(from whose iron power Messina too, gained fame and strength, and benign laws for the fugitive Pythago-
rians) who won the charriot race in Athens; and such as Carondas, whose name and laws were so renowned
in greater Greece, who fled to Reggio from near Catania. And then there were sculptors whose great
works at the dawn of Greek art filled the temples, the stadiums, and the holy cities of Greece: Clearchus,
from whose bronze foundry, so said the Lacedemons, issued the most ancient statue of Jove Chalcea;
and Pythagoras who, before Fidias, sent out Greek statues of Gods and Victors into all the world from
Reggio. The pugilist Euthymos bom in the neighbouring Locri he sent to Olympia; Cleon to Thebes; Apollo
striking the serpent Python, to Delphi; the hero Philoctetes to Syracuse; the rape of Europa to Taranto. And
Reggio had sent musicians and poets to Greece for the contests, such men as Aristón, Eunemos and Ibicus
whose destinies moved the hearts of men for centuries; and then at the dawn of history, when Greece was
still struggling against the power of Xerxes, came Hippus the most ancient of our early historians.
But of Ibicus, of Hippus, of Pythagoras, of Anaxilas and of Aristón remain but a verse, a legend, a
name, some finely engraved coins, some pretty fantastic story. Nothing more.
<1 Only a small building turned towards Etna, and the dying sun, remained, and remains still, saved from
the disaster amidst the great mass of ruins. Here we arranged the poor relics of so much that is past, so
that in the little rooms where the fresh sea-scented breezes blow during the hot mid-day they might tell,
however haltingly, how little had escaped from death.
<1 In one comer of this museum, was a small chalk cast, now broken, of a marble afterwards sent to London,
and on it was engraved, together with the names of the negotiators, the weighty but simple words of a treaty
concluded in 433 between Reggio and Athens: « Let faith, rectitude and sincerity be all things between
Athenians and Reggiaris, let us be faithful, just and strong defenders according to the facts... » An important
treaty because, shortly after, Athens, moving against Syracuse in two unsuccessful wars, was really
supported by our faithful Reggio, and filled the waters of this port with her beautiful ships, and at this
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temple of Artemis Fakelitis the voices of Alcibiades, Nicea, and Demosthenes resounded.
Near this cast were two inscriptions from the temple of Diana, in the form of little temples, with all the
symbols of Diana and Apollo, the tripod, the bow, and the half moon; inscriptions which recall the supreme
magistrates and the priests of Reggio, before and after she assumed the unbeautiful and imperial name of
Regium Julium. And there were « popular » marbles, written half in Greek and half in Latin, indeed sometimes
in Latin with Greek characters and in Greek with Latin characters; and figured marbles where,
between small medioeval capitals, could be seen the rudimentary and ambiguous figures of a Virgin and
child, seated, her head veiled and a torch in her right hand, just as in the Greek terracottas representing
Aphrodite-Persephone with Eros, a Virgin, no longer Pagan, and yet not Christian.
<1 But by far the most important was, and still is, to a great extent, the terracotta collection, and the idols
collected in Stilo, Locri, Messina, and in Reggio itself, beautiful examples of the first strange figures of divinity;
one of clay, flat as a table, representing a hermaphrodite idol; others of terracotta enveloped as in a
sheath, so called xoana reproductions in minature for selling to the faithfull, now of great sculptures, now
of humble images of the divinity; others representing solemn seated godesses, sometimes imitated from distant
Asiatic examples, their hands stiffly resting on their knees, monotonously alike, some others less exotic and
more lifelike; richer in detail, with great oblique eyes, a stereotyped smile, and thick curls on their foreheads,
all destined to be adored for centuries, in the cells of the polichrome temples, of which some fragments of
blue and red, appeared above the ground, overturned together with the marvellous and celebrated fragment
of the two dancing girls.
9 Wrapped in transparent draperies bordered with ifel ; c t |i r s | their hands r e s e l l each otherashoulders,
the two. fair forms move rhythmically, the left legs raised and the right feet on tip toe, scarcely touching the
ground most light, harmonious, youthful and undeveloped as the condition of the age which formed them,
fll They áre the pale but certain sign, of antique Rhegion, bodies of solemn mien, formless figures of a simple
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