90 
GREEK ANTIQUITIES. 
[GROUND 
In the Room recently added to the North end of the 
Elgin Room, are a colossal lion, discovered at Cnidus in 1858 
(see Newton, Hist, of Discoveries II., Part 2, p. 480), a 
sculptured drum of a column from the temple of Diana at 
Ephesus, a fragment of a similar drum, an Ionic capital and 
a base of a column with part of lowermost drum from the 
same building. The lion originally surmounted a Doric tomb 
which stood on a promontory a little to the east of Cnidus, 
and which originally consisted of a square basement surrounded 
by a Doric peristyle, with engaged columns, and surmounted 
by a pyramid, the apex of which was crowned by the lion. 
Inside the tomb was a beehive-shaped chamber with Egyptian 
vaulting, similar to that of the Treasury of Atreus, at Mycenae, 
and with eleven smaller cells radiating from its circumference. 
This tomb was evidently a public monument of the class 
called polyandrion, and from its position on a promontory, 
must have been a conspicuous sea-mark. Hence it has been 
conjectured, with probability, that it was intended to com- 
memorate the naval victory gained over the Lacedaemonians 
by the Athenian admiral, Conon, B.C. 39 4. 
The door on the East side leads into the 
HELLENIC ROOM. 
The marbles exhibited in this room have been brought, at 
different times, from various parts of Greece and its colonies. 
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. 
One of the earliest stages of development in the art of sculpture is 
represented by four casts, attached to the Western wall, which were 
taken from metopes of one of the ruined temples at Selinus, in Sicily. 
The subjects of the sculpture, which is in very high relief, are mytho- 
logical. 
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 iEgina, erected probably about 
b.c. 500 — 478, and dedicated to Athene. The figures in these pedi- 
ments 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 
