Discobolus we have not a realistic portrait, but a generalized type.  This is not the same as to say that the face bore no recognizable resemblance to the young man whom the statue commemorated.  Portraiture admits of many degrees, from literal fidelity to an idealization in which the identity of the subject is all but lost.  All that is meant is that the Discobolus belongs somewhere near the latter end of the scale.  In this absence of individualization we have a trait, not of Myron alone, but of Greek sculpture generally in its rise and in the earlier stages of its perfection (cf. page 126).

Another work of Myron has been plausibly recognized in a statue of a satyr in the Lateran Museum (Fig. 106).  The evidence for this is too complex to be stated here.  If the identification is correct, the Lateran statue is copied from the figure of Marsyas in a bronze group of Athena and Marsyas which stood on the Athenian Acropolis The goddess was represented s having just flung down in disdain a pair of flutes; the satyr, advancing on tiptoe, hesitates between cupidity and the fear of Athena’s displeasure.  Marsyas has a lean and sinewy figure, coarse stiff hair and beard, a wrinkled forehead, a broad flat nose which makes a marked angle with the forehead, pointed ears (modern, but guaranteed by another copy of the head), and a short tail sprouting from the small of the back The arms, which were missing, have been incorrectly restored with castanets.  The right should be held up, the left down, in a gesture of astonishment.  In this work we see again Myron’s skill in suggesting movement.  We get a lively impression of an advance suddenly checked and changed to a recoil.

Thus far in this chapter we have been dealing with copies Our stock of original works of this period, however, is not small; it consists, as usual, largely of architectural sculpture.  Fig. 107 shows four metopes from a temple at Selinus.  They represent (beginning at the left) Heracles in combat with an Amazon, Hera unveiling herself before Zeus, Actaeon torn by his dogs in the presence of Artemis, and Athena overcoming the giant Enceladus.  These reliefs would repay the most careful study, but the sculptures of another temple have still stronger claims to attention.

Olympia was one of the two most important religious centers of the Greek world, the other being Delphi.  Olympia was sacred to Zeus, and the great Doric temple of Zeus was thus the chief among the group of religious buildings there assembled.  The erection of this temple probably falls in the years just preceding and following 460 B.C.  A slight exploration carried on by the French in 1829 and the thorough excavation of the site by the Germans in 1875-81 brought to light extensive remains of its sculptured decoration.  This consisted of two pediment groups and twelve sculptured metopes, besides the acroteria.  In the eastern pediment the subject is the preparation for the chariot-race of Pelops and Oenomaus.  The legend ran that Oenomaus,