Page:Greek Buildings Represented by Fragments in the British Museum (1908).djvu/142

 126 THE PARTHENON AND ITS SCULPTURES. Hercules, Kephalos, or Pan {cf. the coin of Pandosia), but if we are to rest on evidence he must for the present be known as Dionysos, and should be so called. The figure comes over the exploit of that god in the metope. He comes next to Demeter as on the frieze. The attitude is repeated by the Dionysos of the monument of Lysicrates, on a relief from the Piraeus and on a vase (/. H. 5., vol. 25, plates). Furtwangler claims that it should be Kephalos, because it was shod, but the Dionysos of the Kertsch vase is also shod. The frightened girl near the centre may be a subordinate figure, like Hebe, attendant on Hera, but if she is to be regarded as one of the chief actors, and to this view I incline, it can hardly be any other than Ilithyia. (Fig. 120.) On the latest of the vases referred to she is figured in a way which closely re- sembles this statue. (Fig. 124.) The motive would be that she is startled at the extraordinary birth, and flies from the scene. This figure on the vase, like that of the pediment, is youthful. Dr Murray, who proposed this identification, withdrew it later, but it is the one most supported by evidence. If not Ilithyia, it should, by analogy with other figures, be a Nereid, possibly a messenger to Athens. Fig. 125. — Seat of Demeter and Suggested Interpretation. Restorations. It is by minute observations on the separate figures, made with the object of discovering their gestures, accessories, and character when they were complete, and also by comparison of them with other works which deal with similar subjects, or seem to derive in some degree from the sculptures, that we can most fully enter into their meaning. This is the method of " restora-