276 Report of the Select Committee on 
seum, consider the Earl of Elgin (and his heirs being Earls of 
Elgin) as equally entitled to the same distinction, and recom- 
mend that a clause should be inserted to that effect, if it should 
be necessary that an act should pass for transferring his collection 
to the public. 
It may not be deemed foreign to this subject, if your com- 
mittee venture to extend their observations somewhat beyond 
the strict limit of their immediate inquiry, and lay before the 
house what occurs to them as not unimportant with regard to 
the age and authenticity of these sculptures. The great works 
with which Pericles adorned and strengthened Athens, were all 
carried on under the direction and superintendance of Phidias: 
for this, there is the authority of various ancient writers, and 
particularly of Plutarch; but he distinctly asserts in the same 
passage, that Callicrates and Ictinus executed the work of the 
Parthenon; which is confirmed also by Pausanias, so far as re- 
lates to Ictinus, who likewise ornamented or constructed the 
temple of Apollo at Phigalia*; from whence, by a singular 
coincidence, the sculptures in high relief lately purchased for 
the British Museum, and frequently referred to in the evidence, 
were transported. 
The style of this work, in the opinion of the artists, indicates 
that it belongs to the same period, though the execution is 
rated as inferior to that of the Elgin marbles. In the fabulous 
stories which are represented upon both, there is a very striking 
similarity ; and it may be remarked in passing, that the sub- 
jects of the metopes, and of the smaller frize, which is sculp- 
tured with the battle of the Amazons, correspond with two out 
of the four subjects mentioned by Pliny, as adorning the shield 
and dress of the Minerva; so that there was a general unifor- 
mity of design in the stories which were selected for the internal 
and external decoration of the Parthenon. The taste of the 
same artist, Ictinus, probably led him to repeat the same ideas, 
which abound in graceful forms, and variety of composition, 
when he was employed upon the temple of another divinity at 
a distance from Athens. 
The statue of Minerva, within the temple, was the work of 
Phidias himself, and, with the exception of the Jupiter which 
he made at Elis, the most celebrated of his productions. It 
was composed of ivory and gold; with regard to which, some 
very curious anecdotes relating to the political history of that 
time are to be found in the same writers: the earliest of which, 
* The penultimate syllable should be pronounced long; Phigaila closes 
two hexameter verses, one of which is quoted by Pausanias, and the other 
by Stephanus Byzantinus, from Rhianus a poet of Crete. 
from 
