In purple billows; the tide suddenly
Stood still, and great Hyperion’s son long time
Checked his swift steeds, till, where she stood sublime,
Pallas from her immortal shoulders threw
The arms divine; wise Jove rejoiced to view.
Child of the Ægis-bearer, hail to thee!
Nor thine, nor others’ praise shall unremembered be.”
Such is the famous hymn. And from Pausanias we learn that it afforded to the sculptor, Pheidias, the subject for his chief group on the eastern pediment. But, exactly how he treated it we have no precise or definite knowledge.
The Eastern Pediment.—“Doubtless, in this composition, Jupiter (Zeus) occupied the centre, and was represented in all his majesty, wielding the thunderbolt in one hand, holding his sceptre in the other; seated on his throne, and as if in the centre of the universe, between day and night, the beginning and the end, as denoted by the rising and the setting sun.
“It is probable that the figures on his right hand represented those deities who were connected with the progress of facts and rising life—the deities who preside over birth, over the produce of the earth, over love—the rising sun; whilst those on the left of Zeus related to the consummation or decline of things—the god of war, the goddess of the family hearth, the Fates, and lastly the setting sun, or night. Whilst the divine Athéné rose from behind the central figure in all the effulgence of the most brilliant armour, the golden crest of her helmet filling the apex of the pediment.”