Visconti's suggestions as to the figures on the right half of the pediment—Latona and the rest—he named the statue on the left half, and next to the car of Athena (now Hermes), Erechtheus. With the exception of this, the Cecrops and family identification is now generally accepted, and the present British Museum scheme is practically that of Leake. Furtwangler, starting from the Cecrops identification, would make both the right and the left hand groups "the original dwellers on the citadel rock who witnessed the visit of the two deities, and who An image should appear at this position in the text.Fig. 121.—E. Pediment: A Fate. first instituted their worship, and it is they who have the best right to be represented here as witnesses." As behind the chariot on one side were Cecrops and his family, so on the other were Erechtheus and his daughters; he having occupied the position of the right hand gap on Carrey's drawing. One of the daughters of Erechtheus has a nude figure on her lap, "her son Ion, father of the lonians," the two forming a group like another, which has been found from the frieze of the Erechtheum.[1]
We come now to the angle figures, the one of which to the left has usually been taken for a river-god, Ilissos or another. When we find that Pausanias described one of the pediments at Olympia as being bounded by two rivers, there seems to be little room for doubt, and when, further, we note how later river-god statues have followed this type — the "Nile" (at Rome), for instance, is very much a traditional copy of it—the identification
- ↑ This nude figure has been discussed, see Miss Harrison's "Athens." Bauer claims to have identified parts of it, and that it was a male figure. The new B.M. Guide rather overstates that it was most likely female.
