ARCHAEOLOGY (CLASSICAL) 579 the Delphic tripod. The treasury of the Athenians, erected by earthquakes and gradually buried in the alluvial soil. at the time of the Persian wars, was adorned with some The utmost ingenuity and science of the archaeologists of metopes of singularly beautiful and clear-cut style, re- Germany have been employed in the recovery of the compresenting the deeds of Hercules and Theseus. Besides position of these groups; and although doubt remains as the decoration of the treasuries, and the charioteer men- to the places of some figures, and their precise attitudes, tioned below, there were found two very rude figures of yet we may fairly say that we know more about the Apollo naked, by Argive artists, a colossal sphinx on a lofty sculpture of the Olympian temple of Zeus than about the pillar dedicated by the people of Naxos, and other statues. sculpture of any other great Greek temple. The exact date of these sculptures is not certain, but we may with Period III. 480-400 b.c. some confidence give them to the middle of the 5th century On the age of the great early masters of sculpture, of or a few years earlier. (In speaking of them we shall Myron, Phidias, and Polycleitus, much light has been mostly follow the opinion of Dr. Treu, whose masterly thrown in the last quarter of a century, partly by means work in vol. iii. of the great German publication on of new excavation, but also, in a scarcely less degree, Olympia is a model of patience and of science.) In the through the careful re-examination of known monuments. eastern pediment (Fig. 25), as Pausanias tells us, were Under this period, the first place certainly belongs to the represented the preparations for the chariot-race between great temple of Zeus at Olympia. The statue by Phidias (Knomaiis and Pelops, the result of which was to determine which once occupied the place of honour in that temple, whether Pelops should find death, or a bride and a kingand was regarded as the noblest monument of Greek dom. In the midst, invisible to the contending heroes, religion, has of course disappeared, nor are we able with stood Zeus the supreme arbiter. On one side of him stood Olympia: confidence to restore it. But the plan of the CEnomaiis with his wife Sterope, on the other Pelops and Temple of temple, its pavement, some of its architectural Hippodameia, the daughter of QEnomaus, whose position at Zeus. ornaments, remain. The marbles which occupied once indicates that she is on the side of the new-comer, the pediments and the metopes of the temple have been in whatever her parents may feel. Next on either side are large part recovered, having been probably thrown down the four-horse chariots of the two competitors, that of
<Enomaus in the charge of his perfidious groom Myrtilus, who contrived that it should break down in the running, that of Pelops tended by his grooms. At either end, where the pediment narrows to a point, reclines a rivergod, at one end Alpheus, the chief stream of Olympia, at the other end his tributary Cladeus. Only one figure remains, not noticed in the careful description of Pausanias, the figure of a handmaid kneeling, perhaps one of the attendants of Sterope. Our engraving gives two conjectural restorations of the pediment, that of Treu and that of Kekule, which differ principally in the arrangement of the corners of the composition; the position of the central figures and of the chariots can scarcely be called in question. The moment chosen is one, not of action, but of expectancy, perhaps of preparation for sacrifice. The arrangement is undeniably stiff and formal, and in the figures we note none of the trained perfection of style which belongs to the sculptures of the Parthenon, an almost contemporary temple. Faults abound, alike in the rendering of drapery and in the representation of the human forms, and the sculptor has evidently trusted to the painter who was afterwards to colour his work, to remedy some of his clumsiness, or to make clear the ambiguous. Nevertheless there is in the whole a dignity, a sobriety, and a simplicity which reconcile us to the knowledge that this pediment was certainly regarded in antiquity as a noble work, fit to adorn even the palace of Zeus. In the other, the western, pediment (Fig. 26), the subject is the riot of the Centaurs when they attended the wedding of Pirithous in Thessaly,
and, attempting to carry off the bride and her comrades, were slain by Pirithous and Theseus. In the midst of the pediment, invisible like Zeus in the eastern pediment, stands Apollo, while on either side of him Theseus and Pirithous attack the Centaurs with weapons hastily snatched. Our engraving gives two possible restorations. The monsters are in various attitudes of attempted violence, of combat and defeat; with each grapples one of the Lapith heroes in the endeavour to rob them of their prey. In the corners of the pediment recline female figures, perhaps attendant slaves, though the farthest pair may best be identified as local Thessalian nymphs, looking on with the calmness of divine superiority, yet not wholly unconcerned in what is going forward. Though the composition of the two pediments differs notably, the one bearing the impress of a parade-like repose, the other of an overstrained activity, yet the style and execution are the same in both, and the shortcomings must be attributed to the inferior skill of a local school of sculptors compared with those of Athens or of Angina. It even appears likely that the designs also belong to a local school. Pausanias, it is true, tells us that the pediments were the work of Alcamenes, the pupil of Phidias, and of Pmonius, a sculptor of Thrace, respectively ; but it is almost certain that he was misled by the local guides, who would naturally be anxious to connect the sculptures of their great temple with well-known names. The metopes of the temple are in the same style of art as the pediments, but the defects of awkwardness and want of mastery are less conspicuous, because the narrow
