions, more or less authoritative, made as to the restoration, and thence as to the determination of the attributes of the statue, are to be summed up briefly. The Count de Clarac, the then curator of the antiques of the Louvre, adopted the Venus with the apple hypothesis, but afterward abandoned it in favor of one put forward by Millingen, that it was a Victory. This is one of the theories of the restoration which has found the greatest number of adherents. Several restorations have been proposed, which make the statue part of a group, all which, though defended or proposed by manydilettanti, I reject, for what to me seem sufficient reasons, viz.:Firstly, we have in the statue no evidence whatever that it formed part of a group, and without some such the hypothesis is gratuitous;Secondly, we have—with one exception, which I shall presently note, and which gives no countenance to such a theory—no statue or parts of statues which agree with it in artistic quality, oreven none which lend themselves to a group, if such were made up by various sculptors;Thirdly, that, at the epoch in which the statue was produced, any group which has been suggested would have been out of accordance with the aims of art, as practiced by the Greeks. The only evidence in favor of such a theory is that in some antique fragments or coins are indications of such a figure as the Melian in combination. But, as this statue must have been in its own time nearly as celebrated, relatively, as in ours, it must have given rise to many imitations and adaptations. It may have given rise to some which support the group theory, but to more which support an opposing theory.

VICTORY RAISING AN OFFERING (TEMPLE OF NIKÉ APTEROS, THE ACROPOLIS, ATHENS).

Von Ravensburg goes over, in detail, all the group theories, and easily finds fatal objections to all. What most surprises me is that any one ever tried to put it into a group, so completely by itself does it stand in every sense of the word.

Millingen, in 1826, started his theory that it was a Victory holding a shield in both hands. I am quite convinced that many who have started other theories would have adopted this if they had not been anticipated in proposing it. The vanity of archæological research, and eagerness to propose something new is so dominant in most archæologists thatthey exercise more ingenuity to advance some new theory than would be requisite to show the validity of an old one. And the statue of Melos has been preëminent in fruitfulness of theories of all qualities and grades of improbability. Millingen, however, supported his theory by a similar statue known as the Capuan Venus, a reproduction, I believe, in Roman times, of the Melian statue, probably through some other intermediate copy or reproduction, as the sculptors of the Capuan statue could not have seen the Melian. The arms are a modern and abominable restoration. Here, again, I must, in passing, protest against the attribution to the Venus type of all nude or semi-nude statues. There is nothing in the Capuan which indicates that it was intended as a Venus. Millingen quotes Apollonius of Rhodes as describing a statue of Venus looking at herself in the shield of Mars, which she herself is holding, but this is no evidence of the type correspondence, and the gravamen of the matter lies precisely in the diversity of the type from the recognizable Venuses. But the Capuan is too far in type and treatment from the Melian to serve as definite argument. Such as it is, an item in the discussion, I will not exaggerate its importance, though I believe it to be a far-away recollection of the Melian statue.

“The Victory of Brescia” is another of the recollections, rather than reproductions, of the type of which I believe the Melian statue to be the original. It is in bronze, is later, and has the wings, but the type is unmistakable, and the action of the torso and head is sufficiently different from our statue to show that it was only an emulation, and not a plagiarism, that was intended.

The drapery differs in the arrangement, being of bronze and agreeing with some undisputed Victories at Athens, but the action of the left leg holding the shield is the same, and that of the arms corresponds very nearly, as far as the arms remainin the Melian work. As a whole, it reminds one more of the latter than does any other of the statues of its class.

The case is one in which archæological knowledge is of very little value, unless it be aided by thorough artistic study and a knowledge of the requirements of art proper. The archæologist, like other scientists, must have positive evidence to work on; and the testimony of pure taste, the intuitions of an artistic education, are of no use to him except as confirmatory. The intuition of the artist, whose taste has been educated by long study of the works he has to deal with, arrives at opinions by a kind of inspiration to which science often lacks all means of access. In the case of this statue, archæology has no evidence to weigh, and the ponderous erudition which Overbeck, Müller, Jahn, Welcker, and others have piled on the question has no foundation. We can determine with comparative certainty that the statue belongs to the epoch between Phidias and Praxiteles, because we have the work of the school of Phidias and sufficient comparative data for that of Praxiteles [and now, since the discovery of the Hermes at Olympia, positive data] to judge from; and we have a right to say that the Melian statue came between these, but beyond this nothing—no clew except what lies in the design and the unities attendant on it, of whichper sethe professed archæologist is no judge.

In working about the Acropolis of Athens some years ago, I photographed, amongst other sculptures, the mutilated Victories in the Temple of Niké Apteros, the “Wingless Victory,” the little Ionic temple in which stood that statue of Victory of which it is said that “the Athenians made her without wings that she might never leave Athens”; and looking at the photographs afterward, when the impression of the comparatively diminutive size had passed, I was struck with the close resemblance of the type to that of the “Venus” of Melos. There are the same large, heroic proportions, the sameampleness in the development of the nude parts, the same art in the management of the draperies, and Richard Greenough, the American sculptor, has called my particular attention to the curious similarity in the treatment of the folds of the drapery, in the introduction of a plane between the folds, a resemblance not found in any other similar works as far as I know.

VICTORY UNTYING HER SANDAL (TEMPLE OF NIKÉ APTEROS, THE ACROPOLIS, ATHENS).

VICTORIES LEADING A BULL TO SACRIFICE (TEMPLE OF NIKÉ APTEROS, THE ACROPOLIS, ATHENS).

They are little high reliefs, part of a balustrade which surrounded the cortile of the Temple of Niké Apteros, hardly three feet high in their perfect state, and now without heads or hands or feet. There are four of them: one apparently untying her sandal; another,—that which best shows the type of the figure—raising an offering or crown, and two others leading a bull to sacrifice. I give the series. Note the exquisite composition of the drapery below the knee of the Victory raising the offering, and the superb flow of the entire draperies in the sandal-tying figure, but, above all, the Victorytype in the whole assemblage. How absolutely it agrees with that of the Melian statue, and how utterly alone in all antique art that is but for these!

Since I have begun this study, it has twice happened that artist friends trained in the French school (i. e., in the only school which cultivates the perception of style in design, and the only one that emulates the Greek in its characteristics), both trained draughtsmen, came into my room, and without any remark I showed them the photographs of the Victories at Athens. They were new to both, but in one case as in the other the first expression was: “How like the Venus of Melos!” And the similarity runs through the treatment of every part—the management of drapery to express the action of the limbs, the firm, heroic mould of the figure, and the modeling of the round contours. Compare (in the casts, if possible, as the small scale of my illustrations will not show the point so clearly) the right shoulder of the Venus with that in the stooping Victory. The slight differences which exist are just what might be expected between a figure which stands as principal, isolated, and to be seen from all sides, and one which was secondary, subordinate, of partial decorative use, and to be seen only in one view. My illustrations will hardly convey the strikingness of the similarity, but I defy any one to compare side by side the series of Victories and the Melian statue in casts and not admit that the type, the treatment, the ideal, are the same, as sisters may be the same, or at least as mother and daughter.

The little Temple of Niké Apteros had once, we know, a statue of Victory without wings, and we know thebon mot, which I have given above, which it suggested. The decorations of the temple are attributed to Scopas and his school, and this Victory was unique, so far as we know, in being wingless. We may well conceive, with the symbolical meaning—talismanic, rather—implied in what we know of it bythis witticism, that the Athenians would have a special anxiety to keep it from becoming a trophy in the hands of an enemy, even one who might not be disposed to desecrate the temples of the greater gods. Niké was rather an attribute or variation of Athena than a distinct goddess, and was as such both of great value to the Athenians, being thealter egoof their patroness; and of less reverence to the enemy, as not Minerva herself. At all events, when Pausanias visited Athens the Niké Apteros had gone. Her temple still stood there, and near it on the Acropolis hill stood some of the greatest art-treasures of the antique world untouched.

THE SO-CALLED VENUS OF MELOS—FRONT.

THE “VENUS” RESTORED—FRONT.(TRACED FROM A PHOTOGRAPH OF A LIVING MODEL.)

THE “VENUS” RESTORED—SIDE.(TRACED FROM A PHOTOGRAPH OF A LIVING MODEL.)

THE SO-CALLED VENUS OF MELOS—SIDE.

My theory, open to the grave objection that it is one in which hypothesis bears an undue proportion to proven fact (yet not so great as any of the group theories, and hardly more than any other theory, for all are constructed out of the same aerial substance), is that the Melian statue is the original Niké Apteros from the little temple on the Acropolis of Athens. If so, one can understand the whole of my theory of concealment, attribution, and type, because this statue above all others would come under the rancor of a victor and its flight would become an humiliation to Athens. It was like the standard of a defeated army, to be kept at all hazards from the enemy. Hurried away to Melos, it was safe from the invader, but no nearer point was secure. The restoration in my hypothesis becomes that of the Victory in some attitude connected with regarding, or recording, on the shield or a tablet the names of the Attic heroes, or battles, and my opinion is that she has just finished writing, but I am disposed to uncertainty on the exact phase of the action, only insisting on that of the Recorder. The minutiæ of description of many antique works of art which we owe to Pausanias andPliny was plainly impossible with this. Neither ever saw it, but its memory existed in artistic tradition and has been repeated in the statues we have seen, probably only a few of those which once existed.

Von Ravensburg sums up the objections to the shield-bearing Victory and to the theory of Millingen as follows: The theory would indicate that she leaned back to balance the weight of the shield, but the objections urged are that if the shield were larger it would hide too much (yet in an earlier part of the book the statement is made that a part of the figure, and just that part covered by the shield, is comparatively unfinished, which has given rise to the theory of a group in which one side of the statue was hidden); if it were small, the weight would not be enough to account for the attitude. And, in the next breath, he urges that the grand heroic characteris an objection to her struggling with a burden. But if a goddess, and of this robust type, the burden ought not to oppress her, however great, humanly speaking. But in point of fact there is no noteworthy degree of backward inclination. To test the question, I photographed a model in the attitude required to hold a shield on her left knee and write on it.

The result was very slightly different from that of the statue. A part of the backward action of the model was due to the necessity of a support to enable her to remain in the pose necessary to be photographed, but the action of writing is better expressed by the statue.

The action of the statue is that of a figure which stands nearly balanced and in repose, with the first movement in a forward action, like one who reaches out to give, take, or write, or any similar action or the moment after the action is complete. The particular moment we cannot determine without the possession of the fore-arms. Von Ravensburg goes on to say that he does not mean to affirm that the holding of ashield does not suit the action of the upper part of the body, but maintains that it does not explain itparticularly well. But after the inane restoration given forth with his high approval, we may be permitted to doubt that his artistic taste has been as carefully developed as his archæological acumen. He quotes Overbeck as objecting to the shield resting on the left knee, that there are no traces on the left thigh which the shield must have left; but Wittig and Von Lützow have recognized these very marks, and they are distinctly visible even in the east, as far as would be expected if a bronze shield merely rested on the drapery, and the shield, if there was one, was in all probability of bronze, held well out from the body, and resting on the knee raised for that purpose, the foot being supported by a helmet lying on the ground. But, further, he says these considerations are quite superfluous, for the position of the left leg of the Melian statue contradicts the shield-supporting, and he quotes in support Valentin, that the left thigh would incline outward to secure a balance, and that the supporting of a heavy object on the thigh thrown in would violate the laws of equilibrium. That this is not true is shown by the “Victory of Brescia,” in which the action is precisely this, and the pose of the thigh is the same as that of the Melian statue. Moreover, I tried a model again in this view, and the result is given in the illustration.

The knee took quite readily the action indicated, and, indeed, would be compelled to by the pressure of the shield if the weight rested partly on the left hand, as it must to have left the right free for any action whatever. Both nature and the antique assert precisely the contrary to that which Valentin assumes. The length to which the argument against this restoration is carried by him may be judged from the assertion that the action of the “Victory of Brescia” is that of an outward push of the left thigh, to make it agree with that ofthe theory Von Ravensburg lays down. But the assertion is purely gratuitous. If the Brescian bronze is an argument, as far as it goes it obviates every difficulty in the interpretation of the Melian statue by taking, so far as the action of the limbs is concerned, the very action of the latter.

There is but one objection to the restoration theory I propose which deserves serious consideration—that of the goddess looking off or above the point at which she would be writingif she were writing. Half the ingenuity displayed in many of the proposed restorations, or half the sophistry employed by Von Ravensburg to combat this, would carry us over much greater difficulties. In later Greek work, when art was sought for its own sake, and consistency continually sacrificed to the grace of a pose and harmony of the lines, we should not be surprised at the goddess looking at one point and writing at another; but at this period the dramatic unities were sacred alike in poetry as in art. But I suppose that, unlike the Brescian statue, she is not at the moment engaged in writing, but pausing as having just finished, and, looking out from her pedestal in the little temple, gazes out toward Marathon, in which direction the temple opens, and this is no difficulty in the restoration. A little of that kind of imagination so much abused in modern art-criticism, which consists in attributing to the artist all the fancies which arise in our minds in the contemplation of his work, all the far-fetched and poetic visions our own eyes have conjured up, would supply all deficiencies in our theory.

But while I maintain that my theory has more accordances with the known facts and actual qualities of the statue than any other, and presents fewer gaps in the demonstration, I am unwilling to lay down any theory not sustainable by what we know of Greek art, and I admit the difficulty as frankly as I state those of other theories. Doing so, however, I still maintain that not only is there the means of reconciliation ofmy hypothesis of an actual shield-inscribing Victory with the statue as it is, but even in case I am compelled to abandon this particular point, and advocate the modification of Millingen that she holds the shield with both hands and looks at it, my main hypothesis—that the statue is a Victory and no Venus, and the particular wingless Victory of Athens—is untouched. We do not know what the Niké Apteros was doing. What we can see is that this statue was more probably holding a shield, either contemplatively, or pausing, just having written on it, than taking any other action.

VICTORY OF CONSANI.

If we may accept the analogy of the Apollo Belvidere, which also looks off in the same inexplicable way, it would illustrate my hypothesis still further, but the Apollo is later and less dramatic. If we hold to the strict dramatic quality of the best Greek art, we must suppose that the goddess has just finished writing, and looks up and out toward the field where her heroes died. Or even if the shield was a high one, such as the Spartan wounded used to be brought home on, she might still be looking at the shield, if not at the words she has just written. In fact, several suggestions offer themselves, and none open to accusation of such flagrant inconsistencies as those involved in Tarral’s restoration, which shocks the dramatic sense beyond endurance.

The objection that the shield would hide so large a part of the figure goes for absolutely nothing. We continually find Greek work completely, or nearly, finished in positions where by necessity much of it must have been hidden. As the pediments of the Parthenon were originally placed, they would never have been half seen, and how the Panathenaic frieze could have been adequately seen, once the buildingscaffolds were taken down, we can much less easily conjecture than how the Victory could have been seen behind her shield. The Brescian, a later and more realistic work, is seen behind hers. Consani has made a very happy emulation of the motive in his Victory. It is amongst the best of the modern Italian works of its class, and illustrates the manner of avoiding the difficulties we have seen adduced. The principal arguments in favor of my theory are these: The statue is not of the Venus type but on the contrary agrees distinctly with known statues of Victory, some of which I have indicated, of which another is in the coin of Agathocles, and in the Museum of Naples is a terra cotta Victory in almost the identical action and drapery; it is of the epoch of the Victories of the temple of Niké Apteros, and of the same style of treatment and type of figure; it was found where we might expect the Athenians to hide a treasure; and, while unquestionably a Victory, it is the only wingless Victory of the great Attic school we know of. I do not consider this archæological, but artistic demonstration.

TEMPLE OF NIKÉ APTEROS.

The little Temple of Niké Apteros has had a destiny uniqueamongst its kind. Like the Parthenon, it was standing little more than two hundred years ago, but during the Turkish occupation it was razed, and its stones all built into the great bastion which covered the front of the Acropolis and blocked up the staircase to the Propylæa. It was dug out and restored, nearly every stone in its place, by two German architects during the reign of Otho, and it stands again as Pausanias describes it, on the spot where old Ægeus watched for the return of Theseus from Crete, and seeing the black sails of his son’s ship returning, token of failure (for Theseus had forgotten to raise the white sail, the signal of success), threw himself from the precipice, and was dashed into black death on the rocks below. In the distance are Salamis and Ægina, and the straits through which the ships came from Melos and Crete, and to the south is Hymettus, beyond which are Marathon and the road by which the Persians came, and the Turks after them. There certainly was the spot, and this the occasion, if ever, that an Attic sculptor should feel that spiritual enthusiasm below which Greek art stopped and lost the clew which, in later centuries, the Florentine found again and followed to new, if not higher, heights.

GREEK COIN

[1]It has been conjectured that the Ogygia of Calypso was a small barren island just south of Sardinia. There is no evidence in favor of the theory, but it is possible. I adopt it in the route mapfaute de mieux.[2]The Lotophagitis has been recently plausibly identified with Jerba, on the coast of Tunis, the wordrotosbeing still used there, evidently a survival of some primitive language, for the date; and the transliteration ofrotostolotosbeing according to Grimm’s law, see Reinach’s letter to theNation(Mar. 13, 1884) on Jerba. It is easy to understand that the Greek, coming from a country where the conditions of life were hard and the fare of Homeric simplicity, should find the conditions of North African existence tempting beyond resistance, and the delicious date, (constituting the principal and often exclusive food of the people, quite sufficient, in fact, for all needs,) a temptation to abandon the toils and dangers of a return home. The inevitable poetical exaggeration adds the magic power.[3]Cimmerians have been conjecturally identified with the Cymri, the Cimmerian darkness with the fogs of England and the North Sea countries, and there is nothing but conjecture in the case.[4]The text leaves a doubt if he even retained his hold on this, as it describes his striking out with the veil of Leucothea under his breast.[5]I saw, at a recent meeting of the German archæological Institute at Rome, exquisite bronze castings found in a lake city of northern Italy, of which the latest possibly assignable date is 1500B. C.Various data, which it is not the place here to discuss, have led me to the conclusion that bronze working was independently discovered in Italy at a period long anterior to any intercourse with Greece, and that it probably went from Italy to Corinth, where it is said to have been discovered.[6]I suspect the word which I have translated Sicilian to be a mistake in transcribing, for Homer evidently knew nothing of Sicily or he would have given it its name when dealing with the hero’s adventures there. It is however possible that he knew the island by name but had not identified it with Ulysses’ Cyclops-land.[7]The confusion which is so common between Aphrodite, the Greek goddess, and Astarte, the Phœnician, had its beginning at Cythera. It is only in later Greek mythology that they are confounded. The true Aphrodite was the first-born of Zeus, the creating Intelligence, and Dione the prolific Earth—Spirit and Matter—and Aphrodite was Divine Love;—Astarte, lust.[8]The worthlessness of the testimony of d’Urville is shown by this statement—no hand has ever held or touched this drapery, as the least examination shows.

[2]The Lotophagitis has been recently plausibly identified with Jerba, on the coast of Tunis, the wordrotosbeing still used there, evidently a survival of some primitive language, for the date; and the transliteration ofrotostolotosbeing according to Grimm’s law, see Reinach’s letter to theNation(Mar. 13, 1884) on Jerba. It is easy to understand that the Greek, coming from a country where the conditions of life were hard and the fare of Homeric simplicity, should find the conditions of North African existence tempting beyond resistance, and the delicious date, (constituting the principal and often exclusive food of the people, quite sufficient, in fact, for all needs,) a temptation to abandon the toils and dangers of a return home. The inevitable poetical exaggeration adds the magic power.

[3]Cimmerians have been conjecturally identified with the Cymri, the Cimmerian darkness with the fogs of England and the North Sea countries, and there is nothing but conjecture in the case.

[4]The text leaves a doubt if he even retained his hold on this, as it describes his striking out with the veil of Leucothea under his breast.

[5]I saw, at a recent meeting of the German archæological Institute at Rome, exquisite bronze castings found in a lake city of northern Italy, of which the latest possibly assignable date is 1500B. C.Various data, which it is not the place here to discuss, have led me to the conclusion that bronze working was independently discovered in Italy at a period long anterior to any intercourse with Greece, and that it probably went from Italy to Corinth, where it is said to have been discovered.

[6]I suspect the word which I have translated Sicilian to be a mistake in transcribing, for Homer evidently knew nothing of Sicily or he would have given it its name when dealing with the hero’s adventures there. It is however possible that he knew the island by name but had not identified it with Ulysses’ Cyclops-land.

[7]The confusion which is so common between Aphrodite, the Greek goddess, and Astarte, the Phœnician, had its beginning at Cythera. It is only in later Greek mythology that they are confounded. The true Aphrodite was the first-born of Zeus, the creating Intelligence, and Dione the prolific Earth—Spirit and Matter—and Aphrodite was Divine Love;—Astarte, lust.

[8]The worthlessness of the testimony of d’Urville is shown by this statement—no hand has ever held or touched this drapery, as the least examination shows.

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