previous next

CHAP. 40.—STATUES OF IRON; CHASED WORKS IN IRON.

Still, however, human industry has not failed to employ iron for perpetuating the honours of more civilized life. The artist Aristonidas, wishing to express the fury of Athamas subsiding into repentance, after he had thrown his son Learchus from the rock,1 blended copper and iron, in order that the blush of shame might be more exactly expressed, by the rust of the iron making its appearance through the shining substance of the copper; a statue which still exists at Rhodes. There is also, in the same city, a Hercules of iron, executed by Alcon,2 the endurance displayed in his labours by the god having suggested the idea. We see too, at Rome, cups of iron consecrated in the Temple of Mars the Avenger,3 Nature, in conformity with her usual benevolence, has limited the power of iron, by inflicting upon it the punishment of rust; and has thus displayed her usual foresight in rendering nothing in existence more perishable, than the substance which brings the greatest dangers upon perishable mortality.

1 See Ovid, Metam. B. iv. 1. 467, et seq.; and Fasti, B. vi. 1. 489, et seq.—B.

2 An artist mentioned also by Ovid and Pausanias.—B. And by Virgil.

3 " Mars Ultor." In the Forum of Augustus, in the Eighth Region of the City.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Latin (Karl Friedrich Theodor Mayhoff, 1906)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

hide References (1 total)
  • Cross-references to this page (1):
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: