ABSTRACT
Caspar Jacob Christiaan Reuvens’ host, Bernard Eugene Antoine Rottiers, turned out to be an adventurous, enterprising and entertaining man. In Russia Rottiers had started to collect antiquities. In Turkey he created a collection of more than 600 coins, medals and gemstones, which he sold later to the Duke of Blacas, the French ambassador in Rome. A year after the successful purchase of Rottiers’ first collection, a second collection was offered on sale. Rottiers started digging in an area, enclosed by low dividing walls, next to the ancient road from the harbour Klima to the city of Kastro, in the centre of the ancient town of Melos, which was destroyed by the Athenian army in 416 Bc. Rottiers continued to send small items to the museum and later curators had interviews with him when they were working on the first catalogue of the Greek collection.
