Roman flute player or Euterpe figure

3D Model

A cast bronze figure of a girl holding a tibia - a double reed wind instrument similar to an oboe. She is wearing a tall stephane, or headdress, decorated with feathers and is therefore likely to be Euterpe, one of the nine muses. In mythology, the muses were the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne. Challenged by the sirens to a musical contest, the muses won and humiliated the sirens by pulling out their wing feathers and wearing them on their heads as tokens of their supremacy. Euterpe, as the muse of lyric poetry and wind instruments, is usually represented with a pipe or double pipes.

The figure was excavated by the Society of Antiquaries in 1900 in house 2, Insula XXIII at the Roman town of Calleva Atrebatum, near Silchester in Hampshire.

Object number REDMG : 1995.4.3 Height = 122 mm

3D scanned on 19 August 2026 by Steven Dey, ThinkSee3D Ltd.