Bringing the Doryphoros home

Thanks to the many copies the Romans made of original Greek sculptures, the initial artist of most works can be traced back. It is the case of the unique marble Doryphoros by Polycleitus, created in bronze around 440 BC. The bronze original was a little larger than life-size. 

[Picture from the Archaeology News Network]

The best-preserved copy of a Doryphoros or Spear Bearer was retrieved from the volcanic ashes of Vesuvius in the buried city of Stabiae on the Gulf of Naples. The Roman copy was created between 27 BC and 68 AD, shortly before the eruption of 79 AD. It was looted in the 1970s and ended up in Minneapolis' Institute of Arts. 

Investigations led to the reconstruction of the trail, followed by this important artifact after being stolen from Castellammare. This occurred between the end of 1975 and the beginning of 1976. 

The looters sold the statue to an antique dealer in Basel, Switzerland. From there, it made its way to the USA and hence to Germany. It was exhibited at the Glyptothek of the Antikenmuseum in Munich for several years, labeled as "Doryphoros aus Stabia." When identified by the Italia investigators in 1984, it was seized by the Naples Public Prosecutor. However, a year later, it was released and disappeared again to be sold in 1985 to the MIA in Minneapolis.  

It makes one wonder how it is still possible to drag around illegal antiquities without being detected, especially in the present case of a full-sized statue! 

The mayor of Stabia is asking to bring the Doryphoros back home to the Archaeological Museum Libero D'Orsi. The Italian authorities introduced a new official request to Minneapolis to return the Doryphoros to Italy. A close-up study followed to establish that this was indeed Stabia's stolen statue, which initially had a damaged arm, a missing finger, and a missing right foot. 

The Doryphoros stands out because of the perfection of its proportions, as Polycleitus is the first artist to establish the absolutely balanced and harmonious dimensions of the human body in his sculptures. He described its mathematical proportions in a lost treatise, the Canon of Polycleitus. His attitude was called contrapposto, in which the body's weight rested on one leg, and the other leg relaxed. Apparently, the sculptor has created 1500 works, none of which have survived. 

Polycleitus' search for perfection fits entirely with the typical mentality of the Greeks in his time, in which artists, intellectuals, and statesmen strived for excellence. This idea lived on long afterward since it was still practiced by Alexander and his contemporaries. 

With Phidias and Praxiteles, Polycleitus is considered one of the most important sculptors of the Classical Greek era. So significant was his influence that later artists like Skopas and Lysippos (Alexander's personal sculptor) worked using the same references.

[Bottom picture from Positano News]

Historical truth and legends surrounding Alexander

In his lifetime, Alexander was a living legend. As he marched ever further eastward, his impact was told and retold over the centuries to the extent that nobody, in the end, knew where reality stopped and legend started. Today’s travelers will easily meet locals ready to share their tales or direct them toward the routes the conqueror followed more than two thousand years ago.

It is quite remarkable that the most prominent figure in history left us with almost no contemporary documents. As a comparison, Julius Caesar, who lived some three hundred years after Alexander, managed to put down detailed accounts of his campaigns. His best-known books are The Conquest of Gaul and The Civil Wars, whereas The African Wars, The Alexandrian Wars, and the Hispanic Wars are also attributed to him.

The results for Alexander are very meager. Among his historians, we count his royal secretary, Eumenes of Cardia, and the keeper of his official diary, Callisthenes of Olynthus. As contemporary authors of Alexander, we may also include Ptolemy, Aristobulus, Nearchus, and Onesicritus, who participated in his campaigns and lived the events firsthand. Despite these apparent sources, only a few fragments have survived, no matter how deep we dig.

Callisthenes inspired Onesicritus as well as Cleitarchus. Cleitarchus turned out to be the key figure for many historians to rely on. He, in fact, had access to earlier accounts by Nearchus, Ephippus, Polycleitus, Megasthenes, and Aristobulus (who also drew from Onesicritus himself).

Under these circumstances, it becomes obvious that we have sources that are very much truncated over the centuries. In the 1^st century BC, Diodorus of Sicily wrote his history of Alexander based directly on Cleitarchus. Curtius Rufus, in the 1^st century AD, composed his version of the events, leaning heavily on Cleitarchus and to a lesser extent on Trogus and Ptolemy. Shortly afterward, Plutarch made headlines with his Lives using, besides Cleitarchus, Aristobulus, Chares (who was in charge of Alexander’s journal), and remaining bits of the official Ephemerides that were kept by Eumenes. Arrian, in the 2nd century AD, seems to be our most reliable source. For his Anabasis, he mainly trusted Ptolemy. However, he also consulted other historians like Aristobulus, Megasthenes, Nearchus (who himself wrote Indica to recount his sea voyage from India back to Persia), and the surviving  texts of the Ephemerides as well. It should be noted that Trogus’ book is almost entirely lost, but his story has been summarized, not all too well, by Justin two hundred years later.

This is quite a cocktail of information, and it becomes very hard to sift through so many versions and interpretations of the facts and figures.

In my quest to find the sources, I came across an extensive list of lost works on Wikipedia that I insert hereafter. I added the appropriate dates as far as I could find them.

Life of Alexander by Aesopus (no dates found)

Works of Anaximenes of Lampsacus (ca. 380-320 BC)

Works of Aristobulus of Cassandreia (ca. 375-301 BC)

Geographical work of Androsthenes of Thasos (one of Alexander’s admirals who sailed with Nearchus)

Deeds of Alexander by Callisthenes (the official historian)

Personal Notebooks, or Hypomnemata, by Alexander himself (possibly inauthentic)

History of Alexander by Cleitarchus (4^th century BC)

On the Empire of the Macedonians by Criton of Pieria (2^nd century AD)

Histories (also listed as Macedonica and Hellenica) by Duris of Samos (350-after 281 BC)

Ephemerides (royal journal) of the royal secretary Eumenes (existence or authenticity disputed)

Work of Ephippus of Olynthus

Work of Hagnothemis upon which Plutarch rested the belief that Antipater poisoned Alexander.

Work of Hieronymus of Cardia (354?-250 BC)

On the education of Alexander and Macedonian history by Marsyas of Pella (ca. 356-ca. 294 BC)

Work of Medius of Larissa (general under Alexander and senior commander under Antigonus Monophthalmus)

Work of Nearchus, the primary source of Arrian's Indica

How Alexander was Educated and geographical works by Onesicritus (ca. 360-ca. 290 BC)

Work of Ptolemy I Soter (ca. 367-282 BC)

History of Alexander by Timagenes (1^st century BC)

Historiae Philippicae by Gnaeus Pompeius Trogus (1^st century BC)

This list cannot be exhaustive. There must have been many more documents. Nobody mentions, for instance, Alexander’s correspondence with his mother and his sister, with Aristotle, with Antipater in Macedonia, with Queen Ada, and Queen Sisygambis. Letters were exchanged with the many embassies that contacted him or came to visit him. The entire world evolved around Alexander, and strangely enough, there is not a single document left to prove it. The famous  Library of Alexandria must have held scores of such precious testimonies. Besides, the later Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek Empires most certainly produced literature of their own. 

We do have, of course, the Alexander Romance (see: Le Roman d’Alexandre, traduit du grec par A Tallet-Bonvalot). The oldest known version dates probably from the 3rd century AD, and its author is unknown, although it has been attributed to Pseudo-Callisthenes. This document is generally called version α and served for all subsequent accounts that were published on a more or less regular basis until the 16^th century. They were written in Latin, Greek, Armenian, Georgian, Persian, Hebrew, Arabic, Islamic, French, English, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian, Romanian, German, Ethiopic, Mongolian, and several medieval patois. Useless to say that each translation or interpretation contributed to embellishing the legendary person of Alexander.

Historians generally agree that Pseudo-Callisthenes based his tales on the writings of Onesicritus, who used Callisthenes.

The legends about Alexander are endless, and a great many of them have not been put in writing. They are part of the oral tradition of many peoples. They were told and retold by traveling bards over the centuries, and we can still find those tales today in the countries crossed by Alexander.

From the top of my head, I remember the story about the Prison of Alexander in Yazd, Iran (see: Alexander’s Prison?), and that of his general Farhangi-Sarhang in Nur, Uzbekistan (see: Sogdian Forts and Alexander Fort in Nurata).

There is also the later tale of Alexander Rex, which is part of the mosaic in the church of Otranto in southern Italy (see: Alexander's presence in Magna Graecia). Or Saint Alexander depicted in Byzantine and Orthodox art, appearing in the 12th-century Church of S. Demetrius in Vladimir, Ukrainian Kiev. Around the 15^th and 16^th centuries, Alexander became a symbol of vanity. Several churches in Greece display frescoes of monks who meditate on vanity while gazing down on Alexander’s body at their feet. For instance, at the church of St John the Baptist in the Peloponnese and at the Monastery of the Holy Trinity at the Meteora (see: Alexander, from hero to saint).

The references to Alexander are endless, and I am talking mainly about written documentation here. His legacy in architecture, paintings, statues, coins, jewelry, and other decorative elements constitutes another fascinating testimony of Alexander to the world

Updated 24 May 2025

A closer look at Euripides

Several years ago, most of the collection of Hellenistic art at the Louvre was housed in one of the larger ground-floor rooms. The lighting there was relatively poor, and in my memory, the statues were only touched by the changing moods of daylight.

There were no huge crowds in those days, although this is where we would find the Resting youth by Polycleitus; the elegant Aphrodite said to be a replica of Callimachus’ original; a young satyr playing the flute, a replica of an original Praxiteles; the touching elderly Faun holding a Child; a copy of Hermes attaching his sandal; the Hunting Diana in full swing; the Eros ready to shoot his arrow which is a replica of Lysippos as well as the famous Azara Hermes of Alexander the Great another replica of an original Lysippos, and several others. I often sighed that the statues were so dusty, itching to get some water and soap out to wash them off. Despite all this, the unique atmosphere in that half-lit room made you feel close to times long gone. 

Almost lost in a corner near one of the large windows stood the small statuette of a seated Euripides staring out into a world that was not his. However, it caught my attention because the back panel of this statuette listed 32 of his plays. Exhibited at eye level, I would read the titles one by one, and it was as if each name disclosed an entire shelf of papyri ready to be unscrolled.

Then the room was closed for years until the entire collection was moved elsewhere and arranged in a way that complied with the demands of today’s visitors, where each piece of art is highlighted in appropriate floodlights. There was, however, no trace of “my” Euripides, and I wondered what had happened to him. Maybe he was moved to a different room to fit another topic. Who knows?

Yet, all was not lost! At times, it takes patience, and the reward came last year when I visited a temporary exhibition at the Louvre-Lens called Music, Echoes from Antiquity. Many old musical instruments had been brought together, not only from the Greek and Roman era but also from Egyptian, Persian, Sogdian, Assyrian, and Sumerian times. To complement the instruments, several paintings, vases, reliefs, and statues represent the musicians in action.

For no apparent reason, it was here that I suddenly found my precious Euripides! The reason for this presence among the vases and small musicians was not obvious, except that Greek theater plays included choral songs that told the story. I was overjoyed to find my friend sitting in front of this oversized window presiding over his oeuvre.  

Euripides was by far the most prolific tragedian of his time, producing more than his contemporaries Aeschylus and Sophocles together. During his lifetime (ca. 480 - ca. 406 BC), he stayed in Pella at the court of King Archelaus, Alexander’s great-grandfather, and at least two of his plays were performed in Macedonia, one of which is the Bacchae. It tells the story of the  king of Thebes, Pentheus, who is killed by his mother and other women in a maenadic frenzy.

It seems no coincidence that the Bacchae is being performed this summer at the theater of the Getty Villa in Malibu, California. This production is directed by Anne Bogart (one of the three Co-Artistic Directors of the SITI Company and Professor at Columbia University)  and translated by Aaron Poochigian (who earned a Ph.D. in Classics from the University of Minnesota and an MFA in Poetry from Columbia University). This is an excellent opportunity to immerse ourselves in history and watch a play that Alexander must have seen more than once!

It is not surprising that Alexander grew up with an intimate knowledge and great love for theatrical performances, which he loved to organize all through his eastern campaigns – often inviting celebrated actors from Athens for the occasion.

Isn’t it amazing how much one small statuette has to tell?

Wartime looting in antiquity

Wartime looting is something we associate with today’s unstable political situations in North Africa and the Middle East, but looking back into history, this is certainly not new, although the reasons and the drives were entirely different then from what we are facing now.

Looting can be triggered by warfare in which we have the urge to annihilate the enemy, and that includes everything he treasures and cherishes. When it comes to religious wars, like, for instance, those fought by the Crusaders, looting is translated into the destruction of religious convictions and what they stand for. Looting may also be simple greed, the envy to possess what no one else has, either because it is unique or because it is so valuable.

One of the first examples that comes to my mind is the statues of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, two Athenian heroes who stood for the origin of Athenian democracy in 514 BC, and whose images were erected in the Agora. They were stolen by the Persians in 480 BC and moved to Susa, where they were recovered by Alexander the Great in 331 BC, who sent them back to Athens.

Yet most widespread or best-documented lootings happened in Roman times when great Greek works of art were carried home as trophies or as simple spoils of war.

After the sack of Corinth by L. Mummius in 146 BC, many statues were brought to Rome, while others were sold to the King of Pergamum, who was building up a remarkable collection. Among the statues that arrived in Rome was one of Philip II that was mistakenly labeled as that of Zeus.

Better known for all kinds of not-too-glorious reasons was L. Cornelius Sulla, who launched a well-remembered attack on Athens and Piraeus. He used the trees from Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum to build his siege towers. When Athens fell in 86 BC, he removed choice pieces from the Temple of Zeus, hardly built a century before, and these fragments later surfaced in the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus in Rome. At the same time, an unknown number of manuscripts, paintings, and other precious objects were shipped to Rome. Further, to pay for his expensive wars, he levied heavy contributions on the wealthiest cities to acquire the treasures of Epidaurus, Olympia, and Delphi – a true sacrilege at the time!

Following Sulla’s example, L. Licinius Lucullus collected works taken from Sinope by L. Aemilius Paullus. Sinope was a great admirer of Greek art and took his time to tour the country to find the most appealing pieces, like an Athena by Phidias that he dedicated to Rome, leaving, however, (luckily) the gigantic Zeus of Olympia untouched.

Julius Caesar was another great “collector,” acquiring his objects by plunder and purchase.

The most notorious of all looters definitely was Gaius Verres, governor of Sicily, who in 73 BC seized statues, reliefs, dedications, paintings and jewelry from the Sicilians and from other parts of the Greek world. He started by requisitioning the most beautiful objects from private homes, followed by the despoliation of the island’s sanctuaries. He stole a statue of Ceres from the temple of Catania; a set of gold and ivory doors from the temple of Athena in Syracuse, together with paintings and other effigies of the goddess whose hands supposedly were made of gold; a magnificent bronze statue of Apollo by Myron from the temple of Asclepius at Akragas; and many more. On their way to steal the statue of Heracles from the temple at Akragas, his soldiers were overpowered by furious citizens. Enough is enough! Tensions rose so high that Cicero was called in to defend the Sicilians’ case. He won, and Verres went into exile in Marseille. Unfortunately, none of these works of art was ever recovered.

With the increase of its wealth, Rome developed a kind of refinement where Corinthian bronzes became especially prized (the bronze was of exceptional quality!). Among those connoisseurs was Novius Vindex, who acquired a bronze statuette of Heracles made by nobody less than Lysippos, paintings by Apelles, and many other objects of marble, ivory, and precious metal believed to be the work of Praxiteles, Phidias, and Polycleitus.

Even Emperor Nero is to be found among the admirers of Greece, making him one of the major looters of Greek art to adorn the eternal city. He did not shy away from directing his attention towards Delphi, from where he took 500 bronze statues, and Olympia, where he monopolized an unspecified number of statues. Also on his list is a particularly fine Eros by Lysippos taken from Thespiae that was, later on, destroyed by a fire in Rome. Strangely enough, he left Athens untouched but rampaged through the cities of Asia Minor instead. He concentrated on masterpieces created by artists like Phidias, Praxiteles, and Cephisodotus. Among his masterpieces, the most famous were the Apollo Belvedere, the Borghese Gladiator, and a Venus. With the end of Roman power, the import and looting of Greek art came to a halt.

By this time, the Byzantine Empire had taken over, and Constantine the Great in 324 AD, inverted the inflow of art by bringing all the treasures from Rome to Constantinople. Under one of his successors, the pagan Julian the Apostate, we know that the temple of Apollo at Didyma and the sanctuary of Demeter at Eleusis were restored.

The sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 395 was devastating, and many works of art found their way to Constantinople. The ruthless rampage of the barbarians spread as quickly as wildfire, and it was at this period that the great Chryselephantine statue of Zeus that Phidias made for the temple of Zeus in Olympia was saved at the last moment and transferred to the Palace of Lausus in Constantinople (to be ultimately destroyed by fire in the first half of the 5^th century AD). Soon, more selected gem pieces joined this collection, including the Athena of Lindos from the 4^th century BC, the famous Aphrodite from Cnidos created by Praxiteles, and the Hera from Samos made by Lysippos. Constantine also brought a porphyry column from Delphi to adorn his Forum, while his Senate was enhanced by the statue of Zeus from Dodona and two statues of Pallas Athena. Bellerophon slaying the Chimera was brought in from either Great Antioch or Corinth; the Fortune of the City exchanged the Forum in Rome for Constantinople, together with a statue of the Sun God from Phrygia.

Constantinople’s Hippodrome was outrageously populated by no less than sixty statues imported from Rome, which, except for a statue of Augustus, came from all over the Greek world: Athens, Chios, Crete and Rhodes, Cyzicus, Caesarea, Sardes, Tralles, Tyana, Antioch, Iconium (modern Konya), Smyrna, Nicaea, Nicomedia, and Nicopolis. Just imagine the widespread and cumbersome dragging and lugging of all these artifacts. No wonder we keep recuperating them from the bottom of the Mediterranean!

Today’s visitors to the Hippodrome in Istanbul can still admire the Serpent Column, which is part of a monument that once stood next to the temple of Apollo at Delphi and was dedicated by the cities that defied the Persians at the Battle of Platea in 479 BC. On the same square stands an Egyptian obelisk, originally commissioned by Thutmosis III in the 16^th century BC to commemorate one of his campaigns in Syria. It was shipped to Constantinople towards the end of the 4^th century AD and broke during its transport. What we see now is only the upper part mounted on a marble base showing reliefs of Theodosius I and his family attending races on this very Hippodrome.

This was also home to the life-size group of four horses we know from Saint Mark’s Cathedral in Venice. They were made of gilded bronze, and the horses are said to have been pulling a chariot. It may have been brought in from Chios or given as a present to Nero by the king of Armenia and closely resembles the group created by Lysippos for the temple dedicated to Rhodes in Delphi during the 4^th century BC. According to one theory, these horses are Hellenistic copies, but according to others, it may well be the original that traveled from Delphi to Chios to Constantinople and eventually to Venice.

Time-wise, we now reach the construction of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, where today’s visitors can still find many columns, doors, and other decorative elements that were taken from different cities all over Asia Minor.

For many centuries, Constantinople was a safe haven for many works of art from antiquity, but during the ensuing invasions, first by the Arabs in the 7^th and 8^th centuries and by the Bulgarians in the 9^th and 10^th centuries, the city was thoroughly sacked in 1204 when the members of the Fourth Crusade rampaged through the streets of this once so glorious city. Most saddening is maybe the final destruction of so many documents that had survived from antiquity and that are since lost forever. 

In our 21^st century, we praise ourselves as lucky to have museums to shelter and protect our greatest and most magnificent works of art, although, at times, even the museums are no longer a safe haven for our culture. We are all aware of the dilapidated museums of Kabul and Bagdad, for instance, and we still don’t know what has happened to the Museum of Damascus and so many others in the Middle East. Looting was and still is omnipresent, most unfortunately.

[Picture of Harmodius and Aristogeiton is from Ancient Rome]

Another great bronze statue on display in Israel

Some rejoicing news for a change in these times of widespread destruction where so many artifacts disappear on clandestine markets.

The centerpiece of the news is a bronze statue which, together with many more artifacts has been recently donated to the Israel Museum by art-collectors Robert and Renee Belfer from New York. Just imagine having such a statue in your living room!

The nude Roman bronze from the first century BC is totally intact and still has his original inlaid glass eyes, which is rather rare. Starting this coming June (2015) it will go on public display for the first time under the title “A Roman Villa – The Belfer Collection”. How exciting!

Unfortunately, we don’t know the identity of this young man and have no clue as to what he is supposed to hold in his right hand. Speculations go towards Heracles who may have held his club, or Bacchus who could have held his kantharos, or again it might be an athlete carrying the palm branch of victory or a wreath. The provenance also remains obscure although the Belfer family acquired the statue as recently as 2004 through Christie’s.

The four-foot-tall bronze statue will not be lonely as about one hundred of the newly acquired pieces will also be on display, giving the visitor an idea of the luxury the Roman elite enjoyed at their homes. Most pieces are rare objects, including glass (the oldest piece being Egyptian from 1550-1330 BC), bronzes, ceramics, and marble sculptures. There is, for instance, a magnificent Roman head, a copy from an earlier Greek bronze that seems to point towards Polycleitus, a sculptor from the 5^th century BC. The marble is probably from Rhodes and the wear and tear indicates that it was retrieved from the sea, meaning it possibly sank aboard a ship on her way to Rome. Other noteworthy objects are a Phrygian helmet made of bronze; a gilt glass tomb marker; and two high-quality mosaics, one of a fish that seems inspired by a digital photograph and one showing a bird’s eye view of Rome.

Of particular interest is a pendant from Carthage with its typical Punic look of glass inlaid details.

Robert Belfer apparently donated many artifacts to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York before he decided to entrust his present collection to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. In his eyes, the objects represent an important chapter in the history of civilization in which Jerusalem played a central role.

[Pictures from the Times of Israel]