54 
DEPARTMENT OF ANTIQUITIES. 
[ground 
At the sides of the room, a life-size statue of a young man, undraped, of 
Avhich the subject is uncertain ; a mutilated group of two boys, quarrel- 
ling over the game of astragali, or osselets, life-size ; two small statues 
of fishermen, holding baskets, and one having in his right hand a fish ; 
a small statue of a comic actor, wearing a mask ; another^, of a tumbler, 
on the back of a crocodile. 
The individual representations, or portraits, consist of busts 
of personages distinguished in Greek history or literature, and 
stand in the following order : — 
Periander, one of the seven sages ; the philosophers, Epicurus, and 
Diogenes ; Hippocrates, the physician ; Pericles, the Athenian states- 
man ; Demosthenes, the orator ; Aratus, the poet and astronomer ; 
Sophocles, 4;he tragedian ; Homer, and another Greek poet. 
On the walls are two bas-reliefs, each bearing an unknown portrait. 
THIED GKiEGO-KOMAN SALOON. 
This room contains the remainder of the mythological 
series, consisting of the representations of divinities of inferior 
rank to the Olympic cycle, demigods, heroes, and personages 
associated with religion, poetry, or mysticism, in the Greek 
^nd Roman creed. The description commences from the 
North-west door, leading to the Lycian Gallery. 
The first sculpture represents a symbolical personage, modified 
from the type of Hermaphroditus, the offspring of Mercury and Venus ; 
the next Actseon, transformed by Diana into a stag ; the third is a ter- 
minal statue of a veiled person, of uncertain class. 
The five succeeding subjects are connected with Asiatic legends : — 
A bust (on a bracket) of Atys, the favourite of Cybele, worshipped 
especially in Phrygia; a group representing a mystical sacrifice to 
Mithras, the Persian deity of the sun ; a statue of a priest of Mithras 
(wrongly restored as Paris) ; a small group of a Mithraic sacrifice, with 
a dedicatory inscription ; and (on a bracket) a bust of a youth in a 
Phrygian cap, and veiled, probably Adonis, or Atys. 
Over each Mithraic group is a rude bas-relief of uncertain meaning. 
Next follow the creations of Poetry : Mount Parnassus, as its seat, 
and the Muses, as its inspirers. 
An elaborate, and highly curious bas-relief represents the Apotheosis 
of Homer, occurring on Parnassus, in the presence of various deities. 
Muses, and allegorical figures, whose names are generally inscribed on 
the marble, as well as that of the artist, Archelaus of Priene. Beside 
this are two fine busts, probably of Homeric heroes, and commonly, 
though without much reason, termed Achilles and Diomedes. 
Beyond this is a group of Muses : — in the centre, a large statue of 
Thalia, the Muse of pastoral and comic poetry ; on each side of this. 
