PART III.
THE SUCCESSORS OF PHEIDIAS.
SCULPTURES OF THE TEMPLE CALLED
THE THESEION.
The building which is commonly known as the Temple of Theseus, or Theseion, stands about a quarter of a mile to the north-west of the Acropolis of Athens.
Fig. 15.—Plan of the Theseion. (From Baumeister.)
The temple is of the kind called peripteral hexastyle. Round the cella, or central chamber, is a single row of columns, thirty-four in number, of which there are six at each end. The order is Doric, with a frieze peculiarly arranged. On the eastern front are ten sculptured metopes, and there are four on each of the adjacent sides, making a total of eighteen sculptured metopes. The remaining metopes of the temple, fifty in number, are plain slabs, which may possibly have had painted on them figures or ornaments. Of the pedimental groups, which appear to have once existed at each end of the temple, nothing now remains except the marks of the attachment of sculptures. Within the colonnade the two ends of the cella are adorned with a frieze of Parian marble, which is still in position. At the west, the length of the frieze is only equal to the width of the cella; at the east, the frieze is continued as far as the epistyle, or beams surmounting the colonnade.