In 1914 he discussed the question[132] whether the noteworthy female head at Holkham Hall can be given, as Sir Charles Walston has suggested, to the east pediment of the Parthenon; and answered the question with a decided negative. Another paper in the same year suggests the identification of several sculptured heads in various museums as portraits of kings of the Hellenistic Age, Egyptian, Syrian, and Pergamene. The paper also discusses the portraits of Thucydides and Aristotle. There is no more treacherous ground in archaeology than the assignment of portraits which are uninscribed; but the keenness of sight and the cautious method of Dickins had made him eminently fit for such inquiries.
In 1912 appeared a work on which Dickins had expended great labour, the first volume of the Catalogue of the Acropolis Museum at Athens,[133] comprising the sculpture down to the time of the Persian wars. The archaic Korae and male figures which stood in lines on the Acropolis and the pediments of the temples and shrines which adorned it when the Persians broke in in 480 constitute one of the most wonderful revelations of early Greek art. They have been frequently photographed; but their scientific study had not advanced with their popularity, and a number of difficult questions, as to date, artistic school, and manner of drapery awaited the cataloguer. With great care and excellent method Dickins approached these questions; and laid down a platform of knowledge on which all future discussions must be based. The work is in several ways a model.
A posthumous paper on ‘The Followers of Praxiteles’, published in the Annual of the British School,[134] had been given as a lecture at Oxford. It covers some of the ground occupied by the present volume. This with some manuscript to be printed in the forthcoming account of excavations at Sparta and in the forthcoming second volume of the Catalogue of the Municipal Collections of Sculpture at Rome, completes the list of published works. My claim is that they should rather be weighed than measured.
P. Gardner.
FOOTNOTES
[1] N. H. xxxiv. 52.
[2] Pliny, N. H. xxxvi. 24.
[3] Collignon, Pergame, figure on p. 204; Brunn-Bruckmann, Denkmäler, Pl. 159.
[4] N. H. xxxvi. 35.
[5] Collignon, Sculpture grecque, ii, Fig. 302.