“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:
:ΑΚΧΕΟΣΑΤΙΟΥΥΠΟΓΥ...........ΑΣ
ΤΑΝΤΕΕΞΕΔΡΑΝΚΑΙΤΟ.............
ΕΡΜΑΙΗΡΑΚΛΕΙ
“The pedestal of one of the hermae also bore an inscription but its characters had been so mutilated that it was impossible for me to decipher them.
“At the time of our passage to Constantinople the ambassador asked me about this statue and I told him what I thought about it, and sent to M. de Marcellus, secretary of the embassy, a copy of the inscription just given. Upon my return M. de Rivière informed me that he had acquired the statue for the museum and that it had been put on board one of the vessels at the landing. However, on our second trip to Milo in the month of September I regretted to learn that the affair was not yet ended. It seems that the peasant, tired of waiting, had decided to sell this statue for the sum of 750 piasters to a neighboring priest who wished to make a present to the dragoman of the Captain Pacha, and M. de Marcellus came just at the moment when it was being shipped to Constantinople. In despair at seeing this fine piece of antiquity about to escape him he made every effort to recover it, and thanks to the mediation of the primates of the island the priest finally consented, but not without reluctance, to abandon his purchase and give up the statue....
“On April 25 in the morning we doubled the promontory indicated....”
I understand from M. Dumont d’Urville’s report that the statue was in “two parts” each about three feet high, that both hands were mutilated and detached from the body,” and that he had reason to believe that the “left hand was raised and held an apple and the right supported a garment.” I say “he had reason to believe” it, but he positively speaks as if he had seen it although this cannot be the case, for he contradicts this fact by the unequivocal statement that the hands “are actually detached from the body.” He says, “it represented a nude woman, etc.” and the word “represented” need not mean that it was complete with all the limbs intact and in their proper places.
Obviously M. d’Urville here describes the statue restored with the fragments which were found in the cave, were bought of the finder, the peasant Bottonis, and are now preserved in a glass case in the Louvre at Paris. One of these fragments is a hand holding an apple, and there is also a portion of an arm.
This interpretation is important in so far as discussions have arisen in later years as to the original position of the hands when attempts to restore the statue were made, and then the claim was made that the statue had been found complete, that it had been broken by the French sailors in its transportation and that the French authorities had been careless in handling the whole affair.