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 and
Pliny 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 character _is 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 a
shield does not suit the action of the upper part of the body, but
maintains that it does not explain it _particularly 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 of the 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 writing _if 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 of my
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.
[Illustration: 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 building scaffolds 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.
[Illustration: TEMPLE OF NIKÉ APTEROS.]
The little Temple of Niké Apteros has had a destiny unique amongst 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.
[Illustration: GREEK COIN]
FOOTNOTES
[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 map _faute de
mieux_.
[2]The Lotophagitis has been recently plausibly identified with Jerba,
on the coast of Tunis, the word _rotos_ being still used there,
evidently a survival of some primitive language, for the date; and
the transliteration of _rotos_ to _lotos_ being according to Grimm’s
law, see Reinach’s letter to the _Nation_ (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 1500 B. 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.
Transcriber’s Notes
--Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook
is public-domain in the country of publication.
--Silently corrected a few palpable typos.
--In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by
_underscores_.
End of Project Gutenberg's On the track of Ulysses, by William James Stillman