3-003-979 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Cyrene Marbles in the British Museum: Bacchus, 1861. Statue from Cyrene, an ancient Greek and later Roman city near present-day Shahhat, Libya. 'Statue of Bacchus, a Iittle above life-size [from]...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 time during which Cyrene enjoyed a liberal form of government was happily that at which art and literature were in the highest state they reached among the Greeks. On this account we find that art here attained the same relative position that history tells us was won by literature and science... the remains brought to this country have doubtless been the ornaments of temples'. From "Illustrated London News", 1861.