Page:Greek Buildings Represented by Fragments in the British Museum (1908).djvu/150

 134 THE PARTHENON AND ITS SCULPTURES. below in the form of a snake, but here Phidias represented him merely resting on his snake." Not so ; the figure is here undoubtedly a snake-man. The strong coil continues from the spine, twists under the body, and makes two turns. The hand of the figure rests near the tip of the tail, and behind his hand is a tenon-hole where the end of the tail must have been attached in a separate piece. Com- paring my sketch (Fig. 134) with the figure taken from a vase given with it (Fig. 135), there can be no doubt of the intention. Phidias gave his Cecrops legs, and made the tail less grotesquely obtrusive ; but he is a snake-man, and this raises the identifica- Fig. 134. — W. Pediment : Cecrop's Tail ; A, back ; B, from front. tion from good conjecture to proof Notice that his drapery, which is rather full in front, does not pass under the body. It falls, like a skirt, over the beginning of the tail. The figure on the Kertsch vase, which is later, has lost his tail entirely. Here he holds a wand or sceptre in his raised hand, as the sculptured figure would also have done. (Fig. 136.) X. The female figure at the side of Cecrops in the pediment which I shall call his wife,* is also somewhat inadequately it is said, and because the third daughter might have been in the gap to the left of Cecrops. See also Miss Harrison.
 * From her mature character — because she wore some sort of diadem,