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The Statuette of Eros and Psyche, Slabs, Minor Marble Finds
Alongside the larger architectural elements, the Punta Scifo A ship was also
carrying a few small items: four marble slabs of which only one survived intact (SLB 1),
a statuette of Eros and Psyche embracing each other (STA 1), at least six tiny tablets of
marble and slate (MOB 1), and a mortar made of granite (MOB 2).
SLB 1, a thin (0.07 m) but large (2.10 x 1.05 m) marble slab was discovered
during Orsi’s investigations along with a few more fragmentary slabs, the number of
which remains unknown. 177 The other artifacts were discovered later: the statuette in
1968, when some local fishermen raised it in the bay of Punta Scifo, 178 and the tablets and
mortar in 1983 during the Aquarius excavation. 179 Armando Lucifero in his 1976
translation of François Lenormant’s La Grande Grèce, recounts how, after buying the
little sculpture from local fishermen, he donated it to the museum of Croton. 180 This is the
only piece of evidence indicating that between 1915 and 1983 there was at least one
additional find, and one cannot help but wonder if more items disappeared in the years
before the Soprintendenza ai Beni Archeologici della Calabria decided to excavate the
site.
There is a discrepancy between P. Pensabene and C. Moss regarding the ultimate
nature of the Eros and Psyche group. While Pensabene considers it an unfinished
sculpture in pavonazzetto typical of the Docimian workshops, which were skilled in
producing small votive and decorative sculptures for export, Moss sees the group as a
177 P. Orsi describes, at p. 494 of his 1921 article, “an intact marble table of 2.10 x 1.05 x 0.07 m and
fragments of several others” without specifying their exact number.
178 Moss 1988, 386.
179 Pensabene 2002a, 37.
180 Lucifero in Lenormant 1976, 223, n. 29.
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