Word: psyttaleia
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...Attica, still held the sympathies of many a U. S. and English citizen. On July 19, 1827, for instance, the U. S. frigate Constitution anchored in the Straits of Salamis and quietly and unofficially sent ashore a boatload of provisions to Greek revolutionaries hiding on the small island of Psyttaleia. Before Commodore Daniel Todd Patterson could sail away, however, he was persuaded by the Greeks to buy a huge mutilated statue of great antiquity which had been buried inland and whose five tons of bulk gave Old Ironsides' grumbling sailors no end of trouble. But Hellenistic Commodore Patterson brought...
Since 1876. Psyttaleia's headless Ceres has occupied a niche over the main entrance of the Academy's later building at Broad and Cherry Streets. To the sculptor who hewed and chiseled her broad figure in the time of Praxiteles, she represented not Roman Ceres but Greek Demeter, "earth mother," goddess of fertility, mother of Persephone whom Pluto carried off to the underworld. One of the few pieces of ancient Greek sculpture which have been left outdoors since discovery, Ceres has been getting blacker every year in Philadelphia's smoky air, has finally begun to crumble...
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