Page 45 - Beholding Liberty!

PERISTYLE
I.1.4
[Antoine Serieys]
Voyage de Dimo et Nicolo Stephanopoli en Grèce, pendant les années 1797 et 1789, D’après deux missions, don’t l’une du Gouvernement français, et l’autre du général en chef Buonaparte. Rédigé par un des professeurs du Prytanée. Avec figures, plans et vues levés sur les lieux. Tome premier.
A Londres. 1800. Se trouve à Paris, Chez Besson, Libraire, rue de la Loi, no. 955. Prudhomme, rue Jacques, maison Bonneville, no. 195. Dugour, rue et maison Serpente.
Library of the Hellenic Parliament
DIMO STEPHANOPOLI (1729-1802) was a cavalry officer, botanist and naturalist, a Corsican (from the Greek village of Paomia), with roots from the Mani and a descendant of the Komnenoi of the Empire of Trebizond. In 1797-98, in his old age, he travelled to Epirus and the Mani, accompanied by his nephew, Nicolo. Dimo (Demetrios) was chosen to sound out, on behalf of Napoleon Bonaparte, the mood of the Greek population towards the latter and whether they were prepared to take revolution- ary action in the wake of the Orloff Revolution. He essentially acted as a spy under the cover of bo- tanical studies, collecting information on the anthro- pogeography and the political situation in Greece, which was processed and published in two volumes by Antoine Sérieys (1755-1819), a professor at the Prytanée français, in Paris. The work was published simultaneously in London and Paris, this London ver- sion being probably the second.
The image on display, in a drawing by Stephanopoli himself (the print signed by Guyot), presents – accord- ing to the relevant passage – a relief which they found at Gythio, in a ruin that they identified with a temple of Nike. The figure was identified as the personification of Liberty and Lacedaemon, with a spear and a codex crowned with a laurel wreath, bearing the inscription Victory or Death. According to the narrative, Demetrios took the sculpture with him to Paris to offer to Bona- parte, who commented that it ‘has the look of a saint’.
Whether true or the projection of noble desires, the figure of the spear-bearing Liberty (probably a fake), allegorically foreshadows the revolution that would break out in 1821 using the very same slogan – Vic- tory or Death.
THE AWAKENING OF HELLENISM From Archaeoloatry to Philhellenism 45