XL On the Statue of Solon mentioned by ^schines and Demosthenes. 

 By J. W, Donaldson, D.D., Vice-President of the Society. 



[ReadFeJ. 22, 1858.] 



It seems to be a special duty of the philosopher, as such, to discover truth wherever it is 

 concealed or misrepresented, and to expose error in whatever province or department it may be 

 found. And although the identification of an ancient statue may appear at first sight to belong 

 to an antiquarian rather than a philosophical society, I hope to be able to prove that the 

 subject, to which I have invited your attention, is one which properly falls within the circle of 

 our investigations as philosophers in general and as philologers in particular. I propose to 

 show the groundlessness and futility of an arbitrary hypothesis, which has for a long time 

 imposed on every student of art and every traveller to Southern Italy, and which has been 

 made the foundation of a still more erroneous statement in the most widely circulated of our 

 English Cyclopaedias; to correct a more plausible opinion, maintained or accepted by great 

 artists and scholars ; and to lay before you a simple and, as it appears to me, very obvious 

 conclusion, which illustrates two important passages in Demosthenes and JEschines, and re- 

 vives a recollection of a very early and interesting relic of the history and literature of Athens. 



One of the most beautiful and conspicuous statues recovered from the ruins of Hercula- 

 neum is exhibited in the Museo Borbonico at Naples as a whole length statue of Aristides, the 

 Just, the son of Lysimachus. The reasons for this identification are given as follows by 

 Finati in his splendid publication of the monuments of that museum (Museo Borbonico, Vol. i. 

 pi. l) : " Non essendovi, per quanto e a nostra notizia, ritratti autentici di Aristide, e non 

 avendo ritrovato alcun rapporto di somiglianza fra questa statua, e le fattezze di altri ritratti 

 di personaggi noti della Grecia, noi abbiamo seguito la commune opinione, chi riconosce efii- 

 giato in questa statua il rivale di Temistocle ; tanto piu che le fattezze della medesima, Patti- 

 tudine, e I'abbigliamento non disconvengono al carattere e alia facondia di Aristide, non che 

 al costume de' tempi suoi." 



It is quite needless to point out the invalidity of this I'easoning. There is no ground 

 whatever for what Finati calls " the common opinion " that this statue represents Aristides the 

 Just, or indeed any person of that name. It is merely a guess or an assumption. But if Finati's 

 arguments are worthless, still less valuable is the correction of his view by the writer, who 

 gives us the life of iElius Aristides the rhetorician in the Penny Cyclopcedia, Vol. i. p. 325, 

 and who introduces a wood-cut of the statue from Herculaneum by way of a portrait of his 

 subject. He says : " From comparing the head with that of ^Elius Aristides in the Vatican, 

 and from the somewhat affected attitude, and the general character of the figure, we are con» 

 vinced it is not the old Aristides. It may be objected by some that this statue is superior as 



