Rude Stone Antiquities of Brittany. By Miss Russell. 519 



a modified menhir — a pillar-stone cut rudely into the human 

 form, by Romanised Gauls. 



But I find the inscriptions on the front and sides of the 

 pedestal, state most explicitly that it was erected by Caius Julius 

 Cassar, C. Claudius Metellus and Lucius Cornelius Lentulus being 

 consuls, to Venus Victrix, in the year 705 from the building of 

 Rome, he having accomplished the conquest of Graul, not for his 

 own honour, but that of his country ; or words to that effect. 



The statue must of course have been executed by the artificers 

 of the Roman army, who were not sculptors. 



There appears to be no authorit}' whatever beyond conjecture 

 for the tradition that the three inscriptions are a forgery by the 

 Count de Lannion, the gentleman who intervened between the 

 priests who wanted the statue destroyed, and the people who 

 were still worshipping it, in some degree, in the end of the 17th 

 century. It is said to have been twice thrown down and set up 

 again, before he undertook to remove it to his own grounds ; it 

 took forty yoke of oxen to drag it, with a great fountain-basin 

 belonging to it. The inscription at the back records the removal 

 by Petrus Comes de Lannion. It seems improbable nearly to im- 

 possibility that any one should attach the names of Ccesar and 

 Venus to anything so utterly unlike a classical statue as this 

 seems to be ; a- forged statue would have been imaginable, in the 

 reign of Louis the Fourteenth. This Venus is about seven feet 

 and a half high, the limbs little more than indicated, instead of 

 being carved out ; the head too small for the rest of the figure. 

 As to what is said of the grim and malignant expression ; some- 

 thing must be allowed for the weathering of the best part of 

 two thousand years. It is equally unlikely that any one should 

 go to so much trouble and expense to save a mere standing-stone, 

 however venerated. 



What originates the further hypothesis, that the statue was 

 entirely rechiselled, seems to be, that the letters I I T on the 

 bandeau on the head are in relief, not incised. It has only lately 

 been pointed out, by one of the Breton authorities, M. de la 

 Monneraye, that these letters are a device used by the Julian 

 family, and found on the coins of Julius Caesar with the head of 

 Venus ; and though it is going too far to assume, as this gentle- 

 man does, that this would not be known to Count de Lannion, at 

 a time when the classics were so much more studied than they 

 are now, it certainly does affect the history of the statue. The 



