In the same part of the room stands a male torso, supposed to be a figure of Æsculapius (551). Farther on is a cast of a marble owl (560). The original, found near the Parthenon, is at Athens. The owl is supposed to have surmounted a column found near it. This bird, it will be remembered, was sacred to Athena, as the goddess of wisdom-typical of light in darkness, of wisdom showing through obscurity. CASTS FROM THE THESEUM Passing up the room, we must next notice, high up on the wall (above the Parthenon frieze), a series of casts from the Theseum at Athens. This temple, the best preserved of all the architectural relics of antiquity, stands about a quarter of a mile to the north-west of the Acropolis, and was dedicated to Theseus by the Athenians in the time of Cimon, about the year 469 B.C. The sculptures of this temple are supposed to be somewhat earlier than those of the Parthenon. The casts in the British Museum are (1) three of the eighteen metopes (Nos. 400, 401, 402). The subjects record various legendary exploits of the Athenian hero. In 400 he is slaying the robber Periphetes. In 401 he is overthrowing Cercyon, an Arcadian wrestler, who challenged all travellers to wrestle and slew the vanquished. In 402 Theseus is engaged with a sow; "in the thickets of Crommyon he slew the huge sow that ravaged the cornfields." (2) Casts of the west frieze, where the subject was the battle, in which Theseus assisted, of the Centaurs and Lapiths (403). Notice in 403 (2) the conflict with the invulnerable Lapith, Caeneus—an incident which occurs also on the Phigalian frieze. (3) Casts of the east frieze, where the subject is obscure: it seems to represent some battle of the Athenians under Theseus (404). The battle takes place in the presence of two groups of seated deities (404 (2) and (6)). The deities—as in the case of the Parthenon frieze-must be deemed invisible: "else one combatant is in the act of rushing in among them without producing any concern." With regard to the style of these sculptures, they resemble generally the metopes of the Parthenon. They aim at broad effect, rather than delicacy of detail. The human form is displayed in distorted and complicated attitudes; the sculptures are generally attributed to the School of Myron. THE CHORAGIC MONUMENT OF LYSICRATES Underneath the Parthenon frieze are casts from the choragic monument of Lysicrates. This well-known and elegant monument stands at the foot of the Acropolis, a little to the north-east of the Theatre of Dionysus. It is one of the earliest authenticated examples of the Corinthian order. For some centuries the monument was encrusted in a Capuchin convent, a place where English travellers at Athens often stayed. Among these visitors was Lord Byron, who is said to have used the interior of the monument as his study. It was the custom of choragi, or choir-masters, to dedicate to Dionysus the tripods which they had gained in dramatic contests. The tripod in this case was erected on a shrine. An inscription on the monument records among other particulars that Lysicrates was the choragus who dedicated it. The sculptures of the frieze have suffered considerably from exposure during the last ninety years, and the casts before us, made for Lord Elgin, are the best record of them. The subject is the story of Dionysus and the Tyrrhenian pirates. The pirates sought to kidnap the god, who revenged himself by converting them into dolphins,1 a story which forms the subject of the Homeric hymn to Dionysus : “How once he appeared upon the shore of the sea unharvested, in form like a man in the bloom of youth, with his beautiful dark hair waving around him, and on his shoulders a purple robe. Anon came in sight certain men that were pirates; in a well-wrought ship sailing swiftly on the dark seas: Tyrsanians were they, and Ill Fate was their leader, for they beholding him nodded each to other, and swiftly leaped forth, and hastily seized him, and set him aboard their ship rejoicing in heart, for they deemed that he was the son of kings, the fosterlings of Zeus, and they were minded to bind him with grievous rods. But anon strange matters appeared to them: first there flowed through all the swift black ship a sweet and fragrant wine, and ambrosial fragrance arose, and fear fell upon all the mariners that beheld it. And straightway a vine stretched hither and thither along the sail, hanging with many a cluster, and dark ivy twined round the mast 1 Those who are interested in the moralisation of myths may like to be reminded of the pretty interpretation which Ruskin reads into the contest of Dionysus with the Tyrrhenian pirates: " Dionysus, who teaches the cheerful music which is to be the wine of old age, has for adversary the commercial pirate, who would sell the god for gain, and drink no wine but gold" (Fors Clavigera, 1877, p. 364). : blossoming with flowers, and gracious fruit and garlands grew on all the thole-pins; and they that saw it bade the steersman drive straight to land. Meanwhile, within the ship the God changed into the shape of a lion at the bow; and loudly he roared, and in midship he made a shaggy bear such marvels he showed forth: there stood it raging, and on the deck glared the lion terribly. Then the men fled in terror to the stern, and there stood in fear round the honest pilot. But suddenly sprang forth the lion and seized the captain, and the men all at once leapt overboard into the strong sea, shunning dread doom, and there were changed into dolphins" (Andrew Lang's translation). He is "In The sculptor does not closely follow the poet, but represents the scene as taking place on the rocky shore of Naxos, where the pirates found Dionysus. In the centre of the composition the god himself (1) reclines, fondling his panther. represented larger in size than any of the other figures. direct contrast with this central god-like calm, to right and left the scene of the punishment and final transformation takes place. Satyrs, young and old, are beating, binding, and burning the miscreants, and in despair those half-metamorphosed already leap into the sea (Miss Harrison, Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens, p. 247). The mention of a magistrate's name on the inscription fixes the date of the monument to 335-334 B.C. It is thus one hundred years later than the other sculptures in this room-belonging to the time of the Hermes of Praxiteles, the Demeter of Cnidus, and the Mausoleum. Comparing the casts before him with the marbles of the Parthenon, the visitor will note many differences marking the later style. The form of Dionysus is softer, and there is more humour in the whole treatment : "The attendant satyrs, with sticks hastily torn from the trees (5), or with the torches used in their revels (3), pursue and chastise the robbers with a boyish, boisterous delight. For the latter there is no escape. Even those whom the satyrs cannot overtake are subject to the magic influence of the god, and we see them, in the process of transformation into dolphins (5), leaping with desperate eagerness into the new element which is to be their future home. The inevitable serpent, too, the constant attendant at Dionysiac festivals, is biting a terrified pirate in the shoulder (10)" (Perry, p. 475). The composition of the frieze is admirable as an example of variety combined with symmetry. The side door in the Elgin Room leads into the Nereid Room, which is described in the next chapter. CHAPTER XI THE NEREID ROOM Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves; Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him, SHAKESPEARE's Tempest. "In respect of natural beauty, and the general excellence of its climate, New Zealand may be compared with Lycia in Asia Minor. The engravings in Fellows' Asia Minor of the wooded mountains round the city of Xanthus might pass for the beautiful heights behind Otaki, or some of the hills round Nelson. But how different the civilisation of the two places! Science thrives in New Zealand ; art flourished in Lycia. Two centuries hence, should English civilisation and power be overthrown, a few ruined embankments, bridges, fragments of locomotives and dynamos, and ugly buildings of all sorts, would alone testify that here the English empire had been planted. But two thousand years ago Xanthus, with its Boulé and its Gerusia, presided over the Lycian cities, and her citizens had such a passion for the beautiful, and such a reverence for her divinities, that the immortal sculptures in which their feelings were expressed have defied the lapse of time, and the Briton from the distant isle, "which the imperial Roman shivered when he named," can present his capital city with no more precious gift than the exquisite tombs and bas-reliefs of Xanthus-if not for imitation, at least for wondering love" (THOMAS ARNOLD, Passages in a Wandering Life, p. 121). THE Sculptures and architectural fragments in this room come from the Nereid Monument, an Ionic Trophy Tomb found by Sir Charles Fellows at Xanthus in Lycia. The monument derives its name from the graceful figures which stood in the intervals between the columns, and which were supposed to represent the Nereids, daughters of the sea, as described by Apollonius: "At once raising their draperies on their white knees, high as the very rocks and the breach of the waves, they rushed on either side at intervals from each other." The Nereid Marbles were found by Fellows on the occasion of his third expedition in 1841-42-an expedition made with the primary object, as we have seen (p. 100), of removing the tombs discovered by him on his former visits. In 1842 he found a lofty stone basis, and near it a large quantity of reliefs and fragments of architecture. These he brought to England, leaving the basis where it stood. The fragments, reconstructed as far as possible, are now around us. “The 9th of January [1842] was Sunday, when all the men after service generally rambled about, and it often happened that it was the most prolific day for discoveries. In endeavouring to catch a scorpion, I crept into a hole among a pile of large blocks of white marble, and to my great joy saw above me, upon the under side of a stone, an Amazon on horseback, and a fine naked figure with a shield, the whole as white and perfect as when first sculptured. . . . On the east of the foundation I found four pieces of frieze and a keystone of the cornice or border of a pediment; on the apex of this was a square cutting to receive a statue. Another piece of this cornice, forming one of the extreme angles, was also cut to receive a statue about 9 inches distant from the end. These made me hope to discover some statues, and on the following day we dug up two figures lying close together, and one a few feet apart; these were of about the same scale, and had probably surmounted the pediment of a temple. Each of these statues displayed the emblems of Venus beneath their feet; one had a dove, another a dolphin, and the third a tortoise. The pleasure and excitement of these discoveries were entered into even by the sailors, who often forgot the dinner-hour or worked after dusk to finish the getting out of a statue; indeed, great care was needed to prevent their being in too much haste to raise up the figures, for while the marble was saturated with the moisture of the earth the slightest blow chipped off the light folds of the drapery; these hardened as they dried in the air. These stones I found pell-mell, one over the other; and yet from the metal ties remaining, and the fragments of heads or arms broken off in their fall still lying close to the stone from which they had been separated, I feel sure that all are as when first shaken down by an earthquake" (Asia Minor and Lycia, pp. 438, 443, 444). The building, of which the fragments were thus discovered, was in all probability a trophy tomb. The trophy was supposed by Fellows to have been in memory of the conquest of Lycia by the Persians under Harpagus as described by Herodotus (i. 176) in 545 B.C. But the style of the architec |