it Phidias?  The question has been much agitated of late years, but the evidence at our disposal does not admit of a decisive answer.  The great argument for Phidias lies in the incomparable merit of these works; and with the probability that his genius is here in some degree revealed to us we must needs be content.  After all, it is of much less consequence to be assured of the master’s name than to know and enjoy the masterpieces themselves.

The great statesman under whose administration these immortal sculptures were produced was commemorated by a portrait statue or head, set up during his lifetime on the Athenian Acropolis; it was from the hand of Cresilas, of Cydonia in Crete.  It is perhaps this portrait of which copies have come down to us.  The best of these is given in Fig 131.  The features are, we may believe, the authentic features of Pericles, somewhat idealized, according to the custom of portraiture in this age.  The helmet characterizes the wearer as general.

The artistic activity in Athens did not cease with the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War in 431.  The city was full of sculptors, many of whom had come directly under the influence of Phidias, and they were not left idle.  The demand from private individuals for votive sculptures and funeral reliefs must indeed have been abated, but was not extinguished; and in the intervals of the protracted war the state undertook important enterprises with an undaunted spirit.  It is to this period that the Erechtheum probably belongs (420?-408), though all that we certainly know is that the building was nearly finished some time before 409 and that the work was resumed in that year.  The temple had a sculptured frieze of which fragments are extant, but these are far surpassed in interest by the Caryatides of the southern porch (Fig. 67).  The name Caryatides, by the way, meets us first in the pages of Vitruvius, a Roman architect of the time of Augustus; a contemporary Athenian inscription, to which we are indebted for many details concerning the building, calls them simply “maidens.”  As you face the front of the porch, the three maidens on your right support themselves chiefly on the left leg, the three on your left on the right leg (Fig. 132), so that the leg in action is the one nearer to the end of the porch.  The arms hung straight at the sides, one of them grasping a corner of the small mantle.  The pose and drapery show what Attic sculpture had made of the old Peloponnesian type of standing female figure in the Doric chiton (cf. page 177).  The fall of the garment preserves the same general features, but the stuff has become much more pliable.  It is interesting to note that, in spite of a close general similarity, no two maidens are exactly alike, as they would have been if they had been reproduced mechanically from a finished model.  These subtle variations are among the secrets of the beauty of this porch, as they are of the Parthenon frieze.  One may be permitted to object altogether to the use of human figures as architectural supports, but if the thing was to be done at all, it could not have been better done.  The weight that the maidens bear is comparatively small, and their figures are as strong as they are graceful.