melted
them down for the greater part, even before the most ancient of
historians visited that old capital. Nevertheless, he actually saw in
a shrine, at the base of the Temple of Belus, the seated figure of the
god, which, with his table, throne, and footstool, the Chaldeans
informed him, weighed 800 talents (48,000 lbs.). Another statue,
carried off by Xerxes, had been that of a man (άνδρίας), 12 cubits high, and solid. This must have been the statue of the royal founder of the Temple ; its solidity, however,
may well be put down to the account of the Grecian traveller's guide.
These gigantic figures, as the authentic account of the construction of
similar works— the cherubim lining the Jewish sanctuary — informs us,
were carved out of cedar-wood, and then overlaid with gold in plates
necessarily slight, to admit of being moulded over the carving
underneath.
But the celebrated idol of Anaitis (Venus), made out of solid gold,
"long before bronze had come into fashion for such uses," remained in
her temple at Anaitica, on the Euphrates, until the shrine was
despoiled by Antony's soldiers upon his Parthian expedition. Augustus,
chancing to dine with an old soldier of Antony's at Bologna, inquired
if it were true, as commonly reported, that the first man who laid
hands on the goddess was immediately struck dead ; and received for
answer that his entertainer was the very soldier in question; that
Augustus himself was then dining off a leg of the idol (converted into
a dish, it would seem), and that his whole fortune consisted in that
very piece of plunder.
Of
the Greeks, however, the colossal chryselephantine statues, in which
art vied with material, required but a comparatively small weight of
the precious metal ; in fact, Pausanias (i. 40) notices an instance
where the entire
ρ 2
Flickr
Stumbleupon
Scribd
