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

THE WESTERN PEDIMENT.

257

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE SCULPTURES OF THE PARTHENON

(CONTINUED).

The Pediments.

PauSANIAS, who has given us so minute a description of the groups
which adorned the eastern and western gables of the Temple of Zeus
at Olympia, is almost silent concerning the nobler work in the cor-
responding parts of the Parthenon. The scene in the pediment above
the entrance to the Parthenon, he tells us,1 referred to the Birth of
Athene, and the group in the western pediment to the Contest of
Poseidon and Athene for the land of Attica. And this is all the notice
taken in ancient literature of works before which we stand in re-
verential awe, like the invading Gauls before the Roman Senate!

Of the group in this pediment, in which the Contest between Poseidon
and Athftti is represented, and which Carrey (fig. 100) saw almost
complete, we possess only a few mutilated remains. These are the River
Cephissus (fig. IOO, a) in the left corner ; the Torso of the male figure
(fig. 100, //) standing near the chariot of Athene ; the Breast of Athene,
with the aegis, and perhaps the mutilated Head of the same Goddess \
the Chest, back and sides of Poseidon"1 (fig. IOO, k); the Torso of the

1 i. 24. 5. as peculiarly characteristic of the God, when

* It is singular and fortunate that just that he ascril>es to Agamemnon :

THE WESTERN PEDIMENT.

portion of l'oseidon's mighty frame should
have been preserved which Homer refers to

S