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I/O ROMAN DAYS.
It is that question which is now in the order of the
day, among the friends of art in France, since Jean Aicard,
a few months since, published his " La V^nus de Milo :
RechercJics sur VHistoire de la de’coiiverte, dapres des do-
cuments inc’dits.
Until then, it had been affirmed, entirely without
contradiction, that the statue on its discovery was such
as we see it now, but that in the niche, besides the two
Hermes’ had been found a fragment of an arm, and half
a hand, with an apple between the fingers ; and that the
dispute could only be on the question whether this frag-
ment of arm and this hand had belonged to the statue,
either originally or after an alteration.
Aicard’s researches, on the contrary, came to the fol-
lowing result : when the Melian Venus was discovered,
she still had her left arm. This was first broken when
the monk tried to carry the work of art on board the
Turkish vessel, either during the transport down the
Castro mountain, or the fight between Oikonomos’s men
and the crew of La Chevrette. The witnesses he calls
for this view of his, are :
(i) Louis Brest, through his son, the present vice-
consul at Melos, and through Salicis. captain of a frigate,
and professor at the polytechnic school. The younger
Brest, last year, in a conversation with Jules Ferry,
former minister of France to Greece, said that his now
deceased father had always described the statue to him
as having, at its discovery, the left arm remaining, in a
slightly raised position, and with an apple in the hand.
Mr. Salicis communicates that in the year 1852 he talked
with Louis Brest himself. The latter then declared
that the statue at its discovery held the left arm out-
stretched, while the right followed the side 0/ the body
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