these also were originally a separate triad, though in fact the absence of the central group of the pediment precludes absolute certainty on this point. We can, however, argue from the analogy of the west pediment, and in that light we accept these three figures, K, L, M, as a triad. No triad of women, each of about the same age and all fairly clad, was better known than the Fates, and none more appropriately present at a birth. On the Madrid puteal (Pl. IX., Fig. 1), which represents the birth of Athenè, they are present with their shears and thread in their hands. It is true they are there standing in a group as the exigencies of a band of relief required. But they are there all the same. On these grounds it is not surprising that the three figures in the pediment have become popularly known as the Fates. On the other hand, we learn from a fragment of Euripides (Nauck, 623) that the Fates were divine beings who "sat nearest to the throne of Zeus," and obviously on an occasion like the birth of Athenè they would have been intent on their natural occupation, not surprised and startled as are the three women in the remote angle of the pediment. They would thus have been the "Foolish Fates," as they are called in Midsummer Night's Dream. Further, the Fates had no special connection with Attica. But let us examine the group as it stands. At first sight, and from a superficial point of view of the pediment as a whole, there is not much of artistic balance in the two angle groups. We recognise that the two figures K, L on the right respond fairly well to E, F on the left. But as a response to the nude Cephalos on the left we have a draped woman, M, on the right. Yet G beneath this superficial aspect we cannot deny that the reclining figure, M, represents the same idea as does the Cephalos; that is to say, a person in the act of awakening. We have thus in the same place in each angle a figure awakening from sleep, the superficial difference being that one is a man, the other a woman. In spirit the two angles thus respond perfectly. In both we have a scene of awakening, appropriately caused in the first instance by the dawn, but intensified in the second instance by the coincident birth of Athenè. The third figure, M, lying with the feet still crossed one over the other, is surely still more asleep than awake. The second, L, has pulled back her feet, as a woman must do in rising suddenly from a low seat, and is doing her best to stir up her sleeping sister. The first, K, has swung round towards the centre, her left arm pressing hard on the shoulder of L.' All three have been closely grouped like sisters. They are all three taken by surprise, nearly as much so as the three daughters of Cecrops in the west pediment. It is the surprise of beings who, till that moment, have been asleep under daily conditions, and in their native place. In Olympos nothing of the kind was possible. We must, therefore, regard the so-called Fates as local Attic beings, or, to repeat the phrase we have already used, when speaking of the west pediment, "interested local spectators." Accordingly we recognise in both wings of the east pediment-as in the west-local personages 1 The marble head belonging to Count Laborde, in Paris, has sometimes been thought to belong to K, but more frequently perhaps it is assigned to one or other of the figures in the west pediment. The nose and mouth are restored. See the cast in the Elgin Room. |