F. B. Tarbell, A History of Ancient Greek Art

The Great Age of Greek Sculpture. First Period 450-400 B. C.

Phidias

Page 3

In regard to the Athena of the Parthenon we are considerably better off, for we possess a number of marble statues which, with the aid of Pausanias's description and by comparison with one another, can be proved to be copies of that work. But a warning is necessary here. The Athena, like the Zeus, was of colossal size. Its height, with the pedestal, was about thirty-eight feet. Now it is not likely that a really exact copy on a small scale could possibly have been made from such a statue, nor, if one had been made, would it have given the effect of the original. With this warning laid well to heart the reader may venture to examine that one among our copies which makes the greatest attempt at exactitude. It is a statuette, not quite 3 1/2 feet high with the basis, found in Athens in 1880. The goddess stands with her left leg bent a little and pushed to one side. She is dressed in a heavy Doric chiton, open at the side. The girdle, whose ends take the form of snakes' heads, is worn outside the doubled-over portion of the garment. Above it the folds are carefully adjusted, drawn in symmetrically from both sides toward the middle; in the lower part of the figure there is the common vertical division into two parts, owing to the bending of one leg. Over the chiton is the aegis, much less long behind than in earlier art, fringed with snakes' heads and having a Gorgon's mask in front. The helmet is an elaborate affair with three crests, the central one supported by a sphinx, the others by winged horses; the hinged cheek-pieces are turned up. At the left of the goddess is her shield, within which coils a serpent. On her extended right hand stands a Victory. The face of Athena is the most disappointing part of it all, but it is just there that the copyist must have failed most completely. Only the eye of faith, or better, the eye trained by much study of allied works, can divine in this poor little figure the majesty which awed the beholder of Phidias's work.

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