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ANTIQUE STATUES. 187
sions and does not shun " Witze^ The island of Melos
was in form like an apple, before an earthquake opened
the bay on its northern coast, and seamen called the
rock so. The name Melos, (Maelos) and the Greek word
melon, {in<2lon, apple) are also near of kin. The fruit
in the goddess’s hand might thus be a symbol of the
island. With the extended left arm, then, it seems as if
in the same sense as Leonidas, she would say :
" Come
and take it !
" Such an alteration would be in many par-
ticulars clumsy ; but modern times have not an exclusive
right to unlucky " restorations." The later antique time
was also acquainted with such.
He who with me is inclined to see in the Aphrodite
of Melos a monument of Hellenic love of liberty, mated
with Hellenic sense of beauty, will recollect with pleas-
ure that in the same year and the same month she again
saw the light of day, the Greek war of independence
broke out. It was, as aforesaid, February, 1821. Imme-
diately after, the Melians again stood in arms against the
Orient, and in the beginning of June of the same year, the
island Greeks defeated the Turkish fleet at Mitylene. That
was a freak of fate that resembled a thought of history.
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