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Show A Beautiful Statue of Eros, the r Greek God of Love, Worthy to p. Si , , . . " ;1 , Rank with the Work of Praxiteles, V Dug Up on the Island of Lemnos,' and Other Finds at the Front ih ' . X 0-yt HE warring European armies, I -which have been excavating the soil of the Old World upon a scale never before known, have un-J un-J earthed a remarkable number of ancient j art treasures, statues and relics of the I past of various kinds. The -war 13 raging in regions which t were of the greatest importance during ; I the most interesting periods of antiquity. ! It is being waged, for Instance, along the ; shores of the Dardanelles, where ancient Troy was situated; in Greece itself, in Mesopotamia, where Babylon and Niniveh etood, and in many other regions of similar simi-lar interest. Several thousand miies of trenches I have been dug in all. In France alone they run all the way from the English Channel to the Alps. In some cases these trenches have been dug so deep that thousands of tons of ammunition can be stored in one centre, and hundreds of thousands of men obtain shelter in the whole system. The soldiers, of course, have not been ' looking especially for art treasures and remains of ancient cities, but they have found many things of this kind all the j, came. When the war Is over and there is time to pay attention to such matters, it will prpbably be found that the soldiers lhave dug up more antiquities than all the professors o archaeology before them ' had ever done. A Strange Old Greek City Also Found.' . One of the most Interesting discoveries . jet reported is that of a beautiful statue cf the Greek god of love, Eros. It was found by French soldiers while digging a trench on Lemnos, the Greek island. which the French are using as a base in the Dardanelles' operations. Upon this Island there is an ancient site incumbered with broken columns, tiles, bricks and ragments of marble. The site is known among the modern Greeks as Palaiopolis, meaning the "old city." It is now believed to be the site of the ancient Greek city of I-Iephaestla, founded by Hephaestus, the god of tire, son of Zeus and Hera. A curious legend of ancient Greek mythology mythol-ogy says that at the time of the Argonauts' Argo-nauts' expedition in search of the Golden Fleece there were no men on the iBland, the women having suddenly murdered " them all art of revenge for ill treatment. The Argonauts stopped at Lemnos and in consideration of their gentle behavior they were received with great favor. They stayed some months, and the sub- !' sequent population of the Island was the result of this visit. At the time Athens was at the height cf Its fame Hephaestla possessed sixty thousand inhabitants, a larger number thau the more famous city. The island was noted for its pottery and the earth from which it was made. The French officer who discovered this statue has written the following Interesting Interest-ing account of the occurence: s. Interesting Story of the Statue's Discovery. "Our mon who were digging the trench suddenly came upon the floor of a large building, evidently a temple or palace. I was looking at them carelessly when one or them said, 'This sounds hollow.' That attracted my attention and I became ex-. ex-. cited by the Idea thit In the course of cur duties we might discover soma precious relic I told our men that they might come upon a Greek amphora f-lled with pieces of gold, and they dug away with Increased energy. At first we found two or three, fragments of marble like those which are scattered about everywhere every-where here, and then some fragment of an amphora, too much shattered to be of ' any value. "Suddenly a man with a pick cried, "Here Is something solid." I caught a glimpse of a round piece of marble. I nought it was the base of a column. 'Dig gently,' I ordered. Having loocened f the earth around tho object with his pickax, he began to clear it awny with his hands. "Suddenly a white human shoulder came Into view. 1 called nil my comrades. com-rades. 'Quick, quick a statue!' They could hardly believe it. The duties of military operations had led uj to this spot, where we found a masterpiece of Greek art hidden Elnce ancient times! "The extent of the ruins is so great that the point evacuated by our men does not represent the millionth part of the space. How strange that they should have dug just at the spot where this marble had been concealed for twenty centuries! "We proceeded with the greatast care to extract the statue. Alas, It had no head! In a short time we had disengaged disen-gaged the torso from the soil. The arms r had hffen hrnknn off and were niissins. One leg was complete to the left knee. The greater part of the right leg was missing. The statue was about two-thirds two-thirds of natural size and weighed over 300 pounds. Upon the back were the remains re-mains of wings that had been broken off. "It was a statue of a young Greek god, a youth of the most exquisite beauty, comparable com-parable with the. Hermes of Praxiteles. We decided that it was a statue of Eros, the God of Love. "We were so excited that we could not stop to eat at the customary lunch hour. We were anxious to recover the rest of the statue the arms, the legs, the wings. Pit the end of an hour we came upon an object that gave promise of being one ot :he missing fragments. It proved to be the .right thigh. Soon we discovered the calf of the same limb. The sun was fearfully fear-fully hot,' and our men were growing exhausted ex-hausted and caked with dust. e worked on arduously until dark, but without finding find-ing any more of the missing pieces of tUe statue. "We were, however, able to obtain an interesting piece of evidence as to the nature of the disaster that put an end ti the ancient city of Hephaestia. Opinion among historians has been divided between be-tween the view that It was destroyed by an earthquake and that it was sacked by tho Turks when they tirst began to ovei run the Greek dominions. We decided that it had been destroyed by an earth- quake. We found the evidence of this in the hall in which the statue had stood.' This hall, by the way, was a splendid apartment entirely constructed of white marble. In one corner we found a stair-caso stair-caso of three steps, descending into what had apparently been a swimming pool. In the corner cf this we found the skeleton of ah ancient Greek bull, or cow. The French soldiers requested that the statue should be placed in a Greek museum with the inscription: "Found by the officers and soldiers of the Dardanelles Expeditionary Corps at Palaipolis, in Lemnos, in the campaign against Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey, 1915.". The contending armies in the Balkans are fighting over territory that was successively suc-cessively civilized by Alexander the Great and the Roman Empire, and has since fallen into more or less barbarism. In Macedonia the allied armies have dug up an amazing quantity of antiquities belonging be-longing to the period of Alexander the Great and earlier. This is an extremely interesting field that has never been thoroughly explored by archaeologists. The eastern side of the Adriatic, for which Italy is now fighting, was an important im-portant part of the Roman Empire, not far removed from Rome itself. In this region the soldiers are recovering many interesting relics "of" the past, incidental to their military duties. It is strange that a region that was a central part of ' the olvilized world in ancient times should be the most barbarous part of Europe to-day. This is one of many things that may be changed by the war. The Russian army has recovered many Interesting relics of the past from the trenches which it has constructed. Greek civilization extended far into Russia in ancient times, and many sites of buried and forgotten cities lie there. Some of these have been opened up by the soldiers' spades. Curious and beautiful statues have been found there and some remarkable jewelry of gold and precious stones. jm K . . v , - ( v V: ' T s" iVt ' " v ? 1 n V ' . f - ? t' ' ' ' S - - - , k ' . ' 4 ' " - " - ' j 0 f ' - - ; - t ' v ' French Soldiers Digging Trenches on Lemnos, During Which They Discovered Many Interesting Ancient Greek Relics Besides the Eros Statue. This we took to be evidence of the earthquake. earth-quake. It was not likely that the marauding maraud-ing Turks would have driven the animal here In their destructive raid. They would have eaten it. The animal had evidently taken refuge here, terrified by the earthquake and had been buried among the ruins." The French officer presented his find to the Greek authorities, hoping that it would have some effect in deciding the attitude of Greece In favor of the Allies. The British forces entrenched on the peninsula of Galllpoll, the European side of the Dardanelles, have discovered an enormous, quantity of statuary, fragments of temples and relics of the most Interesting Inter-esting periods of ancient Greek history. Among these Is a winged statue of victory vic-tory in the finest Athenian style, which probably commemorates a victory of the Athens in the Peloponnesian war. From Kut-el-Amarna, the base of the British expedition In Mesopotamia, comes the news that the British soldiers have found a wonderfully carved series of sculptures showing how the King Darius conquered Babylon, the greatest city of that day, and other deeds performed by him. On the frontier of France and Germany Ger-many the trench operations have brought to light many remains of the middle ages and earlier periods. It is said that the confusion of war has given an opportunity oppor-tunity for unscrupulous persons to make French Officer Holding the Mutilated-Fragment of the Beautiful Ancient Greek Statue of Eros, Found on the Island of Lemnos. ! if a ... - ; t " " x ; , -. j , , - ' . r -. . ' , " ' r" Curious Ancient Figure Dug Up by the Russians on the Volhynia Front. away with ancient relics, statues and fragments from Rheims Cathedral and other places. On the other hand the churches and museums will bo enriched with some offerings from the patriotic trench diggers. At Soissons, in France, a very critical point in (lie line of intrenrhmrnts, the French soldiers have reached the foundations foun-dations of the ancient church endowed by Hip famous King Clovis, the flrnt Frankihh chieftain who became a Christian. |
