the spoils of Marathon. Nor is it by any means
improbable that this united sacred treasure may
have been distinguished as the spoils of Marathon,
in commemoration of that one of the great victories
over the Persians which had been achieved by the
Athenians alone. There is, indeed, a passage in
Demosthenes (Parapresh. § 272, ed. Bekk., p. 428)
in which this is all but directly stated, for he says
that the statue was made out of the wealth given
by the Greeks to the Athenians and dedicated by the
city as an (Greek characters) of the war against the barbarians. This can only refer to the division of the
spoil at the close of the second Persian War, while
his statement that the Athenians dedicated the
statue as an (
Greek characters), clearly implies that the
Athenians were accustomed, through national pride,
to speak of these spoils as if they had been gained
in that battle, the glory of which was peculiarly
their own, namely Marathon. This observation
would apply also to the Plataeans' share of the
spoil; and it seems to furnish a satisfactory reason
for our hearing so much of the votive offerings dedicated by the Athenians out of the spoils of Marathon, and so little of any similar application of
the undoubtedly greater wealth which fell to their
share after the repulse of Xerxes. But in this
case, as in the former, we must of necessity suppose
a considerable delay. The first objects which engrossed the attention of the Athenians were the
restoration of their dwellings and fortifications, the
firm establishment of their political power, and the
transference to themselves of the supremacy over
the allied Greeks. In short, the administrations
of Aristeides and Themistocles, and the early part
of Cnnon's, were fully engaged with sterner necessities than even the restoration of the sacred edifices
and statues; At length even the appearance of
danger from Persia entirely ceased ; the Spartans
were fully occupied at home ; the Athenians
had converted their nominal supremacy into the
real empire of the Aegean ; and the common
treasury was transferred from Delos to Athens
(B.C. 465); at home Cimon was in the height of
his power and popularity, and Pericles was just
coming forward into public life; while the most
essential defences of the city were already completed. The period had undoubtedly come for
the restoration of the sacred edifices and for the
commencement of that brilliant era of art, which is
inseparably connected with the name of Pheidias,
and which found a still more complete opportunity
for its development when, after the conclusion of
the wars which occupied so much of the attention
of Cimon and of Pericles during the following
twenty years, the thirty years' truce was concluded
with the Lacedaemonians, and the power of Pericles
was finally established by the ostracism of Thucydides (B.C. 445, 444); while the treasury of
Athens was continually augmented by the contributions levied from the revolted allies. There is,
indeed, no dispute as to the fact that the period
from B.C. 444 to the breaking out of the Peloponnesian War, B.C. 431, was that during which he
most important works of art were executed, under
the administration of Pericles and under the superintendence of Pheidias. The question really in
dispute regards only the commencement of the
period.
An important event of Cimon's administration affords a strong confirmation to the general conclusion suggested by the above view of the history of the period : we refer to the transference of the bones of Theseus to Athens, in the year b. c. 468, an event which must be taken as marking the date of the commencement of the temple of Theseus, one of the great works of art of the period under dis- cussion. In this case there was a special reason for the period chosen to undertake the work j though the commencement of the general restora- tion of the sacred monuments would probably be postponed till the completion of the defences of the cit}', which may be fixed at u. c. 457 — 456, when the long walls Avere completed. Hence, assuming (what must be granted to Thiersch) that Pheidias ought to be placed as early as the circumstances of the case permit, it would seem probable that he flourished from about the end of the 79th Olympiad to the end of the 86th, B.C. 460—432.
This supposition agrees exactly with all that we
know of the history of art at that period. It is
quite clear that the transition from the archaic
style of the earlier artists to the ideal style of
Pheidias did not take place earlier than the close
of the first quarter of the fifth century B.C. There
are chronological difficulties in this part of the
argument, but there is enough of what is certain.
Perhaps the most important testimony is that of
Cicero (Brut. 18), who speaks of the statues of
Canachus as "rigidiora quam ut imitentur veriiatem" and those of Calamis as "dura quidem, sed tamen molliora quam Canachi," in contrast with
the almost perfect works of Myron, and the perfect ones of Polycleitus. Quintilian (xii. 10) repeats the criticism with a slight variation, "Duriora et Tuscanicis proxima Gallon atque Egesias, jam minus rigida Calamis, molliora adhuc supra diciis Myron fecit." Here we have the names of Canachus, Callon, and Hegesias, representing the tho-
roughly archaic school, and of Calamis as still
archaic, though less decidedly so, and then there is
at once a transition to Myron and Polycleitus, the
younger contemporaries of Pheidias. If we inquire
more particularly into the dates of these artists, we
find that Canachus and Callon flourished probably
between B.C. 520 and 480. Hegesias, or Hegias,
is made by Pausanias a contemporary of Onatas,
and of Ageladas (of whom we shall presently have
to speak), and is expressly mentioned by Lucian,
in connection with two other artists, Critios and
Nesiotes, as (Greek characters), while Pliny, in
his loose way, makes him, and Alcamenes, and
Critios and Nesiotes, all rivals of Pheidias in 01.
84,B.C. 444 [Hegias]. Of the artists, whose
names are thus added to those first mentioned, we
know that Critios and Nesiotes executed works
about B.C. 477 [Critios]; and Onatas, who was
contemporary with Polygnotus, was reckoned as a
Daedalian artist, and cleariy belonged to the
archaic school, wrought, with Calamis, in B.C. 467,
and probably flourished as late as B.C. 460. Calamis, though contemporary with Onatas, seems to
have been younger, and his name (as the above
citations show) marks the introduction of a less
rigid style of art [Calamis[1]]. Thus we have a
- ↑ -r1 is, however, far from certain that the statue of Apollo Alexicacos by Calamis, at Athens, furnishes a sufficient ground for bringing down his date to the great plague at Athens, in B.C. 430, 429. Pausanias merely assigns this as a traditional reason for the surname of the god, whereas we know it to have been an epithet very anciently