Page:Greek Buildings Represented by Fragments in the British Museum (1908).djvu/107

 THE PARTHENON AND ITS SCULPTURES. 91 and one under* each metope on the east. On the north and south fronts there were single shields at each end.f Between the shields of the east front are traces of rows of lettering. " There are five rows, with nine holes in each," says Dodwell. The shields, it is generally said, were fixed " long after " | the comple- tion of the building. Penrose says that they were fixed "at some uncertain period. They are said to have been fixed by Alexander the Great— they were attached more rudely than is likely to have been the case at the time of building." The idea of their being late may have arisen from what Pausanias says of shields having been affixed to the temple of Olympia by Mummius, the Roman conqueror of Achaia, 146 B.C. He also says, however, that there was another shield beneath the Victory on the pediment ; this was probably placed there in the fifth cen- tury along with the Victory. Again, there were shields at the temple of Delphi, those on the east and north having been given by the Athenians in memory of Marathon, and those on the west and south having been given by the ^tolians in memory of their victory over the Gauls. The temple at Delphi was built in the fourth century, and the recent discoveries have shown that the shields were fixed in the metopes, which were unsculptured. We may fairly suppose that the Athenians hung up their memorial shields on their own temple before they sent them to Delphi.§ As I shall show that the metopes of the west front of the Parthenon had reference to the Persian war, we may conclude that the shields there were in Fig. 77. — Frieze : Head of Hera, restored. over the columns. + Also, in some places at least, objects under the triglyphs attached with three pins, thus,. ' . J Leake. § " The Athenians dedicated shields at Delphi after the battle of Platsea" (Furtwangler, p. 446). An examination lately made by an American student suggests that shields were put up at four times.
 * Not exactly, they seem to have been drawn nearer together in pairs