Page:Greek Buildings Represented by Fragments in the British Museum (1908).djvu/121

 THE PARTHENON AND ITS SCULPTURES. 105 / and the probability is that the foes were Persians. Professor Gardner has remarked generally of the sculptures: "By their choice of all these subjects there is little doubt that the Athenians intended to depict to the glory of their goddess the mythical prototypes of their own vic- tories over the Persians which ^'"^ -^ were still fresh in their me- mory, and such a theme was ^appropriate to the Parthenon, built as it was from the funds subscribed by the Greeks against the common foe, but no longer necessary.* Yes, but would not these allusions best be gathered up by a sculptured battle with the Persians themselves ? It was only fitting that, on the Par- thenon itself, as on the Temple of Nike, the triumph over the Persians should be celebrated amongst the acts of the Greeks. Taken in relation to the subject of the pediment above, which showed how Athena took charge of the land, these metopes suggested how, by her help, it was retained. I have found, in some drawings of these metopes, made by Pars in 1765, when they were in much better condition, some further confir- mation of this view. The metope i, by the north corner, is a magnificent Greek horseman (in the Museum Cata- logue called an Amazon with a ?). (Fig. 89.) It is found practically copied in the tomb-relief of Dexileos(B.C. 394).t 2 is a combat on foot (Fig. 90), 3 is a noble group of a mounted 'Greek and a fallen Persian, of which Pars gives a valuable drawing Fig. 99. — W. Cast at restored. Metope, I : from the the Museum, slightly Fig. 100. — Amazon : from Athena's Shield. t Collignon, ii., fig.
 * E. A. Gardner's " Athens."