[MSN] Horace farm find back in Rome. Satyr stolen in 1977 will return to villa after cleaning

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Horace farm find back in Rome 
 Satyr stolen in 1977 will return to villa after cleaning 


(ANSA) - Rome, April 6 - A precious statue from Roman poet Horace's Sabine
farm arrived back in Rome on Thursday .

It will be returned to the villa site north of Rome in about three weeks,
officials said .

"All it needs now is to be cleaned up and then it will be restored to the
Horace Museum at Licenza in 20 days' time at the most," Deputy Culture
Minister Antonio Martusciello told a press conference here .

The herm, or archaic head on a square block, was stolen from the farm near
Rome in 1977 and turned up on the German antiquities market in the 1990s .

It was acquired by a German regional museum in 2000 for just 10,000 euros -
a fraction of the price it would have fetched if its provenance had been
known .

Experts recently identified it and informed Interpol and Italy's art cops,
who took it off the museum's hands last month .

The herm takes its name from the Greek god Hermes but in this case it bears
the head of a leering satyr .

Lyric poet Horace (65-8BCE) is the most celebrated poet of the Augustan era
along with epic poet Virgil .

One of his odes contains the famous injunction to readers, 'carpe diem'
('seize the day') .

Other odes refer fondly to his Sabine farm, a gift from his patron Maecenas.
Culture Minister Rocco Buttiglione said the return of the herm marked
another victory in Italy's crackdown on art theft .

Italy has stepped up its fight to recover lost treasures and recently sealed
a groundbreaking deal with New York's Metropolitan Museum to secure the
return of some of its finest Ancient Greek pieces - in exchange for future
loans of equivalent value .

Italian authorities have also launched a landmark trial of a US antiquities
curator, accused of buying looted artefacts for the Getty Museum in
California.


http://ansa.it/main/notizie/awnplus/english/news/2006-04-06_1066864.html