On the track of Ulysses; Together with an excursion in quest of the so-called Venus of Melos / Two studies in archaeology, made during a cruise among the Greek islands

by William James Stillman

M. Dauriac, captain of the frigate La Bonté, writes from Melos, date 11th of April, 1820: “There has been found, three days ago, by a peasant who was digging in his field, a marble statue of Venus receiving the apple from Paris. It is larger than life; they have at this moment only the bust as far as the waist. I have been to see it.” Mr. Brest again writes, 12th of April: “A peasant has found in a field which belonged to him three marble statues, representing, one Venus holding the apple of discord in one hand, the other represents the god Hermes, and the third a young child.” The correspondence shows that Mr. Brest was entirely ignorant of everything connected with archæology or art. He probably heard one of the officers say that one of the objects was a Hermes, and he changes it into a statue of the god Hermes, but we see that there was only one Hermes. November 26th, Brest again writes: “His Excellency has left me orders to make researches in order to find the arms and other débris of the statue, but to do that it is necessary to obtain a bouyourouldon which will permit us to make excavations at our own expense, because in the same niche where it was found there is reason to hope that we might find other objects.”

The contradictions are so palpable that it is clear that these documents are only of value as secondary archæological evidence. No one seems to have made an observation with exactitude.

We have the whole statue found, in one, bound together by iron clamps; in another, only half had yet been found; in one, the statue is found holding the apple of discord in one hand; in another, receiving it from Paris; and in another still, we are told that search has been ordered for the arms, etc.

In 1865 I visited Melos, and having made the acquaintance of Mr. Brest, son and successor of the French consul who secured the statue for the Louvre, he politely offered to guide me through the ruins of the ancient city. Among other things, we visited the locality where the statue was found, and he showed me the niche still standing as when the discovery was made.

It was a slightly built work, of the height, as nearly as I can remember, of ten or at most twelve feet, and about five wide. It formed a part of an old boundary-wall of the field on which it opened, and above it the ground was level with the crown of the arch of the niche. It had no suite or connection with any other structure, except the boundary-wall in which it was, and there were no evidences of ruin or of foundation of antique buildings about it. The opening had been closed with rubbish, not with masonry, as was evident from the face of the side walls, which were of smooth, if not carefully laid, masonry. If as I believe not built for the concealment of the statue, it had been made for some unimportant purpose; perhaps the protection from the weather of the poor Hermes which is said to have been found with it. C. Doupault, architect, has published a brochure with what he supposed important evidence on the question, in which, from data given him by old Brest twenty-seven years after the discovery, he reconstructs the apse of a seventh-century church, in which he places the statue. The whole study has no value whatever, as the sketch does not correspond with the ruins which I saw, and looking back to the correspondence quoted, it is clear that Brest, knowing nothing of archæology or art, caught at certain suggestions of the officers who saw the statue, and affirmed what they surmised. As to the fragments found, to which constant reference is made, there is not the slightest evidence that they were found in any connection with the statue, as none of the early evidence indicates that they were known when the statue was first taken under notice—on the contrary, it is said explicitly by Brest that he had orders to make researches to find the arms and other portions of the statue; indicating clearly that the arms alluded to had not been found with the statue, and that the connection between them and it was an after-thought, either of the peasant, who wished to increase the value of the statue by connecting with it fragments which he had found in other parts, or of the archæologists, who, seeking to restore the statue to what they judged to be its true action, connected the arm found, no one knows where, except at Melos, with the statue. It is undeniable that when the letters before quoted were written, there had been only conjecture as to the arms. Dauriac, writing on the 11th of April, says that they have only found the bust. Brest, November 26th, says that there is reason to hope that they might find other objects in the same niche—proof that it had not even then been cleared out. In fact, all we have of documentary evidence goes for nothing beyond showing that the statue was found at a certain place on a certain date; and if the two halves of the statue did not fit exactly we could not be certain that they were found at the same time and place. The hypothesis of the apple of discord is based on a conjecture of some of the officers, and has no further confirmation than that an arm and hand, with what may be an apple or a cup, seem to have been found somewhere in the island about the same time; but they evidently are not of the statue, nor even of the same epoch.

Over or somewhere near the niche an inscription was said to have been found which records the dedication of an exedra by a gymnasiarch to Hercules and Hermes. The date of this inscription, according to conjecture based on the inscription itself, is about a century before Christ, i. e., long after any possibility of such a work being produced had gone by.

These are all the positive data we have to work on. They suffice, however, for about twenty monographs in French, German, and English; and a late German work, by Dr. Goeler von Ravensburg, exhausts all the possible and impossible conjectures to establish its character in accordance with the original attribution of a Venus receiving the apple.

In the year 1880, I made another visit to Melos, on commission from “The Century” magazine, to photograph whatever might remain which had any connection with the statue; but found the niche gone, and no trace of foundations of any kind, or walls, city or other, very near the spot which was again pointed out to me as that where the Venus was found.

It would seem that in the energetic excavation that followed the last great archæological revival, everything that was suspected to conceal works of art had been dug away.

I found an old man, a pilot well known in our navy, Kypriotis, who had seen the statue when it was brought out, being a boy of about fourteen. At that time Mr. Brest was a child, and retained only slight personal recollection of the event; but it was evident that he, like his father in 1847, had mingled in his impressions conjecture of others and his own, with facts perverted, and details conceived without sufficient basis. Nothing new was to be got.