The schools of Euphronius, Hiero and Duris belong to the age of the Persian wars. With the middle of the century the works of these makers are succeeded by unsigned vases of most beautiful design, some of them showing the influence of Polygnotus. In the later years of the century, when the empire of Athens was approaching its fall, drawing becomes laxer and more careless, and in the treatment of drapery we frequently note the over-elaboration of folds, the want of simplicity, which begin to mark contemporary sculpture. These changes of style can only be satisfactorily followed in the vase rooms of the British Museum, or other treasuries of Greek art (see also A. B. Walters, History of Ancient Pottery; and the article Ceramics).
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| Fig. 33.—East Pediment, Olympia. Two Restorations. |
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| Fig. 34.—West Pediment, Olympia. Two Restorations. |
Among the sculptural works of this period the first place may
be given to the great temple of Zeus at Olympia. The statue by
Pheidias which once occupied the place of honour in
that temple, and was regarded as the noblest monument
of Greek religion, has of course disappeared, nor
are we able with confidence to restore it. But the plan
Olympia:
Temple of Zeus.
of the temple, its pavement, some of its architectural ornaments,
remain. The marbles which occupied the pediments and the
metopes of the temple have been in large part recovered, having
been probably thrown down by earthquakes and gradually buried
in the alluvial soil. The utmost ingenuity and science of the
archaeologists of Germany have been employed in the recovery
of the composition of these groups; and although doubt remains
as to the places of some figures, and their precise attitudes, yet
we may fairly say that we know more about the sculpture of
the Olympian temple of Zeus than about the sculpture of any
other great Greek temple. The exact date of these sculptures
is not certain, but we may with some confidence give them to
470–460 B.C. (In speaking of them we shall mostly follow the
opinion of Dr Treu, whose masterly work in vol. iii. of the great
German publication on Olympia is a model of patience and of
science.) In the eastern pediment (fig. 33), as Pausanias tells
us, were represented the preparations for the chariot-race
between Oenomaüs and Pelops, the result of which was to
determine whether Pelops should find death or a bride and a
kingdom. In the midst, invisible to the contending heroes,
stood Zeus the supreme arbiter. On one side of him stood
Oenomaüs with his wife Sterope, on the other Pelops and Hippodameia,
the daughter of Oenomaüs, whose position at once
indicates that she is on the side of the newcomer, whatever her
parents may feel. Next on either side are the four-horse chariots
of the two competitors, that of Oenomaüs in the charge of his
perfidious groom Myrtilus, who contrived that it should break
down in the running, that of Pelops tended by his grooms.
At either end, where the pediment narrows to a point, reclines a
river god, at one end Alpheus, the chief stream of Olympia, at
the other end his tributary Cladeus. Only one figure remains,
not noticed in the careful description of Pausanias, the figure
of a handmaid kneeling, perhaps one of the attendants of Sterope.
Our engraving gives two conjectural restorations of the pediment,
that of Treu and that of Kekule, which differ principally in the
arrangement of the corners of the composition; the position
of the central figures and of the chariots can scarcely be called
in question. The moment chosen is one, not of action, but of
expectancy, perhaps of preparation for sacrifice. The arrangement
is undeniably stiff and formal, and in the figures we note
none of the trained perfection of style which belongs to the
sculptures of the Parthenon, an almost contemporary temple.
Faults abound, alike in the rendering of drapery and in the
representation of the human forms, and the sculptor has
evidently trusted to the painter who was afterwards to colour
his work, to remedy some of his clumsiness, or to make clear the
ambiguous. Nevertheless there is in the whole a dignity, a
sobriety, and a simplicity, which reconcile us to the knowledge
that this pediment was certainly regarded in antiquity as a noble
work, fit to adorn even the palace of Zeus. In the other, the
western pediment (fig. 34), the subject is the riot of the Centaurs
when they attended the wedding of Peirithous in Thessaly, and,
attempting to carry off the bride and her comrades, were slain
by Peirithous and Theseus. In the midst of the pediment,
invisible like Zeus in the eastern pediment, stands Apollo, while
on either side of him Theseus and Peirithous attack the Centaurs
with weapons hastily snatched. Our illustration gives two
possible arrangements. The monsters are in various attitudes
