[4] In 1863, Charles Champoiseau (1830–1909), acting chief of the Consulate of France in Adrianopolis (now Edirne in Turkey), undertook from March 6 to May 7 the exploration of the ruins of the sanctuary of the Great Gods on the island of Samothrace.

On April 13, 1863, he discovered part of the bust and the body of a large female statue in white marble accompanied by numerous fragments of drapery and feathers.

The main part of the body (2.14 m from the upper belly to the feet) is erected on a stone base, and largely completed by fragments of drapery, including the fold of himation that flares behind the legs on the Nike.

[8] Beginning in 1875, Austrian archaeologists who, under the direction of Alexander Conze, had been excavating the buildings of the Samothrace sanctuary since 1870, studied the location where Champoiseau had found the Victory.

Architect Aloïs Hauser drew the grey marble blocks left on-site and apprehended that, once properly assembled, they would form the tapered bow of a warship, and that, placed on a base of slabs, they served as the basis for the statue.

[9] Tetradrachmas of Demetrios Poliorcetes struck between 301 and 292 BC, representing a Victory on the bow of a ship, wings outstretched, give a good idea of this type of monument.

The monument was staged to constitute the crowning of the staircase: it was advanced on the landing to be more visible from the bottom of the steps, and was put on a modern 45 cm-high block of stone, supposed to evoke a combat bridge at the bow of the ship.

At the declaration of the Second World War in September 1939, the Victory statue was moved along with other artefacts to the Château de Valençay (Indre) until the Liberation, and was replaced at the top of the stairs without damage in July 1945.

The statue came down from its base to undergo scientific examination (UV, infrared, x-rays, microspectrography, marble analysis):[22] traces of blue paint are detected on the wings and on a strip at the bottom of the mantle.

A cast of the large ship block left in Samothrace was replaced by a metal base on a cylinder ensuring the proper balance of the statue.

"If the French and the Louvre have a problem, we are ready to preserve and accentuate the Victory of Samothrace, if they return it to us", Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Akis Gerondopoulos said in 2013.

The sculptor has multiplied the effects of draperies, between places where the fabric is plated against the body by revealing its shapes, especially on the belly, and those where it accumulates in folds deeply hollowed out casting a strong shadow, as between the legs.

There is no clue to reconstructing the position of the left arm, probably lowered, very slightly bent; the goddess may have held a stylis (a naval standard)[28] on this side, a kind of mast taken as a trophy on the enemy ship, as seen on coins.

"The whole body is inscribed in a rectangular triangle, a simple but very solid geometric figure: it was necessary to support both the fulfilled shapes of the goddess, the accumulation of draperies, and the energy of movement".

[30] The art historian H. W. Janson has pointed out[31] that unlike earlier Greek or Near Eastern sculptures, the Nike creates a deliberate relationship to the imaginary space around the goddess.

The wind that has carried her and which she is fighting off, straining to keep steady – as mentioned the original mounting had her standing on a ship's prow, just having landed – is the invisible complement of the figure and the viewer is made to imagine it.

At the same time, this expanded space heightens the symbolic force of the work; the wind and the sea are suggested as metaphors of struggle, destiny and divine help or grace.

At the bottom of the bow, at the waterline, a large triple-pronged spur would have been sculpted, and a little higher up, a smaller two-bladed ram that would have been used to smash the hull of the enemy ship would have been shown.

[32] Epigraphist Christian Blinkenberg[33] thought that this bow was that of a trihēmiolia, a type of warship often named in Rhodes inscriptions: the island's shipyards were renowned, and its war fleet important.

In the case of Victory, the sculptor optimized this technique by tilting the joint surfaces that connect the wings to the body by 20° forward, which ensured their cantilevered support in the back.

The Victory Monument was located at the south end of the portico terrace, in a rectangular space dug into the hillside, and set back and raised from the theatre; facing north, it overlooks the entire sanctuary.

Two 3D reconstructions have been proposed by B. Wescoat:[44] either low walls forming a peribolos around the open-air monument, or a covered building with columns and pediment of the naiskos type.

In addition to a promise of a better spiritual life, the Cabeiri gods, including the Dioscuri, were reputed to ensure their protection to those who were initiated into their Mysteries if they were in danger at sea and in combat.

The construction of the monument was then related to the Battle of Cos (around 262–255 BC),[53][54] during which the King of Macedonia Antigonus II Gonatas defeated the Lagids, allied with Athens and Sparta during the Chremonidean War.

The same is true of the small fragment found in 1891 by Champoiseau within the walls of the monument to Samothrace, bearing the end of an engraved name: [...]Σ ΡΟΔΙΟΣ.

According to him, the monument was commissioned by the Rhodians, allies in the kingdom of Pergamos against Antiochus III, after their victory at the naval battles of Side and Myonnesos, on the Ionian coast, in 190 BC.

Jean Charbonneaux also admits the historical link between the Victory of Samothrace and the battles of Myonnesus and Magnesia, and makes it the dedication of King Eumene II.

Rhodes and Pergamon called on the Roman Republic for reinforcements, and Titus Quinctius Flamininus crushed the Macedonian army in Thessaly with the Battle of Cynoscephalae.

This style lasted in Rhodes until Roman times in complex and monumental creations such as the Laocoon group or Sperlonga sculptures attributed or signed by Rhodian sculptors.

The Victory of Samothrace is a grandiose adaptation of the moving statue of the Athena-Niké of the Cyrene monument:[67] the sculptor added wings, stretched out the front leg to express the flight, and modified the arrangement of the mantle with the floating panel at the back.