The Venus of Milo: an archeological study of the goddess of womanhood

“The pedestal of one of the hermae also bore an inscription but its characters had been so mutilated that it was impossible for me to decipher them.

“At the time of our passage to Constantinople the ambassador asked me about this statue and I told him what I thought about it, and sent to M. de Marcellus, secretary of the embassy, a copy of the inscription just given. Upon my return M. de Rivière informed me that he had acquired the statue for the museum and that it had been put on board one of the vessels at the landing. However, on our second trip to Milo in the month of September I regretted to learn that the affair was not yet ended. It seems that the peasant, tired of waiting, had decided to sell this statue for the sum of 750 piasters to a neighboring priest who wished to make a present to the dragoman of the Captain Pacha, and M. de Marcellus came just at the moment when it was being shipped to Constantinople. In despair at seeing this fine piece of antiquity about to escape him he made every effort to recover it, and thanks to the mediation of the primates of the island the priest finally consented, but not without reluctance, to abandon his purchase and give up the statue....

“On April 25 in the morning we doubled the promontory indicated....”

I understand from M. Dumont d’Urville’s report that the statue was in “two parts” each about three feet high, that both hands were mutilated and detached from the body,” and that he had reason to believe that the “left hand was raised and held an apple and the right supported a garment.” I say “he had reason to believe” it, but he positively speaks as if he had seen it although this cannot be the case, for he contradicts this fact by the unequivocal statement that the hands “are actually detached from the body.” He says, “it represented a nude woman, etc.” and the word “represented” need not mean that it was complete with all the limbs intact and in their proper places.

Obviously M. d’Urville here describes the statue restored with the fragments which were found in the cave, were bought of the finder, the peasant Bottonis, and are now preserved in a glass case in the Louvre at Paris. One of these fragments is a hand holding an apple, and there is also a portion of an arm.

This interpretation is important in so far as discussions have arisen in later years as to the original position of the hands when attempts to restore the statue were made, and then the claim was made that the statue had been found complete, that it had been broken by the French sailors in its transportation and that the French authorities had been careless in handling the whole affair.

VISCOUNT MARCELLUS ON HIS “SOUVENIRS.”

IT is important to know the facts with regard to the debris found together with the so-called Venus of Milo, as stated by a second eye witness, the Viscount Marcellus. He wrote his reminiscences on the Venus of Milo in a book entitled Souvenirs, and the second edition of this was reviewed by Lenormant. In answer to some objections of the latter the Viscount published “a last word on the Venus of Milo.”[2]

In this he enumerates as follows the objects brought away from the cave where the Venus had been found:

“No. 1. The nude upper part of the statue.

“No. 2. The lower draped portion.

“Yorgos, their original owner ... gave me at the same time three small accessories of the statue found in a field near by.... These were:

“No. 3. The top of the hair commonly called the chignon, etc.

“No. 4. A shapeless and mutilated fore-arm.

“No. 5. Part of a hand holding an apple.

“The last two objects seemed to me to be of the same kind of marble and of a grain near enough like that of the statue, but I could not tell whether they could reasonably be assumed to belong to a Venus whose attitude I no longer remembered....

“The primates at the same time sent me the three hermae (Nos. 6, 7 and 8) which were still at Castro, and a left foot in marble (No. 9) which had been found in the neighborhood of the field of Yorgos lower down toward the valley where the burial caves are.

“They wished also to give me the inscription found in the same locality which I had already seen in their town. It is the one which commences with the Greek words: ΑΓΧΕΟΣ ΑΤΙΟΥ....

“I here repeat that with this exception I took away from Milo everything which had been taken from the ground with the Venus or near by, and I have no remembrance of having seen there, much less of having received or acquired myself, any other Greek inscription which made mention of a sculptor with a mutilated name, etc. Of course I would be eager enough with anything that might be able to throw light on the discovery, and since in my Souvenirs de l’Orient (I, p. 249) I cite an epigraph of almost no significance I would not wittingly or negligently have omitted any Greek letters near the excavation or relating to its details. Neither should it be forgotten that in fact I indicate only ‘three hermae, some pedestals and other bits of marble debris’ (I, p. 237) as the result of Yorgos’s successive excavations; and further down (p. 48) these same hermae and other antique fragments without ever speaking of any inscription.”

The inscription more completely mentioned by Dumont d’Urville has also been published by Clarac with only a few insignificant variations. He adds the missing B at the beginning, reads I in place of E, and has two Σ’s. It is a votive inscription which has no connection with our Venus. Being of little value, the authorities of the Louvre did not take good care of it and it is now lost. The probable meaning of the inscription is “Bakchios, (son of) Atios the subgymnasiarch (has donated) the arcade and the ... [he has erected according to a vow] to Hermes, Heracles, ...”

*  *  *

These reports of two eye-witnesses are important not so much for what they contain as for what they do not contain. Neither M. Dumont d’Urville nor Viscount Marcellus mentions the name of the artist of the statue. An inscription is copied by both in which Bacchus, Hermes and Heracles are mentioned, but no reference is made to the name of Agesander or Alexander of Antioch as having been seen on a fragment of the pedestal—an artist who makes his appearance in a mysterious way and whose acquaintance we shall make in the next chapter. Moreover, since other pieces of debris were found either in the cave or in a neighboring field, there is no reason whatever that any one of them, let alone the left hand holding an apple, should have been attached to our statue.

We shall have occasion to refer to these points again.

DEBAY’S DRAWING.

Debay’s drawing shows a plinth bearing an inscription and also exhibiting a square hole in the ground near the left foot of the statue. The angle of vision is indicated by the line “xx” which shows the height from which the statue was viewed by M. Debay. The point a corresponds to the place of the eye projected horizontally at a distance in front which cannot have been more than one and one-half times the height of the statue. Geometrically this place is determined by the intersection of two lines

from a and b constructed in a horizontal plane at right angles to the vertical axis of the statue.

The inscription on the pedestal of M. Debay’s drawing reads:

“ ... andros son of Menides of [Ant]iochia on the Maiandros.”

Since of the last missing letter before the Α the lowest stroke of a Greek Ξ or of an Σ is discernible in the drawing, the name must have read “Alexandros” or “Agesandros.” This man cannot have lived before the third century B. C. because his native city Antioch on the Maeander was founded by Antiochus I, the second of the Diadochs (280-261 B. C.) According to Professor Kirchhoff’s view the character of the letters belongs to the first century and may in his opinion be dated back at most to the middle of the second century B. C.

We have no information whatever why the plinth was joined to the statue. All we know about it is that it appears on the Debay drawing and is lost now, but it continues to be a mystery to archeologists.

Some consider it as genuine and denounce the authorities of the Louvre for their extraordinary carelessness in having allowed so important a document to be lost, and others see no reason why this

piece of marble which possessed no significance whatever should be so highly treasured.

If the piece of the pedestal with the inscription belonged to the statue, for which assumption, as we have seen, there is no reason whatever, the statue would be of a comparatively late date, but we really do not know what the plinth bearing the name “ ... andros” has to do with the statue.

Archeologists have discovered other heads showing a remarkable similarity in their features to the Venus of Milo. Among them is a head discovered in Tralles, Asia Minor, which shows almost the same face as the Venus of Milo. So close is the resemblance that both seem to have been made after the same model. It may be that one has been copied from the other or both chiseled from a common prototype. We here reproduce the heads of both, after half-tone pictures published by Saloman.[4]

Overbeck believes that the Venus of Milo is not an original. He says: “It seems permissible to doubt the originality of this composition, and to refer it back to an older original which we can no longer determine, as the common prototype of the statue of Milo and of other similar statues. For this reason there would be no objection to assigning the origin of our statue to the period of imitation. Although I deem the dependence of the statue upon an older original assured, I am disinclined to deny a certain degree of originality, but in those very features which I deem to be original are the very marks of a late revision.”

Conze[5] compares our Venus of Milo with the style of the Pergamene sculptures, and in his essay on the results of the excavation at Pergamum, page 71, he calls attention to the fact that the warm tone of the skin and the sketchy method of the treatment of the hair seem characteristic of a later period, pointing out the similarity of a piece of Pergamene sculpture with the head of the Venus of Milo.

Shall we assume that this head of Tralles is older than the Venus of Milo and that we must look upon the art of Pergamum as the school in which our artist, Agesander or Alexander or whoever he may have been, drew his inspiration? We have no positive proof on either side but internal evidence speaks in favor of regarding the Venus of Milo as original, and we cannot place any confidence in the genuineness of the plinth in the Debay drawing, so may regard the statue as the work of a classical, though unknown, Athenian artist, or at least one who worked for Athens and her temples.

A DESCRIPTION OF THE STATUE.

The consensus of art admirers, which is almost, though not quite, universal, sees in this marble the great mother-goddess, das ewig Weibliche, idealized femininity, the goddess of beauty and love, whom the Greeks called Aphrodite and the Romans Venus.

The goddess (if we may so call her) stands before us erect in queenly dignity. Her dress is falling down leaving the upper body entirely uncovered, and yet in spite of the nudity of the figure we are struck with its unparalleled purity and nobility of expression.

The statue has suffered many injuries. Both arms have been broken off and are now lost, and so is the left foot. The tip of the nose has been restored, and there are scratches and cudgel marks all over the body which could not be mended without destroying the original work in the general treatment of the skin. The ears are pierced, so there must originally have been earrings which robbers had torn away before the statue was secreted in the cave.

A line in the hair of the statue shows holes which prove plainly that on top of the head there must have been a coronet like that commonly worn by Greek goddesses and called by the Greeks σφενδόνη, “sling,” because with the strings attached it resembles a sling. It was worn especially by the Queen of Heaven, Hera (the Juno of the Roman pantheon).

Since the arms have been broken off and lost, the artist’s conception with regard to the posture can only be surmised. The face is calm and without passion. It wears a commanding expression, apparently with a suggestion of surprise, even of self-defence.

Judging from the muscles of the left shoulder the left arm must have been raised. Sometimes it has been claimed that the broken hand with the apple, which with other debris was found in the neighborhood, belonged to the statue; and that the apple being the emblem of Venus and at the same time that of the island of Milo as well, the statue represented the patron goddess of the island, but this is very doubtful. Archeologists are not in full accord upon this point for the mere reason that the fragment of the hand with the apple is of rough workmanship and is commonly judged as not worthy of the statue; at best it might be regarded as the work of an ancient restoration. All critics, however, are pretty well agreed that the right hand must have grasped for the falling garment, preliminarily held up by the raised knee.

The Venus of Milo is at present the pride of the Louvre at Paris, and the place where she stands on account of her presence alone may be likened to an ancient pagan shrine, comparable to the room in the Dresden gallery where the Sistine Madonna stands, the latter being a Christian counterpart of the former.

Our Blessed Lady of Milo, as we may call this beautiful representative of Greek paganism in imitation of Veit Valentin’s name Die hohe Frau von Milo, has always a group of admiring visitors sitting quietly before her, and there is often a hush in the room which recalls the sanctity of religious chapels attended by quiet worshipers. There is a sacred atmosphere surrounding the statue and even the hurried globe-trotter feels that he has come into the presence of some divinity that exerts her influence upon the world not by might, but by beauty, grace and loveliness.

RESTORATIONS.

MANY attempts have been made to restore the statue of the Venus of Milo, and we here reproduce a number of them, but none of them have proved successful. It almost seems, as the German poet Heinrich Heine somewhere says, that the Venus of Milo in her helpless condition with her arms broken off appeals more to our sympathy than in her original condition of glory when she received the homage of faithful worshipers, and it is true the very mutilated form is extremely attractive in its present dilapidated state. Broken by fanatics of a hostile faith, she represents in dignity and beauty the natural charm of Greek religion at its best. The hordes of bigoted monks vented their hatred with especial wrath against the goddess of love and also against her son, Eros, as may be seen from a figure of this god represented in his daintiest youthfulness. Here too the marks of the clubs of a furious mob are visible, betraying the same spirit as in the treatment of the Venus of Milo. It is the fanaticism of ascetic frenzy in the bitterness

of its wrath against nature in general and love in particular that showed itself in these iconoclastic demonstrations.

We regret now the destruction of the Greek idols as a barbaric warfare waged upon art. We have begun to sympathize with the vanquished gods, and archeologists are trying to restore what early Christianity ruthlessly destroyed or mutilated.

Those restorers of the Venus of Milo who reject the genuineness of the right hand holding an apple enjoy the greatest liberty in their work of reconstruction, and we find some of them representing our Venus as holding a shield on her knee and writing upon it. Others assume that her right hand holds a mirror, while still others who claim that there is no necessity of interpreting the statue to be a Venus, believe her to be a Victory or Niké, and put wreaths in her hands.

Hasse and Henke have treated the problem of restoration from the standpoint of anatomy, and plausibly claim that the left hand should be raised higher than other restorers have proposed.

The restoration of Furtwängler, according to which the goddess rests her left arm on a column and holds an apple in her hand, has for a long time

been considered the most probable, and yet even this can scarcely be regarded as satisfactory.

Mr. Geskel Saloman, a Swedish archeologist, also places a column at her left side and uses it for her elbow to rest on. In consideration of some ancient descriptions of a dramatic ceremony performed

at Corinth he places a dove on her right hand. The idea is that having received the apple as the prize of beauty she sends out the dove to her worshipers to announce her triumph and inform them that they may celebrate the victory.

Veit Valentin attempts to construct his restoration out of the data furnished by the marble itself and seems to come nearest to the truth. He assumes that the goddess, when in the act of undressing for a bath, finds herself surprised by an intruder. There is no fear or alarm in her attitude, but she raises her hand in protest with a self-poised assurance and grasps with her right hand the falling garment which she attempts to support by a hurried motion of her left knee. We regret that we have not seen either a picture or a statue of this restoration, but we are deeply impressed that this idea is most probably correct.

The latest restoration comes from Francisca Paloma Del Mar (Frank Paloma) who places a child on the left arm of the goddess, and this conception is defended in a special pamphlet by Alexander Del Mar.[6]

Mr. Del Mar brings out the idea that the reverence in which the great mother goddess was held among the pagans was not substantially different in piety from Christian Madonna worship, and this view is brought out in the painting by the artist

Frank Paloma here reproduced. Mr. Del Mar thinks that the pagan goddess served the inhabitants of Melos as a Christian Virgin. He says:

“What more natural than for the pious islanders of Melos, terrified by the harsh edicts of Theodosius, to simply burn the pedestal and inscription belonging to their pagan goddess, and continue to worship under another name the same embodiment of that holy sentiment of love and maternity which they had hitherto been accustomed to adore.”

Mr. Del Mar relies on the testimony of Count Marcellus who finally concluded the bargain in the name of the French government and quotes him as saying in his Souvenirs de l’Orient, I, 255: “It can be demonstrated that the statue represented the Panagia or Holy Virgin of the little Greek chapel whose ruins I saw at Milo.”

It seems to us that the statue cannot have carried a child on her left arm because the marble would show more trace of pressure where the mother must have touched the babe, even when we make allowance for a polishing in the restored portions; and we would suggest further that the arm carrying the child would be held farther down. When a mother carries a child, her upper and lower arms are naturally at right angles and the position of having them at a very acute angle at the elbow appears quite artificial.

The haloes placed upon the heads of mother and child and the apple of empire in the infant’s hand are attributes belonging to the Christian era and so constitute other objections to Mr. Del Mar’s restoration. The halo is of late pagan origin, and in the form of rays it was first used to characterize gods of light, as for instance Helios and Selene. The round form of the nimbus is later still and seems to have arisen with the development of the art of painting. The apple of empire was not used in the days of antiquity but appears frequently in Constantinople and in early Christian symbolism.

Without entering into details we leave it to the taste of the reader whether he would select any of these restorations as a possible solution of the problem: we prefer to admire the statue as it appears now; for after all the broken figure still remains dearer to us in its wonderful and appealing beauty than any of the restorations. We ourselves believe that modern man will come to the conclusion that in this image in its present shape we have a noble martyr of ancient paganism. Even the original statue itself in all its perfection, if it could be restored to us as it came fresh from the artist’s workshop, could not replace the torso as we know it now.

This is the reason why we do not take a great interest in the various restorations of the Venus of Milo, and therefore are not inclined to undertake a close study of them or to enter into an elaborate recapitulation of these otherwise quite laudable attempts. We can only say that none of the restorations here discussed seems to solve the problem. Nevertheless we do not believe the problem to be beyond the possibility of solution, and we will state briefly what in our opinion the facts suggest.

We believe that among all the propositions made by restorers the simplest one, that of Veit Valentin, alone deserves our interest.

If we consider the dominating motive of the statue we must grant that it neither belongs to the very earliest times in which Venus was fully dressed, nor to the latest in which nudity, intensified in its suggestiveness by prudery, had nearly become the most characteristic feature of the deity of love. It takes its place in the midst of Greek art development when the first attempt was made to show the human form, and this is done in such a way as not to go to the extreme of a complete denudation but only suggests it and, as it were, with a protest on the part of the goddess. For the attitude of the statue plainly indicates that the goddess endeavors to retard the falling garment so as to give the right arm a moment’s time to grasp it and to hold it up. It is more than merely probable that the left arm was raised toward an unexpected intruder in warning not to approach. There is no fear in the expression of the face, no fright, no anticipation of danger. The whole attitude makes us suspect that the missing left hand was raised with a forbidding gesture, expressing the command, Ne prorsum! Ne plus ultra! Noli me tangere!

RECENT THEORIES.

Accusations were made that this venerable piece of classic art had been treated with inexcusable neglect, that important inscriptions belonging to it had been lost, and the claim was even made that the statue was whole at the time it was found. The dissatisfied parties interpreted M. Dumont d’Urville’s report in the sense that he had seen the statue whole, quoting from his description: “It represented a nude woman whose left hand was raised and held an apple and the right supported a garment draped in easy folds and falling carelessly from her loins to her feet.” This in their opinion meant that M. d’Urville had seen the statue complete in this posture when he bought it. The sentence which runs, “Both hands have been mutilated and are actually detached from the body,” according to this contention is to be interpreted that this must have happened before the French party delivered the statue to the Louvre, probably at the time when the French marines forced its transfer from the Turkish brig to the French warship “Estafette.”

The points raised in this discussion overlook some significant facts which if duly considered dispose of the claim that the statue was whole and unmutilated when discovered and sold to M. Dumont d’Urville. Viscount Marcellus enumerates the objects discovered in the cave and mentions fragments of the statue found in the field nearby. Could he, an eye witness, have believed that it was whole and unmutilated when he assumes that a number of separate fragments belonged to it?

It is not impossible that the quarrel between the French marines and the Turks was a regular fight; that they came to blows, but scarcely to shots. If there had been any fatalities we would have heard of it in the first report of the acquisition of the statue; but no serious wounds in the struggle are mentioned even in the later report, although in it we learn of a fight on the beach about the possession of the statue, and this later became humorously exaggerated into a battle involving drawn cutlases and a bleeding ear.

The discussion was renewed in 1912 by M. Alcard who laid much emphasis upon the testimony of Lieutenant Matterer, a comrade of M. Dumont d’Urville. He is claimed to have felt such disgust about the endless disputes on the original form of the Venus of Milo that he wished to put an end to them. He says: “When I saw the statue in the hut of Yorgos Bottonis on whose field it was found, the left arm was attached to the bust and held an apple over her head.”

This positive statement stands in plain contradiction to the older records and it seems that the imagination of the valiant naval officer played his memory a trick after the lapse of nearly half a century. Perhaps it is impossible to evolve the exact truth definitely, but it seems to me that we must not estimate these later testimonies too highly, for it would be more difficult then to explain the actual condition of the statue and its agreement with the older descriptions, than now to account for these later depositions of a few excitable and imaginative men who feel that they have something of great importance to declare. Moreover, the most important witness, Lieutenant Matterer, is characterized in these accounts as “an officer of great merit but no literary cultivation,” which does not seem to make his opinion especially reliable.

The Sunday Record-Herald of Chicago (Nov. 24, 1912) contains a summary of this later phase of the discussion as to the condition of the Venus of Milo from which we quote a few passages that in spite of the sensational character of the account may be of interest. The American reporter, relying on his French sources, says:

“The great Thiers began his start in journalism by a study of this Venus and the riddle of her arms. So when he became president of the French republic he ordered the ambassador to Greece, Jules Ferry, to make a trip to Melos and pick up local tradition. Ferry did better. He found the son and nephew still alive, Antonio and Yorgos Jr. ‘They have grown to be beautiful old men—white-bearded, ruddy, robust and bright-eyed,’ reported Ferry. ‘Examined separately before the French vice-consul at Castro they declared steadily, with minute details and explanatory gestures and poses, that Venus, when they found her, was standing upright on her pedestal, her right arm sustaining her draperies and her left arm raised and extended, its hand holding an apple.’”

I assume that the old Greek peasants spoke Greek, and so M. Ferry probably understood their meaning mainly from their “explanatory gestures and poses” which might as well have expressed their idea of the original attitude of the statue as the way in which they actually saw it.

“The popular story of the countryside also,” continued Ferry’s report, “is a tale of battle. At fifty years’ distance the recollection remains and tradition is not yet born. The discovery of the Venus Victrix, the dispute of which she was the object, the fight on the beach, the victory of the French and her final abduction violently impressed the islanders—and the impression remains.”

“The battle of the beach” is described in sensational terms. The French war-schooner “Estafette” had reached Melos in May 1820, when her commander Robert saw the Greek brig “Galaxidion” (flying the Turkish flag) anchored nearby, and to the consternation of himself and Marcellus, the secretary of the French embassy at Constantinople, there appeared on shore at the foot of the hill a crowd of Greek and Turkish sailors laboriously transporting the upper half of the statue toward that same Turkish brig. The account continues:

“The Greeks and Turks advanced slowly, changing shifts and reposing. Marcellus and Robert looked in each other’s eyes. ‘There’s just time,’ said Robert. They armed a long-boat full of marines, Marcellus and Robert with them in command, and reached the shore just as men from a Turkish long-boat came running to protect their brethren. From the hill of Castro M. Brest, the French vice-consul, was making good time to the mêlée. Cutlasses and clubs opened the dance.

“The Turks dropped the marble idol. Around Venus it was slash and parry, kick, bite, jab, gouge and roll. A cutlass takes off a Turkish ear. Enough carnage! When you fly the Turkish flag you don’t soak the sands with your life-blood for a graven image made against the law of the Prophet. The Turks pull for the brig. The French have copped the peerless one, Venus Victrix, impassive, stares past them at the white-capped sea, where she was born. Is there a faint smile of satisfaction on the lovely lips?

“The stretcher had been injured. All were excited. Hurry, the Turks may return in force! That stretcher is no good. Put rollers under the flat of the block. Pull on the ropes! Attention! The bust is slipping! Malheur, she’s on her back? Tant pis!! Now, my children, yet another effort! Good old long-boat! Embark! It was hot work, but she’s ours. Best say as little as possible about it. Monsieur le Vice-Consul, you will please to arrange the settlement of this annoying episode diplomatically!

“Negotiations lasted two days. Finally the Turkish brig ceded to the French the lower part of the statue; but when the ‘Estafette’ sailed for Piraeus. Venus bore irreparable wounds.

“So they say. Such is said to be the secret—or part of it. Among fragments of marble gathered up after the battle of the beach were debris of her arms—in particular of the beautiful left arm which MM. d’Urville and Matterer had seen entire on her shoulder, lifting the triumphal apple!”

The report of M. Ferry makes the trip from Paris to Melos worth while and may have pleased the learned president of the republic, M. Thiers. The American reporter’s account throws light on the theory suggested by the results of M. Ferry’s trip:

“Venus Victrix was received in Paris by the Count de Clarac, curator of the Louvre, then Royal Museum. Did he know of the fight? Perhaps. Was it to forestall a possible hint that a French war-ship could attack and plunder the war-ship of a friendly power in profound peace, or to prevent a dream of the impossible possibility that the marvelous statue could have been mutilated in any French hands, by accident or otherwise, that he assumes Venus to have been dug up [in its present condition]?”

The official report of Count de Clarac when the statue was received at the Louvre runs as follows:

“Bust and front have scarcely suffered from the ravages of time. They keep the velvety skin of a master of the great Greek period, who, after polishing, once more skimmed the chisel over the perfect work. But here and there are slight lesions, due, probably, to careless pickstrokes in digging her up. The shoulders have been much damaged, traces of cords indicate that she was dragged along the shore toward the Turkish brig, and in that fatal passage the shoulders and haunches were scraped and worn, several finger breadths being taken off the former.”

The fertile imagination of the account changes the Greek brig “Galaxidion” into a Turkish man-of-war so as to impress the reader that there is a diplomatic secret to be hidden which might involve the French authorities into a war with Turkey. The cause, being about the goddess of love, would be quite romantic but a war is serious enough to make the authorities wish to avoid it and prefer to cast a shadow of mystery over the whole affair.

We shall see later that the mutilations of the statue need not have originated from careless handling on the part of the French marines when they took possession of the statue.

Here is another passage which describes the nature of the injuries of the Venus statue without, however, being proof of the battle of the beach:

“The shoulder has been broken, not merely scraped and worn, by dragging. And the author of another report, M. Lange, chief restorer of the Royal Museum in 1820, specialist of vast experience and a workman to boot, notes certain exfoliations or scrapings of the left arm fragments ‘running straight up on to the shoulder of the statue, and found also on the back of the hand fragment, which show that these different parts formed one with the shoulder; and these straight scratches could only have been made, all following the same direction, when the left arm was entire!’”

This quotation is made to prove that the arm was still connected with the statue before it was scraped along the ground, but may not this scraping have taken place before it was hidden in the cave?

The Louvre’s acquisition of the Venus of Milo proved in some respects a misfortune to the Count de Clarac. Charles Lenormant, the archeologist, in a contribution to the Correspondant in 1854 mercilessly attacked the director of the Louvre and his staff, saying (as reported in the Record-Herald):

“I have always believed that from the beginning to better accredit a production which is its own best proofs, they designedly caused to disappear accessories which might derange the idea that they had just conquered a chef-d’oeuvre of the grand epoch of Greek art. Thus, besides the arms, they suppressed the debris of an inscription.”

Can we entertain the suspicion that the authorities of the Louvre purposely destroyed the inscription assumed to have been found with the debris of the Venus of Milo and that they suppressed facts or the knowledge of facts which might bear testimony against their cherished theories as to the provenience of their favorite piece of art? Scarcely! The inscription, as we have seen, was doubtless lost because nobody cared for it, for there was no evidence that it belonged to the statue.

WHAT THE FACTS REVEAL.

We cannot help thinking that the artist worked after a living model and followed details pretty faithfully. It has been noticed for instance that the feet of the Venus are larger than those of the average woman of to-day and the head is unusually small. In fact this close adherence to actual life may be the main secret of the charm of the statue, for on account of this reality there is a personal element in it, and we can almost read the character of the woman who stood as a model. We see at once an absence of any and every lascivious trait quite common to Venus figures of a later period, and in the face there is a remarkable unconsciousness of self.

We may assume that the artist belonged to the famous school of Rhodes or to the group of those artists who made Pergamum famous with their work, but no statement can be made with certainty. Upon archeological grounds we cannot place the date of the statue earlier than about 400 B. C., nor later than the first part of the second century B. C., and this opinion is mainly based upon the excellent workmanship, the peculiar warmth of the skin as well as the classical simplicity of the statue as a whole. It appears that this valuable piece of art is worthy of a Phidias, a Praxiteles, a Lysippos, or a Scopas.

Having searched art books in vain for an explanation of the history of the Venus of Milo and its tragic fate, we will here briefly recapitulate what the simple facts of the statue, its workmanship, its sad and mutilated condition and also its place of discovery, can teach us.

The statue shows a few scratches which indicate that it may have been dragged along the ground, but the marble bears innumerable indentations which can scarcely be explained otherwise than as due to blows with heavy sticks or clubs. The story of M. Ferry recapitulated in the foregoing chapter does not suffice. Some mutilations may be due to a rough handling in transportation, but the scratches are few and the cudgel marks are many. Apparently the statue has stood an attack of a mob of infuriated enemies who hated the goddess and regarded her as a devil—as the patron deity of the worst of sins. She must have endured a terrible persecution at the hands of implacable enemies, and these enemies can only have been Christians.

It is obvious that the statue has been hidden, and we need not doubt that it was concealed by pagan worshipers who wanted to preserve the effigy of the goddess. The marks of brutal treatment visible all over the body of the statue indicate that the fair goddess had been most furiously belabored as if in corporeal chastisement with rods and any weapons that happened to be at hand. The arms are broken and we must assume that the statue was upset and thrown from its pedestal. Probably the goddess fell on her right shoulder which is crushed, while the left arm exhibits a smooth fracture as if it had been broken by the concussion of the fall. If the arms are not the fragments enumerated by Count Marcellus and now preserved in the Louvre, they must have been lost; possibly they were smashed to small fragments.

Can we assume that the provincial population of a small island could have produced the greatest piece of art of antiquity? Could a few farmers have engaged a sculptor who must have been the equal of Phidias and Scopas? If the statue had represented the tutelary goddess of the island, would not some Greek author have alluded to its existence; would not Pausanias have mentioned the fact? The idea that the statue was of indigenous workmanship is a mere assumption and by no means probable. But whence can the statue have come, and how did it find its way to this little island in the Ægean Sea?

This question is not unanswerable; we need only consider the history of the island and its political connections.

The island of Milo was too small a place to have a temple that could afford a statue of such extraordinary value, and we must assume that it was carried thither on a ship. Athens is the only place that we can think of which might have been its original home.

The early centuries of the Christian era were troublesome times. Lawlessness prevailed and a general decadence had set in, which was due to the many civil wars in both Greece and Italy. The establishment of the Roman empire checked the progress of degeneration but only in external appearance. In reality a moral and social deterioration continued to take an ever stronger hold upon the people. The old religion broke down and the new faith was by no means so ideal in the beginning as it is frequently represented by writers of ecclesiastical history.

Our notions concerning the vicious character of