of a composition is employed to localise a scene, and nothing is more probable than that Pheidias had been one of the first to introduce this principle. The personifications of sun and moon at each extremity of his sculptured base of the Zeus at Olympia is a proof of this habit of mind on his part, to say nothing of his sun and moon at each end of the east pediment of the Parthenon itself, serving as boundaries of the scene.

The Ilissos has no corresponding figure in the right angle, as the analogy of the two river-gods at Olympia might lead us to expect. In the interval there had been an artistic advance which had discarded the older feeling of a necessary balance in each angle. And similarly in the east pediment of the Parthenon we shall see that the so-called Theseus in one angle has no figure strictly balancing him in the other. That question we must leave for the moment. But considering that the Ilissos is the only figure of the whole west pediment which has been fairly well preserved, we may now examine him more closely from an artistic point of view (Pl. V.). We do not expect him to have an urn by his side, with water flowing from it, and a branch in one hand, as in late Greek and Roman art; we may fairly be content if his nude form is resplendent with light, as becomes the representative of a river, on which the play of light is always one of its most characteristic features. It is so. There is not certainly so much undulation in his limbs as in the river-gods of Olympia, but there is some. His mantle, which stretches behind him, is characterised by long lines and folds which may be described as wet. It spreads

itself on the rock behind his left hand in a thin sheet of

flat folds, which, though only sketched in, or because of that, conveys the idea of water gliding over a smooth rock in the bed of a stream. It may be argued that this treatment of the drapery is mere negligence; if so, it is negligence in the right place for once. He is excited by the contest of the two deities, and raises himself in his channel, pulling back his left foot and raising his right knee; his right hand has caught hold of an end of his mantle, dragging it forward, an action always significant of surprise in Greek art. The somewhat violent raising of himself has necessarily thrown the more mobile parts of the body into a confusion which might easily have been indicated by a sculptor more expressively than here, but never with a finer conception and with just that degree of truth which is consistent with a lofty ideal. The massive bones of the chest and the ribs remain unchangeable, of course, however the body may turn. The task was to reconcile with them the easily changing forms of the abdomen. For ourselves, the way in which this has been done commands unaltering admiration.

At Athens there remain in the right angle of this pediment two torsos, V, W. The former is a male figure in the act of rising suddenly as in alarm. For the moment he still rests on his right knee, but the right foot is entangled in a mantle, in a manner which suggests haste. Probably the left knee had been raised, the foot on the ground. His bodily forms are very simple, but very grand. That he represents the river Cephisos we are content to believe. The other figure, W, is a woman, thickly draped, reclining at full length, and grasping with her right hand the rock

beneath her. Enough remains to show that she had been in the act of turning towards the centre of the pediment in alarm. Her drapery at the back is finely if simply rendered. We are willing to accept her as the local fountain, Callirrhoè.

Thus the great shock of the deities in the centre vibrates through every figure to the remote angles. The unity of the whole pediment must have been singularly impressive in its original state. With patience we can learn this much from Carrey's drawing and the remains. The gods with their chariots were invisible, but the shock of their contention reached by some divine sound or sight the beings in Attica who were at the moment most interested in the result.

CHAPTER III

THE EAST PEDIMENT

[PLATES VI.-IX.]

N the east pediment we have no drawings of Carrey to

IN

show us what the great central group, now missing, had been like. All we possess is the groups from the two angles, much as Carrey saw them (Pl. VI.). But we are told by Pausanias in the briefest possible words that the whole of the sculptures of this pediment were concerned with the birth of Athenè. With this authentic information we see at once that what is now a great void in the centre had been occupied originally by the deities present at and startled by the birth of the goddess from the head of her father Zeus. We read in the Homeric Hymn to Athenè that Olympos, the abode of the gods, trembled at the sight of her, the earth moaned heavily, the sea was agitated, raising its purple waves and tossing its brine; Helios, the sun-god, stayed his horses what time Athenè was doffing her immortal armour to the joy of her father Zeus. Pindar (Olymp. vii.) says: "Springing from the head of her father, she shouted an exceeding great cry, and Olympos and mother earth shuddered at her." Later on he says that the sun-god had commanded to watch her advent and to offer her sacrifice.

With the aid of these poets and with the sober statement of Pausanias we can imagine the present great void in the centre filled by deities, all agitated except Zeus himself. On the strength of certain Greek vases and the reliefs on a marble well-mouth (puteal) in Madrid (Pl. IX. Fig. 1), we may even go a step further and imagine Zeus seated in the very centre or near it, facing the right, Hephaestos immediately behind him, rushing off in haste after having cloven the head of Zeus, and Athenè in front of her father, full armed and excited. Beyond these limits we cannot go, except in mere speculation. Yet we know in general terms that the whole central group of deities, now lost, had been stirred into action by a sudden event; and if anything is needed to confirm this view, it is supplied by the existing groups of the two angles, where each figure is seen to be moved by some action in the centre, the sound of which is reaching them one after the other, according to distance. We are on sure ground thus far, and must now meet the next question: Did the figures in the two angles belong to the conclave of deities present at the birth of Athenè? In other words: Did the whole composition of the east pediment represent a united homogeneous body? If so, why are those in the angles so unprepared for what is happening in their midst? As we examine them one by one we shall see how unprepared they are, and how much in this respect they resemble the angle groups of the west pediment. Meantime we have no hesitation in accepting for the east pediment the same principle of composition which we have recognised in the west; that is to say, a great central group of deities who were visible only to the inner eye, and two angle groups of secondary beings, whom