blessed gods to the most impetuous movement; grace and harmony of
line; an almost faultless execution--such are some of the
qualities which make the Parthenon frieze the source of
inexhaustible delight.

The composition of the group in the western pediment is fairly
well known, thanks to a French artist, Jacques Carrey, who made a
drawing of it in 1674, when it was still in tolerable
preservation. The subject was, in the words of Pausanias, "the
strife of Posidon with Athena for the land" of Attica. In the
eastern pediment the subject was the birth of Athena. The central
figures, eleven in number, had disappeared long before Carrey's
time, having probably been removed when the temple was converted
into a church. On the other hand, the figures near the angles have
been better preserved than any of those from the western pediment,
with one exception. The names of these eastern figures have been
the subject of endless guess-work. All that is really certain is
that at the southern corner Helios (the Sun-god) was emerging from
the sea in a chariot drawn by four horses, and at the northern
corner Selene (the Moon-goddess) or perhaps Nyx (Night) was
descending in a similar chariot. Fig. 128 is the figure that was
placed next to the horses of Helios. The young god or hero
reclines in an easy attitude on a rock; under him are spread his
mantle and the skin of a panther or some such animal. In Fig. 129
we have, beginning on the right, the head of one of Selene's
horses and the torso of the goddess herself, then a group of three
closely connected female figures, known as the "Three Fates,"
seated or reclining on uneven, rocky ground, and last the body and
thighs of a winged goddess, Victory or Iris, perhaps belonging in
the western pediment. Fig. 130, from the northern corner of the