of the roof open to the sky, we could understand Pausanias when he speaks of the water and the dew from the water. But that is still a vexed question. We may further assume that the ivory in these colossal statues had been stained, first, because we know that the staining of ivory was a practice of the Greeks as far back as the time of Homer; and secondly, because the innumerable fine joints of the ivory could hardly have been concealed otherwise.

We may never be able to realise the majesty and splendour of the Athenè; but we can see in a measure what she was like in her pose and attributes from the ancient copies in marble to which we have referred (Pl. XIV.). They are rude, unskilful, and on a small scale, not much above statuettes. As we have said, they are the work of Roman times. Such copies were probably made by the dozen in Athenian workshops.1 The most complete is the one known as the Varvakeion Athenè, now in Athens (No. 1 in Plate XIV.). Plainly enough the three crests on the helmet are out of all proportion to the rest of the figure. Yet the face retains something of the grand type of Pheidias. The copyist knew that the triple crest of the helmet was a notable feature, and in trying to get in as much detail as possible he was driven to exaggerate the size of the crests. We assume that he is correct in his details. But here comes in a difficulty. Pausanias says,

1 At present we have the following copies: (1) found near the Varvakeion at Athens; (2) found at Patras ; (3) found in Athens; (4) now in Madrid Museum. The base of the latter has been reworked, but in some respects this copy is good. Like Nos. 1, 2, it is about

3 feet high, whereas No. 3—the Lenormant copy-is much smaller.

Among the marble copies of the head alone, are one in Berlin preserving some of its ancient colours (Ant. Denkmäler, i. pl. 3), and another in the Louvre (Mon. Piot, vii. (1901), pl. 15).

"The crest was supported by a sphinx," the significance of which he promises to explain afterwards. The statuette confirms that. Then Pausanias goes on: "On each side of the helmet was a gryphon," whereupon he runs off into the old tale of how the gryphons were animals having the body of a lion, but the wings and beak of an eagle, which guarded heaps of gold in a far-away country against a race of men called Arimasps, who had each only one eye. Apparently he had thought that the gryphons had been introduced on the helmet with reference to the amount of gold employed on the statue. Anyhow the statuette shows us winged horses or Pegasi, not gryphons, on the sides of the helmet. There must be some explanation. It does not seem at all possible that Pausanias could have mistaken a horse for a gryphon, or that the copyist of the statuette would have ventured to put winged horses in the place of gryphons. Besides, the presence of horses supporting the side crests is confirmed by a cameo in the British Museum and by other evidence, especially two large gold medallions in St. Petersburg, which were found in a Greek tomb in the Crimea (Pl. XV.). Both the cameo and the medallions show on the cheek-piece of the helmet a gryphon, and probably the explanation is that Pausanias had overlooked the horses in his haste to tell the story of the fabulous gryphons. The winged horses would represent Pegasus, whom Athenè caught and bridled, when he had sprung into existence from the decapitated body of the Gorgon. The copyist of the statuette has omitted the gryphons on his cheek-pieces, and we must here mention another omission on the part both of the copyist and of

Pausanias. Neither of them takes notice of the decoration along the brow of the helmet, which we find in our cameo and on the St. Petersburg medallions, consisting of a row of horses or of alternate deer and gryphons springing forward, but visible only in the foreparts. The joint evidence of the cameo and the medallions is sufficient to prove the existence of that rich element of decoration above the brow of the Athenè. How splendid the effect must have been of all this sculptured ornament on the helmet executed on so colossal a scale is now more than we can realise.

On the breast of the Athenè was her aegis of gold covered with scales, and having a fringe of serpents. The scales both of the aegis and the serpent had been enamelled, doubtless. In the middle of the aegis was inserted in ivory the mask of the Gorgon Medusa. Gorgon Medusa. How Athenè came to have the head of the Gorgon on her breast was a question which sometimes perplexed the Greeks. They knew that Athenè had helped Perseus to cut off the Gorgon's head, and to escape with it hid in his wallet. They knew also that she was sometimes called "Gorgophonè," or Gorgon-slayer, but that title might have been earned by the assistance she to Perseus. Herodotus (iv. 189), who was a contemporary of Pheidias, had an idea that the aegis on the statues of Athenè had been borrowed from the people of Libya, on the north coast of Africa, where the women wore goat-skins wrapped about their shoulders. Aegis means ordinarily a goat's skin, and of course Libya was the habitat of the Gorgon. Apparently Herodotus had put these two facts together, and made his own inference from them.

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