So many many people would come far and wide to see this famed nude statue of the goddess. Katie: And this actually brought great acclaim to Knidos. The city of Cos was the first buyer and chose the more modest statue, leaving the city of Knidos to buy the naked one. Narrator: The story goes that Praxiteles had made two statues of Aphrodite: one where she is clothed and modest and another, like the one you see here, fully nude. What’s interesting about this particular Aphrodite type is that it’s the first sculpture to have shown any goddess in the Greek world fully nude. The original version was created in the 4th century BC by the famed Greek sculptor Praxiteles, and what we are looking at here is a Roman version created in the 2nd century AD, so about 600 years later. Katie: So this particular sculpture of Aphrodite is a type known as Aphrodite of Knidos. Katharine Raff: Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of Love and in the Roman world she is known as Venus. So the depiction of someone like Silenus would have been immediately understood as sort of, you sit here, you’re here to party. Jeff: The type of couch these objects decorated was used for reclining during the symposium, a type of raucous drinking party popular amongst ancient Greek men. And, while it may seem strange to us, there was good reason to decorate this type of furniture with these bearded wine lovers. Narrator: Though they hang by themselves today, originally they would have been featured as decoration on a dining couch, a popular form of furniture for the Greeks.

This was especially good for transporting wine from one place to another. In antiquity, before they were put into ceramic jars, wines were stored in animal hides. But the goatskin also relates to the object which is slung over the shoulder of the other Silenus figure, which is a wineskin. Goats were sacred to Dionysus as are many wild animals. Jeff Nigro: One of the figures is draped in a goatskin.

Narrator: If you look closely, you’ll see that each of the figures is carrying something on their shoulder. I’ve never tried it so I couldn’t tell you if that’s true. According to what the ancient writers thought, ivy berries are hallucinogenic. And their crowned here with leaves and berries, which are indicative of ivy, ivy is sacred to Dionysus. Jeff Nigro: And a Silenus figure is usually represented as you see here, as mature male figures with elaborate curly beards. Narrator: Silenus, a part human part horse creature, was part of entourage of Dionysus, the god of wine and revelry. The word Silenus might refer to an individual figure who is named Silenus or figures who closely resemble him. Jeff Nigro: These two little figures represent Silenoi.

The gold within divinity