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480–400 ] 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 ).

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

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 (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