Italian editor*- Hobhouse thinks it may fairly be considered a copy of that master-piece of Ctesilaus which represented "a wounded man at the point of death, in which you might see how much of life was yet remaining in himt." Montfaucon and Maffei thought it the identical statue; but that statue was of bronzet.

The Gladiator once formed part of the collection at the Villa Lodovisi, and was purchased by Clement XII. It affords another instance of Michael Angelo's skill in restoration: he has contributed an arm, a foot, the upper lip, and the tip of the nose.

The Capitoline Venus, as it is called, is also in this room. She is supposed to be coming out of the bath, and bears some resemblance to the Medicean. The attitude of this latter statue seems to have been a favourite with the sculptors. Several copies of it are to be seen in the Florentine gallery; and Ovid, as we have already seen, alludes to it in the following lines:

Ipsa Venus pubem, quoties velamina ponit,

Protegitur lævâ semireducta manu.-—ART. AMOR. ii. 613.

"Much controversy," says Burton, " has arisen, as to whether the Medicean Venus is the famous Venus of Praxiteles, which so late as the time of Arcadius and Honorius was exhibited at Cnidos, in a small temple,

* Storia delle Arti, tom. ii. p. 207.

+ Vulneratum deficientem fecit in quo possit intelligi quantum restat animæ.-(Plin. N. H. xxxiv. c. 8.)

See Notes to the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold.

open on all sides; and to which, according to Pliny (Lib. xxxvi. c. 5), Cnidos was indebted for its celebrity and its concourse of strangers. From thence it was removed to Constantinople; and Cedrenus, who tells us that it stood in the palace of the Lausi, describes the attitude of the statue, Κνιδια Αφροδιτη εκ λιθου λευκῆς, γυμνη, μονην την αιδῶ τῇ χειρι περιστέλλουσα, εργον του Κνιδιου Пpareλovs. From these words, the Medicean Venus might be the same with that of Cnidos; but we have no account of its removal from Constantinople to Rome, and there seems good reason for thinking that the posture of the left arm of the Florentine statue differs from that of Praxiteles. We may reasonably suppose, that the coins struck at Cnidos represent the real statue which made the city so famous; and these agree with the Medicean, except that one arm is extended, and holds some drapery over a vase. It must be remembered, however, that both arms of the Venus of Medicis are modern; and that from Lucian (Amor. xiii.) it might be argued that the Venus of Praxiteles was quite naked, without any drapery. If the identity of the Medicean Venus with that of Cnidos be given up, this statue in the Capitol may perhaps claim it, as it nearly agrees with the representation on the coin."

Among the remaining statues in this apartment of the Gladiator are the group of Cupid and Psyche-the Flora, which Winckelmann takes to be the portrait of some beautiful woman under the image of Spring-the Juno-the Head of Alexander the Great, whose authenticity, though it has been set on awry by the restorers, it

is now the fashion to call in question" and last though it should have been placed first and foremost in beauty — the beautiful Antinous*-who is always hanging down his head as if he felt ashamed of himself:

Sed frons læta parum et dejecto lumina vultu.

easy

Nothing can be more graceful, elegant, and than this charming statue. It is an exquisite representation of the most beautiful youth that ever lived; and, considered merely as an exhibition of the beauty of the male figure, scarcely inferior to the Apollo itself."

In the court of the Palace of the Conservators, which forms a part of the modern Capitol, every object reminds us of the grandeur of ancient Rome. Opposite to us sits Rome triumphant; at her feet weeps a captive Provincet; and by her side stand two barbarian kings, whose mutilated figures plainly attest the barbarity of their conquerors. The court is strewed with the heads and feet of colossal statues; and, as Madame de Staël observes, "we might fancy it the field of battle where Time has con

* Some contend that the statue, which Mathews thus eulogizes, ought rather to be called a Mercury.

† Crinibus en etiam fertur Germania passis,

Et ducis invicti sub pede mæsta sedet.—OVID.

Several coins bear the image of a Province sitting downcast, like this, and leaning her head on her hand, with the legend Germania subacta. The modern inscription calls this figure Dacia, perhaps from the scaly armour and polygonal shields which appear in the back ground; but such armour and shields are also found on Germans in ancient relievos.-Forsyth.

tended with Genius; while the scattered fragments attest his victory and our loss." Forsyth, however, gives a different account of the matter. According to him, the bodies of those colossal statues fell a sacrifice to artists themselves, who wanted the marble for small sculpture and even for building. Cæsar and Augustus stand here entire. The lion tearing a horse is an ancient group indifferently restored by Michael Angelo.

The Rostral Column-a column of marble in basrelief, with three prows of ships on each side, and part of an inscription-represents, as accurately as coins can give it, that of Caius Duilius, which commemorated the first naval victory Rome ever obtained; and the mutilated inscription itself has been well restored by Ciaccioni and others. Some antiquaries doubt whether even the ancient part, which forms a kind of oval, be the original inscription; yet the very place where it was found, the very antiquity of diction which Quintilian remarked in it, seemed, to Forsyth, sufficient to overcome the objections brought against it from the materials being marble, and from the accidental blending of two letters in the word Navebuos*.

* This column was found in the Forum, not far from the Arch of S. Severus, and Pliny (Lib. xxxiv. c. 11) mentions such a column as having stood in the Forum:-"A more ancient kind of memorial is that of erecting pillars, as the one raised to C. Mænius, who conquered the Latins; and another to C. Duilius, who was the first that celebrated a naval triumph over the Carthaginians, which latter still stands in the Forum." Quintilian remarks," that the old Latins added the letter D to the ends of words, as we may observe in the naval column erected to Duilius in the Forum."-(Lib. i. c. 7.)

In the first room of this palace of the Conservators, D'Arpino has painted the history of the kings; in the second, Lauretti takes his subjects from the infant republic; subjects which, if not strictly Capitoline, are nearly related to the spot. In the other rooms, Volterrano and Perugino have flown away from Rome to the Cimbrian wars, and Hannibal's passage over the Alps. How superior in interest are the Consular Fasti*, the bronze Geese, (which appear to be cackling as if the Gauls were again within hearing), and the thunderstruck She Wolf, from their local relation to the ground!" No object in Rome," says Forsyth," appeared to me so venerable as this wolf. The Etruscan stiffness of the figure evinces a high antiquity, its scathed leg proves it to be the statue which was ancient in the time of Cæsar, and it still retains some streaks of the gilding which

• The Capitoline Marbles, or Fasti Consulares, containing a list of the consuls and all public officers from Romulus down to the year of Rome 724, are among the greatest curiosities preserved here. After the year 610, the account is not kept so accurately as before: only one of the ten tribunes of the people is named, and several other magistrates are omitted. They were found in 1545 in the Forum, not far from the church of S. Maria Liberatrice. They are in several fragments, and sadly mutilated; but the inscriptions are very legible. Another portion was found in 1819, which supplies some names not before known. In the fire which consumed the Capitol in the time of Vitellius, all the records preserved there were burnt. Vespasian, who rebuilt the temple, had the loss repaired by copies from the most authentic documents; and these fragments are probably of that date.—Burton.