ation could not easily have escaped, when the Persians destroyed every thing in the Acropolis, the existing remains cannot be older than the Persian war; their style, moreover, not admitting of the considerably greater antiquity which such a supposition would render probable. On the other hand, no mention of a temple of Victory occurs among the constructions of Pericles: to Cimon, therefore, who built the wall on which the existing temple stands, it may safely be ascribed. As it was raised out of the spoils of his successful campaigns, one might expect to find his victories delineated on the frieze; but there is nothing to imply such an intention. The battle of the Eurymedon, the greatest of Cimon's victories, having been partly naval, something would probably have indicated the circumstance, had that action been intended; and something also to show that Asiatic Greek ships and soldiers were in alliance with the Persians on that occasion: whereas on that part of the frieze in which horsemen are introduced, the opponents of the Greeks, both on foot and horseback, are all trousered Medes, like those of the Poecile '. The democratic jealousy of the Athenians, of which some strong examples occurred about that time, would hardly have permitted so direct and immediate an honour to have been conferred on Cimon, as the representation of his victories on a new temple; and it was more customary for the poets and artists of those days, as of all times, to select subjects, which antiquity assisted in rendering poetical. The extant portions of the frieze which are at Athens, compared with those in the British Museum, are said to prove that both the two long sides were occupied with combats of horsemen, and that the western end alone related to a battle of hoplita 2. Perhaps one of the long sides may have represented the battle of Marathon, and the other that of Platæa. But in this temple, still more than in the Parthenon and Theseium, the 1 braccatis illita Medis Porticus. Pers. Satir. 3, 53. 2 Akropolis von Athen. I. p. 13. degraded state of the sculptures, and the loss of those distinguishing marks which, whether in metal or in marble, were the parts most liable to injury, must render it extremely difficult to discover the artist's intention. In the combat of Hoplita, on the western end, there is nothing but the form of the armour that can lead to any well-founded opinion on the subject. It has already been stated that the western wall of the substruction which supports the platform of the temple of Victory, was decorated at the summit of the wall, on the northern and western sides, with a cornice of Pentelic marble. This cornice was continued along the northern wall, and may be considered as part of the decorations of the temple of Victory. The excavations of 1835 have led to the further discovery that along the northern side above the cornice there was a balustrade three feet four inches in height, which extended from the north-western angle of the platform to the lateral flight of steps, ascending at the eastern end of the northern wall to the platform of the temple of Victory; and which balustrade was continued from thence to the north-eastern angle of the temple; thus securing the platform from an enemy in possession of the ground in front of the Propylæa, and affording a breastwork to those who from that side of the platform commanded the ascent to the Propylæa on the unshielded side of the assailants, in the same manner as the western side of the bastion commanded the lateral approach from the southward by the temple of Tellus and Ceres. This balustrade served also as a decoration to the temple of Victory; having consisted of slabs of marble, representing on the exterior side winged Victories in high relief: two of these, which are engaged in subduing an enraged bull, suggest that the general design of the balustrade was allegorical; but the parts which have been found are so broken and defective, that no conclusion can yet be formed concerning See above, p. 303. the general design. The several pieces of marble which composed the balustrade were fixed to the masonry below by tenons of metal, and laterally to one another by clamps, so that the whole might easily be removed. At the top there appears to have been a railing of metal. There was pro bably a railing also along the edge of the western wall. APPENDIX XVI. Page 338. ON THE PARTHENON. I. On the glyptic Decorations of the Parthenon. 1. Of the statues in the 'Aɛroì or pediments. At what time the eastern pediment of the Parthenon was reduced to the condition in which it was delineated by Carrey, the artist employed by M. de Nointel in the year 1674, is quite uncertain: the excavations recently made (1837) around the Parthenon have not brought any remains of the central figures of that pediment to light, and hence we are led to the belief that their loss, whether the effect of plunder, of iconoclast fury, of an earthquake, or of an original defect, which may have caused that part of the structure to fall, occurred at a distant period of time. Had there been among the statues removed from Greece, either at Rome or at Constantinople, a colossal group representing the birth of Minerva, some trace of the fact would probably have been found in the Latin or Byzantine writers. It must ever remain doubtful, therefore, for what personages were intended the eight pieces of sculpture from this pediment which are now in the British Museum'; and 1 From No. 91 to No. 98, inclusive. Nos. 94 and 97 contain two figures each. which, with the exception of the loss of two heads, are still nearly in the same state as they are represented in the drawings of Carrey'. Deprived of all the central part of the composition, and having no intimation from antiquity of the manner in which the main subject was treated by Phidias, we are left to judge of it from the subordinate figures alone, assisted by such insufficient information on Athenian mythology as may be collected from the ancient writers; those figures, moreover, being so broken and injured, that little remains of the original character of the greater part of them, beyond that of sex. The following is the hypothesis of the Chevalier Bröndsted : "Dans le fronton oriental, Jupiter était assis sur son trône, au centre de l'univers, entre le Jour et la Nuit, entouré des divinités généthliques du sort, c'est à dire des trois Heures (Saisons) et des trois Parques avec la Fortune Bienveillante ('Ayaðǹ Túxn) et des divinités, qui président aux accouchemens,-Aphrodite-Uranie, et Ilithyie, Hephæstus et Prométhée, Arés et Hermes. Le père toutpuissant des dieux venait d'enfanter de sa tête la fille divine, qui s'élançait dans les airs, brillante de ses armes d'or: miracle suprême de la création, elle planait au dessus de son 1 The draped torso (No. 96 of the British Museum) was not seen by Carrey, as it was prostrate on the platform of the pediment. 2 The following lines from the Homeric hymn to Minerva (v. 4) compared with many Ceramic designs and other monuments, may serve to show the mode in which this mythological event was sometimes represented : τὴν αὐτὸς ἐγείνατο μητίετα Ζεὺς Σεμνῆς ἐκ κεφαλῆς, πολεμήϊα τεύχε' ἔχουσαν, Χρύσεα, παμφανόωντα· σέβας δ' ἔχε πάντας ὁρῶντας ̓Αθανάτους· ἡ δὲ πρόσθεν Διὸς Αἰγιόχοιο Εσσυμένως ὤρουσεν ἀπ ̓ ἀθανάτοιο καρήνου, Σείσασ ̓ ὀξὺν ἀκοντα· μέγας δ' ἐλελίζετ ̓ ὄλυμπος Δεινὸν ὑπ ̓ ὀμβρίμης γλαυκώπιδος· ἀμφὶ δὲ γαῖα Σμερδαλέον ἰάχησεν· ἐκινήθη δ ̓ ἄρα πόντος |