of Pausanias and
Pliny, as neither of these antiquaries mentions the statue. Accepting,
then, the statue as that of the Victory Without Wings, Mr. Stillman
agrees with Millingen in supposing that in her left hand she held a
bronze shield, the lower rim of which rested on the left knee where some
marks of the kind are easily recognizable, while with her right hand she
traced, or had just finished tracing, the names of the great heroes of
Athens. Valentin's objection, that if this were so the left thigh would
incline outwards so as to secure a balance, Mr. Stillman meets partly by
the analogy of the Victory of Brescia and partly by the evidence of
Nature herself; for he has had a model photographed in the same position
as the statue and holding a shield in the manner he proposes in his
restoration. The result is precisely the contrary to that which Valentin
assumes. Of course, Mr. Stillman's solution of the whole matter must not
be regarded as an absolutely scientific demonstration. It is simply an
induction in which a kind of artistic instinct, not communicable or
equally valuable to all people, has had the greatest part, but to this
mode of interpretation archaeologists as a class have been far too
indifferent; and it is certain that in the present case it has given us a
theory which is most fruitful and suggestive.

The little temple of Nike Apteros has had, as Mr. Stillman reminds us, a
destiny unique of its kind. Like the Parthenon, it was standing little
more than two hundred years ago, but during the Turkish occupation it was
razed, and its stones all built into the great bastion which covered the
front of the Acropolis and blocked up the staircase to the Propylaea. It
was dug out and restored, nearly every stone in its place, by two German
architects during the reign of Otho, and it stands again just as
Pausanias described it on the spot where old AEgeus watched for the
return of Theseus from Crete. In the distance are Salamis and AEgina,
and beyond the purple hills lies Marathon. If the Melian statue be
indeed the Victory Without Wings, she had no unworthy shrine.

There are some other interesting essays in Mr. Stillman's book on the
wonderful topographical knowledge of Ithaca displayed in the _Odyssey_,
and discussions of this kind are always interesting as long as there is
no attempt to represent Homer as the ordinary literary man; but the
article on the Melian statue is by far the most important and t