above all, that most perfect work of human art, the temple of Athena on the Acropolis, called the Parthenon or the Hecatompedon, on which, as the central point of the Athenian polity and religion, the highest efforts of the best of artists were employed. There can be no doubt that the sculptured ornaments of this temple, the remains of which form the glory of our national museum, were executed under the immediate superintendence of Pheidias; but the colossal statue of the divinity, which was enclosed within that magnificent shrine, was the work of the artist's own hand, and was for ages esteemed the greatest production of Greek statuary, with the exception of the similar, but even more splendid statue of Zeus, which Pheidias afterwards executed in his temple at Olympia. The materials chosen for this statue were ivory and gold; that is to say, the statue was formed of plates of ivory laid upon a core of wood or stone, for the flesh parts, and the drapery and other ornaments were of solid gold. It is said that the choice of these materials resulted from the determination of the Athenians to lavish the resources of wealth, as well as of art, on the chief statue of their tutelary deity; for when Pheidias laid before the ecclesia his design for the statue, and proposed to make it either of ivory and gold, or of white marble, intimating however his own preference for the latter, the people at once resolved that those materials which were the most costly should be employed. (Val. Max. i. 1. § 7.) The statue was dedicated in the 3d year of the 85th Olympiad, B. c. 438, in the archonship of Theodorus. The statue itself will be described presently, with the other works of Pheidias; but there are certain stories respecting it, which require notice here, as bearing upon the life and death of the artist, and as connected with the date of his other great work, the colossal statue of Zeus at Olympia. The scholiast on Aristophanes (Pax, 605) has preserved the following story from the Atthis of Philochorus, who flourished about B. C. 300, and whose authority is considerable, inasmuch as he was a priest and soothsayer, and was therefore well acquainted with the legends and history of his country, especially those bearing upon religious matters. Under the year of the archonship of Pythodorus (or, according to the correction of Palmerius, Theodorus), Philochorus says that the golden statue of Athena was set up in the great temple, having forty-four talents' weight of gold, under the superintendence of Pericles, and the workmanship of Pheidias. And Pheidias, appearing to have misappropriated the ivory for the scales (of the dragons) was condemned. And, having gone as an exile to Elis, he is said to have made the statue of Zeus at Olympia; but having finished this, he was put to death by the Eleians in the archonship of Scythodorus (or, according to the correction of Palmerius, Pythodorus), who is the seventh from this one (i. e. Theodorus), &c."" And then, further down, Pheidias, as Philochorus says in the archonship of Pythodorus (or Theodorus, as above), having made the statue of Athena, pilfered the gold from the dragons of the chryselephantine Athena, for which he was found guilty and sentenced to banishment; but having come to Elis, and having made among the Eleians the statue of the Olympian Zeus, and having been found guilty by them of peculation, he was put to death." (Schol.in Arist. ed. Dindorf; Fragm. Histor. Graec. p. 400, ed. Müller.) It must be remembered that this is the statement of Philochorus, as quoted by two different scholiasts; but still the general agreement shows that the passage is tolerably genuine. Of the corrections of Palmerius, one is obviously right, namely the name of Pytho dorus for Scythodorus; for the latter archon is not mentioned elsewhere. Pythodorus was archon in Ol. 87. 1, B. c. 432, and seven years before him was the archonship of Theodorus, Ol. 85. 3, B.c. 438. In the latter year, therefore, the statue was dedicated; and this date is confirmed by Diodorus (xii. 31), and by Eusebius, who places the making of the statue in the 2d year of the 85th Olympiad.* This is, therefore, the surest chronological fact in the whole life of Pheidias.+ The other parts, however, of the account of Philochorus, are involved in much difficulty. On the very face of the statement, the story of Pheidias having been first banished by the Athenians, and afterwards put to death by the Eleians, on a charge precisely similar in both cases, may be almost certainly pronounced a confused repetition of the same event. Next, the idea that Pheidias went to Elis as an exile, is perfectly inadmissible.‡ This will be clearly seen, if we examine what is known of the visit of Pheidias to the Eleians. There can be little doubt that the account of Philochorus is true so far as this, that the statue at Olympia was made by Pheidias after his great works at Athens. Heyne, indeed, maintains the contrary, but the fallacy of his arguments will presently appear. It is not at all probable that the Athenians, in their eagerness to honour their goddess by the originality as well as by the magnificence of her statue, should have been content with an imitation of a work so unsurpassable as the statue of Zeus at Olympia; but it is probable that the Eleians, as the keepers of the sanctuary of the supreme divinity, should have desired to eclipse the statue of Athena: and the fact, that of these two statues the preference was always given to that of Zeus, is no small proof that it was the last executed. Very probably, too, in this fact we may find one of the chief causes of the resentment of the Athenians against Pheidias, a resentment which is not likely * It is not, however, absolutely necessary to adopt the other correction of Palmerius, eodépou for Пueodpov, since Philochorus may naturally have placed the whole account of the trial, flight, and death of Pheidias under the year of his death; or the scholiasts, in quoting the account of his death, given by Philochorus under the year of Pythodorus, may have mixed up with it the beginning of the story, which Philochorus had put in its proper place, under the year of Theodorus. The correction, however, makes the whole matter clearer, and the words dлò TоÚтоυ rather favour it. It is remarked by Müller, with equal ingenuity and probability, that the dedication of the statue may be supposed to have taken place at the Great Panathenaea, which were celebrated in the third year of every Olympiad, towards the end of the first month of the Attic year, Hecatombaeon, that is, about the middle of July. The form in which Seneca puts this part of the story, namely, that the Eleians borrowed Pheidias of the Athenians, in order to his making the Olympian Jupiter, is a mere fiction, supported by no other writer. (Senec. Rhet. ii. 8.) to have been felt, much less manifested, at the moment when he had finished the works which placed Athens at the very summit of all that was beautiful and magnificent in Grecian art. It is necessary to bear in mind these arguments from the probabilities of the case, on account of the meagreness of the positive facts that are recorded. There is, however, one fact, which seems to fix, with tolerable certainty, the time when Pheidias was engaged on the statue at Olympia. Pausanias informs us (v. 11. § 2) that, on one of the flat pieces which extended between the legs of the throne of the statue, among other figures representing the athletic contests, was one of a youth binding his head with a fillet (the symbol of victory), who was said to resemble Pantarces, an Eleian boy, who was beloved by Pheidias; and that Pantarces was victor in the boys' wrestling, in Ol. 86, B. c. 436.* If there be any truth in this account, it follows, first, that the statue could not have been completed before this date, and also that, in all probability, Pheidias was engaged upon it at the very time of the victory of Pantarces. That the relief was not added at a later period, is certain, for there is not the least reason for supposing that any one worked upon the statue after Pheidias, nor would any subsequent artist have the motive which Pheidias had to represent Pantarces at all. A more plausible objection is founded on the uncertainty of the tradition, which Pausanias only records in the vague terms éoikévaι Tò eidos Aéyovo. But it must be remembered that the story was derived from a class of persons who were not only specially appointed to the charge of the statue, but were the very descendants of Pheidias, and who had, therefore, every motive to preserve every tradition respecting him. The very utmost that can be granted is, that the resemblance may have been a fancy, but that the tradition of the love of Pheidias for Pantarces was true; and this would be sufficient to fix, pretty nearly, the time of the residence of the artist among the Eleians. If we are to believe Clemens of Alexandria, and other late writers, Pheidias also inscribed the name of Pantarces on the finger of the statue (Cohort. p. 16; Arnob. adv. Gent. vi. 13). Besides urging the objections just referred to against the story of Pantarces, Heyne endeavours to establish an earlier date for the statue from that of the temple; which was built out of the spoils taken in the war between the Eleians and Pisaeans. The date of this war was Ol. 50, B. c. 580; but it is impossible to argue from the time when spoils were gained to the time when they were applied to their sacred uses: and the argument, if pressed at all, would obviously prove too much, and throw back the completion of the temple long before the time of Pheidias. On the whole, therefore, we may conclude that Pheidias was at work among the Eleians about B. c. 436, or two years later than the dedication of his Athena of the Parthenon. Now, was he there at the invitation of the Eleians, who desired that their sanctuary of the supreme deity, the centre of the religious and social union of Greece, should be adorned by a work of art, surpassing, if possible, the statue which had just spread the fame of Athens and of Pheidias over Greece; or was he there as a dishonoured exile, banished for peculation? All that is told us of his visit combines to show that he went attended by his principal disciples, transferring in fact his school of art for a time from Athens, where his chief work was ended, to Elis and Olympia, which he was now invited to adorn. Among the artists who accompanied him were COLOTES, who worked with him upon the statue of Zeus, as already upon that of Athena, and who executed other important works for the Eleians; PANAENUS, his relative, who executed the chief pictorial embellishments of the statue and temple; ALCAMENES, his most distinguished disciple, who made the statues in the hinder pediment of the temple; not to mention PAEONIUS of Mende, and CLEOETAS, whose connection with Pheidias, though not certain, is extremely probable. It is worthy of notice that, nearly at the time when the artists of the school of Pheidias were thus employed in a body at Olympia, those of the Athenian archaic school-such as Praxias, the disciple of Calamis, and Androsthenes, the disciple of Eucadmus, were similarly engaged on the temple at Delphi (see Müller, de Phid. Vit. p. 28, n. y.). The honour in which Pheidias lived among the Eleians is also shown by their assigning to him a studio in the neighbourhood of the Altis (Paus. v. 15. § 1), and by their permitting him to inscribe his name upon the footstool of the god, an honour which had been denied to him at Athenst (Paus. v. 10. § 2; Cic. Tusc. Quaest. i. 15). The inscription was as follows: Φειδίας Χαρμίδου υἱὸς ̓Αθηναῖος μ' ἐπόησεν. Without raising a question whether he would thus solemnly have inscribed his name as an Athenian if he had been an exile, we may point to clearer proofs of his good feeling towards his native city in some of the figures with which he adorned his great work, such as that of Theseus (Paus. v. 10. $2), and of Salamis holding the aplustre, in a group with personified Greece, probably crowning important in another light. They seem to show her (Paus. v. 11. § 2). These subjects are also that the work was executed at a time when the Eleians were on a good understanding with Athens, that is, before the breaking out of the Peloponnesian War. also for the time which so great a work would neFrom the above considerations, making allowance cessarily occupy, it may be inferred, with great probability, that Pheidias was engaged on the statue of Zeus and his other works among the leians, for about the four or five years from B. C. 437 to 434 or 433. It would seem that he then returned to Athens, and there fell a victim to the jealousy against his great patron, Pericles, which was then at its height. That he was the object of the general consent of the chief ancient authorities some fierce attack by the party opposed to Pericles, forbids us to doubt; and a careful attention to the internal politics of Athens will, perhaps, guide us through the conflicting statements which we have to deal with, to a tolerably safe conclusion. The most important testimony on the subject, and one which is in fact enough to settle the question, is that of Aristophanes (Pax, 605), He had, however been honoured by the inThe important bearing of this tradition on scription of his name on a column as the maker of the throne of the goddess. (Plut. Per. 13.) the question of the age of Pheidias is obvious. where, speaking of the commencement of the war, he says: Πρῶτα μὲν γὰρ ἦρξεν ἄτης Φειδίας πράξας κακῶς· εἶτα Περικλέης φοβηθεὶς μὴ μετάσχοι τῆς τύχης, τὰς φύσεις ὑμῶν δεδοικὼς καὶ τὸν αὐτοδὰς τρόπον, πρὶν παθεῖν τι δεινὸν, αὐτὸς ἐξέφλεξε τὴν πόλιν, ἐμβαλὼν σπινθῆρα μικρὸν Μεγαρικοῦ ψηφίσματος, κἀξεφύσησεν τοσοῦτον πόλεμον, κ.τ.λ. from official records, namely the archonship of Pythodorus, or B. C. 432. The death of Pheidias happened about the time of the completion of the last of those great works which he superintended, about the time when he went to Elis, B. C. 437. namely, the Propylaea, which had been commenced of the life of Pheidias, according to their actual or It will be useful to give a synopsis of the events probable dates. B. C. 490 488 468 OL. 72. 3 73. 1 464 79. 1 460 80. 1 444 84. 1 438 437 Battle of Marathon. Pheidias born about this time. Pheidias studies under Ageladas, Pheidias begins to flourish about this time. Aet. 29. destroyed by the Persians commenced about this time. Sole administration of Pericles Pheidias overseer of all the public works. Aet. 44. 85. 3 The Parthenon, with the chryselephantine statue of Athena, finished and dedicated. Aet. 50. 85. 4 Pheidias goes to Elis.-The Propylaea commenced. 436 433 86. 1 Pantarces Olympic victor. From this passage we learn, not only that Pheidias suffered some extreme calamity at the hands of the Athenians, but that the attack upon him was of such a nature as to make Pericles tremble for his own safety, and to hurry the city into war by the passing of the decree against Megara, which decree was made not later than the beginning of B. c. 432. It is clear that Pericles was at that period extremely unpopular with a large party in Athens, who, thinking him too powerful to be overthrown by a direct attack, aimed at him in the persons of his most cherished friends, Pheidias, Anaxagoras, 457 80. 3 The general restoration of the temples and Aspasia. This explanation is precisely that given by Plutarch (Peric. 31), who furnishes us with particulars of the accusation against Pheidias. At the instigation of the enemies of Pericles, a certain Menon, who had been employed under Pheidias, laid an information against him for peculation, a charge which was at once refuted, as, by the advice of Pericles, the gold had been affixed to the statue in such a manner that it could be removed and the weight of it examined (comp. Thuc. ii. 13). The accusers then charged Pheidias with impiety, in having introduced into the battle of the Amazons, on the shield of the goddess, his own likeness and that of Pericles, the former as a bald old man hurling a stone with both his hands, and the latter as a very handsome warrior, fighting with an Amazon, his face being partially concealed by the hand which held his uplifted spear, so that the likeness was only visible on a side view. On this latter charge Pheidias was thrown into prison, where he died from disease, or, as the less scrupulous partizans of Pericles maintained, from poison. The people voted to his accuser Menon, on the proposal of Glycon, exemption from taxes, and charged the generals to watch over his safety. Plutarch then proceeds (c. 32) to narrate, as parts of the same train of events, and as occurring about the same time, the attacks upon Aspasia and Anaxagoras, and concludes by distinctly affirming that the attack on Pheidias inspired Pericles with a fear, which induced him to blow into a flame the smouldering sparks of the coming war (s dè did Φειδίου προσέπταισε τῷ δήμῳ, φοβηθεὶς τὸ δικασ τήριον, μέλλοντα τὸν πόλεμον καὶ ὑποτυφόμενον ἐξέκαυσεν, ἐλπίζων διασκεδάσειν τὰ ἐγκλήματα, KaÌ TATELVŰSELV TÒV póvov). To complete the evidence, Philochorus, though he (or the scholiasts who quote him) has made a confusion of the facts, may be relied on for the date, which he doubtless took 432 87. 1 Accusation and death of Pheidias. II. His Works.-The subjects of the art of Pheidias were for the most part sacred, and the following list will show how favourite a subject with him was the tutelary goddess of Athens. In describing them, it is of great importance to observe, not only the connection of their subjects, but, as far as possible, their chronological order. The classification according to materials, which is adopted by Sillig, besides being arbitrary, is rather a hindrance than a help to the historical study of the works of Pheidias. 1. The Athena at Pellene in Achaia, of ivory and gold, must be placed among his earliest works, if we accept the tradition preserved by Pausanias, that Pheidias made it before he made the statues of Athena in the Acropolis at Athens, and at Plataeae. Paus. vii. 27. § 1.) If this be true, we have an important indication of the early period at which he devoted his attention to chryselephantine statuary. This is one of several instances in which we know that Pheidias worked for other states besides his native city and Elis, but unfortunately we have no safe grounds to determine the dates of such visits. 2. It cannot be doubted that those statues which were made, or believed to have been made, out of the spoils of the Persian wars, were among his earliest works, and perhaps the very first of his great works (at least as to the time when it was undertaken, for it would necessarily take long to complete), was the group of statues in bronze, which the Athenians dedicated at Delphi, as a votive offering, out of the tithe of their share of the Persian spoils. The statues were thirteen in number, namely, Athena, Apollo, Miltiades, Erechtheus, Cecrops, Pandion, Celeus, Antiochus, Aegeus, Acamas, Codrus, Theseus, Phyleus. (Paus. x. 30. § 1.) which he mentions in such a way as to imply, probably but not certainly, that it also was a statue of Athena. The key in the hand of this statue was probably the symbol of initiation into the mysteries. 8. We now come to the greatest of Pheidias's works at Athens, the ivory and gold statue of Athena in the Parthenon, and the other sculptures which adorned that temple. It is true, indeed, that none of the ancient writers ascribe expressly to Pheidias the execution of any of these sculp 3. The colossal bronze statue of Athena Promachus, in the Acropolis, was also said to have been made out of the spoils of Marathon; but it is important to remember the sense in which this must probably be understood, as explained above. Böttiger supposes that it was placed in the temple of Athena Polias (Andeutungen, p. 84, Amalthea,tures, except the statue of the goddess herself; vol. ii. p. 314); but there can be no doubt that it stood in the open air, between the Propylaea and the Parthenon, as it is represented on the coin mentioned below. It was between fifty and sixty feet high, with the pedestal; and the point of the spear and the crest of the helmet were visible as far off as Sunium to ships approaching Athens. (Strab. vi. p. 278; Paus. i. 28. § 2; comp. Herod. v. 77.) It was still standing as late as A. D. 395, when it was seen by Alaric. (Zosimus, v. 6.) It represented the goddess holding up both her spear and shield, in the attitude of a combatant. (Ibid.) The entire completion of the ornamental work upon this statue was long delayed, if we are to believe the statement, that the shield was engraved by Mys, after the design of Parrhasius. (See MYS, PARRHASIUS: the matter is very doubtful, but, considering the vast number of great works of art on which Pheidias and his fellow-artists were engaged, the delay in the completion of the statue is not altogether improbable.) This statue is exhibited in a rude representation of the Acropolis, on an old Athenian coin which is engraved in Müller's Denkmäler, vol. i. pl. xx. fig. 104. 4. Those faithful allies of the Athenians, the Plataeans, in dedicating the tithe of their share of the Persian spoils, availed themselves of the skill of Pheidias, who made for them a statue of Athena Areia, of a size not much less than the statue in the Acropolis. The colossus at Plataeae was an acrolith, the body being of wood gilt, and the face, hands, and feet, of Pentelic marble. (Paus. ix. 4. § 1.) The language of Pausanias, here and elsewhere, and the nature of the case, make it nearly certain that this statue was made about the same time as that in the Acropolis. 5. Besides the Athena Promachus, the Acropolis contained a bronze statue of Athena, of such surpassing beauty, that it was esteemed by many not only as the finest work of Pheidias, but as the standard ideal representation of the goddess. (See Paus. i. 28. § 2; Plin. H. N. xxxiv. 8. s. 19. §1; and especially Lucian, Imag. 4, 6. vol. ii. pp. 462, 464, who remarks upon the outline of the face, the softness of the cheeks, and the symmetry of the nose.) It is possible that this was Pheidias's own model of the Athena of the Parthenon, executed in a more manageable material, and on a scale which | permitted it to be better seen at one view, and therefore more beautiful. The statue was called Lemnia, from having been dedicated by the people of Lemnos. (Paus. l. c.) 6. Another statue of Athena is mentioned by Pliny (.c.) as having been dedicated at Rome, near the temple of Fortune, by Paulus Aemilius, but whether this also stood originally in the Acropolis is unknown. 7. Still more uncertainty attaches to the statue which Pliny calls Cliduchus (the key-bearer), and but neither do they mention any other artists as having executed them: so that from their silence, combined with the statement of Plutarch, that all the great works of art of the time of Pericles were entrusted to the care of Pheidias, and, above all, from the marks which the sculptures themselves bear of having been designed by one mind, and that a master mind, it may be inferred with certainty, that all the sculptures of the Parthenon are to be ascribed to Pheidias, as their designer and superintendent, though the actual execution of them must of necessity have been entrusted to artists working under his direction. These sculp tures consisted of the colossal statue of the goddess herself; and the ornaments of the sanctuary in which she was enshrined, namely, the sculptures in the two pediments, the high-reliefs in the metopes of the frieze, and the continuous bas relief which surrounded the cella, forming a sort of frieze beneath the ceiling of the peristyle. The great statue of the goddess was of that kind of work which the Greeks called chryselephantine, and which Pheidias is said to have invented. Up to his time colossal statues, when not of bronze, were acroliths, that is, only the face, hands, and feet, were of marble, the body being of wood, which was concealed by real drapery. An example of such a statue by Pheidias himself has been mentioned just above. Pheidias, then, substituted for marble the costlier and more beautiful material, ivory, in those parts of the statue which were unclothed, and, instead of real drapery, he made the robes and other ornaments of solid gold. The mechanical process by which the plates of ivory were laid on to the wooden core of the statue is described, together with the other details of the art of chry selephantine statuary, in the elaborate work of Quatremère de Quincy, Le Jupiter Olympien, and more briefly in an excellent chapter of the work entitled the Menageries, vol. ii. c. 13. In the Athena of the Parthenon the object of Pheidias was to embody the ideal of the virgin-godless, armed, but victorious, as in his Athena Promachus he had represented the warrior-goddess, in the very attitude of battle. The statue stood in the foremost and larger chamber of the temple (prodomus). It represented the goddess standing, clothed with a tunic reaching to the ankles, with her spear in her left hand and an image of Victory four cubits high in her right: she was girded with the aegis, and had a helmet on her head, and her shield rested on the ground by her side. The height of the statue was twenty-six cubits, or nearly forty feet, including the base. From the manner in which Plato speaks of the statue, it seems clear that the gold predominated over the ivory, the latter being used for the face, hands, and feet, and the former for the drapery and ornaments (Hipp. Maj. p. 290). There is no doubt that the robe was of gold, beaten out with the hammer (opupnλaros). Its thickness was not above a line; and, as already stated, all the gold upon the statue was so affixed to it as to be removable at pleasure. (See Thuc. ii. 13, and the commentators.) The eyes, according to Plato (l. c.), were of a kind of marble, nearly resembling ivory, perhaps painted to imitate the iris and pupil; there is no sufficient authority for the statement which is frequently made, that they were of precious stones. It is doubtful whether the core of the statue was of wood or of stone. The various portions of the statue were most elaborately ornamented. A sphinx formed the crest of her helmet, and on either side of it were gryphons, all, no doubt, of gold. The aegis was fringed with golden serpents, and in its centre was a golden head of Medusa, which, however, was stolen by Philorgus (Isocr. adv. Callim. 22; Böckh, | Corp. Inser. vol. i. p. 242), and was replaced with one of ivory, which Pausanias saw. The lower end of the spear was supported by a dragon, supposed by Pausanias to represent Erichthonius, and the juncture between the shaft and head was formed of a sphinx in bronze. Even the edges of the sandals, which were four dactyli high, were seen, on close inspection, to be engraved with the battle of the Lapithae and Centaurs. The shield was ornamented on both sides with embossed work, representing, on the inner side, the battle of the giants against the gods, and on the outer, the battle of the Amazons against the Athenians. All these subjects were native Athenian legends. The base, which of itself is said to have been the work of several months, represented, in relief, the birth of Pandora, and her receiving gifts from the gods: it contained figures of twenty divinities. The weight of the gold upon the statue, which, as above stated, was removable at pleasure, is said by Thucydides to have been 40 talents (ii. 13), by Philochorus 44, and by other writers 50: probably the statement of Philochorus is exact, the others being round numbers. (See Wesseling, ad Diod. Sic. xii. 40.) Great attention was paid to the preservation of the statue: and it was frequently sprinkled with water, to preserve it from being injured by the dryness of the atmosphere. (Paus. v. 11. § 5.) The base was repaired by Aristocles the younger, about B. c. 397 (Böckh, Corp. Inser. vol. i. p. 237: Böckh suggests that, as Aristocles was the son of Cleoetas, who appears to have been an assistant of Pheidias in his great works, this artist's family may have been the guardians of the statue, as the descendants of Pheidias himself were of the Zeus at Olympia.) The statue was finally robbed of its gold by Lachares, in the time of Demetrius Poliorcetes, about B. C. 296. (Paus i. 25, § 7.) Pausanias, however, speaks of the statue as if the gold were still upon it; possibly the plundered gold may have been replaced by gilding. We possess numerous statues of Athena, most of which are no doubt imitated from that in the Parthenon, and from the two ether statues in the Acropolis. Böttiger has endeavoured to distinguish the existing copies of these three great works (Andeutungen, pp. 90-92). That which is believed to be the nearest copy of the Athena of the Parthenon is a marble statue in the collection of Mr. Hope, which is engraved in the Specimens of Ancient Sculpture, vol. ii. pl. 9, and in Müller's Denkmäler, vol. ii. pl. xix. fig. 202. A less perfect, but precisely similar copy, stood in the Villa Albani. Copies also appear on the re verses of coins of the Antiochi, engraved in this work (vol. i. p. 199). These copies agree in every respect, except in the position of the left hand, and of the spear and shield. In Mr. Hope's statue the left hand is raised as high as the head, and holds the spear as a sceptre, the shield being altogether wanting: on the medals, the left hand rests upon the shield, which stands upon the ground, leaning against the left leg of the statue, while the spear leans slightly backwards, supported by the left arm. An attempt has been made at a restoration of the statue by Quatremère de Quincy in his Jupiter Olympien, and a more successful one by Mr. Lucas in his model of the Parthenon. (See also Flaxman's Lectures on Sculpture, pl. 19.) The statue is described at length by Pausanias (i. 24), by Maximus Tyrius (Dissert. xiv.), and by Pliny (H. N. xxxiv. 8. s. 19. § 1, xxxvi. 5. s. 4. § 4). One of the best modern descriptions is that of Böttiger (Andeutungen, pp. 86-93). It is also well described in The Elgin and Phigaleian Marbles (vol. i. pp. 136, 137). The other sculptures of the Parthenon belong less properly to our subject, since it is impossible to say which of them were executed by the hand of Pheidias, though it cannot be doubted that they were all made under his superintendence. It is, moreover, almost superfluous to describe them at any length, inasmuch as a large portion of them form, under the name of the "Elgin Marbles," the choicest treasure of our national Museum, where their study is now greatly facilitated by the admirable model of the Parthenon by Mr. Lucas. There are also ample descriptions of them, easily accessible; for example, the work entitled The Elgin and Phigaleian Marbles.* It is, therefore, sufficient to state briefly the following particulars. The outside of the wall of the cella was surrounded by a frieze, representing the Panathenaic procession in very low relief, a form admirably adapted to a position where the light was imperfect, and chiefly reflected, and where the angle of view was necessarily large. The metopes, or spaces between the triglyphs of the frieze of the peristyle, were filled with sculptures in very high relief, ninety-two in number, fourteen on each front, and thirty-two on each side; the subjects were taken from the legendary history of Athens. Those on the south side, of which we possess fifteen in the British Museum, represent the battle between the Athenians and Centaurs at the marriage feast of Peirithous. Some of them are strikingly archaic in their style; thus confirming our previous argument, that the archaic style continued quite down to the time of Pheidias, who may be supposed, on the evidence of these sculptures, to have employed some of the best of the artists of that school, to assist himself and his disciples. Others of the metopes display that pure and perfect art, which Pheidias himself introduced, and which has never been surpassed. The architrave of the temple was adorned with golden shields beneath the metopes, which were carried off, with the gold of the statue of the Among the numerous other copies of these works, we may mention the authorised publication of the Marbles of the British Museum, the engravings in Müller's Denkmäler der Alten Kunst, and in the plates to Meyer's Kunstgeschichte. The miniature restorations in plaster by Mr. Hennings also deserve attention. |