Dyer, Thomas Henry: Ancient Athens: Its history, topography, and remains (London, 1873)

374

ANCIENT ATHENS.

or 30 figures, and seems to represent an assembly of the gods. As this
is mythological, so the other three sides appear to he historical, and to
represent combats between foot and horse, foot and foot, Greeks and
Greeks, and Greeks and Persians. The last have by some writers been
taken to be Amazons, but Ross agrees with Leake in considering the
figures on horseback to be Persians. The style of the sculpture bears
some resemblance to that of the temple of Apollo at Phigalia.1

Close to the temple of Nike' Athena stood a statue of Artemis
Epipyrgidia, or the triple Hecate; which Pausanias does not mention
in the regular course of his itinerary, but casually in his Corinthiaca
(ii. 30, 2). This deity, he says, was principally worshipped by the
JEginetans; but their statue of her, which was of wood, and made by
Myron, had only one face and one body. We have already spoken of
this deity when describing the throne of her priest.2 A medal on
which she is figured with three heads and three bodies has been
engraved by Stuart (vol. ii. ch. 5, init.), and the inscription on it,
'AOrjpas viKT)<f>6pov, seems to indicate her proximity to the temple.

There seems also to have stood at the entrance of the Acropolis,
though Pausanias does not mention it, a statue of Athena, surnamed
Cleidouchos, or the Keeper of the Keys. It is alluded to by Aristo-
phanes, in the following verses of the ' Thesmophoriazusae':

(IlaXXas) rj no\iif rjfMTtpav ex«,

Ka\ Kpdros <\>avepbv \uovr\,

leXr/boixos t( xaXetrai.—V. 1140 sqq.

" 'Tis Pallas keeps our city,
Our only open strength,
The key-holder she's called."

It was said to be the work of Pheidias.3 But Cleidouchos might per-
haps be a sobriquet of the Lemnian Athena, of which statue, standing
near the Propylsea, we shall have to speak further on.

At the very entrance into the Acropolis, says Pausanias (c. 22, 8),

1 There is an elaborate account of the 2 Above, p. 323.

frieze in Koss, Nike Tempel, 4"r Ab- 3 See Preller in the Hall. A. Encycl.

achuitt. See also Leake, vol. i. App. xv. p. 195.