Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, BOOK XXXIII. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF METALS., CHAP. 24.

The first statue of massive gold, without any hollowness within, and anterior to any of those statues of bronze even, which are known as "holosphyratæ,"¹ is said to have been erected in the Temple of the goddess Anaïtis. To what particular region this name belongs, we have already² stated, it being that of a divinity³ held in the highest veneration by the nations in that part of the world. This statue was carried off during the wars of Antonius with the people of Parthia; and a witty saying is told, with reference to it, of one of the veterans of the Roman army, a native of Bononia. Entertaining on one occasion the late Emperor Augustus at dinner, he was asked by that prince whether he was aware that the person who was the first to commit this violence upon the statue, had been struck with blindness and paralysis, and then expired. To this he made answer, that at that very moment Augustus was making his dinner off of one of her legs, for that he himself was the very man, and to that bit of plunder he had been indebted for all his fortune.⁴

As regards statues of human beings, Gorgias of Leontini⁵ was the first to erect a solid statue of gold, in the Temple at Delphi, in honour of himself, about the seventieth⁶ Olympiad: so great were the fortunes then made by teaching the art of oratory!

1 "Solid hammer-work," in opposition to works in metal, cast and hollow within.

2 In B. v. c. 20, most probably. See also B. xvi. c. 64.

3 The worship of Anaitis was probably a branch of the Indian worship of Nature. The Greek writers sometimes identify this goddess with their Artemis and their Aphrodite.

4 Holland has strangely mistaken the meaning of the veteran's reply; "Yea, sir, that it is; and that methinks you should know best, for even now a leg of his you have at supper, and all your wealth besides is come unto you by that saccage." He then adds, by way of Note, "For Augustus Cæsar defeited Antonie, and was mightily enriched by the spoile of him."

5 In Sicily. According to Valerius Maximus and other writers, a statue of solid gold was erected by the whole of Greece, in the temple at Delphi, in honour of Gorgias, who was distinguished for his eloquence and literary attainments. The leading opinion of Gorgias was, that nothing had any real existence.

6 The ninetieth Olympiad, about the year 420 B.C., is much more probably the correct reading; as it was about the seventieth Olympiad, or somewhat later, that Gorgias was born.

The Natural History. Pliny the Elder. John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S. H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A. London. Taylor and Francis, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street. 1855.

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Pliny the Elder, The Natural History
John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S., H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A., Ed.

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CHAP. 24.—THE FIRST STATUES OF GOLD.

Pliny the Elder, The Natural History John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S., H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A., Ed.