Lastly, we come to the frieze. To judge it rightly, the spectator must remember its position on the temple, for its character is entirely changed when it is seen at the level of the eyes on the walls of our Museum. It ran round the top of the cella wall, 39 feet above the floor, inside the colonnade of the Parthenon. It could be examined by mounting the stylobate and craning your neck uncomfortably, but in an ordinary case you would merely catch glimpses of it between the columns as you passed along outside. Moreover, it was in the shadow of the roof, lighted, as Professor Gardner reminds us, from below by reflection from the white marble pavement. This the artist has foreseen and provided for by making the relief of the upper part deeper than below, so that the heads lean forward from the panels. Where deep shadows are required below they are often secured by cutting into the background. Here is another proof of the advantage Art gains when her ministers are practical craftsmen rather than luxurious gentlemen who spend their time between the studio and the drawing-room. The designer of this frieze—and surely the designer was no less than the master himself—had a free hand here, with no laws of tradition to bind him, for such a frieze is without previous example. He had to cover an uninterrupted space of 524 feet with ornament. He chose for his subject the great procession representing the people of Athens which went up every year at the Panathenaic festival to offer a new saffron robe to the goddess. Observe how he has conceived it. Over the front[50] he placed the immortal gods and goddesses, not in the awful majesty of Olympus, but down on earth in their beloved city of Athens. He depicted them at ease; only their added dignity of countenance and their greater stature (their heads reach the cornice, though they are seated) indicates their divinity. They are not overladen with attributive emblems. They are at home in Athens. They sit, they almost lounge, in comfortable attitudes. Dionysus leans on the shoulder of young Hermes. Ares, the dreadful Thracian warrior, has left his armour at home; he rests pleasantly with his right knee clasped in his hands. Hera unveils her head, turning to say a word to her royal husband, who sits a little apart in his simple dignity. Athena, the heroine of the hour, is marked by no pomp; she is
Plate 44.—The Lemnian Athena.
Tamme.
conversing in friendly fashion with Hephæstus. Apollo turns his beautiful head to say a word to the grave Poseidon. Eros is a naked human boy leaning at the knee of Aphrodite; she is fully draped, and even veiled, as becomes the deity of Heavenly Love. It is a warm, peaceful day: the gods have flung back their tunics from their shoulders, the goddesses are clad in soft Ionic robes. The sculptor has not chosen to represent the ceremony at its crisis. The procession is on its way, the music can be heard in the streets below. Close by Athena, separated by no extra space, a priest is handing a folded garment, the old peplos, no doubt, to a lad. It cannot be the offering of the new one, for Athena has her back to the scene. Groups of grave elders converse together, leaning on their staves. Attendant maidens stand near with baskets on their heads. This eastern end shows us the peace and happiness of a heaven not far removed from earth at its best.
Turning the corners, we have on each side the approaching procession, advancing towards the front at a slow pace. As the passing visitor glances up between the columns the procession actually moves. First come the young men leading the sacrificial beasts, oxen and sheep, with attendants bearing the trays and water-jars. The flute-players and harpers follow at the head of the warriors, the war-chariots, men with branches of victory, and the hoplites with shield and spear. And then, most brilliant of all, the young knights,[51] scions of the best families of Athens, sitting their fiery horses barebacked with charming ease and grace, some wearing the broad hat and short chlamys, some in chitons, some with mantles flying in the wind, some in armour. Here and there you see the marshals ordering the procession. Farther back it is just forming; the young knights are mounting their horses and attendants are holding them ready. We must supply to the frieze a coloured background and bronze fittings such as spears and bridles.
But why in the world has he left out the sacred robe itself? Well, he might have chosen to put Athena on her throne in full panoply, and to have made the whole scene far more devotional and impressive to the religious sense. Instead, he has slackened the tension everywhere. The soldiers might have marched in disciplined ranks of Doric precision. The animals might have walked in two by two, as well-behaved beasts going to sacrifice should. The whole thing might have been formal and grand. Pheidias preferred to make it charm by its simplicity and grace. His procession glows with youth and beauty, modest but unembarrassed. The young knight lacing up his military boot is quite unconscious that you and I are looking at him. It would not have done for the solemn pediments, it would have been out of place on the violent metopes, but here, just to glance at between the pillars, as a piece of light, supererogatory ornament, the artist felt at liberty to express the joy of living.
If you needed to look upon divinity in its awful grandeur, you had only to enter the shrine and worship before the temple statue. This was the chryselephantine Athena Parthenos, 39 feet high, with £150,000 worth of refined gold upon her raiment, with her triple-crested helmet, her shield and Victory, her ægis and her serpent. Like the Olympian Zeus, she was to be as splendid as art could make her; there was colour and ornament everywhere. I do not suppose that even here she was very terribly militant. Loose tresses of her hair escaped to mitigate the ferocity of the helmet, with its fierce sphinx and monsters. Her pet owl was perched somewhere on her helmet. The “Strangford Shield” in the British Museum[52] is of great interest, because it seems to copy the design of the original shield with some fidelity, and it belongs to an interesting anecdote told about the sculptor. In 432, when Pericles was being attacked through his friends, they charged Pheidias with embezzling some of the gold entrusted to him for this statue, and with blasphemous impropriety in putting his own portrait, together with the portrait of Pericles, on the goddess’s