to the natural phenomena the sculptor could have imagined himself facing in the opposite direction. The sun would then have been on his right hand and the moon on his left, as on a beautiful vase in the British Museum about contemporary with the Parthenon (E 466). He would then have placed his Helios in the right angle of the pediment and his Selenè in the left. The effect, however, would have been incongruous, and bearing these things in mind, we think that the sculptor has distinctly meant to indicate sunrise at Athens. But what has sunrise to do with Olympos? And what interest could the Athenians be expected to take in any sun and moon but their own?

It is true that the Greeks generally and Pheidias in particular regarded the east as on their left hand. On the base of his statue of Zeus at Olympia, representing the birth of Aphroditè, the sun was seen rising on the extreme left, the moon retiring on the right (Pausanias, v. 11, 3), and on the base of his Athenè in the Parthenon itself the same phenomenon occurs, if we may judge from the Lenormant copy of the statue (Pl. XIV., Fig. 3). But granting that this was a mere habit on his part, we must still regard it as a happy coincidence that on the Parthenon the sun rises exactly as in the sky at Athens.

In ancient times the sun stood still at scenes of carnage, as on Mount Gibeon, or of horror, as at the feast of Thyestes. At the birth of Athenè he stayed his horses, we are told. From the sculpture (A on Pl. IX., Fig. 2) we can see that he is pulling them in. His outstretched right arm is full of strength and action, forcing round to the front the two nearer horses' heads B, C. The two farther heads remain

F

in the pediment,' as may. be seen in our view of the east front (Pl. I.) He has a quadriga, whereas the two deities in the west pediment have only bigae. But that distinction, we may well imagine, was purely artistic. Two quadrigae in the west pediment would necessarily have presented more complicated masses on each side of the two protagonist deities in the centre, and for that reason would have been less effective in accentuating the prominence of the deities. In the angle of the east pediment, where only the heads of the horses were visible, the presence of four was more a gain than otherwise. The same may be said of the four horses of Selenè in the right angle. We possess only one of them (O on Pl. IX., Fig. 2). The others, more or less disfigured, remain in their original place, the fourth being only sketched in on the back of the pediment. In certain late Roman reliefs the horses of Selenè appear plunging downward, their heads already lost beneath the horizon, their bodies still visible. It is otherwise on the Parthenon. There it is the heads of the horses and the upper part of Selenè that remain in view, the rest being out of sight. Yet the head of the nearest horse, O, is cut away at the back to let it overhang the cornice, as if already

1 Athen. Mittheilungen, xvi. pl. 3.

2 For example, the sarcophagus in the Capitoline Museum representing Prometheus making man. But more to our purpose is a Mithraic relief, on which we see between the rising sun on the left and the waning moon on the right a group of deities in two rows. In the front row Zeus sits in the centre. On his right stand Hera,

2

Athenè, Aphroditè; on his left stand Apollo, Ares, Heracles. In the back row, and visible only as far as the busts, are, behind Zeus, Victory holding a palm branch; on her right, Artemis, Hades, and Persephonè; on her left, Poseidon. This relief was found in 1861, at Kastell Osterburken, and is published in the Obergermanisch. Rhaetisch. Limes, pt. ii. p. 23, pl. 2.

The dull

partially below the horizon. Surely no horse's head could be more beautiful. Ordinarily the large flat cheek-bones of a horse-irresponsive to any muscular movement—seem ungainly. But in an animal of noble breed the mobile mouth, the fiery nostrils, the prominent eye and the alert ears at once rivet our attention. The dull expanse of cheekbone then resolves itself into an agreeable contrast, just because of its structural and immobile form. Selenè herself is a mere fragment now in Athens. She had worn a scarf, which passed round the back of the shoulders and had fallen over her upper arms. Both arms had been stretched forward energetically, possibly in the act of pulling back her horses, like Helios, in astonishment.

As we proceed in examining one by one the sculptures of the pediment, we come next to a figure D, which is at once the grandest of them all in an artistic sense and a source of perplexity as to who he is. Long ago he was called Cephalos, and now again that name is in favour. He has been called also Dionysos, but is best known as Theseus. Whatever his name, he is reclining on a rock over which he has thrown both a lion's skin and a mantle. That he had worn a huntsman's boots is inferred from the drill-hole in the marble in front of his left ankle. But how is his attitude to be described? The cramped action of his knees is very peculiar. It seems to indicate awakening from slumber at sunrise. The slight bending forward of the head and body, the partial turning round towards the front, are equally consistent with that action. We can imagine the right hand raised towards the head in a familiar act of awakening. His left hand may have held