The Venus of Milo: an archeological study of the goddess of womanhoodCarus, Paul
History
The Venus of Milo: an archeological study of the goddess of womanhood
Carus, Paul
Venus (Roman deity); Venus de Milo
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....
[Illustration: FRAGMENTS FOUND AT MELOS.[3] Nos. 4 and 5 of Viscount
Marcellus’s list.]
“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,
...”
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Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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