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STUDIES IN GREEK ART.

was the gold and ivory votive statue of Athene, enshrined
within its walls. This, and this only, we are certain was
actually wrought by the hand of Pheidias himself, was
the outcome, the embodiment of his highest thought.
The statue has perished utterly ; what remains to us is
an account of its structure and some technical details of
its execution, a few expressions of wonder and admira-
tion, and some Graeco-Roman copies on a small scale,
from which we gather the attitude and some attributes of
the goddess, but scarcely anything of the spirit of the
original. As frontispiece to this chapter all we can place
to represent the art of Pheidias is a fragment of the
sculptured decoration of Athene’s temple, of which much
remains to us. But when we come to study this frag-
ment we must always bear in mind that these sculptures
which are our national pride, which are to modern
sculptors their models of an unattainable perfection,
their despair and their inspiration, were passed over in
silence by ancient critics with just a passing note of
their subject; they were lost in the superior glory of the
statue of the goddess who dwelt within. Before, then,
we look at our fragment, beautiful though it is, let us
learn of the gold and ivory statue something of what is
left us to know.
What need, perhaps we may ask, of a new statue of
the goddess at all ? Was there not already Athene Polias,
and — for memory of Marathon — Athene Promachos