Phrasikleia

This photograph on cardboard represents the 6th century BCE figure known as Phrasikleia, a marble kore discovered in 1972 in Merenda, Greece (a suburb of modern Athens). This kore functioned as a funerary monument commemorating the premature death of a woman name Phrasikleia. The inscription on the statue’s base, which had been reused as a column capital for a nearby Byzantine church, declares that it is the sema, marker, of Phrasikleia and that she died before marriage. The full inscription reads:

I am the marker of Phrasikleia. I shall always be called

‘kore,’ this name being given in place of marriage by the gods.

On the left side of the base, the artist signed his work: ᾽Αριστίον Πάρι[ός μ᾽ἐπ]ο[ίε]σε (“Aristion of Paros made me”).

[More coming soon…]

A Nineteenth Century Reproduction of The Dying Gaul

Fig. 1 DePauw University’s 19th Century Reproduction of the Dying Gaul

In 1885, Washington C. DePauw made a gift to the university of “several beautiful pieces of Italian marble statuary as the beginning of an art collection…” (Forty-Seventh Year-Book, p. 7). Included in the gift was a 19th century reproduction of The Dying Gaul (also known as The Dying Trumpeter), one of the most famous sculptures of Classical Antiquity. The DePauw University version is carved in green serpentine marble and is approximately one-fourth life-size. It was probably made in Florence, Italy between 1860 and 1882. For many years the figure was on display in the Lilly Center. Unfortunately it was damaged at some point and put in storage. In 2013, thanks to the Kairos Fund in the Department of Classical Studies, The Dying Gaul was restored and is now on display in the Classical Studies Department on the first floor of Asbury Hall.