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Perry, Walter Copland
Greek and Roman sculpture: a popular introduction to the history of Greek and Roman sculpture — London, 1882

DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14144#0214

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GOLDEN AGE OF PLASTIC ART.

visible intervention they had achieved their triumphs. Cimon em-
ployed not only the booty taken from the Persians, but his own great
private means, in rendering Athens the grandest and most beautiful
city in the world. The Park of the Academy with its shady walks
and running streams, and the Portico and groves of the Agora, were his
work. It was under his patronage that the young Pheidias first
appeared on the stage which he was destined to tread so long, and
with such unrivalled glory. We first hear of him in connexion with
the adornment of the Thcseion (temple of Theseus) after the taking of
Scyros in 470 B.C. This island of pirates, barren as it was, contained an
inestimable treasure in the bones of Theseus. The great Athenian
hero, ' as the mythical champion of Democracy,' was naturally in high
favour at Athens, especially after the battle of Marathon, in which he
had visibly aided the Athenians." In the year 476 B.C., the Athenians
were directed by an oracle to bring home his bones from Scyros, and to
enshrine them in a manner worthy of their godlike champion and
themselves. A skeleton of gigantic size, discovered in the island by
Cimon, just at the right moment, was transferred to Athens and
conducted in solemn pomp by the jubilant people to its final resting-
place, over which a magnificent temple was erected. The precincts of
this building were appropriately made a sanctuary in which the
poor man and the slave could claim protection from the oppressor.2
Pheidias was employed to furnish the Thcseion with its plastic
ornaments, of which we shall have to speak more at large under
the head of extant remains of this period.

Cimon also built the S. wall of the Acropolis, on a buttress of
which the temple of Nike Apteros was afterwards reared ; and began
or restored the Anakcion (temple of the Dioscuri), and the temple
of Artemis Euclcia.

It was evidently Cimon's chief delight to make plastic art con-
tribute to the glorification of Athenian valour, and with this view the
young Pheidias was employed by him on a Bronze group of thirteen
figures which was offered at Delphi from the proceeds of a tithe of the

1 Grote (Hist, of Greece, v. 113) in controversy with Clinton, Fas/. Hcllcn. ad An. 476.
* Athenaeus, vi. 235.
 
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