168 Account of the Interesting Works of Art 



accords with the mythology of the statue erected by them near 

 Thermopylae, in grateful acknowledgment of his having spared 

 their lives justly forfeited by their crime ; and with the picture* 

 on two Greco-Sicilian vases of great antiquity, one seen by the 

 author in Palermo, the other at Girgenti. 



To find on three consecutive metopes the actions of three sons 

 of Jove engraven ; and to know that the ancient Selinus, where 

 there was a temple to Jupiter Argoraeus, occupied the site of the 

 citadel of Selinunte, gives probability to the idea, that the me- 

 topes belonged to that temple. In like manner, says the author, 

 we find the war of the giants sculptured on the facade of the 

 temple of Olympian Jove at Agrigentum. In one of the tym- 

 pans of the Parthenon at Athens, we behold the representation 

 of the birth of Minerva ; and in the other, her contest with Nep- 

 tune. Thus, in the facades of the most celebrated temples of an- 

 tiquity, were represented deeds relating to the divinity wor- 

 shipped within. 



With respect to the middle temple of the group of the Pillars 

 of the Giants, (to which none can compare in size, except that of 

 the Agrigentine Jupiter,) not having succeeded in piecing any 

 of its metopes, it becomes difficult to decide what subjects they 

 represented. Each of them contained no more than two figures, 

 seemingly of warriors and women intermixed. Hence the author, 

 after an examination of numerous fragments, is of opinion 

 that they represented Amazons, and has proposed as a question, 

 whether the subject might not l:>e the invasion of Attica by those 

 heroines ? 



The metopes of the temple of the citadel evince, from the 

 rudeness of the back ground, and of the most elevated parts of 

 the sculpture, no less than by the hardness of the figures them- 

 selves, an extreme antiquity. The Hercules Melampyges alone 

 is somewhat less rude ; and one can perceive that it unfolds the 

 germs of the suc^essftil efforts at perfection which the art of 

 sculpture was then making. Certainly the horses (a phenome- 

 non which each may explain in his own manner) are most beau- 

 tiful, not only relatively to the human figures, but absolutely ; 

 and on seeing them, we are inclined to refer them to the perfec- 

 tion of the art. 



