37 
are, therefore, sufficient in themselves to upset the first identi¬ 
fication of the character of the statue. 
The second, which makes it to he a Mars, has much to he said 
in its favour; hut yet is open to certain grave objections that do 
not present themselves to the casual observer in so glaring a 
light as those above adduced against the previously quoted 
opinion, hut which will he found the more difficult -to rebut 
the more closely they are examined. It is true, indeed, that 
our figure still rests one hand on his shield, and the 
other, though now deficient, unquestionably upon his spear, 
in the attitude of that god when “ standing at ease,” as 
opposed to his violent action in his other characters of 
“ Gradivus,’’ and “ Projyugnafor ,^^—hut this is nearly all that 
can he said in support of the attribution we are now con¬ 
sidering. The very youthful, nay feminine cast of the 
features, and the long flowing hair would rather bespeak a 
“Yenus Yictrix,” than the ferocious Mavors of the Romans, 
who invariably typified their Divine progenitor as a bearded 
man, arrived at the maturity of his strength; and this from the 
earliest times as may be seen from the head of Mavors placed 
upon the beautiful mriptuU of the Republic. It is however true 
that the Ai^es of the Greeks, (and consequently, of their 
scholars, the Etruscans) enjoys perpetual youth upon their 
monuments; and the thought once occurred to me that the 
maker of our figure had chosen to take for his model some 
ancient masterpiece of the Greek school, a bronze statuette of 
Ares, carried about from one country to another amongst the 
lares of his Roman patron: just as the Table-Hercules of 
Alexander always accompanied Hannibal in his campaigns, 
and afterwards, under the Flavian dynasty, its latest possessor, 
Rollins Felix, (Statius, Sylvse, iii. 1). Although the exceptional 
merit of the York sculpture would warrant our assigning it 
an origin of this nature, yet it exhibits certain pecidiarities 
in the detail (hereafter to be noticed) that plainly indicate a 
widely different nationality and date for its execution. 
The third explanation of its design, that proposed by Mr. 
Thompson Watkin, (Archaeological Journal for December, 
1881), is equally ingenious and seductive; and if it should 
