Mitchell, Lucy M.: A history of ancient sculpture (New York, 1883)

260 ARCHAIC SCULPTURE.

here admirably brought out, and there is great faithfulness in executing the
minor details. The decidedly archaic character of the relief, especially seen in
the heads, will strike every observer. The details of hair and beard arc not
carved out, but left to color; and the curves of the eyelids are still monoto-
nous. But, by running the fingers over these strong but subtile muscles of the
body, we become pleasantly aware by touch, as cannot be done by sight alone,
that there is here no laxity or uncertainty, but everywhere perspicuity, firm-
ness, and assurance in the severe but thoroughly plastic shapes, even though
still exaggerated in parts with the naive emphasis given by archaic art to the
most prominent members. But how primitive the drapery of this Hesperid,
and how far behind the rendering of the nude ! The simplicity of cut is
quite unlike the pattern of garments found in statues among the Ionians, as
those of Miletos, Samos, Delos, and even Athens. In the perpendicular folds
which fall over her thigh, in the horizontal lines of the edge running across
the body, and in the serpentine border dropping towards the hip, there is,
however, a peculiar attraction, far indeed from that of entire naturalness, and
dependent rather upon stern conformity to carefully weighed artistic princi-
ples, it might be said upon "the beauty alone of certain linear combinations."*62
There is throughout the forms of this metope a nobility holding itself aloof
from all that is trivial or undignified, showing the work of a master well trained
in artistic traditions, whose sculptures do not appeal to feeling or sentiment,
but most emphatically to our judgment, and sense of sculptural form.

The eleventh metope has a female figure, in her severe but agreeable lines,
sister, as it were, to this nymph. It is Athena who here stands by with her
aid while Heracles cleans the stables of Augeias (Fig. 124). According to
myth, these were so extensive and so foul that Heracles turned a river into
them ; but here he appears actually at work hoeing out the dirt, in an attitude
which shows great exertion. Athena, while standing with full front to the
beholder, looks toward Heracles ; her left hand, perhaps, once holding a lance,
and her right resting on a shield. Her helmet had attachments of bronze,
now gone ; and Heracles' hair and beard were clearly painted. The twelfth
and last metope seems to represent the chaining of Kerberos, the watch-dog
at the portals of Hades. Here the triple-headed monster of myth appears as
a very agreeably shaped dog, whom the hero is dragging out of his cave.
Above the dog, and completing the scene, must have been another figure;
for the space in all these metopes was well filled : probably it was Athena,
the hero's protecting goddess ; or Hermes, the leader of souls to and from
Hades, the scene of Heracles' adventure with Kerberos.

To arrive at the date of these vigorous but still constrained sculptures,
their place in the architecture must be considered. This shows us that the
metopes must have been executed during the building of the temple. Their
intimate connection with the triglyphs, both on the side and the top, shows