FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTIONS AND METHODS 573 



of illustrations, that the reader may not grope in darkness when 

 comparisons are made. The first impression made upon many people 

 by the book was that Furtwangler had inaugurated a boom in 

 second-class sculpture, and brought to honor many trifles. But let 

 any one pay careful attention to the method by which the first 

 section of the book brings before us the Lemnian Athena, a perfect 

 flower of Phidias's work, and he will realize that it is a method with 

 no madness in it. 



Whether every one of the heads which the author puts into a certain 

 group is there to stay remains, of course, yet to be seen. Let it be 

 conceded that half the groupings are open to contention, the method 

 is still the method of the future. The only danger is that tyros will 

 try their hand at constructing groups and proclaim or assume their 

 success. But this is a field where the tyro ought to realize that he 

 must proceed with caution or he will find that he has let loose the 

 Geister and to lay them he must call in the "alte Meister." 



To continue a work such as Furtwangler has inaugurated is not 

 Jedermann's Ding, but there lies the path of progress even if it is 

 the path of danger. Every few years somebody tries to construct 

 a Pythagoras group, generally out of some outlying part of Myron's 

 preserves. Much as we may desire to construct such a group we do not 

 appear to have the materials for it yet. For whipping back into 

 the Myronian corral certain waifs that sometimes threaten to make 

 a group by themselves, we get a sort of sanction from Furtwangler, 

 who allows that a great sculptor cannot always be credited with 

 only one shape of head. In speaking of the Discobolos, Ince Blundell. 

 and Riccardi heads, he says, " the strikingly different individuality 

 of these three heads need not perplex us, for from what artist should 

 we expect such variety as from Myron who multiplicasse vcritatem 

 videtur." He also gives the reminder that " copyists allow themselves 

 great freedom in the execution of details, especially in the case of the 

 hair." In fact, to the casual observer there is in some of the bearded 

 heads which Furtwangler calls Myronian very little superficial resem- 

 blance to the head of the youthful Discobolos. 



(3) The study of ancient authorities. It may be profitable to con- 

 fine ourselves to two cases, Pausanias and Pliny. Pausanias, the 

 traveler, has long been suspected, and sometimes unjustly suspected, 

 of making great mistakes in his descriptions of ancient sculpture. 

 It has long been customary to regard the two corner figures in the 

 west gable of the Parthenon as representing the Kephisos and 

 the Ilissos, and writers on sculpture have recognized and admired 

 forsooth the ''liquid flow" in the form of the Ilissos. The great 

 master, Brunn, went on to the natural conclusion that the other 

 figures of the gable must be interpreted in like fashion; and he 

 accordingly made this gable into a sort of animated map of Attica. 



