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

476 EXTANT WORKS OF THIS PERIOD.

beginning" of the next period, the statue of Dionysus in the Brit. Mus.,
which was taken from a similar building, called

The Monument of Thrasyllus. This Choragic monument, only
lately destroyed, formed the facade of a large cavern in which the
prize tripods were kept, above the theatre of Dionysus at Athens. It
was erected, 01. 115. I (B.C. 320), by Thrasyllus.

In this statue, which was brought to England by Lord Elgin,
Dionysus is represented sitting, robed in long and flowing garments.
A chiton of a fine material reaches to his feet, above which he wears a
panther's skin confined by a broad girdle, and an ample himation
covers the lower part of his body and his legs.1 The figure is grandly
conceived in the soft full forms appropriate to the God of wine re-
presented as a youth. The broad masses of the drapery, too, are
treated in a manner worthy of the best period of art, and, were it not
for the loss of the head, we should possess in this statue a noble
representative work of the younger Attic school, still free from sen-
suality. A hole in the thigh served probably to fix some musical
instrument of bronze.

1 Anc. Marbles of B. Af. ix. pi. I.