[212]The Luperci were the priests of Pan, who, at the celebration of their games, called Lupercalia, were in the habit of running about the streets of Rome, with no other covering than a goat’s skin tied about the loins.
[213]Pliny has forgotten the gilded chariot, with six horses, which Cneius Cornelius dedicated in the Capitol, two hundred years before Augustus; there is also an ancient inscription which mentions chariots of this description.
[214]By one Leptines, at Laodicea.
[215]The mode in which the fingers were placed, so as to serve the purpose here indicated, is supposed to have been by their forming the letters which were the Roman numerals for the figures in question.
[216]The Colossus at Rhodes was begun by Chares, but he committed suicide, in consequence of having made some mistake in the estimate; the work was completed by Laches, also an inhabitant of Lindos.
It remained on the spot where it was thrown down for nearly nine hundred years, until the year 653 A.D., when Moavia, khalif of the Saracens, after the capture of Rhodes, sold the materials; it is said that it required nine hundred camels to remove the pieces.
The Bartholdi statue of “Liberty enlightening the World” is even larger than the Colossus at Rhodes.
[217]St. Jerome informs us, that Vespasian removed the head of Nero, and substituted that of the Sun with seven rays.
[218]There is no work of Phidias now in existence; the sculptures in the Parthenon were, however, executed by his pupils and under his immediate directions, so that we may form some judgment of his genius and taste. There is a foot in the British Museum, said to be the work of Phidias.
[219]Praxiteles held a high rank among the ancient sculptors, and may be considered as second to Phidias alone.