Page:Greek Buildings Represented by Fragments in the British Museum (1908).djvu/140

 124 THE PARTHENON AND ITS SCULPTURES. of this composition. The comparison, with certain reliefs, and Sauer's careful examination of the pediment itself, seem to show that at the left of the centre was Zeus, enthroned in profile, and in front of him Athena. Furtwangler suggests that the Medici torso represents the goddess of this pediment* At the two extremities were the rising Sun and the setting Moon. (Fig. 117.) These last, and the three and four next figures on either hand, are in the Museum. The three colossal figures on the right were called the Fates by Visconti a century ago, and the relief at Madrid which, it is allowed, derived from the pediment, also has three figures which are shown by their emblems to be the Fates. (Figs. 121, 122.) This, we may be sure, would be held by Visconti to be a striking proof of the truth of his ascription, which has been accepted and re- inforced by Furtwangler. Sauer, however, and others have made various objec- tions. About the latest theory is that of Studniczka.f who, starting from the as- sembly of gods of the eastern frieze — to which, as we have seen, Robert had already related the sequence of the acts of the gods in the eastern metopes — considers that the twelve great gods were represented in this pediment. He also goes back to the old ascriptions, Dionysos, Persephone, and Demeter, for the three figures on the left, who follow the rising Sun, and whom Furtwangler called Kephalos and the Horae. Two of the "Fates" (Fig. 122) are, according to him, Dione and Aphrodite. Fig. 123. — E. Pediment : Selene's Horse. ' Intermezzi." + Berlin Arch. Inst., xix., 1904.