Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 3,1): Zeus god of the dark sky (earthquake, clouds, wind, dew, rain, meteorits): Text and notes (Cambridge, 1940)

The birth of Athena in art

689

be determined and arranged in an intelligible series, we are thereby
encouraged to play Childe Roland and, undeterred by the fate of
°ur predecessors, once more attack that Dark Tower of Athenian
archaeology—the time-honoured problem of reconstructing the
eastern pediment of the Parthenon.

Two factors in the situation make the attempt less foolhardy
nowadays than it was a century since in the time of Christopher
Wordsworth1. On the one hand, R. Schneider2 in 1880 justly
emphasized the importance of the Madrid puteal3 and inferred from
lt that Pheidias' Zeus was seated in profile4 to the right with the
axe-bearer behind him and Athena before. On the other hand,
*• Sauer5 in 1890—1891 published and discussed the first minutely
accurate chart of the Standspuren or actual traces left by the
sculptures on the floor of the gable6. His investigation corrected
Schneider's idea that Zeus occupied the middle of the pediment7

tre ' C' Wordsworth Athens and Attica London 1836 p. 116 'The attempt to infer the
fro* "u m and details of the altorilievo groupe which once occupied the eastern pediment
striT, fragments o{ il whicn remain, would be as futile an enterprise as that to recon-
« an Athenian Tragedy from a few broken lines.'
3 R- Schneider Die Geburt der Athena Wien 1880 p. 42.
"'at f"fi' a P' 657 ff' 0thers have attached little or no weight to the puteal, on the ground
nah„ 8ures were neo-Attic—'eine Compilation alterer Typen' (P. Arndt in Einzelauf-
JaJ,'''"'/"0*'- 1724—30 Tcxt vi- +'2ff-) or ' klassizistische Einzeltypen' (E. Pfuhl in the
basis'd lieulsch- arch- In$L 1026 xli- '7°)- Thus. for example, W. Amelung Die

Ule tut Praxiteles a"s Mo"'"'"* Miinchen 1895 p. 13 ff. maintains that the Fates of
to&nti ^ " ere take" fr°m fourth-century prototypes closely resembling the Muses of the
"onian 1>aSe' 3nd that they are therer°re """-Pheidiac in character and /otf-Parthe-
■<j25 xx"1 date—a view sufficiently refuted by Rhys Carpenter in the Am. fount. Arch.
*ere ni'd' ff' AI°St critics' however, would admit that the /«/^a/-groups, even if they
''econst 'ate rathCr lhan immediate coPies o{ tne pediment, are yet highly relevant to a

t ^ ruction of their lost originals (supra p. 660 n. o).
lhrone 11S would not necessarily preclude the slightly oblique position assigned to the
St''Hxtio,H b°dy °f ZeUS b> K' Schwerzek Erlduterungen zu dem Versuch einerHelton-
Giebels" °sUichcn Partltenongiebels Wien 1904 p. 17: ' Wegen der geringen Tiefe des
re'nen v'St ^ namlich aus technischen Grunden ganz unmdglich, die Zeus-Statue in der

5 g °ri>er- oder Seitenansicht anzuordnen.'
GiebelBr thC Ant' Denh"- 48 ff- P1- 58> B and c. id- ' Untersuchungen liber die

' RhUPPLn deS ]'arthenon' in the Ath. A/itth. 1891 xvi. 59—94 pi. 3.
still 0ps|yS Ca'penter in the Am. fount. Arch. 1925 xxix. 130(1'. fig. 7 and pi. 3, A was
erected e,raUnK wit1' Sauer's floor-plan, but in 1931—thanks to the great scaffoldings
Var'°us V- Kala"os—he was able to pay repeated visits to the actual floor and in
•933 j; P°lnts t0 control or supplement the observations of his predecessor (Hesperia
r<:siorati0 Wil11 pls' 1 (photograph of floor-blocks 19—11) and 2 ( = niy pi. lviii, 2:

' S l°f Pediment and revised plan of floor)).
K0 Gr<isse Jneider Die Geburt der Athena Wien 1880 p. 42 'Zeus—alle ubrigen Figuren
"Clfer' et^.U ,erragend—in der Mitte, rechts die neugel>orne Tochter, links der Geburts-
detu'scf^' ' C'e M'tt^grfPPe des ostlichen Parthenongiebels' in the Jahrb. d.
3 testoraf arc/l- I**t. '894 ix. 83—87 with fig. adopts this solution of the problem in
justly derided bv A. Kurtwangler Intermezzi Leipzig—Berlin 1896 p. 53 f.

c- III.

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