Page images
PDF
EPUB

raising a rock? Possibly Plutarch was wrong, and yet on the shield of another of these ancient marble copies of the Parthenos-the one known as the Lenormant statue (Pl. XIV.) -we have a figure raising a large stone aloft with both hands, as if about to hurl it. This discrepancy is the more curious because our shield is not the only one which shows Pheidias wielding the battle-axe. The same occurs also on a fragmentary copy in the Capitoline Museum in Rome. Apparently the ancient copyists of the statue alternated between these two types of Pheidias, hurling a huge stone or wielding a battle-axe. Which of the two was the more

authentic we cannot say. of a combatant seizing a But usually when we see in Greek art a man raising a large stone we assume that he belongs to the war of gods and giants, where we are accustomed to see rocks hurled in this manner. Now the war of gods and giants was, we are told, figured on the inside of the shield, and perhaps it is not too rash to conjecture that the copyists of these statuettes had occasionally transposed a figure from the interior to the exterior of the shield.

We read in the Iliad occasionally piece of rock to hurl at an enemy.

On the inside of the shield, as we have said, was represented the war of gods and giants. It has been supposed that this subject on the inner side had not been sculptured, but painted, or rather enamelled, and to some extent that view has been lately confirmed by the finding of a rudely painted figure on the inner side of our shield. It is a figure of an old man stooping and raising a rock with both hands, as Pheidias was occupied in doing according to Plutarch. So that in fact our shield gives us a Pheidias on the inside

as well as the outside, the one wielding a battle-axe, the other raising a huge stone. The original shield was of gold, and if we assume the inner side richly enamelled with gods fighting against giants, we must assume also that the serpent had been enamelled in colours representing the natural hues of its scales. The same would be true of the owl on her right side. On her sandals, we suppose along the edge of the soles, was a battle of Centaurs and Lapiths. On the contemporary frieze of Phigaleia in the Museum we see how Greek sculptors when they chose treated this legendary subject as so much discursive fighting without any central point or climax. In the metopes of the Parthenon itself the subject is broken up into many isolated groups. It is therefore not in the least surprising that Pheidias had distributed his battle of Lapiths and Centaurs equally on both the sandals of the goddess.

We now come down to the base of the statue, on which was represented the birth of Pandora in the presence of a number of deities, as we are told. Pandora had been fashioned as a statue by Hephaestos, but Athenè breathed into it the breath of life, and it became a living woman. We may assume that this act of Athenè's was represented as the central group of the base, much as on a fine vase in the Museum. In Berlin there is a fragmentary copy of the base of an Athenè from Pergamon, on which we see a group of deities, but cannot make much of them. On the Lenormant statuette there is a rude sketch of the base, which is so far useful that we can discern on it at the left angle a group of Helios and his chariot, which at once recalls to memory first the base of the statue of Zeus at Olympia, where Pheidias

sculptured the birth of Aphroditè, and secondly the east pediment of the Parthenon, where he represented the birth of Athenè herself. Thus in all three instances of birth we find in the left angle the sun god Helios coming upon the scene in his chariot, while in the right angle the moon rides or drives away, indicating the dawn of day as the moment of these events.

The various copies of the Athenè agree in giving her a long, low base, from which we may take it as certain that this was a feature in the original statue. The Lenormant copy shows further that this low base was sculptured only along the front. The whole scene would, therefore, be recognisable at once, the making of Pandora in the centre with a number of deities at each side looking on, the sun rising on the left and the moon setting on the right.

There remains to be noticed the Victory held out in the right hand of Athenè. On the new gem the Victory is reaching a wreath towards the Athenè. But on the Varvakeion statuette she seems rather to have held out a taenia or ribbon, which was the badge of Victory. Nor is she turned towards the Athenè, as on the gem. She seems rather as if she were being sent forth on a mission by the Athenè, with the victor's ribbon ready on whomsoever it might at any time be fittingly bestowed.

Except on the colossal gold and ivory Zeus at Olympia, there has never been in the whole history of art, we believe, a statue enriched with accessory sculptures to a tenth of the degree of the Athenè Parthenos. There was a time when it was hard to understand how so much sculptured decoration could be added to a statue without in some manner detract

ing from the simplicity and grandeur of the whole effect. But the finding of the marble statuettes-rude as they are— has removed every doubt on that score, because they have shown, the one supplementing the other, how completely the vast wealth of sculptured ornament had been treated as so much accessory, serving, in fact, to intensify the simplicity and grandeur of the colossal figure. We see now how the enormously rich decoration of the golden helmet was necessary as a set-off to the large, simple forms of the ivory face, neck, and arms; how the heavy, massive folds of the drapery, especially those on the right side, found a counterpoise in the richly sculptured shield on the left, with the enamelled serpent beside it; how the ivory of her feet must have gleamed above the golden sandals; how the long strip of sculptured base in low relief, with heavy mouldings above and below, would appear to reduce the sense of weight in the statue, and so help to etherealise the whole effect. And what must have been the splendour of such a statue, 40 feet high, standing in the gloom of a great interior, reaching almost from floor to ceiling, and representing the goddess to whom the Athenians ascribed their triumphs in peace as in war, the work of the greatest sculptor in the greatest age of Greece!

CHAPTER IX.

DETAILS OF THE FRIEZE IN CONSECUTIVE ORDER

North Side

Slab I-From Carrey. With this corner slab begins the series of victims for the sacrifice-cows and sheep. The averted attitude of I seems to mark off this section of the procession as stopped here for the moment. In an artistic sense also this figure suggests just the idea of finish and completeness which was needed at the abrupt angle of the frieze. Much the same occurs at the other angles. This slab, having on its left return the two girls who were the last of the group of Ergastinae on the extreme right of the east frieze E 62, 63 (Pl. XVII., Fig. 5), has disappeared. This and the two following slabs are all that we now know of the group of cows being led to sacrifice on this side of the frieze, but probably the whole group had originally been as extensive as the corresponding group of the south frieze, with its nine cows forming an impressive sight, broken as they are.

Slab II.-From a cast in the British Museum; the original in Athens. In this section each cow is led by two boys, one on each side of her. By this means the cows would be most easily restrained and led on in due

« PreviousContinue »