Thus much, however, for clearness sake may and must be said. The design of the western pediment fell into two parts. In one angle, that to the left of the spectator, Herakles is wrestling with Triton; the right-hand portion, not figured here, is occupied by the triple figure of ‘Blue-beard,’ whose correct mythological name is probably Typhon[43]. He is no protagonist, only a splendid smiling spectator. The centre of the pediment, where, in the art of Pheidias, we should expect the interest to culminate, was occupied by accessories, the stem of a tree on which hung, as in vase-paintings, the bow and arrows and superfluous raiment of Herakles.
It is a point of no small mythological interest that in this and two other primitive pediments the protagonist is not, as we should expect, the indigenous hero Theseus, but the semi-Oriental Herakles; but this question also we must set aside; our immediate interest is not in the sculptured figures of the pediment, but in the richly painted decoration on the pediment roof above their heads.
The recent excavations on the Acropolis yielded a large number of painted architectural fragments, the place and significance of which was at first far from clear. Of these fragments forty were adorned with two forms of lotus-flower; twenty had upon them figures of birds of two sorts. Fragmentary though the birds mostly are, the two kinds (storks and sea-eagles) are, by realism as to feathers, beak, legs, and claws, carefully distinguished. The stork (πελαργός) in the Pelargikon is a surprise and a delight. Was Aristophanes[44] thinking of this Pelargikon when to the building of his Nephelokokkygia he brought
For brickmakers a myriad flight of storks.
One of the storks is given in [Fig. 13]. The birds in the original fragments are brilliantly and delicately coloured. Their vivid red legs take us to Delphi. We remember Ion[45] with his laurel crown, his bow and arrows, his warning song to swan and eagle.
Fig. 13.
There see! the birds are up: they fly
Their nests upon Parnassus high