PLATE I APHRODITE THE MOTHER On Aphrodite's left arm originally rested an infant, the fingers of whose little hand may still be seen on the drapery of its mother's bosom. The goddess is looking straight before her, not, however, with her vision concentrated on a definite object, but rather abstractedly, as if serenely proud of her motherhood. She seems to represent here that special development of the earth goddess who typified the kindly, fostering care of the soil, and reminds one of certain Asiatic images of the divine mother and child. From a marble statue of the fourth or third century B.C., found on the Greek mainland, and now in the Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology, Toronto (photograph). See pp. 196 ff. |