Page:Greek Buildings Represented by Fragments in the British Museum (1908).djvu/124

 io8 THE PARTHENON AND ITS SCULPTURES. The Southern Metopes for the most part contain sculp- tures of the legendary combat of Theseus and the Lapiths with the Centaurs. (Figs. 102, 103, 104.) The first twelve and the last eleven or twelve deal with this subject, while in the centre there is a separate group of eight or nine, according as its end one is read to go with one or the other series. These seem to relate to the early legends of Athens. In the Museum Catalogue we read : " The nine intervening metopes have been ingeniously interpreted as relating to the story of Erichthonios, the mythical founder of the Panathenaic procession." (See Pernice, 1895.) Bronsted long ago suggested a similar reading of the central group. The panel, which is the last of these or y • ■. T-ni^wnrmt-nnM iyiiii,, ■ w-,uKA the first of the twelve which form the third group, con- tains two women on either side of an archaic statue. Pernice reads this subject as two maidens adorning the Xoanon of Athena, and makes it the last of the central set. The sculptures of the third group, as already said, formed a continuation of the Centaur battle, the chief incident of which was an attack on women. A frieze from Bassae, also at the Museum, which in the Parthenon, gives a pro- Two women, who have taken Fig. 104. — S. Metope : Centaur Battle. much admittedly derives from minent place to a similar episode, sanctuary at a sacred image, are attacked by a Centaur, who is himself attacked by a Greek (Theseus ?), while a goddess, in this case Artemis, gallops up to the rescue, with Apollo in her stag-drawn chariot. The panel at the Parthenon must, it seems to me, belong to the Centaur series, and must be the first of a second group of twelve. It furnishes, in fact, the episode around which the action develops. On either hand, in the separated groups, are two panels of Centaurs carrying away women, while further towards the angles there are no women. The southern metopes were thus divided up into groups of 12:8:12; and we