ON THE PROGRESS OF SCULPTURE. 463 



truth and fiction are so confounded, as almost to 

 resist the test of criticism ? 



According to a still more extraordinary tradi- 

 tion, Phidias is represented as banished from 

 Athens, and obtaining an asylum at Elis, where 

 he executed the greatest of all his works, — the 

 Olympian Jupiter. On this occasion, (Schol. 

 Arist.) it is said that he again disgraced himself 

 by yielding to his mercenary propensities, and 

 perished by an ignominious death, the just reward 

 of his perfidy. I am greatly mistaken, if, upon a 

 close inspection of this passage, the whole story 

 will not be found to be an idle fabrication, for by 

 the laws of Athens, death, and not banishment, 

 was the punishment annexed to the crime of 

 sacrilege ; and the testimony of the grammarian 

 will cease to be a good authority, if it can be 

 proved that the statue of the Olympian Jupiter 

 was an earlier production than the Minerva in 

 the Parthenon. 



The trial of Phidias, the resolution of Pericles 

 to strengthen his administration and increase his 

 own security, by involving his country in war, 

 and the Peloponnesian war thereby occasioned, 

 form a series of events that are comprised in a 



