我小时候常去博物馆，那里藏有古希腊所有著名雕像的摹制品。这些摹制品都用石膏制成，我们称石膏摹制品。我后来才知道，我最喜欢的几座雕像其实还没有我上一章介绍的那些雕像好看。男孩子似乎就是这样，小的时候喜欢某些东西，长大后又喜欢一些不一样的东西。我特别喜欢贴有“垂死的角斗士”标签的那座雕像。
我问：“角斗士是干什么的？”大人们告诉我，角斗士是剑客，也是囚犯或奴隶。他们受命相互搏斗，直到一方被杀，来让一群围坐在看台席上的观众从中取乐，好像我们今天在足球场观看足球赛。
我后来才知道，那座雕像上的标签写错了，应该是《垂死的高卢人》，而不是《垂死的角斗士》。高卢人极其野蛮，他们生活在现在的法国。高卢人同希腊人作战时，这个高卢人在战斗中被杀。他脖子上戴着一个扭曲的金属领圈。正是从这一点我们知道他是高卢人，因为高卢人都戴这种特殊的领圈。
这座雕像向我们展示了这个高卢人身上的剑伤，鲜血从石刻的伤口流出。雕像上有张卡片，上面写着“请勿触摸”。但是，我还是忍不住摸了流血的伤口，因为它看起来实在太逼真了。“过来”，母亲喊道，“那是垂死的人，实在太可怕了！我们还是去看《贝尔维德尔的阿波罗》吧，那可是世界上最漂亮的雕像之一啊。”
“那是男的吗？”我惊叫道：“他看起来怎么像个女的。”“那是因为他留了长发，他像许多古希腊人那样把头发盘到头顶上了。”我说过，阿波罗是太阳神，在希腊众神中最英俊。我们不知道这座雕像中的阿波罗在做什么。有人说他左手握着一把弓，正用右手在拉，准备射杀一条像龙一样可怕的蛇。这是条蟒蛇，将接近它的人都咬死。还有人说阿波罗左手拿着美杜莎的头颅，将敌人变成石头。阿波罗、弥涅瓦和帕尔修斯都曾用美杜莎头颅的摹制品来杀敌。
“贝尔维德尔”的意思是“看上去很美”。但是，阿波罗被称作“贝尔维德尔”，并不是因为他的美，而是因为这座雕像现存放在罗马梵蒂冈博物馆一个叫贝尔维德尔的房间里。
不过，我对那些“有故事”的雕像更感兴趣，尤其是那些恐怖的故事。梵蒂冈博物馆里还有一座雕像，刻的是两条巨蟒缠绕三人。标签写着：拉奥孔和他的儿子们。拉奥孔是特洛伊的一个祭司。他告诉特洛伊人，希腊人要耍诡计骗他们。正在此时，两条巨蟒缠住了拉奥孔的儿子。他去救儿子，但巨蟒却把他和他两个儿子都活活缠死了。当时特洛伊人以为这是拉奥孔撒谎的报应。尽管后来真相大白，拉奥孔讲的是实话，但为时已晚矣。据说，这是三位雕刻家共同完成的雕像。
为什么有些人，尤其是男孩子们，喜欢看那些刻画受苦或垂死的雕像呢？我以前也喜欢看这种雕像，不过现在我房间里已找不到这样的画或雕像了。摆放那种东西让人很不舒服。但在古时，很多人都心地残忍，喜欢看杀戮的场面以及残杀和受苦的雕像。他们经常去角斗场，还带着午餐，边吃边看，看到最后有人被打死时尤为兴奋。现在仍有些人喜欢看斗牛或参观屠宰场。
不过，有一座小雕像我一直都很喜欢。这像刻的不是神，也不是神话人物，甚至不是一个大人，而是一个男孩。他正在脚上拔刺。从这座雕像上我们可以看出，今天光脚丫的男孩和两千年前光脚丫的男孩非常相似。
另外一座雕像是公元前不久完成的。这座雕像实在太大，所以没用石膏摹制。它是一座巨大的太阳神青铜雕像，差不多有100英尺高。这座雕像摆放的位置很特别，太阳神的腿刚好跨坐在罗德斯岛海港的入口处。雕像名叫《罗德斯岛巨像》，它是世界七大奇迹之一。不过，由于某些原因，或是地震，太阳神巨像倒塌了，碎片被当成废品卖掉了。
TINY TREASURES
宝石小雕
WHERE your treasure is，there will your heart be also.“I once read a description of a group of sculptured figures that had been made for a public building.The chief thing the newspaper said about the sculpture was that it weighed ten tons.It did not say whether the statues were beautiful or not—just that they weighed ten tons.It might have been ten tons of coal.But mere size doesn’t make a thing beautiful.The Greeks made some huge statues，but they were beautiful.They made，also，tiny sculptured figures so small that you have to look at them under a magnifying glass to see how really beautiful they are.
Not long ago I saw in a museum a piece of such sculpture that couldn’t have weighed more than an ounce and was no larger than a domino.It was a piece of colored stone through which the light shone and it was carved with beautiful figures of Greek gods and goddesses in low relief.The figures had been cut into the stone with very fine but sharp tools.It had been made by some Greek sculptor whose name no one knows—before Christ was born.It was called a gem，which is the name we give to anything that is very precious though it may be tiny.
In the British Museum in London is a whole room of such gems made before the time of Christ，by sculptors as great as those who made man size and colossal size figures.These gems were made for kings and wealthy people，for no others could afford them.Rich people long ago used to collect such gems as you might collect postage stamps，and museums—and some people who can afford it—do so to-day.
Often these tiny bits of low relief sculpture were cut in a stone that had two or three layers of different colors so that the figures were in one color and the background in another.If one layer was black and the other white，the stone was called onyx.If the top layer was reddish and those below it white and black，it was called sardonyx.Such sculptured low reliefs were known as cameos and some were very beautiful.Nowadays，cameos are made of shells of two color layers and are called shell cameos.Some are cut from two or more layers of different colored stone cemented together or from artificial sardonyx.
It used to be the fashion for ladies to wear shell cameos as breastpins and perhaps your grandmother may have had such a cameo pin with the head of some one cut in it.
Some kinds of china have white cameo-like figures on a blue background.Some cameos were cut from glass of two colors.There is a famous vase in the British Museum called the Portland Vase.It is of blue glass and the figures on it in relief are white glass.Many years ago a crazy person，just to show off，knocked over the vase and it was smashed to bits.The bits were all picked up and put together again，and so well was it repaired that you can hardly tell that it was broken.
There was another kind of gem made in great quantities，before Christ，in which the figures were hollowed out or sunken，instead of being raised.A gem of this sort was called a seal or intaglio，which means sunken.The seals were used to stamp a design in wax.Of course the stamped impression made from the sunken relief was raised in wax，and one could make as many stamped impressions with the seal as he liked.Each person who could afford it had such a seal with a special design all his own to stamp everything he wished to mark with his own hand.Every one would then know he alone had made the impression.
The marks made by seals were largely used instead of signatures，back in the days when few people knew how to write—or even how to sign their names.Sometimes the seal was fitted in a finger ring which was worn by the owner so that no one else could use it.Such rings were called signet rings，which means “signing ring.”Sometimes the seal was not mounted in a ring，but was kept in a safe place so that no one but the owner could use it.
