574 HISTORY OF ART 



The starting-point of this manner of interpreting such corner figures 

 seems to be that when Pausanias was at Olympia some local guide 

 told him that the two reclining figures of the east gable of the Zeus 

 temple represented the river Alphaios and the brook Kladeos. It 

 is more than likely that Pausanias, who belonged to an age when this 

 sort of personification was current, more than half extorted this state- 

 ment from his guides, who may well have told him what he wanted 

 to have them tell. At any rate Furtwangler is authority for the 

 statement that " in the artistic products of the fifth century there are 

 no instances of an}^ figures serving merely as indications of locality." 



It is pretty generally believed that Pausanias's statement that 

 Paionios and Alkamenes were the sculptors of the gables of the 

 Zeus temple at Olympia was based on information of about the 

 same character. It was quite likely unknown to the ciceroni of that 

 time in Olympia, more than six hundred years after the erection of 

 the temple, who did execute these gable figures. The ciceroni might 

 fall upon almost any known sculptor rather than say that they did 

 not know. The name of Paionios was right at hand, cut on the 

 pedestal of his Xike, famous and admired, adjacent to the east 

 front of the temple. 



The other so-called authority is Pliny the Kldor. who wrote more 

 than a century before Pausanias. We know from his nephew some- 

 thing as to how he wrote. He allowed himself little sleep. He had 

 readers read to him all the time that was left to him after his onerous 

 official duties were attended to. even when he was being rubbed after 

 the bath, through his dinner, and far on into the night. He never 

 read a book without making copious extracts. "My thirty-six 

 volumes," he says, "contain twenty thousand matters worthy of 

 attention, gathered from some two thousand books." Well, we have 

 his wonderful book, called Xatural History, which corresponds 

 pretty closely to what one would expect as result of such omnivorous 

 reading. Books 34, 3-5, and 36 are concerned with the history of art; 

 and this is all that interests us here. Inasmuch as it was known in 

 advance that these were a patchwork from older writers, some of 

 whom are casually mentioned, hero was a grand chance for Quclkn- 

 ^ludicn offered as a challenge. Perhaps never was such study 

 more successful. It has been continued down to the present 

 time with unabated interest, in many lands and by many hands. 

 One rises from a reading of these studies with admiraton for the 

 acumen which has arrived at a fair understanding of what Pliny 

 himself did. and at what some of the main contributors furnished. 

 If we could ever find a copy of Pliny with quotation marks and 

 footnotes we could go somewhat, but not very much, beyond what 

 we now know as to the sources of the art-historical part of Pliny's 

 compilation. 



