of one of M. Lolli's workmen, they pushed on to a new spot in the same vicinity. "It is difficult," says Hamilton, writing to Mr. Townley, "to account for the contents of the place, which consisted of a vast number of trees cut down and thrown into this hole, probably from despite, as having been part of some sacred grove intermixed with statues, &c., all of which have shared the same fate." The Egyptian statues had evidently been the object of special ill-treatment. Nevertheless, as many as fiftyseven pieces of statuary, in a greater or less degree of preservation, were discovered. Among these are the statues of Cincinnatus, of Paris, the groups of Cupid and Psyche, the Antinous, the bust of a victor in the Olympic games, the Antinous as an Egyptian deity, the statue of Pudicitia, the head of a Muse, two Egyptian idols in black marble, and a bas-relief of the same material, now at Lansdowne House.
In 1771 Gavin Hamilton extended his researches to the Tenuta of San Gregorio, then the property of Cardinal Chigi, commonly called Tor Colombaro, near the Appian way. Two places were selected, one supposed to have been a temple of Domitian, the other a villa of Gallienus. The first valuable discovery at the latter was the M. Aurelius, larger than life, and the statue, formerly named Antinous and Meleager, but now recognized as a replica of the Mercury of the Vatican and pronounced by Canova to be superior to it.[1]
Encouraged by these results, Gavin Hamilton extended his researches further to Grotto Ferrata at Albano and to Monte Cagnolo—the latter of which two sites he esteemed one of the richest mines of antiques ever opened in the neighbourhood of Rome—to Prima Porta at Monte Rotondo, to Nemi, and elsewhere in the same neighbourhood. In nearly every case success rewarded his efforts. He is next heard of in 1772 at Porta Marina, near Ostia, working on the site of some ancient Thermae Maritimae, and among other ancient statues he then discovered a torso which he restored as Diomede carrying
- ↑ Both of these statues are at Lansdowne House.
