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

2i2 EXTANT WORKS OF THE PERICLEAN PERIOD.

CHAPTER XX.

EXTANT WORKS OF THE PERICLEAN PERIOD.

The attention of ancient Greek and Roman writers was almost ex-
clusively directed to those great masterpieces of sculpture in which
this branch of art developed itself in perfect freedom and indepen-
dence. Unhappily for us nearly all these works are lost. Of all
the marvellous achievements of which Pausanias, Pliny, Lucian,
Cicero and others speak with enthusiasm, we can hardly boast of
possessing more than two or three examples, and we are fortu-
nate when we meet with copies of some of them sufficiently true to
give us an idea of their style and merits. The noblest remains of
Greek art which we possess are specimens of sculpture not walk-
ing in her own way, but assuming the gait of Architecture, her
more solid, staid, and serious sister. There are obvious reasons
why architectural statues and reliefs, and these alone, have escaped
destruction. They were always of stone, which presented to the
plunderer none of the attractions of bronze, silver, gold, and ivory.
In their lofty position, too, they were more out of reach, and even as
works of art they were of less value when taken from the place for
which they were exclusively intended. And hence it happens that
while the Sosandra of Calamis, the Cow of Myron, the Athene
Parthenos and the Panhellenic Zeus of Pheidias, the Cnidian Venus
of Praxiteles, are lost to us for ever, we still possess important
remains of pedimental groups from the school of Pheidias, which
bear the impress of the great master's genius, if not the very traces
of his hand.