first "History of Ancient Art" (published in 1763); but twilight
still reigns over many an important question. This general warning
should be borne in mind in reading this or any other hand-book of
the subject.

We may next take up the materials and the technical processes of
Greek sculpture. These may be classified as follows:

(1) Wood. Wood was often, if not exclusively, used for the
earliest Greek temple-images, those rude xoana, of which many
survived into the historical period, to be regarded with peculiar
veneration. We even hear of wooden statues made in the developed
period of Greek art. But this was certainly exceptional. Wood
plays no part worth mentioning in the fully developed sculpture of
Greece, except as it entered into the making of gold and ivory
statues or of the cheaper substitutes for these.

(2) Stone and marble. Various uncrystallized limestones were
frequently used in the archaic period and here and there even in
the fifth century. But white marble, in which Greece abounds, came
also early into use, and its immense superiority to limestone for
statuary purposes led to the abandonment of the latter. The
choicest varieties of marble were the Parian and Pentelic (cf.
page 77). Both of these were exported to every part of the Greek
world.

A Greek marble statue or group is often not made of a single
piece. Thus the Aphrodite of Melos (page 249) was made of two
principal pieces, the junction coming just above the drapery,
while several smaller parts, including the left arm, were made