3-003-976 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Cyrene Marbles in the British Museum: the nymph Cyrene strangling a lion, 1861. Statue from Cyrene, an ancient Greek and later Roman city near present-day Shahhat, Libya. One of '...a selection of antiquities collected by Mr. Werry, her Majesty's Vice-Consul at Ben-Ghazee, a town which represents the ancient Hesperides, afterwards Berenice, the westernmost of the five cities of the Cyrenaïca...The group of the nymph Cyrene strangling a lion is more interesting from its reference to a local myth than as a work of art, for it belongs to a very low period, and is even careless in its execution. It may, however, be considered to be a copy of an early statue. The story of Cyrene is supposed to be of late invention, the name of the city having been taken, not from her, but from the fountain Cyre. However this may be, it is related that she fought and slew a lion in the Libyan desert, a fable perhaps connected with the earlier troubles of the Greek settlers'. From "Illustrated London News", 1861.