The Venus of Milo, Paul Carus

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THE VENUS OF MILO

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THE VENUS OF MILO

AN ARCHEOLOGICAL STUDY OF THE GODDESS OF WOMANHOOD


BY
PAUL CARUS

ILLUSTRATED


αἰδοίν χρυσοστέφανον καλὴν Άφροδἰτην ᾄσουαι—Homeric Hymn.


CHICAGO LONDON
THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY
1916

COPYRIGHT BY
THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY
1916

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CONTENTS.

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

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THE DISCOVERY OF A RARE ART TREASURE.

MELOS (Italian Milo), one of the smallest Greek islands, would scarcely be known at all except to specialists in geography or ancient history, had not a happy accident brought to light on one of its hillsides that most beautiful piece of sculpture which ever since its discovery has been known as the Venus of Milo.

Melon means apple, and the island of Melos (the “apple island”) belongs to the Cyclades, being the most southern and western member of that group. It lies almost straight west from the southern tip of the Peloponnesus and in a direction south to south-west from Athens.

Melos was inhabited in ancient times by Dorians who sympathized with Sparta against Athens, but when the Athenians conquered it after a most stubborn resistance they slaughtered the entire Dorian male population and replaced them by Athenian colonists. Since then the island remained abso{2}lutely faithful to Athens, in fact it was the last possession which still belonged to Athens when the Ionian confederacy broke up, and the friendly relations between Melos and her metropolis continued even after Greece had become a Roman province.

THE FIELD OF YORGOS BOTTONIS.

Cross shows where the Venus was found. (From the Century Magazine, 1881, Vol. I, p. 99.)

On this island of Melos, a peasant by the name of Yorgos Bottonis and his son Antonio, while clearing away the stones near the ruins of an ancient theater in the vicinity of Castro, the capital of the island, came accidentally across a small underground cave, carefully covered with a heavy slab and concealed, which contained a fine marble statue in two{3} pieces, together with several other marble fragments. This happened in February, 1820.

The Rev. Oiconomos, the village priest who guided the finder in this matter, invited M. Louis Brest, the French consul of Melos, to see the statue and offered it to him (in March of the same year) for 20,000 francs. M. Brest does not seem to have been in a hurry to buy, but he claims to have written to the French minister at Constantinople. One thing is sure, no answer had come by April when His French Majesty’s good ship “Chevrette” happened to cast anchor in the harbor at Melos and an ensign on board, Monsieur Dumont d’Urville, went to see the statue. The inability to sell it had brought the price down, and the finder was willing to part with it to the young Frenchman for only 1200 francs. M. d’Urville was more energetic than M. Brest and as soon as he reached Constantinople the French Minister at once authorized a certain Count Marcellus, a member of the French embassy, to go to Melos and procure the statue.

Count Marcellus arrived on the French vessel “Estafette” in May, but found that the statue in the meantime had been sold to a certain Nikolai Morusi for 4800 francs and had just been placed aboard a little brig bound for Constantinople, the home of the buyer. At this juncture the three Frenchmen, M. Brest, M. d’Urville and Count Marcellus, decided not to let their treasure so easily escape them, so M. Brest protested before the Turkish authorities{4} that the bargain had been concluded, declaring that Bottonis had no right to sell his prize to any other party. They even threatened to use force and, being backed by the French mariners of the “Estafette,” said that under no conditions would they allow the statue to leave the harbor.

While the three Frenchmen claimed that France was entitled to have the statue for 1200 francs they were willing to pay not only 4800 francs, the price promised by Morusi, but 6000 francs. The new buyer had not yet paid and so the peasant was satisfied with the cash offered him, while the Turkish authorities did not care either way. Thus it came to pass that the valuable marble was transferred to the French warship on May 25, 1820, (so at least runs the original report without the fantastic story of a battle) and after much cruising was carried to Constantinople where it was placed on the “Lionne,” another French ship bound for France and destined to bring home the French Minister, Marquis de Rivière. The “Lionne” reached France in October, 1820, and the statue was delivered at the Louvre in February, 1821.{5}

DUMONT D’URVILLE’S REPORT.

THE most important passage of Dumont d’Urville’s report[1] about the discovery of the statue reads in an English translation thus:

“The Chevrette set sail from Toulon on April 3 (1820) in the morning, and anchored on the sixteenth in the roadstead of Milo....

“On the 19th I went to look at some antique pieces discovered at Milo a few days before our arrival. Since they seem to me worthy of attention I shall here record the result of my observation in some detail....

“About three weeks before our arrival at Milo a Greek peasant digging in his field ... came across some stones of considerable size. As these stones ... had a certain value, this consideration encouraged him to dig still further, and so he succeeded in{6} clearing out a sort of recess in which he found a marble statue together with two hermae and some other pieces, likewise of marble.

THE SITE OF MELOS FROM THE PORT.

White cross shows where the Venus was found. (From the Century Magazine, 1881, Vol. I, p. 99)

“The statue was in two pieces joined in the middle by two small iron tenons. Fearing he would{7} lose the fruit of his toil, the Greek had the upper part of the two hermae carried away and deposited in a stable. The rest were left in the cave. I examined all very carefully, and the various pieces seemed to me in good taste, as far as my slight acquaintance with the arts permitted me to judge of them.

“I measured the two parts of the statue separately and found it very nearly six feet in height; 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. Both hands have been mutilated and are actually detached from the body. The hair is coiled in the back and held up by a bandeau. The face is very beautiful and well preserved except that the tip of the nose is injured. The only remaining foot is bare; the ears have been pierced and may have contained pendants.

“All these attributes would seem to agree well enough with the Venus of the judgment of Paris; but in that case where would be Juno, Minerva and the handsome shepherd? It is true that a foot clad in a cothurnus and a third hand were found at the same time. On the other hand the name of the Island Melos has a very close connection with the word μῆλον which means apple. Might not this similarity of the words have indicated the statue by its principal attribute?

“The two hermae were with it in the cave. Be{8}yond this fact there is nothing remarkable about them. Their height is about three feet and a half. One is surmounted by the head of a woman or child and the other by the face of an old man with a long beard.

“The entrance to the cave was surmounted by a piece of marble four feet and a half long and about six or eight inches wide. It bore an inscription of which only the first half has been respected by Time. The rest is entirely effaced. This loss is inestimable; ... at least we might have learned on what occasion and by whom the statues had been dedicated.

“At any rate I have carefully copied the remaining characters of this inscription and I can guarantee them all except the first, of which I am not sure. The space which I indicate for the defaced part has been measured in proportion to the letters which are still legible:

“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{9} 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{10} 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.{11}

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.{12}

“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....

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{13} 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{14} 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.{15}

DEBAY’S DRAWING.

THE famous French painter David happened to be in exile at the time of the discovery of the Venus of Milo, and, taking an especial interest in this wonderful piece of ancient art, he induced one of his disciples, a certain Debay, to have his son Auguste Debay, a young art student, make a drawing of the statue as soon as it was put up in the Louvre. This drawing was afterwards published by M. de Clarac in his “Notice” and we here republish it on account of the importance it has gained as a document in the history of the statue.

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{16}

DEBAY’S DRAWING OF VENUS.

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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{18}

HEAD OF THE VENUS OF MILO.

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THE HEAD OF TRALLES.

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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{21} 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.{22}

A DESCRIPTION OF THE STATUE.

WE have before us in the statue of the Venus of Milo one of the greatest masterpieces of ancient Hellas, and it is of secondary importance whether or not it was the artist’s intention to represent the goddess of love and beauty. Surely this work of art represents womanhood at its best—a noble feminine figure in full maturity, not a maiden but fully developed, a wife or mother; and yet not as a mother with a child, nor as a wife with her husband, but simply as a woman.

There is nothing frivolous about her, no coquetry, nothing amorous. Her eyes betray not the slightest touch of a sensual emotion, not that sentimental moistness, τὸ ὑγρόν as the Greeks called it, and thereby the artist succeeded in transfiguring naked beauty by a self-possessed chastity unrivaled in the art of statuary.

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.{23}

THE VENUS OF MILO.

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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.{25}

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{26} 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.{27}

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{28}

A MUTILATED STATUE OF EROS.

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

VENUS WITH SHIELD AND PENCIL.

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{30} archeologists are trying to restore what early Christianity ruthlessly destroyed or mutilated.

VENUS WITH MIRROR.

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{31} 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.

VENUS AS VICTORY.

Probably by T. Bell.

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DRAWING BY HASSE AND HENKE.

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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.

RESTORATION BY FURTWAENGLER.

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{34}

SALOMAN’S LATEST RESTORATION.

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

RESTORATION BY SALOMAN.

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{36}

VENUS SENDING OUT THE DOVE.

Vase picture after Creuzer, Deutsche Schriften, 1846, I, II, p. 238.

Reproduced from the Erbach Collection.

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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{38}

THE MOTHER OF THE GODS.

From a painting by Francisca P. Del Mar.

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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{40} 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 prob{41}lem. 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!{42}

RECENT THEORIES.

THE statue discovered on the island of Milo acquired a fame beyond the greatest expectations, and the intense interest taken in it frequently gave rise to bitter discussions about its history and the causes of its mutilation. Thus it happened that the authorities of the Louvre, or even the French government itself, were held responsible for the sad state of desolation in which it now appears.

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{43} 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.{44}

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{45} 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 Vic{46}trix, 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{47} 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{48} 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{49} 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{50} 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.{51}

WHAT THE FACTS REVEAL.

OF all the statues of classical antiquity the Venus of Milo is the greatest favorite, not only with the public at large but with art critics as well, and it is strange that the statue has acquired this popularity, for it is by no means perfect in conception nor has it been made by any one of the famous artists. The sculptor is either not known at all or, if the pedestal bearing the name of Agesandros or Alexandros actually belonged to the statue, he was a man unknown to fame, and it seems difficult to point out the reasons which give to this most badly wrecked piece of marble its peculiar charm.

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{52} 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{53} 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{54} 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{55}

VENUS ON THE SWAN.

A kylix from Capua.

ancient paganism are entirely wrong. Even the worship of Aphrodite and of the Phenician Astarte was by no means degraded by that gross sensualism of which the fathers of the church frequently accuse it. Wherever we meet with original expressions of the pagan faith we find deep reverence and childlike piety. In many respects the worship of Istar in Babylonia and Astarte in Phenicia, of Isis in Egypt,{56} of Athene, Aphrodite and Hera in Greece, of the Roman Juno, and Venus, the special protectress of the imperial family, was noble in all main features, and did not differ greatly from the cult of the Virgin Mary during the Middle Ages. We shall discuss this phase in a subsequent chapter and here reproduce an ancient platter which is ascribed by archeologists to the fourth century B. C., and shows a noble and serene Venus who is fully draped and flying on a swan.

When Christianity spread over the Roman empire, the city of Athens was the last stronghold of paganism, but even there the mass of the population had become Christian. There was a time in the development of Christianity when it was hostile not only to ancient pagan mythology but also to pagan science and to pagan art. This was the age in which almost all the statues of the Greek gods were either destroyed, or maltreated and shattered so that not one has come down to us unmutilated.

Prof. F. C. Conybeare of University College, Oxford, describes conditions of that age in his translation of the Apology and Acts of Apollonius and Other Monuments of Christianity, as follows:

“The obvious way of scotching a foul demon was to smash his idols; and we find that an enormous number of martyrs earned their crown in this manner, especially in the third century, when their rapidly increasing numbers rendered them bolder and more ready to make a display of their intolerance.{57}

HEAD OF THE VENUS OF MILO.

Profile view.

{58}

Sometimes the good sense or the worldly prudence of the Church intervened to set limits to so favorite a way of courting martyrdom; and at the Synod of Elvira, c. A. D. 305, a canon was passed, declaring the practice to be one not met with in the Gospel nor recorded of any of the Apostles, and denying to those who in future resorted to it the honors of martyrdom. But in spite of this, the most popular of the saints were those who had resorted to such violence and earned their death by it; and as soon as Christianity fairly got the upper hand in the fourth century, the wrecking of temples and the smashing of the idols of the demons became a most popular amusement with which to grace a Christian festival. As we turn over the pages of the martyrologies, we wonder that any ancient statues at all escaped those senseless outbursts of zealotry.”

It must have been in one of these “outbursts of zealotry” that one of the temples of Aphrodite was attacked and the statue of the goddess brutally assaulted. The mutilated statue presumably lay prone upon the ground at the foot of its pedestal at the overturned altar, and had to suffer under the clubs of fanatical zealots. When night broke in and the rioters sought their homes, the few friends of paganism, perhaps the priests, perhaps some well-to-do philosophers and admirers of the ancient Greek civilization, came to the rescue. They met stealthily at the place of the tumult and with the assistance of{59}

HEAD OF THE VENUS OF MILO.

Front view.

{60}

their servants had the statue carried away down to a ship at anchor in the harbor. Before the riot could be renewed on the next morning the ship set sail for the island of Milo where the devotees of the goddess may have had friends, or where possibly one of their own number possessed a farm. There they hid the statue, and it is certain that the act of concealment was done in the greatest haste, for it was only lightly covered over, and a mark, discovered later on by careful investigation of the place of hiding, was scratched into the curbstone on the wayside to indicate the spot.

This explanation seems to me simple enough to be acceptable. The facts seem to tell it. Consider the age when paganism broke down; consider the fanaticism of the early Christians, the uncultured mobs led by fanatical monks, mobs capable of tearing to pieces a noble woman—I refer to Hypatia—in the conviction that they were doing a good deed pleasing in God’s sight. Other statues of pagan gods have received exactly this treatment. Is it possible to explain the cudgel marks on the statue of the Venus of Milo differently?

It seems strange that this explanation has not been offered before. The data of the conditions in which the statue was found, the place of hiding, the political relation of Melos to Athens, and the character both of the few pagans and of the multitudes of Christians who lived in the beginning of the Christian era, tell us the story of the statue, its{61} sad fate and why it found here a safe place of concealment.

The pagan remnant was small and kept quiet for fear of persecution, but we may very well imagine how they lived in the hope that paganism would celebrate a revival, that the storms of these barbarous outbursts would pass by and the temples of the gods would be restored in all their ancient glory. Then would come the time to bring the goddess back to her ancient dwelling place, to raise her altar again and light the sacrifice anew. But though the riots ceased and the authorities restored order, though for a short time a pagan emperor sat again on the throne of Cæsar, the ancient gods never returned and Christianity permanently replaced paganism. The devotees of the lost cause died without seeing their hope fulfilled. The desecrated statue remained hidden and their secret was buried with them in the grave.{62}

THE MEANING OF “APHRODITE.”

THE etymology of the name Aphrodite is doubtful. The Greeks derived it from the word ἀφρός = foam, because the goddess was said to have risen from the foam of the sea. This wild guess of ancient Greek philology may have been responsible for the fable that Uranus (Heaven) nightly embraced Gaia (Earth) until he was attacked and mutilated by his rebellious son Kronos. Uranus, deprived of his creative ability, retired to the outskirts of the world. Mythologists assume that herewith the creation of the raw material of the universe ceased, but that the generative principle being now mingled with the sea changed into foam, whence rose the goddess that represents all fertility and creativeness in both vegetable and animal domains.

If this legend of the origin of Aphrodite is not simply the product of the wrong etymology of her name[7] it is assumed to have been imported from Phenicia. The only other similar myth known is{63} found among the South Sea islanders where Rangi (Heaven) and Papa (Earth) embraced one another so closely that no life could originate, Rangi being regarded as a great blue canopy of stone. Then Tane Mahuta, their youngest son, corresponding to Kronos, the youngest child of Uranus and Gaia, cruelly separated the couple and forced his father upward and pressed his mother down, thus becoming the creator of life on earth.[8]

The ancient Greeks were poor philologists and similar failures of etymological speculation are quite common among them. Thus they explained the origin of names like Heracles as “the fame of Hera,” or Amazon as “the woman without breasts,” or Prometheus as “the forethinker,” etc. All these derivations are wild and obviously wrong guesses, nor may our modern philologists, though more scientific, be always exactly correct. We are taught now by comparative philology that Prometheus, the firebringer, is the Sanskrit word pramathyus, “the driller,” denoting the hard stick[9] which by a swift rotation in a soft piece of wood produces the spark that calls forth the beneficent flame.

This explanation seems probable but we cannot say that our etymologies of other names have been equally successful.{64}

One recent interpretation of “Aphrodite” would make us regard the name as an Egyptian importation, explaining the word to mean Apharadat, “the gift of Ra,” the sun-god, derived from Pha Raa Da-t with the prosthetic A; but this, like the suggested derivation of Psyche from Pha Sakhu, “the mummy,” seems to be a mere accident of homophony. Other Greek names such as Elysion from Aalu, the Elysian Fields of the Egyptians, Charon from Kere, driver or skipper (ferryman), are better attested, but if the name Aphrodite came from Egypt the cult of a goddess by that name and character has been lost or obliterated.

*  *  *

Originally Aphrodite was the same figure as Hera or Juno, Artemis or Diana and Pallas Athene or Minerva. These female deities are differentiations of the idealized and personified activities of womanhood: Hera as the queen of heaven, the protectress of wifehood; Diana of girlhood and virginity; Athene as the goddess of battles, as protectress of arts and sciences, as wisdom personified; Aphrodite, the personification of beauty and love.

The ancient pagans were not so very unlike the Christians; e. g., Istar, like the Virgin Mary, represented at the same time eternal virginity and motherhood, and the name of the temple on the Acropolis might truly be translated “Church of the Holy Vir{65}gin,” for Parthenon is derived from παρθένος, “virgin.”

In prehistoric times there was more reverence for the female deity than for the male god. So Ares (or Mars) is the god of fight, of combativeness, while Athene is the teacher of the art of warfare, of generalship, of strategy in battle.

The character of Aphrodite as a universal principle was never lost sight of. She was and remained the giver of life, joy, love, loveliness, grace, fertility, increase, exuberance, rejuvenescence, springtime, restoration of life, immortality, prosperity and the charm of existence,—and all this she was in one, all as a universal principle and in its cosmic significance.

The same idea is also expressed in Eros, called in Latin Amor or Cupido, who is regarded as the oldest and at the same time the youngest of the gods, represented as a beautiful youth. This same Eros is said to have existed prior to Aphrodite, for when she rose out of the sea, Eros met her at the shore, while according to another version he was regarded as her son.

The notion that Aphrodite is the cosmic principle of love has found expression in poetry and philosophy, but her mythical nature has never been definitely settled. Homer, who calls Aphrodite Cypris (Κύπις) speaks of her in the Iliad (V, 312) as the daughter of Zeus[10] and Dione, the goddess{66}

HEAVENLY AND WORLDLY LOVE.

By Titian.

{67}

who in olden times was worshiped on the Acropolis in Athens, in Dodona, and in other localities, as the wife of the Olympian ruler and as his female counterpart. Dione is probably the same word as Hera’s Latin name Juno. As her daughter, Aphrodite is called Dionæa (Διωναία) and also by her mother’s name Dionē.

Being the goddess of sexual love, Aphrodite was also held responsible for all relations between men and women, and philosophers felt the need of distinguishing between heavenly love and vulgar passion, calling the former “Aphrodite Urania,” the latter “Aphrodite Pandemos.” In Plato’s Symposium (180 D) the heavenly love is described as “the older one, born without mother, the daughter of heaven,” while the younger and less divine Aphrodite is the daughter of Zeus and Dione. The same contrast is brought out in the age of the Renaissance by Titian in his famous picture of heavenly and worldly love.

The distinction between celestial and earthly love however is artificial and has certainly not influenced the cult of the goddess. It is a later thought, invented by philosophers for the purpose of teaching a lesson.{68}

THE CULT OF APHRODITE.

POLYTHEISM is not a stable religion. It changes with the growth of civilization, and we do not know a time in which it was not constantly in a state of transition.

The myths which connect Aphrodite in one place with Adonis, in others with Mars, Hephæstos, Anchises and other gods or mortals, were originally several different developments of the same fundamental idea, the love story of the goddess of love. This is quite natural and ought to be expected, but when in the days of a more international communication these myths were told in different shapes in all localities, they in their combination served greatly to undermine the respect for the goddess and to degrade the conception of her even as early as in the time when the Homeric epics were composed. Nevertheless, since the sarcasm remained limited for a long time to the circle of heretics and scoffers, the noble conception of Aphrodite was preserved down to the latest days of paganism.

In other words Venus was originally the mother{69} of mankind. She was at once the Queen of Heaven or Juno, the Magna Mater or Venus Genetrix, the educator and teacher or Pallas Athene, the eternal virgin or Diana, and the all-nourishing earth-goddess, Demeter or Ceres; and this view had better be stated inversely, that the original mother of mankind became differentiated in the course of history into these several activities of womanhood, as Juno, Venus, Diana, Ceres and Athene, which divinities were again reunited in Christianity in the form of Mary, the Queen of Heaven, the Mother of God, the Lady as an authority and guide in life, and the Eternal Virgin.

Aphrodite was worshiped in a prehistoric age, and the origin of her cult is plainly traceable to the Orient, especially to Phenicia and further back to Pamphylia, Syria, Canaan and Babylon. The Phenician Astarte was imported to the islands of the Ægean Sea, to Cythera, Paphos and Amathus. Hence even in the Hellenistic age she was still honored with the names Cytherea, Paphia and Amathusia.

From the Ægean islands the cult of Aphrodite spread rapidly to Sparta, Athens and other Greek centers. The barbaric origin of the Aphrodite cult is in evidence in the myth of Aphrodite’s birth as the foam-born, but it is difficult to say whom we shall deem responsible for the legend—perhaps the inhabitants of the islands. Certainly we cannot lay the burden of the invention of the story upon{70}

BIRTH OF VENUS.

Relief found in the Villa Ludovisi.

{71}

the Asiatics, at least not on the Syrians, for according to an account of Nigidius Figulus,[11] the fish of the Euphrates found a large egg in the floods and pushed it ashore, where it was brooded upon by a dove until the Syrian goddess came forth from it.

An exquisitely graceful relief pictures the birth of Venus from the foam of the ocean. She appears as a young maiden covered with a diaphanous garment, and is being lifted out of the water by the Graces. The marble is preserved in the National Museum at Rome and was discovered by excavations in the grounds of the Villa Ludovisi in 1887.

The Oriental goddess was originally the queen of the starry heaven, either the moon or the morning star, and as such she was the same figure which in other places gave rise to the development of Artemis. We may emphasize here that like the Christian Mary the pagan female divinity was at the same time both the eternal virgin and the celestial mother. Mythology cannot stand the application of logical rationalism, and we must not try to make the traditional legends rigidly consistent.

While we recognize a strong Oriental influence in the Greek construction of the Aphrodite cult, we must acknowledge that in Greece we have a new and independent origin of the divine ideal of femininity. In Mesopotamia Istar was a very popular deity, and innumerable idols have been found in the shape of a naked woman, commonly called{72}

DETAIL FROM THE LUDOVISI RELIEF.

{73}

“Beltis” or “Lady,” but this conception of the goddess of femininity cannot be regarded as the prototype of the Greek Aphrodite who at an early period assumed a definitely Greek figure and character. Without detracting from her universal significance as the cosmic principle of generation, the artistic conception of the Greek mind at once idealized her as the incarnation of loveliness and grace, and from Phidias down to the end of paganism she has retained this ideal.

WINTER.		SUMMER.
End pieces of the Ludovisi relief.

In Cnidos Aphrodite was worshiped in three forms: as gift-giver (δωρῑτις), as goddess of the high places (ἀκραία) and as the lucky sailor (εὔπλοια), and we learn that bloody sacrifices were not permitted (Tac., Hist., II, 3), even on the main altar in Paphos.{74}

Originally, Aphrodite was not only love, grace and beauty, but the mistress, the lady, the queen; and so she is represented in Cythera as fully armed. The same is true in Sparta and in Corinth where her temple was erected on the highest place of the city, called Acrocorinthus.

The sensual features of the Aphrodite cult were certainly not absent in ancient Hellas. We know that in Corinth there were large numbers of hierodules in the temple who helped to make the ceremonies gorgeous and impressive, but judging from the language used by Æschylus and Pindar they were highly respected and received public acknowledgment for their fervent prayers during the Persian wars.

In the early imperial time of Rome, the authority of Venus was promoted by the fact that she was the tutelary deity of Cæsar, who through the similarity of his name “Julius” with “Julus,” the son of Æneas, was encouraged to derive his legendary pedigree from Æneas, the mythical founder of the Latin race, the son of Anchises and Aphrodite.

With the rise of Christianity the worship of Venus naturally deteriorated very rapidly, and the fathers of the church referring to all the different versions of her love affairs maligned her in the eyes of the world by identifying the Venus Urania with the Venus Vulgaris, and their views have contributed a good deal to disfigure her picture in later centuries.{75}

VENUS AND ANCHISES.

In the times of Cæsar she was still the great goddess whose domain was not limited to beauty and love nor even to the procreation of life, in which capacity she was called Venus Genetrix, but she was also Venus Victrix, or the goddess who in battle assures victory. Yea, more than all this, she was the goddess of life and immortality connected with the chthonian gods—the powers of death in{76} the underworld. Her emblem, the pomegranate, is also found in the hands of Persephone, indicating a kinship between Aphrodite and the daughter of Demeter.

It is not accidental that Aphrodite as the goddess of love and generation is also the queen of the underworld. She begets life, she restores to life; she leads into Hades and back out of Hades into the world of life. It is for this reason that, according to Pausanias (II, 10, 4), her statue in the temple at Sicyon carries the chthonian symbols, the apple and the poppy, in her hands, and there her priestesses were bound by a vow of chastity.

The chthonian aspect of the Aphrodite cult appears in the legend of the death of Adonis with all its details of funeral lamentations and ceremonies and the great hope of his resurrection. Istar herself descends to the underworld, as we shall see further down (see pp. 85-95), and we know at least that in Cyprus a tomb of Aphrodite has been shown. [12] {77}

THE GODDESS OF WAR.

ONE special function of the mother goddess was leadership in war. It was a custom among the Arabians until recent times that the warriors of a tribe were led in battle by a girl riding at their head with breast exposed, inspiring them in their attack to the display of irresistible courage; and if it was a common practice in prehistoric times, we may assume that this function of womanhood established the character of Istar as the goddess of war, later on differentiated as the Greek Pallas Athene and the Roman Bellona.

VENUS VICTRIX.[*]

After Hirt, Bilderbuch, Plate VII, 11.]

[*] Engraving on a gem representing the statue of Venus Erycina on the Capitoline. This interpretation does not exclude other possibilities. Certainly the attitude of little Eros is artistic and pleasing.]

{78}

We may be sure that the character of Aphrodite as Venus Victrix is by no means a late Roman invention of the days of Cæsar but dates back to the most ancient days of Babylonian tradition. She was from the start of history the great Magna Mater, the All-Mother and Queen to whom the people appealed in all their needs, especially in war. In Greece she is frequently addressed as νικηφόρος, bringer of victory.

A penitential psalm on the destruction of the ancient city of Erech has been preserved in a fragment which in Theodore G. Pinches’s translation reads thus:[13]

As Venus Victrix, the warlike goddess akin to the Greek Pallas Athene, Istar, appears to Asurbanipal in a vision, recorded in a cuneiform inscription of the annals of this powerful Assyrian king, and refers to the invasion of Tiumman, King of Elam. The passage reads in H. Fox Talbot’s translation thus:[15]

“In the month Ab, the month of the heliacal rising of Sagittarius, in the festival of the great Queen [Istar] daughter of Bel, I [Asurbanipal, King of Assyria,] was staying at Arbela, the city most beloved by her, to be present at her high worship.

“There they brought me news of the invasion of the Elamite, who was coming against the will of the gods. Thus:

“‘Tiumman has said solemnly, and Istar has repeated to us the tenor of his words: thus: “I will not pour out another libation until I have gone and fought with him.”’

“Concerning this threat which Tiumman had spoken, I prayed to the great Istar. I approached to her presence, I bowed down at her feet, I besought her divinity to come and save me. Thus:

“‘O goddess of Arbela, I am Asurbanipal, King of Assyria, the creature of thy hands, [chosen by thee and] thy father [Asur] to restore the temples{80} of Assyria, and to complete the holy cities of Akkad. I have gone to honor thee, and I have gone to worship thee. But he Tiumman, King of Elam, never worships the gods....

[Here some words are lost.]

“‘O thou Queen of queens, Goddess of war, Lady of battles, Queen of the gods, who in the presence of Asur thy father speakest always in my favor, causing the hearts of Asur and Marduk to love me.... Lo! now, Tiumman, King of Elam, who has sinned against Asur thy father, and has scorned the divinity of Marduk thy brother, while I Asurbanipal have been rejoicing their hearts. He has collected his soldiers, amassed his army, and has drawn his sword to invade Assyria. O thou archer of the gods, come like a [thunderstorm] ... in the midst of the battle, destroy him, and crush him with a fiery bolt from heaven!’

“Istar heard my prayer. ‘Fear not!’ she replied, and caused my heart to rejoice. ‘According to thy prayer thine eyes shall see the judgment. For I will have mercy on thee!’

*  *  *

“In the night-time of that night in which I had prayed to her, a certain seer lay down and had a dream. In the midst of the night Istar appeared to him, and he related the vision to me, thus:

“‘Istar who dwells in Arbela, came unto me begirt right and left with flames, holding her bow{81} in her hand, and riding in her open chariot as if going to the battle. And thou didst stand before her. She addressed thee as a mother would her child. She smiled upon thee, she Istar, the highest of the gods, and gave thee a command. Thus: “take [this bow],” she said, “go with it to battle! Wherever thy camp shall stand I will come.”

“‘Then thou didst say to her, thus: “O Queen of the goddesses, wherever thou goest let me go with thee!” Then she made answer to thee, thus: “I will protect thee! and I will march with thee at the time of the feast of Nebo. Meanwhile eat food, drink wine, make music, and glorify my divinity, until I shall come and this vision shall be fulfilled.”

“‘Thy heart’s desire shall be accomplished. Thy face shall not grow pale with fear: thy feet shall not be arrested: thou shalt not even scratch thy skin in the battle. In her benevolence she defends thee, and she is wroth with all thy foes. Before her a fire is blown fiercely, to destroy thy enemies.’”

Mr. Talbot makes the following editorial comment on the historical event connected with Asurbanipal’s narrative:

“The promises which the goddess Istar made to the king in this vision of the month Ab were fulfilled. In the following month (Elul) Asurbanipal took the field against Tiumman, and his army speedily achieved a brilliant victory. Tiumman was slain, and his head was sent to Nineveh. There is a bas-{82}relief in the British Museum representing a man driving a rapid car, and holding in his hand the head of a warrior, with this inscription, Kakkadu Tiumman, ‘The head of Tiumman.{83}’”

THE DESCENT INTO HADES.

AS the goddess of love Venus is the restorer of life, and as such she descends into the underworld and brings the dead back to life. Lewis Richard Farnell in his Cults of the Greek States[16] reproduces a remarkable votive tablet which shows Hermes the soul-dispatcher (psychopompos) confronting a woman holding in her outstretched hand a pomegranate blossom (the symbol of both the chthonian Aphrodite and Persephone) and Eros, the god of love, on her arm. The obvious meaning of the tablet indicates that it is love which redeems from death. This conception of the great goddess found a fit expression in the myth of Demeter’s daughter Persephone (called in Latin “Proserpina”) who, after being snatched away by Pluto, the ruler of Hades, is allowed to return to earth. So life on earth with its bloom of vegetation dies off each winter but returns annually in the spring.

This idea became a symbol of human immortality in the Eleusinian mysteries, presumably derived{84} from older sources which go back to religious cults in Babylonia and Asia Minor, and the Christian doctrine is apparently derived from the same tradition. Paul says (1 Cor. xv. 36-38):

EROS IN THE UNDERWORLD.

Votive terra-cotta tablet.

“Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die. And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain. But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body.”

Jesus echoes the same argument and uses the same simile of the grain of wheat in John xii. 24:

“Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn{85} of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”

The most important document still at our command relating to the chthonian Venus is a fragmentary poem called “Istar’s Descent to Hell.” The main subject is introduced in order to justify the possibility of conjuring the dead from Sheol. Dr. Jeremias[17] explains the situation as follows:

“A man grieves over the death of his sister. He consults a magus as to how to release the spirit of the deceased from the prison of Hades. The priest tells him the story of Istar’s descent to Sheol for the sake of proving that the gates of Sheol are not unconquerable, and advises him to address Istar, the conqueror of Hades, and Tammuz her consort, with prayer and sacrifice, in order to gain their assistance. He is requested to comply with funeral ceremonies at the coffin of the dead and to begin his mourning with the assistance of the Uhats, the companions of Istar. The spirit of the dead, hearing the lamentations of her brother, requests him to rescue her from the horrors of Sheol through mourners’ music and sacrifices in the days of Tam{86}muz, which is the time when the people sing and weep, as told by Ezekiel viii. 14, and mourn for their dead under the shape of Tammuz. The concluding lines of the poem, which are summed up in these words, form the core of the whole, while the legend of Istar’s descent to Sheol is only an introduction to it, and constitutes a part of the conjuration of the dead. From other documents of Babylonian literature we learn that on the names of Istar and Tammuz, the hero and heroine of the legends of the descent to Sheol, depend the hopes of a rescue from Sheol.” (Loc cit., pp. 7-8.)

It appears that people celebrated with special preference the days of the god Tammuz, who represented the disappearance of vegetation and its resurrection to life. The legend of Istar’s descent[18] to Sheol reads in the translation based on Dr. Jeremias’s version as follows:

(OBVERSE OF THE TABLET.)

[The goddess Allatu is greatly agitated about Istar’s appearance in Sheol. The poem continues:]

REVERSE OF THE TABLET.

[Allatu curses Uddusunâmir, but the conjuration which he uttered is too powerful, and she must obey. Thus the power of the realm of death is broken and Istar is free.]

[The conjurer here addresses the brother and promises the release of his dead sister from the power of Allatu. The poem continues:]

[Now the spell takes effect. The spirit of the departed sister rises from Sheol:]

THE MAGNA DEA OF THE NATIONS.

THOUGH we may fairly well assume that in prehistoric ages all nations revered a Magna Mater, historical development points to the Orient as the place whence the cult of Aphrodite was imported into Greece; there it found the soil prepared by the common belief in a mother goddess, a world-creatrix, a lady divine and supreme. The Greek Aphrodite was the same as the Astarte of the Tyrians, the “great goddess” of the Syrians and the Istar of the Babylonians.

It is quite certain that the cult of this goddess-mother played a more important part in the world of primitive mankind than the cult of a God the Father, the male deity of a later age. The goddess of love and life under whatever name she may have been known, as Our Lady, the Queen of Heaven, the Mistress of the World, the holy mother genetrix of all living creatures, the Dea optima maxima or Most High Goddess, was practically the same all over the world. We may not be mistaken if we attribute the height of her worship to the age of matriarchy.{97} In prehistoric times the Magna Dea was looked up to with awe and reverence, possibly even with a devotion more ardent than in a later period. The Ancient of Days or Jupiter, i. e., Diespiter, the father of time and light, was symbolized by the all-embracing sky and also by the sun. The Greeks called him Zeus, a name pronounced dzeus, connected with the Latin deus and dies, and Sanskrit deva, the creator and ruler of the world. The Magna Dea was the all-mother, and it is but to be expected that when the social conditions of matriarchy changed into the age of the patriarchs the reverence for an all-mother was superseded by the worship of an all-father.

CARRYING IN PROCESSION THE SYMBOL OF ISTAR

The Magna Dea was all in all to mankind. Her emblem as the goddess of vegetation and of the sus{98}tenance of life was the apple or pomegranate. As the goddess of the human soul she is represented as a bird like the Egyptian representation of the soul, a human-headed hawk; or as a dove, the symbol which later on represents the gnostic Sophia, the mother of the child-god, and in Christian dogmatology, the Holy Ghost.

Originally the deity was triune in India, in Egypt, and in other countries. In India we become acquainted with Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, the Creator, the Revealer (or Avatar), and the Transformer (i. e., the one who destroys and renews). In Babylon the universe is divided into the three kingdoms of Heaven, Water and Earth under the three rulers, Anu, Ea and Marduk; and in Egypt men worshiped God the father or Osiris, God the mother or Isis, and God the child or Horus. Similar trinities are met with in other religions, and the Christian Trinity, although not taught by Jesus, is one of the oldest doctrines of the Christian church. Here indeed the Egyptian conception of God as father, mother and child makes its first appearance in the apocryphal writings, for there are passages in heretical gospels where Jesus speaks of the Holy Ghost as his mother. This idea might have been accepted as an orthodox thought if the age had not been strongly ascetic and dualistic, but on that account the feminine character of the Holy Ghost became offensive to the fathers of the church. In Hebrew the Holy Ghost as Ruah was still conceived{99} as a brooding pigeon, but among the Gentile Christians the conception of the third person of the Trinity was translated by the neuter noun πνεῡμα and in Latin by the masculine spiritus. Nevertheless the old symbol of the brooding pigeon was retained and a feminine designation such as Sophia, the consort of God, was occasionally tolerated in the Greek church and among the Gnostics.

ISIS AND HORUS. From Lenormant.

EGYPTIAN REPRESENTATION OF THE DEAD MAN AND HIS SOUL.

Wings have always been the symbol of thought,{100}

ASTARTE AND THE DOVE.

and serve as a simile to represent the soul not only in Egyptian mythology but also in Babylon and on the Greek islands. A human-headed bird attributed to a primitive period of Babylonian civilization has{101}

THE HUMAN-HEADED BIRD.

A figure unearthed among the ruins of Babylon. From Lenormant.

been interpreted as the soul of Semiramis, and may represent either a dead person or the goddess of the dead, and the same idea is expressed in a little figurine of the Greek islands which shows us a{102}

AMULET[28] OF THE MYCENAEAN PERIOD.

ISIS AND THE FISH.

female deity with a dove on her head. We can scarcely be mistaken if we interpret this little figurine as an amulet denoting the goddess whose emblem is the dove. Whether the figure represent the goddess herself with her emblematic bird or whether it be the portrait of a dead person protected by the dove, is of secondary importance. The main truth on which we insist here is that the dove is the emblem of the great goddess to whom people look for salvation in the dark beyond. Thus flocks of pigeons enjoyed great liberties in Hierapolis, the holy city of Syria,—probably in the same way that the pigeons in St. Mark’s place are befriended in{103} Venice both by the inhabitants and by foreign visitors.

Another emblem of the goddess of womanhood is the fish, as is fully described in Lucian’s most interesting treatise “On the Syrian Goddess.” In Egypt Isis has been represented with a fish surmounting her head as an emblematic ornament.

In some parts of Greece the hare or rabbit has also been sacred to Aphrodite, unquestionably on account of the fertility of that animal. Even to-day in Christian times the Easter hare and the egg are the symbols of spring, and the Easter festival cannot be celebrated without them.

APHRODITE WITH RABBIT.

A remarkable monument has been discovered in Boghaz-Köi in Cappadocia. It represents a procession of gods standing on their symbolic animals, and what interests us mainly is that it portrays the meeting of a god and a goddess, he standing on human beings, she on an animal which is apparently a lioness. Among her followers is a man on a leopard and two figures standing on a double-headed eagle. The idea of this symbol was carried to Europe by crusaders and became the emblem{104}

RELIEF FROM BOGHAZ-KOEI.

of the Holy Roman empire; it is still retained in the imperial arms of Austria and has also been accepted by the Czar of Russia. The subject of this monument in Cappadocia is still considered as under question. There is no explanation and there are no ancient books that can throw light upon it. But{105} the composition speaks for itself. We see here the great goddess meeting the heroic god—whatever names they may have borne.

A LATER ASTARTE.

A LEADEN IDOL.

Marduk (or Melkarth or Bel or Baal) is a deity who rises to sovereignty through his victory over the powers of evil, and the climax of his life consists{106}

ASTARTE IN CYPRUS.

From Ohnefalsch-Richter, Kypros.

{107}

in his marriage. Can this great sculpture refer to any other topic than the festive occasion of the victorious god’s marriage ceremonial when he meets the great bridal goddess?[29]

The name Istar has been traced also in the Phenician word Astarte. The goddess was held in high esteem in Phenicia and was regarded also as the patroness of navigation. Coins represent her standing on the prow of a ship, and, strange to say, very frequently she carries a Latin cross in her arms. Beside the cross her emblems are also the moon and the swastika, and the latter is frequently found on her dress, and in one very archaic leaden figurine discovered by Schliemann in the ruins of Troy, the swastika is placed on her body to indicate the mysterious power of procreation. The idol was apparently intended to be carried in the hand, for its lower part ends in a shapeless stick.

THE GODDESS OF NAVIGATION.

Sidonian coins reproduced from Calmet No. 6.

From the excavations of Cyprus we reproduce{108}

SARGENT’S ASTARTE.

Reproduction with the permission of Curtis and Cameron. Altered from their copyright photograph.

{109}

THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION.

By Murillo.

{110}

the picture of a well-preserved statue of Astarte which must have been the recipient of offerings before an altar in some of the ancient temples (p. 106).

A beautiful modern picture of Astarte has been worked out by Sargent in his frescoes on the walls of the Boston Public Library, and we can see on this very picture her similarity to Murillo’s ideal of Mary in his many paintings of the “Immaculate Conception.”

*  *  *

There is a counterpart of the western Magna Dea in eastern Asia, but we no longer know it in its primitive form and have it only as it is represented in art in the shape of a Buddhist deity, a kind of female Buddha, called in China Kwan-Yon and in Japan, Benten. Here again in some cases we find that the fish is her symbol as it is that of the Syrian goddess, and she frequently presents a remarkable similarity to the Christian Virgin Mary. She is never pictured naked like the Greek Aphrodite but is always dressed in the most scrupulously decent fashion.[30]

One picture of Kwan-Yon with the fish bears an inscription which is a poetical expression of wonder at the mystery of incarnation, and following a literal translation we render it into English as follows:{111}

KWAN-YON AND THE FISH.

In the Pei-lin at Singan-fu. After a Chinese color-print.

{112}

A POEM ON KWAN-YON.

Paper impression of a carving in stone.

The Chinese deity Kwan-Yon may, for all we know, be the Magna Mater of most primitive China. At least she was an ancient popular goddess. When Buddhism was introduced into the Middle Kingdom she was too dear to the people to be abandoned or degraded in rank, and so she was interpreted to be a female incarnation of the Buddha himself. Some pictures or statuettes represent her as denoting motherly love by holding a baby in her arms, which{113}

BENTEN, THE JAPANESE GODDESS OF DIVINE LOVE.

From a relief preserved in the Field Museum Chicago.

{114}

KWAN-YON

By Li Lung-mien (11th cent.) From the original painting in the collection of Charles L. Freer in Detroit.

{115}

gives her an obvious resemblance to the Christian Mary, the mother of Christ.

KWAN-YON AS THE BUDDHA.

In the Musée Guimet.

The ancient Chinese were rich in divinities of all kinds and among them there is a goddess who{116}

T’IEN HOU, QUEEN OF HEAVEN.

in one way or other might easily have developed into the Buddhist Kwan-Yon. This is the Queen of Heaven or Holy Mother, who is worshiped with great fervor in some localities. Emperor K’ang Hi bestowed upon her the high title of T’ien Hou, that is, “Heaven’s Ruler,” but we may very well assume{117} that she did not originate in his days but existed since older times. She, or some figure like her, must have been known before the importation of Buddhism, and Kwan-Yon presupposes the primitive existence of a female deity of love, charity and universal goodwill.

*  *  *

The northern Venus, called Freya, the mother-goddess of the Teutons and in fact of all the Teutonic races, did not share the fate of the Venus of classical antiquity. She never deteriorated into the goddess of sensuality. It is strange that we descendants of the Germanic nations are better posted on the national gods of Greece and Rome than on those of our own ancestors. These are mainly remembered from the names of the week days and even there the god of war, Tiu, has become quite unintelligible in Tuesday. Freya’s day, Friday, is easily recognizable as the Latin dies Veneris or vendredi, and it is peculiar that on that very day Christian custom still retains the fish diet of the ancient Astarte. The motive of course is changed, and the fish is no longer thought of as the emblem of Astarte but is eaten in remembrance of the death of Christ on the cross. Fish has become the diet of fasting. Such is the logic of tradition, which persists after the reason for it has gradually been forgotten.

H. A. Guerber in his Myths of Northern Lands describes Freya as follows:{118}

“Although goddess of love, Freya was not soft and pleasure-loving, for the ancient northern races said that she had very martial tastes, and that as Valfreya[31] she often led the Valkyrs down to the battle-fields, choosing and claiming one-half the heroes slain. She was therefore often represented with corselet and helmet, shield and spear, only the lower part of her body being clad in the usual flowing feminine garb.

“Freya transported the chosen slain to Folkvang, where they were duly entertained, and where she also welcomed all pure maidens and faithful wives, that they might enjoy the company of their lovers and husbands even after death. The joys of her abode were so enticing to the heroic northern women that they often rushed into battle when their loved ones were slain, hoping to meet with the same fate; or they fell upon their swords, or were voluntarily burned on the same funeral pyre as the beloved remains.

“As Freya was inclined to lend a favorable ear to lovers’ prayers, she was often invoked by them, and it was customary to indite love songs in her honor, which were sung on all festive occasions, her very name in Germany being used for the formation of the verb freien, i. e., ‘to woo.{119}’”

FREYA.

From Guerber’s Myths of Northern Lands.

{120}

When the conception of the mother goddess of antiquity began to decay, a new faith spread and under a new name the old ideal was revived as Mary, Mother of God, Maria Theotokos; the star of the sea, or Stella Maris; and the Italian fishermen sing to her the beautiful lines,

THE ORIGIN OF WOMAN.

THE problem of womanhood has found different expressions in different ages. In prehistoric times all great questions were answered mythologically. Cosmogeny and anthropogeny, including gynecogeny, were expressed in stories of gods, while in later periods the same facts remained and found different solutions in religious dogmas and still later in scientific investigations.

The same subjects have been treated in a different spirit during the Christian era and again differently still under the influence of a scientific world-conception. Socrates respected the gods but he no longer believed in them as personalities. He explained them as signifying some facts of experience. To him love found expression in a belief in Aphrodite and in her powerful son, Eros. Further, his disciple Plato explains to us the significance of love and devotes a special dialogue to a discussion of its meaning in every aspect. This dialogue of Plato’s, the Symposium, may truly be characterized as the most poetical and most interesting discussion of{122} Greek philosophy. It tells of a banquet to which Agathon has invited his friends, among whom we find the philosopher Socrates, the poet Aristophanes (the disciple of Socrates), Pausanias, Phaedrus and some others. After dinner Phaedrus proposes to make speeches in honor of love, and Pausanias begins by drawing a distinction between heavenly and earthly love, extolling the former and giving scant praise to the latter. Aristophanes is the next speaker, but, being prevented by a severe hiccup from taking up the discussion, gives precedence to Eryximachus, the physician. This speaker approves the distinction made by Pausanias, but generalizes the conception of love by regarding it as a universal principle, bringing about the harmony that regulates nature in the course of the seasons in its relations of moist and dry, hot and cold, etc., and whose absence is marked by diseases of all sorts. Aristophanes, having recovered from his hiccup, proposes to offer a new explanation setting forth a novel theory of the origin of human nature. We quote extracts from the translation of Jowett:

“Primeval man was round, his back and sides forming a circle; and he had four hands and four feet, one head with two faces, looking opposite ways, set on a round neck and precisely alike; also four ears, two privy members and the remainder to correspond. He could walk upright as men now do, backward and forward as he pleased, and he could also roll over and over at a great pace, turn{123}ing on his four hands and four feet, eight in all, like tumblers going over and over with their legs in the air; this was when he wanted to run fast.... Terrible was their might and strength, and the thoughts of their hearts were great, and they made an attack upon the gods; of them is told the tale of Otys and Ephialtes who, as Homer says, dared to scale heaven, and would have laid hands upon the gods. Doubt reigned in the celestial councils. Should they kill them and annihilate the race with thunderbolts, as they had done the giants, then there would be an end of the sacrifices and worship which men offered to them; but, on the other hand, the gods could not suffer their insolence to be unrestrained. At last, after a good deal of reflection, Zeus discovered a way. He said: ‘Methinks I have a plan which will humble their pride and improve their manners; men shall continue to exist, but I will cut them in two and then they will be diminished in strength and increased in numbers; this will have the advantage of making them more profitable to us. They shall walk upright on two legs, and if they continue insolent and will not be quiet, I will split them again and they shall hop about on a single leg.’ He spoke and cut men in two, like a sorb-apple which is halved for pickling, or as you might divide an egg with a hair; and as he cut them one after another, he bade Apollo give the face and half of the neck a turn in order that the man might contemplate the section of himself: he would{124} thus learn a lesson of humility. Apollo was also bidden to heal their wounds and compose their forms. So he gave a turn to the face and pulled the skin from the sides all over that which in our language is called the belly, like the purses which draw in, and he made one mouth at the center which he fastened in a knot (the same which is called the navel); he also moulded the breast and took out most of the wrinkles, much as a shoemaker might smooth leather upon a last; he left a few, however, in the region of the belly and navel, as a memorial of the primeval state. After the division the two parts of man, each desiring his other half, came together, and throwing their arms about one another, entwined in mutual embraces, longing to grow into one, they were on the point of dying from hunger and self-neglect, because they did not like to do anything apart; and when one of the halves died and the other survived, the survivor sought another mate, man or woman as we call them—being the sections of entire men or women—and clung to that.”

This ingenious theory of primitive man as a union of two human creatures is perhaps older than Plato and may not be original with him. At any rate the Biblical passage in Gen. i. 27 and Gen. ii 21-22 may also have been given the interpretation of man’s creation of Adam and Eve. The oldest texts read plainly: “And God created man in his image, in the image of God created he him, male and female{125} created he them”; but it has been pointed out that the same primitive man is here spoken of, first in the singular as “him,” and then at the end of the verse in the plural, “them.” The idea that originally Adam comprised in himself the nature of Eve as well is suggested by the story that Eve was taken out of the side of Adam and was formed from one of his ribs.

Obviously the idea expressed here in this passage of Genesis is ultimately the same as that of the Greek poet Aristophanes, and from the standpoint of modern physiology neither man nor woman is an individual, but the combination of two, viz., the father and mother. Each one of them, man alone or woman alone, is but a one-sided half of human existence. Each, by itself alone, is doomed to die; both together are immortal.

The Genesis story of the creation of woman is portrayed in many of the artistic representations of the creation of Eve.

Suggestions made to explain the original story of the creation of man in the sense suggested by Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium, may not be tenable but they are not altogether senseless.

We must consider that primitive legends have originated from curiosity with regard to some problem that has presented itself to man in the childhood of the race. In our present case we have to deal with the question why the ribs of man’s chest do not entirely enclose the body, but leave unprotected{126} an opening in the middle, the so-called procardium, where they turn upward. The primitive answer to this problem was the story we have been discussing, and thence the notion seems implied that before Eve, the feminine portion of man, had been taken out of his side he must have been an androgynous being, and we will add that there is a scientific truth underlying this primitive idea.

Living substance is originally asexual, or rather bisexual,[32] and in its primitive state it is immortal. A moner does not experience what we call death; unless it is crushed or destroyed by poison, it lives on and grows. When it outgrows its proper size it divides into two parts. It does not die; nor does it beget a young moner; it divides. There are two new moners, but there is not a mother and a child; the two are coordinate. Both are mothers and both are children. Death is not the original lot of life. Death comes into the world by birth. Life in itself can be destroyed by physical violence or by chemical means, but if it is not thus destroyed it is unending; or, in other words, immortality is a fact.

The differentiation of life into two sexes places a limit upon the existence of the differentiated parts. Each individual grows to a definite size and is limited to a definite span of duration: “The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength, labor and sorrow.{127}”

The story of the garden of Eden was given a symbolical interpretation at an early date. We read in Origen’s refutation of Celsus (Book IV, Chapter XXXVIII):

“In the next place, as it is his object to slander our scriptures, he [Celsus] ridicules the following statement: ‘And God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib, which he had taken from the man, made he a woman,’ and so on; without quoting the words which would give the hearer the impression that they are spoken with a figurative meaning. He would not even have it appear that the words were used allegorically, although he says afterward, that ‘the more modest among Jews and Christians are ashamed of these things, and endeavor to give them somehow an allegorical signification.’”

It is not an accident that the fruit of the tree of life was conceived by Christians at an early date as an apple or pomegranate, the symbol of Aphrodite. We must assume that the apples of the Hesperides which Hercules was requested to obtain, and also the apples of Iduna bestowing immortality upon the Teutonic gods, possess ultimately the same significance as the apple of Eve.

*  *  *

We do not mean to gather here all the traditions about the origin of woman, but we will quote two accounts from a modern book of Hindu tales, called{128} A Digit of the Moon and Other Love Stories from the Hindu, and translated from the original manuscripts by F. W. Bain. Here we are told of a king who falls in love with a princess when he sees her picture. He leaves his kingdom in the hands of his ministers and travels out in search of his love, accompanied by his faithful companion Rasakósha.[33] The passage containing the story of the origin of woman reads thus:

“One day, as they rested at noon beneath the thick shade of a Kadamba[34] tree, the King gazed for a long time at the portrait of his mistress. And suddenly he broke silence, and said, ‘Rasakósha, this is a woman. Now, a woman is the one thing about which I know nothing. Tell me, what is the nature of women?’ Then Rasakósha smiled, and said: ‘King, you should certainly keep this question to ask the Princess; for it is a hard question. A very terrible creature indeed is a woman, and one formed of strange elements. A propos, I will tell you a story: listen.

“‘In the beginning, when Twashtri[35] came to the{129} creation of woman, he found that he had exhausted his materials in the making of man, and that no solid elements were left. In this dilemma, after profound meditation, he did as follows: He took the rotundity of the moon, and the curves of creepers, and the clinging of tendrils, and the trembling of grass, and the slenderness of the reed, and the bloom of flowers, and the lightness of leaves, and the tapering of the elephant’s trunk, and the glances of deer, and the clustering of rows of bees,[36] and the joyous gaiety of sunbeams, and the weeping of clouds, and the fickleness of the winds, and the timidity of the hare, and the vanity of the peacock, and the softness of the parrot’s bosom, and the hardness of adamant, and the sweetness of honey, and the cruelty of the tiger, and the warm glow of fire, and the coldness of snow, and the chattering of jays, and the cooing of the kókila,[37] and the hypocrisy of the crane, and the fidelity of the chakrawáka;[38] and compounding all these together, he made woman and gave her to man. But after one week man came to him and said: Lord, this creature that thou hast given me makes my life miserable. She chatters incessantly, and teases me beyond endurance, never leaving me alone: and she requires incessant attention, and takes all my time up, and{130} cries about nothing, and is always idle; and so I have come to give her back again, as I cannot live with her. So Twashtri said: Very well: and he took her back. Then after another week, man came again to him, and said: Lord I find that my life is very lonely since I gave back that creature. I remember how she used to dance and sing to me, and look at me out of the corner of her eye, and play with me, and cling to me; and her laughter was music, and she was beautiful to look at, and soft to touch: so give her back to me again. So Twashtri said: Very well: and gave her back again. Then after only three days, man came to him again, and said: Lord, I know not how it is; but after all, I have come to the conclusion that she is more of a trouble than a pleasure to me: so please take her back again. But Twashtri said: Out on you! Be off! I will have no more of this. You must manage how you can. Then man said: But I cannot live with her. And Twashtri replied: Neither could you live without her. And he turned his back on man and went on with his work. Then man said: What is to be done? for I cannot live either with or without her.’

“And Rasakósha ceased, and looked at the King. But the King remained silent, gazing intently at the portrait of the Princess.”

Another story, of like character, is told in the same book, on pages 372-374, only with the difference that it points out a lesson for woman that she{131} must cleave to her husband because she possesses no independent existence by herself. (The same, however, in the Indian story is not true of man.) This is the explanation the faithful wife Wanawallari gives to the Brahman who tempts her to leave her husband. She says:

“Once there was a time when there were neither men nor women, but the universe existed alone. And then one day, when the Creator was meditating with a view to further creation, he said to himself: ‘Something is wanting to complete the creation which I have created. It is blind, and unconscious of its own curious beauty and excellence.’ Thereupon he created a man. And instantly the creation became an object of wonder and beauty, being reflected like a picture in the mirror of the mind of the man. Then the man roamed alone in the world, wondering at the flowers and the trees and the animals, and at last he came to a pool. And he looked in and saw himself. Then full of astonishment, he exclaimed: ‘This is the most beautiful creature of all.’ And he hunted incessantly through the whole world to find it, not knowing that he was looking for himself. But when he found that in spite of all his endeavors he could never do more than see it on the surface of pools, he became sad and ceased to care about anything. Then the Creator, perceiving it, said to himself: ‘Ha! this is a difficulty which I never foresaw, arising naturally from the beauty of my work. But now, what is to{132} be done? For here is this man, whom I made to be a mirror for my world, snared in the mirror of his own beauty. So I must somehow or other cure this evil. But I cannot make another man, for there would be two centers to the circle of the universe. Neither can I add anything to the circumference of nature, for it is perfect in itself. There is necessary, therefore, some third thing: not real, for then it would disturb the balance of the universe; nor unreal, for then it would be nothing: but poised on the border between reality and nonentity.’ So he collected the reflections on the surface of the pools, and made of them a woman. But she, as soon as she was made, began to cry. And she said: ‘Alas! alas! I am, and I am not.’ Then said the Creator: ‘Thou foolish intermediate creature, thou art a nonentity only when thou standest alone. But when thou art united to the man, thou art real in participation with his substance.’ And thus, O Brahman, apart from her husband a woman is a nonentity and a shadow without a substance: being nothing but the mirror of himself, reflected on the mirror of illusion.”

*  *  *

Early Christian art took little or no interest in the parents of mankind. So far as we can discover neither the catacombs of Rome nor Christian sarcophagi are adorned with representations of Adam and Eve. Wherever they may occur they are rare exceptions. There is no trace of them in the fondi{133} d’oro (gold-bottomed glasses), nor in the mosaics. In painting they become more and more frequent in the beginning of the Middle Ages, and we reproduce here, as one of the oldest representations of the subject, a picture from the so-called Alcuin Bible preserved in the British Museum.

ADAM AND EVE CALLED TO ACCOUNT.

From the so-called Alcuin Bible (9th cent.)

{134}

The name “Alcuin Bible” is not justified, for the work dates from some time after Alcuin; but after all it comes from his school, and the book was produced in Tours about the middle of the ninth century, still showing the influence of the brilliant scholar of Charlemagne’s court.

We will say here that the so-called Alcuin Bible is severely criticized by Anton Springer on account of “the ugliness of its figures,” but there is more to be seen in this picture than mere awkwardness of style. The psychology of the picture here reproduced is exceedingly good. The eyes of Adam and Eve, and of the Lord in rebuking them, show real appreciation of the mental processes of the individuals. God walks into the garden with his finger raised, like a teacher who rebukes children caught stealing apples. God’s finger is not straight, a fact which presupposes a close observation of life. His eyes express kindliness as well as admonition, while Adam and Eve stand conscience-stricken by the side of the tree. They do not dare to look into the face of God, and Adam, with his clumsy hand, points to Eve as the cause of the evil, while her face expresses admission, though in her turn she lays the blame on the snake which stands erect at her left.

It is true that the technique is abominable. The heads are ridiculously large, and the hands are out of proportion. The bodies do not express the beauty generally credited to both Adam and Eve as the{135} most perfect handiwork of God. The paints in the picture are reported to be no better than the drawing. The flesh is of a gray color shaded with maroon streaks. In contrast to the sickly and poverty-stricken appearance of the human couple the good Lord is dressed in gold, like a wealthy nobleman of the age, and the scene is shown to be in Paradise by the trees too being overlaid with gold. Nevertheless the situation is very clearly a garden, copied from nature, and the very story, with all its details, could be reconstructed from this picture.

In time, with the advance of art, the figures of Adam and Eve come more and more to assume the artistic appearance of natural beauty. Adam and Eve represent mankind in its primitive state, devoid of spirituality but perfect in health and vigor. It is noteworthy that Christian art portrays in them paganism in its rudeness and ignorance, and so they acquire a certain relationship to Greek antiquity.

In the Renaissance we reach a perfection in the figures of Adam and Eve which attains the ideal of classical beauty. Every painter believed it his duty to represent the two fatal scenes, the fall of man and the expulsion from Paradise. Similar scenes also begin to appear in sculptured reliefs. A scene on one side of the large pillars in the front of the cathedral at Orvieto is devoted to the subject of Eve’s creation.

The creation of man and woman is the first scene portrayed on Ghiberti’s great bronze entrance-doors of the baptistery at Florence. These beautiful{136}

THE CREATION OF WOMAN.

Relief on the cathedral of Orvieto (14th cent.)

reliefs represent the beginning of a new and greater period of art. It is Ghiberti’s merit to have created an originally Christian conception quite different from the classical reliefs of plastic art. We observe in his work evidence of a close study of garments and draperies, and the attempt to bring out not only{137} bodily beauty but a spiritual expression and allegorical meaning. Most of the characters presented are plainly portraits of men and women who have served as living models.

DETAIL FROM GHIBERTI’S DOORS.

First panel.

In the lower left corner of this panel on Ghiberti’s door God is creating man. In the center he is raising Eve from the side of the sleeping Adam, who lies prostrate on the ground. God is here always surrounded and assisted by angels, who lift up Eve while the good Lord watches her rise. In the middle{138} left part of the picture we see Adam and Eve taking the apple from the serpent which is entwined about the tree between them. In the right corner our unfortunate ancestors are being driven out of Paradise. Eve stands in despair, while Adam is visible in the rear.

THE CREATION OF WOMAN. By Michelangelo (15th cent.)

{139}

ADAM AND EVE IN PARADISE.

By Gustave Doré.

{140}

THE FIRST FAMILY. By Schnorr von Carolsfeld.

Michelangelo’s Creation of Eve is represented on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, and is perhaps the most vigorous expression of the original strength of the mother of mankind. It will be observed that here too Eve comes from Adam’s side, although the picture seems to show her fully grown.{141}

From among the more modern pictures we reproduce a drawing by Gustave Doré representing Adam and Eve. Here we see them in their state of innocence, Eve being pictured as reclining on the ground, while Adam looks upon her in love and admiration.

Of the more recent pictures we will mention only those of Schnorr von Carolsfeld, who has succeeded most effectively in striking the proper traditional note in Bible illustrations. He represents Adam and Eve according to the dogmatic belief of Protestant Christianity. In the scene here reproduced they are portrayed after their expulsion from Paradise in their comfortable primitive home, where Adam, leaning on his hoe, rests from his labors while Eve sits in the background with a distaff in her hand, and their two sons are playing about them.

*  *  *

And now, in conclusion, the question as to the place of this theme in the art of the future. Has not the present generation lost interest in our ancestors? Since the legend is no longer believed literally, our artistic imagination is not attracted so strongly by it. The story of the fall of man has become an allegory, an interesting tale, but it is no longer a truth. We believe now in evolution, and so Gabriel Max has pictured a new Eve for us which is the mother of modern man,—the mother who bequeaths to her son a deeper comprehension of life and a truer insight into the nature of things.{142}

PRIMITIVE MAN.

By Gabriel Max.

{143}

The picture is at first sight repulsive, but the more we look at it and the more we study the artist’s intentions, the more it grows on us. Here is a primitive couple of the ape-man type, fossil remains of which have been found in the Neanderthal, in Cannstatt and in Spy. They must have been very savage, and we shudder at their appearance. How unpleasant it would be to meet such creatures in a lonely forest! The male is very brutish while the female shows traces of a dawning intelligence.

Verily, we discover in this scene represented by Gabriel Max a close resemblance to pictures of the holy family. And considered rightly, the similarity is by no means fortuitous, for here we have indeed a holy family. It is an uncultured primitive couple of a speechless tribe of forest men, yet the hope of progress and a brave determination to take up the battle of life for the sake of the babe that is born to them becomes visible in the mother’s eyes.

After all, the wife of homo alalus, of the primitive speechless man, is still the same Eve. There is the same sacrifice of motherlove, the same determination of bringing to life the man of the future, the higher, better, nobler man, whose life will be much more worth living than was her own.

This is the secret of life, that we live not for ourselves but for others. If mankind were one great immortal being, how monotonous life would be; how egotistical would all our aspirations become!{144} But nature renders all egotism futile. None of us finds an abiding home here on earth; we pass away and new generations fill the places we leave vacant.

Daily the world grows older, and yet it remains ever young. There is the same happiness, the same bliss and joy that ever thrilled the heart of a mother. Christianity has abolished Venus, the great mother goddess, but Eve has taken her place; and if Eve too is to be deposed, mankind will still cling to the old idea of eternal womanhood, the patron of love and loveliness, of wifehood and of motherhood.{145}

APHRODITE IN ART.

BABYLONIAN CLAY FIGURES.

THE oldest assured statues of Venus, of an all-nourishing mother goddess, are perhaps the little figurines frequently found in Mesopotamia representing “the Lady” or Beltis (the feminine of{146} Bel, “the Lord”) in the shape of a naked woman, sometimes with a child in her arms; but we may fairly well assume that even the artists of the stone age took up this all-absorbing subject, and if this be the case we may be justified in calling the torso of a naked female figure discovered in Brassempouy, a Venus,—so far the oldest Venus that has come down to us.

THE VENUS OF BRASSEMPOUY.

{147}

LAKSHMI.

In the Musée Guimet.

{148}

A CILICIAN COIN.

COIN OF TARSUS.

COIN OF GAULOS.

COIN OF PERGA.

In India the goddess of beauty was revered under the name of Lakshmi, and we need not doubt that she still finds worshipers among the Hindu population of to-day, but there are no statues left of the age of ancient Brahmanism. All monuments are of comparatively late origin; in fact the large mass of Hindu idols is quite modern, although it represents art and religious notions of a typically primitive character.

Another and, as it seems, independent development can be traced from the worship of stone pillars or bethels. A bethel, i. e., “house of God,” well known from the Bible as a monument of divine{149} revelation, developed gradually into the representation of a stiff female figure like the Diana of Ephesus, but we cannot doubt that the primitive idea of it was the worship of an all-nourishing mother. From her the Greek conception of the chaste moon goddess, the virgin Artemis or Diana, developed in course of time; but the Diana of Ephesus still preserves symbols of a pantheistic conception of the All under the allegory of a mother goddess. (For illustrations see pages 152 and 153.)

COINS OF PERGA IN PAMPHYLIA.

THREE ARTEMIS MEDALS.

Among the Semites the oldest bethels, or houses of God, were pillars of stone. We need not assume{150} that they were gods or goddesses, for judging from Biblical information they may be interpreted as monuments marking a holy place, i. e., a spot where a deity had revealed himself in some way.

The primitive form of a bethel,[39] or as the Greeks transcribed the Phenician term, βαίτυλος, has often been represented on coins. Sometimes two columns are placed, one on each side, and the stone is frequently accompanied with the symbols of the goddess, fruit and eggs; sometimes doves perch on the sanctuary; sometimes the pillar is covered with a temple roof. We know one instance in which it bears the symbol of a Latin cross and gradually it assumes in a coarse style the features of a woman. Such is the beginning of the manufacture of idols which at first are extremely stiff and assume only gradually—indeed very slowly—an artistic shape.

COIN OF ANTIOCHUS EUERGETES.

ISTAR ON A COIN OF TARSUS.

{151}

COIN OF EMESA.

COIN OF IASOS CARIA.

COIN OF PAPHOS, CYPRUS.

COIN OF IULIA GORDUS, LYDIA.

At the dawn of the historic age the oldest Greek statues and paintings of Venus show her fully robed and draped. Great numbers of Aphrodite amulets of small size and made of glazed terra-cotta have been found mainly on the Ægean islands where her cult had spread from Babylon and Syria. They resemble the Babylonian Beltis statuettes in having{152}

THE DIANA OF EPHESUS IN THE VATICAN.

After a photograph.

{153}

THE DIANA OF EPHESUS.

Alabaster statue now in the museum of Naples. (Roscher, Lex., I, col. 588.)

{154}

the arms crossed over the breast, but as a rule their hips are unnaturally broad. Some of them have a bird’s (possibly a pigeon’s) head and all have large ears with earrings.

The very oldest real statues of Aphrodite, products of primitive manufacture, have been lost, and none of the temple idols have survived Christian iconoclasm, but we have information that Kanachus[40] in the sixth century before Christ, and Kalamis, Phidias and Alcamenes in the fifth, have represented the goddess as dignified and severe. We reproduce here drawings of archaic statues fully dressed. Some of them are still awkward but give evidence of the artist’s reverence. An archaic Venus of the style familiar in Pompeii was formerly regarded as a Moera but to-day after Gerhard’s interpretation it is considered as a Venus Proserpina.

CYPRIAN APHRODITE.[41]

The statue by Kalamis which once stood upon the Acropolis at Athens and was called Aphrodite Sosandra[42] is also fully dressed, but much more graceful. A veil is tied about her hair, and in her right hand the goddess is clasping some{155} folds of her upper garment, while her extended left hand holds a pomegranate blossom.

ARCHAIC APHRODITE WITH DOVE. Roscher, Lex., I, 409.

ARCHAIC VENUS IN POMPEIAN STYLE.

Among the Attic votive reliefs there is one interpreted as Aphrodite and Ares,[43] which shows{156}

APHRODITE SOSANDRA BY KALAMIS.

From Roscher, Lex., I, col. 412.

Aphrodite unveiling her face to Ares. She holds a pitcher in her right hand and is pouring its contents into a vessel in his hands. It is also to be noted that the action takes place above an empty altar. The child{157} behind her in this connection can only represent her son Eros.

In the National Museum at Rome there is an Attic sculpture of the fifth century which is somewhat bolder in showing the outlines of the figure. This Aphrodite is clad in a very diaphanous garment, the left breast being quite uncovered.

APHRODITE AND ARES.

Votive relief from Monuments grecs, Pl. I.

In the beautiful statue by Alcamenes, a copy of{158}

ATTIC SCULPTURE OF THE FIFTH CENTURY B. C.

In the National Museum at Rome.

which is still preserved in the Louvre, the dress seems to be of slightly heavier texture and the posture more simple and dignified. In her left hand the goddess holds a pomegranate and is lifting with{159}

APHRODITE OF ALCAMENES, KNOWN AS VENUS GENETRIX.

{160}

her right hand a corner of her drapery above her right shoulder.

HEAD OF THE CNIDIAN VENUS.

It was in the days of the highest development of{161}

THE CNIDIAN VENUS OF PRAXITELES.

In the Vatican Museum at Rome.

{162}

Greek art that the greatest artists dared to show the goddess of love in perfect nudity. The statues of Phidias still retain the severe expression of her divine character, but Praxiteles endeavors to show her beauty as in primitive times without any dress, in a careless but graceful and artistic pose. So at least appears the most authoritative record of her appearance on the Cnidian coin. Other statues, especially the Vatican marble known as the Venus of Praxiteles, are partly dressed. It is assumed that many replicas of ancient masterpieces did not follow their originals in all details.

THE VENUS OF PRAXITELES ON A CNIDIAN COIN.

From Roscher, Lex., I, col. 416.

This statue of Praxiteles was ordered by the Cnidians from the artist for public worship, and when finished they placed it in the temple of Aphrodite Euploia built especially to serve as a shrine for{163}

HEAD OF THE CROUCHING VENUS.

this piece of art. The goddess was the patroness of the island of Cnidos and therefore her image was impressed upon the Cnidian coins as the great artist had depicted her. The best copies of the Cnidian{164}

VENUS CROUCHING IN THE BATH.

In the Vatican.

{165}

Aphrodite are preserved in the Vatican and in the Glyptothek at Munich.

VENUS WITH THE UNGUENT JAR.

In the Vatican.

The Vatican is rich in Venus statues of a similar{166} type which have been worked out in the spirit of Praxiteles, and we here reproduce photographs of what has been called the crouching Venus and also the Venus with the unguent jar.

These statues of Aphrodite in the Vatican and most others produced in the latter portion of the classical period of Greek art are entirely nude, but with the exception of the very latest ones we must grant that they are endowed with divine dignity. An improper feature enters only when nudity betrays either an intentional display, with a pretense of prudery, or an obvious purpose to excite sensuality. Originally these features are foreign to the Greek goddess and develop only with the decay of Hellenic civilization. They appear obtrusively in the so-called Venus of Medici, and worse still in the so-called Venus Kalypygos, in this way justifying to some extent the harsh opinion of Christian pietists who have vitiated our notion of Greek deities down to the present day. From the standpoint here taken I may be permitted to omit entirely any reproduction of pictures of this latest phase of the artistic conception of Venus.

Among the portrayals of Venus we deem two recent discoveries worthy of reproduction on account of their sweetness and gracefulness. One is the Venus of Panderma and the other a bust found in a wrecked ship by sponge divers at the bottom of the sea off the African coast in the Mediterranean. The former was found in a shipwreck near the coast{167}

THE VENUS OF PANDERMA.

Front view.

of Panderma in the year 1884, together with coins of the time of Lysimachos. It is made of Parian marble and shows the goddess standing near a small pillar over which her garment is hung. She is represented at the moment when her hands are tying a long ribbon around her head to hold up her curly hair which falls back behind the ears. Furtwängler and Salomon Reinach have devoted much attention{168} to the statue, the latter in his Répertoire de la statuaire grecque et romaine, and both praise highly the beauty of the goddess.

THE VENUS OF PANDERMA.

Rear view.

The head of the goddess Venus now preserved in the museum at Bardos near Tunis must have lain hidden for over two thousand years. It had{169}

THE VENUS HEAD IN THE MUSEUM OF BARDOS.

{170}

probably been ordered by lovers of art living in Africa and never reached its place of destination. The shells which cover part of the bust have happily not attacked the features of the goddess and so the beauty of the face is left unmarred.{171}

CLASSICAL HYMNS.

THE worship of Aphrodite in the days of classical paganism is best characterized by two hymns attributed to Homer, but it must be understood that this whole class of poetry constitutes Homeric apocrypha of a comparatively late date. We quote the original from the Teubner edition:

A versified translation of our own reads thus:

HEAD OF THE CNIDIAN VENUS.

Front view.

{173}

Here is another hymn, not less charming:

Translated into English verse the hymn reads:

ANOTHER VIEW OF THE CNIDIAN VENUS.

{176}

The nature of Venus as the mother of the universe, the mistress of existence, and the representative of all that is charming and lovely endeared her to the philosopher as well as to the poet, and so in Rome at a later day even the freethinker among classical poets, Titus Lucretius, dedicated to her his philosophical book of poetry, De rerum natura, in these often quoted words:[44]

*  *  *

The temples of Aphrodite lie in ruins, and her worship is abandoned; but the ideal of womanhood which she represented has remained to this day, and will remain so long as mankind will continue to exist on earth. The artist of the statue of Milo has left us an unsurpassed interpretation of this ideal which even in its mutilated condition is noble and beautiful. At the same time nature does not cease to actualize the type in every living woman that has been born into the world. Each one of them with all her individual traits, her preferences and even her feminine faults is a specimen of the eternal ideal of womanhood—the divinity of love, of grace, of charm, of beauty, a source of inspiration as well as of physical and intellectual creativeness.

The ancient paganism has passed away and will never come back, but because its superstitions are gone we need no longer scorn its gods. We can recognize their grandeur, their nobility, their beauty, yea their truth; and if we contemplate the representation of their ideals in Greek art, we must own that the Venus of Milo is not the least among them.{179}

INDEX.

A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, Z

Adonis, Death of, 76.
Æneas, 74.
Æschylus, 74.
Agesander or Alexander of Antioch, 14, 17, 20, 21, 51.
Alcamenes, 154, 157-159.
Alcard, 44.
Alcuin Bible, 133-135.
Amazon, Etymology of, 63.
Anchises, 68;
and Aphrodite, 74, 75.
Antiochus Euergetes, 150.
Antiochus Soter, 17.
Aphrodite, and Ares, 155-157;
as a universal principle, 65, 73;
Birth of, 62, 69;
Cypris, 65;
Etymology of the name, 62, 64;
Euploia, 162;
Pandemos, 67;
Sosandra, 154, 156;
Urania, 67, 74;
Worship of, 55, 68-75.
Apple, emblem of mother-goddess, 98;
emblem of Venus, 25;
held in hand, 7, 9, 10, 12, 14, 25, 30, 33, 44, 45, 47;
Melos means, 1, 25;
of empire, 39-40.
Archaic Venus, 154-155.
Ares, Aphrodite and, 155-157.
Artemis, 149.
Astarte, 69, 107;
A later, 105;
and the Dove, 100;
in Cyprus, 106, 110;
Sargent’s, 108, 110;
Worship of, 55.
Asurbanipal, 79, 80.
Athene, 69, 77, 79;
Worship of, 56.
Athens, 54, 56, 67.

Babylon, Trinity in, 98.
{180}Bacchus, 14.
Bain, F. W., 128.
Bajot, 5n.
Bardos, 168, 169.
Battle on the beach, 43, 46-47, 49.
Bell, T., 31.
Bellona, 77.
Beltis, 73, 145, 151.
Benten, 110, 113.
Bethel, 148-150.
Birth, of Aphrodite, 62, 69, 70;
of Syrian goddess, 71.
Boghaz-Köi, 103-105.
Bottonis, Antonio, 2, 45.
Bottonis, Yorgos, a Greek peasant, 2, 5, 9, 10, 11, 13, 44.
Bottonis, Yorgos, Jr., 45.
Brassempouy, Venus of, 146.
Brest, Louis, 3, 46.
Buddha, Kwan-Yon as the, 112, 115.

Cæsar, 74, 75.
Capua, 55.
Carolsfeld, Schnorr von, 140-141.
Carus, The Bride of Christ, 107;
Soul of Man, 126.
Castro in Melos, 2, 12, 45, 46.
Century Magazine, 2, 6.
Charm of statue, 26, 27.
“Chevrette,” 3, 5.
Christian Trinity, 98-99.
Christianity, 56, 74, 144.
Chthonian Venus, 75, 83, 85.
Clarac, Count de, 13, 15, 50;
Report of, 48.
Cnidian Venus, 160-163, 172.
{181}Cnidos, 73, 163.
Condition of statue, 9-10, 24, 43, 45, 48, 49.
Conybeare, F. C., 56.
Conze, 21.
Corinth, Hierodules in, 74.
Coronet, 24.
Creation, Greek legend of, 62;
Maori legend of, 63n.
Creuzer, 36.
Crouching Venus, 163, 164, 166.
Cyprian Aphrodite, 154.
Cyprus, 76, 107;
Astarte in, 106, 110.

Date of statue, 20, 52.
David, 15.
Debay, Auguste, 15;
Drawing of, 16, 21.
Del Mar, Alexander, 37, 39-40.
Del Mar, Francisca Paloma, 37, 38.
Demeter, 69.
Descent into Hades, 76, 83-95.
Description of statue, 6-8, 22-25, 41, 42, 45, 51, 52.
Diana of Ephesus, 149, 152-153.
Dionæa, 67.
Dione, 65.
Discovery of statue, 2, 5-6, 44.
Dodona, 67.
Doré, Gustave, 139, 141.
Dove, 98, 102;
Astarte and the, 100;
Venus sending out the, 36, 37.

Egypt, Trinity in, 98.
Eleusinian mysteries, 83.
Ephesus, Diana of, 149, 152-153.
Epithets of Aphrodite, 65, 67.
Eros, 27, 28, 65, 77n, 83;
in the underworld, 84;
Statue of, 28.
“Estafette,” 3, 4, 43, 46, 47.
Eve, Adam and, in art, 132-141;
Apple of, 127, 138;
Creation of, 125, 127, 135, 138, 140.

Fanaticism, 27, 60.
Farnell, Lewis Richard, 83.
Ferry, Jules, 52;
Report of, 45-47.
{182}Figulus, Nigidius, 71.
Fish, 103;
Isis with the, 102;
Kwan-Yon with the, 110-111;
of the Euphrates, 71;
on Friday, 117.
Foam-born, 62, 69.
Fragments, 2, 6, 10, 11, 12n, 13, 43, 47, 53.
Freer, Charles L., 114.
Freya, 117-120.
Furtwängler, 167;
Restoration by, 33.

“Galaxidion,” 46, 48.
Gauttier, 5n.
Gerhard, 154.
Ghiberti, 135-138.
Gilchrist, Edward, 86n.
Glyptothek, 165.
Greek, legend of creation, 62;
philology, 63;
religion, 27.
Guerber, H. A., 117, 119.

Hades, Descent into, 76, 83-95.
Halo, 39-40.
Hasse and Henke, 32, 33.
Hawk, Human-headed, 98.
Heine, Heinrich, 27.
Helios, 40.
Hephæstos, 68.
Hera (Juno), 24;
Worship of, 56.
Heracles, 14, 127;
Etymology of, 63.
Hermae, 6, 7, 8, 13.
Hermes, 14;
(psychopompos), 83.
Hesiod, 62.
Hesperides, Apple of the, 127.
Hierapolis, 102.
Hirt, 77.
History of the statue, 52-60.
Holy Ghost, 98.
Homer, 65.
Homeric hymns, 171-176.
Hypatia, 60.

Idols, Beginning of, 150.
Iduna, Apples of, 127.
India, Trinity in, 98.
Inscription, on plinth, 15, 17;
{183}Votive, 8, 13-14, 50.
Isis, and Horus, 99;
and the fish, 102, 103;
Worship of, 55.
Istar, 71, 79, 80, 81, 107;
and Tammuz, 86;
Carrying in procession the symbol of, 97;
on coin of Tarsus, 150;
Worship of, 55.
Istar’s Descent to Hell, 85-95.

Jeremias, Dr. Alfred, 85.
Jesus, 84.
Jowett, 122-126.

Kalamis, 154, 156.
Kalypygos, Venus, 166.
Kanachus, 154.
K’ang Hi, 116.
Kirchhoff, 17.
Kronos, 62.
Kwan-Yon, as the Buddha, 112, 115;
by Li Lung-mien, 114;
Poem on, 112;
with the fish, 110-111.

Lady, 69, 73, 78, 96, 145.
Lakshmi, 147.
Lang, Andrew, 63n.
Lange, M., 49.
Lenormant, Charles, 11, 50.
Lenormant, F., 99, 101.
Leonard, William Ellery, 176n.
Life, Secret of, 143.
“Lionne,” 4.
Louvre, 4, 10, 12, 25, 43, 48, 49, 53, 158;
Authorities of the, 14, 17, 42, 50.
Love, Goddess of, 22, 39, 64, 74, 75, 76, 83, 117-120, 144, 178;
Goddess of sexual, 67.
Lucian, 103.
Lucretius, Titus, 176.
Ludovisi relief, 70-73.
Lung-mien, Li, 114.
Lysimachos, 167.
Lysippos, 52.

Magna Dea, 96ff.
Man, Origin of, 122;
{184}Primitive, 142.
Maori legend of creation, 63n.
Marcellus, Viscount, 3, 9, 14, 39, 43, 53;
Report of, 11-13.
Marduk, 105.
Mary, Virgin, 64, 69, 71, 110, 115, 120;
Worship of, 37, 56.
Matriarchy, 96, 97.
Matterer, Lieutenant, 44, 47.
Max, Gabriel, 141-143.
Measurements of statue, 7-8.
Medici, Venus of, 166.
Melos, 1, 2, 45, 46, 47;
Inhabitants of, 39, 53;
Name of, 1, 7;
Site of, 6.
Michelangelo, 138, 140.
Mirror, Venus with, 30, 31.
Montaiglon, M. A., 5n.
Morusi, Nikolai, 3, 4.
Mother-goddess, The, 22, 68, 77, 96ff, 117, 120, 144.
Murillo, 109, 110.
Mutilation of statue, 7, 24, 27, 40, 42-43, 49, 53.

National Museum, 157, 158.
Navigation, Goddess of, 107.
Nebo, 81.
Nudity in art, 166;
of statue, 22, 24, 41.

Ohnefalsch-Richter, 106.
Oiconomos, 3.
Open Court, 110.
Oriental influence, 70-71, 96.
Original, Statue an, 20-21.
Orvieto, 135, 136.
Overbeck, 20.

Paganism, 55, 135, 178;
End of, 60, 68, 73.
Panderma, Venus of, 166-168.
Paphos, 73.
Paul, St., 84.
Pausanias, 54, 76, 154n.
Pedestal, 14, 17, 20.
Penitential psalm, 78.
{185}Pergamum, 21, 52.
Persephone, 76;
Myth of, 83.
Phidias, 52, 54, 73, 154, 162.
Philology of Greeks, 63.
Pinches, Theodore G., 78.
Pindar, 74.
Plato, 62, 67, 121, 124, 128n.
Pluto, 83.
Polytheism, 68.
Pomegranate, 83, 98, 127;
emblem of Venus, 76;
held in hand, 158.
Pompeian Venus, 154-155.
Praxiteles, 52, 160-163.
Preller, 76n, 154.
Prometheus, Etymology of, 63.
Purchase of statue, 3-4, 9.

Queen of heaven, 64, 69, 74, 96, 116.

Rabbit, 103.
Record-Herald, 44, 50.
Reinach, Salomon, 167.
Restorations, 27-41.
Rivière, Marquis de, 4, 9.
Robert, Commander, 46.
Roscher, 63n, 71n, 153, 154n, 155n, 156, 162.

Sailors, French, 4, 10, 49;
Turkish, 46.
Saloman, Geskel, 20;
Restorations by, 34, 35.
Sargent’s Astarte, 108, 110.
Schliemann, 107.
Scopas, 52.
Sculptor of the statue, 13, 21, 51, 52, 53.
Selene, 40.
Semiramis, 101.
Shield and pencil, Venus with, 29, 31.
Sistine Madonna, 25.
Socrates, 121.
Sophia, 99;
The gnostic, 98.
Soul, Egyptian, 98, 99.
Springer, Anton, 134.
Star of the sea, 120.
{186}Steinthal, H., 63n.
Swastika, 107.
Syrian goddess, 96, 103;
Birth of, 71.

Tacitus, 73.
Talbot, H. Fox, 79, 81.
Tammuz, 86.
Taylor, 63n.
Theodosius, 39.
Thiers, 45, 47.
T’ien Hou, 116.
Titian, 66, 67.
Tiumman, 79, 80;
Head of, 82.
Tomb of Aphrodite, 76.
Toulon, 5.
Tralles, Head of, 19, 20, 21.
Tree of life, 127.
Trinities, 98.
Turkish brig, 43, 46, 48.

Unguent jar, Venus with the, 165, 166.
Uranus and Gaia, 62.
Urville, Dumont d’, 3, 13, 14, 42-43, 44, 47;
Report of, 5-9.

Valentin, Veit, 25;
Restoration by, 37, 41.
Vatican, 152, 160-163, 164, 165.
Venice, Doves of, 103.
Venus Erycina, 77n;
Genetrix, 69, 75, 159;
Kalypygos, 166;
of Milo; full figure, 16, 23;
of Milo; head, fr., 18, 57, 59;
of Milo; restored, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 38;
on the swan, 55, 56;
Proserpina, 154;
Urania, 74;
Victrix, 75, 77, 78, 79;
Victrix, Statue called, 45, 47, 48;
Vulgaris, 74.
Victory, Venus of Milo as, 31.

War, Goddess of, 77-82.
Wings, 99.
Woermann, 102n.
Woman, Origin of, 127-132.

Zealotry, Outbursts of, 58.
Zeus, 65.

Greece

World

Index

Hellenica World - Scientific Library