DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5253#0440
4-o6
THE AGE OF PHEIDIAS AND OF POLYCLEITOS.
monotony was avoided, and perfect symmetry preserved. Thus, above the
summit of the east pediment towered a group (Fig. 183), in which a powerful
winged man, having caught in his grasp a helpless female, seems to speed away.
About her members the drapery floats in the excited haste of her motion, as
she is being borne off, to the astonishment of two attendant maidens one on
each side. A small horse in the foreground gallops away, thus sharing in the
excitement of the scene. Of this group, large fragments of every figure except
the maiden to the right have been discovered ; but, from the analogy of a fig-
ure preserved from the group at the opposite end of the temple, it is evident
that such a figure was here also. In this eastern acroterion, there can be no
doubt that we have the rough north wind Koreas, carrying off the beautiful
Fig. 183. Acroterion of lempie on Delos as restored by Furtwangler.
daughter of Erechtheus, Oreithyia, whom he is fabled to have made his wife.
This myth is constantly represented on Attic vases, where Boreas, with his
accompanying name, appears in the same garments as here, and having the
same rough, stormy character. The horse is intimately connected in Homeric
myth with Boreas, who was the father of twelve wind-fleet colts ; "s and the
animal is, doubtless, here added as his most suggestive symbol, as well as
being a necessary support for the marble form of Oreithyia, who, in the in-
stantaneousness of her motion, would, besides, give the impression of toppling
over, were it not for the firm horizontal mass of the horse at her feet. How
striking the resemblance between the treatment of this figure, as her drapery
floats about the legs, to that of Paionios' Nike!
But the resemblance of that master's Nike is still more striking to the
figures that must have formed the corner acrotaia, of which a large fragment
THE AGE OF PHEIDIAS AND OF POLYCLEITOS.
monotony was avoided, and perfect symmetry preserved. Thus, above the
summit of the east pediment towered a group (Fig. 183), in which a powerful
winged man, having caught in his grasp a helpless female, seems to speed away.
About her members the drapery floats in the excited haste of her motion, as
she is being borne off, to the astonishment of two attendant maidens one on
each side. A small horse in the foreground gallops away, thus sharing in the
excitement of the scene. Of this group, large fragments of every figure except
the maiden to the right have been discovered ; but, from the analogy of a fig-
ure preserved from the group at the opposite end of the temple, it is evident
that such a figure was here also. In this eastern acroterion, there can be no
doubt that we have the rough north wind Koreas, carrying off the beautiful
Fig. 183. Acroterion of lempie on Delos as restored by Furtwangler.
daughter of Erechtheus, Oreithyia, whom he is fabled to have made his wife.
This myth is constantly represented on Attic vases, where Boreas, with his
accompanying name, appears in the same garments as here, and having the
same rough, stormy character. The horse is intimately connected in Homeric
myth with Boreas, who was the father of twelve wind-fleet colts ; "s and the
animal is, doubtless, here added as his most suggestive symbol, as well as
being a necessary support for the marble form of Oreithyia, who, in the in-
stantaneousness of her motion, would, besides, give the impression of toppling
over, were it not for the firm horizontal mass of the horse at her feet. How
striking the resemblance between the treatment of this figure, as her drapery
floats about the legs, to that of Paionios' Nike!
But the resemblance of that master's Nike is still more striking to the
figures that must have formed the corner acrotaia, of which a large fragment