The Riace Warriors: Remnants of a sanctuary in Magna Graecia or Roman plunder?
I first learned of the Riace warriors while listening to the Great Courses lecture series "Classical Archaeology of Ancient Greece and Rome presented by John R. Hale of the University of Louisville. Dr. Hale made them sound so intriguing I had to research them further and see what they actually looked like since I was listening to an audio version of the course while I commuted to work at my university. When I finally saw them I found them absolutely breathtaking, too! The Riace Warriors, are two full-size Greek bronzes of naked bearded warriors, cast about 460–450 BCE that were found in the sea near Riace, Italy in 1972. The bronzes are now in the collections of the Museo Nazionale della Magna Graecia in the southern Italian city of Reggio Calabria, Italy. Stefano Mariottini, then a chemist from Rome, chanced upon the bronzes while snorkeling near the end of a vacation at Monasterace. While diving some 200 metres from the coast of Riace, at a depth ...