FLOOR.] 
HELLENIC EOOM. 
HELLENIC EOOM. 
The marbles exhibited in this room have been brought^ at 
different times, from various parts of Greece and its colonies^, 
exclusive of Athens and Attica. With them are also exhibited 
plaster casts of some important monuments of the period 
preceding that of the marbles. The description commences, 
with the casts. 
The earliest and rudest development of the art is represented by 
four casts, attached to the Western wall, which w'ere taken from 
metopes of one of the ruined temples at Selinus, in Sicily. The sub 
jects of the sculpture, which is in very high relief, are mythological. 
Next in chronological order should be noticed the restorations, 
placed on each side of the room, of the Eastern and Western pediments 
of a Doric temple in the Island of 2Egina, erected probably in the fifth 
or sixth century, e.g., and dedicated either to Jupiter or Minerva. The 
plaster figures in these pediments are casts from the original marbles, 
which were discovered in 1811 amongst the ruins of the temple, and 
are now preserved in the Museum of Sculpture at Munich. The group 
in the Western pediment, here placed on the North side of the Room, 
represents the contest of the Greeks and Trojans over the body of 
Patroclus ; the imperfect group in the pediment opposite is supposed 
to represent an incident of the ^ginetan expedition against Troy. 
The folio vfing are the marbles exhibited in this Room : — 
In the middle is a statue of Apollo, brought from Byzantium, of 
which the style belongs to the beginning of the fifth century, e.g. 
Next in date is a collection of marbles discovered in 1812 
amongst the ruins of the temple of Apollo Epicurius (or " the 
Deliverer") near the ancient Phigaha in Arcadia. This edifice 
v/as erected by Ictinus, the architect of the Parthenon at 
Athens, in commemoration of the delivery of the Phigalians 
from the plague, B.C. 480. 
The most important part of this collection consists of twenty-three 
sculptured slabs, originally belonging to a frieze in the interior of the 
cella of the temple, and now arranged on both sides of the Room. 
Eleven of them (Nos. 1-11) represent, in mezzo-relievo, the contest 
between the Centaurs and Greeks, which has been noticed in describing 
the metopes of the Parthenon. The other twelve represent the invasion 
of Greece by the Amazons. 
Underneath the frieze are several architectural and sculptural frag- 
ments from the same temple, including part of a Doric capital from 
the outer colonnade, and part of an Ionic capital from one of the 
columns within the cella, the external and internal architecture of the 
building having been of different orders. 
