Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/81

 PHOENICIAN SCULPTURE IN THE WEST. 59 and Persephone. In the sequel the Carthaginian army was attacked by the plague, and met with disasters of various kinds, in which the Senate saw a punishment directed against the impiety of which Himilco had been guilty. They tried to conciliate the offended goddesses by raising statues to them in Carthage at the public cost, by sacrifices to be celebrated in the Greek fashion, and by consecrating some of the more notable Greeks in the city as priests in their honour. 1 These statues of Greek goddesses, confided to the care of Greek priests, must surely have been Greek in style and attribute. In this connection we may notice a curious monument carried off from Carthage by an Italian consul, and now in the Turin museum (Fig. 50). It is an interesting example of the work done for Carthaginian patrons by Greek artists. A goddess stands in a kind of pavilion made up of two Doric columns and a triangular pediment ; she is Persephone- Core, a deity whose worship was introduced into Carthage towards the end of the fourth century. With her right hand she draws aside her veil, in the nuptial gesture, in her left she holds a vase of pomegranates. The panther of Dionysos, her spouse in the under-world, helps out the significance of the composition. 2 On the base of the pavilion the following inscription in the Phoenician language and character may be read : " The vow of thy servant Melekiathon the Suffete, son of Maharbal the Sufifete." The goddess is addressed directly as in the dedications to several other votive monuments of the same people. In all this there is nothing barbarous, as the Greeks would say, but the Phoenician text. All the rest, both in the figure and its surroundings, is purely Hellenic. The monument belongs to the last years of Carthaginian independence. It has no date; but the juxtaposition of mouldings belonging to all the three orders, as well as the form of the Phoenician letters, point decisively to the epoch named. In the execution, too, of the figure, some of the over- sweetness of the decadence may be traced. " Maharbal the Suffete " has been identified by some with the famous lieutenant 1 DIODORUS, XIV. 63 and 77. This story has been doubted (DAVIS, Carthage and Its Remains, p. 194), but without any valid reason. 2 Gazette Archeologique, seventh year, pp. 76-79, and plate xvii. ; Un Ex-voto carthaginois (E. RENAN and FR. LENORMANT).