the Athenians, for reasons which they stated in an inscription still existing in the time of Thoukydidês,* used every effort to wipe out from their city everything that could perpetuate, in a favourable way, the memory of the Peisistratids and their tyranny. The Olympicion, as we have seen, was left unfinished for seven hundred years, until the time of Hadrian, and the altar of the twelve gods, erected by the younger Peisistratos, when archon, was, before the time of Thoukydidês,† so enlarged that the dedicatory inscription was covered up. It is very unlikely, therefore, that, had the Hekatompedos been built by Peisistratos, the Athenians would have restored it. That the Parthenon was in part a restoration of the Hekatompedos, there can be no doubt; but there is no ground for connecting either with the Panathênaia.‡ This, unless we are mistaken, exhausts the list of the grounds adduced to show that the Parthenon was connected with the Panathenaia. Not one of them has the slightest weight, and some of them even tell in the opposite direction. The whole assumption, therefore, is purely gratuitous, and may be ignored in all discussions respecting the Parthenon frieze.

This result, it must be observed, being purely

vi. 55.

† vi. 54.

We do not mean to assert that the Parthenon may not have sometimes been used for purposes connected with the Panathenaia, only that we have no proof that it was so used or originally meant to be so used. The Dionysiac theatre was not meant for the popular assembly, yet it was at one time regularly used for the meetings of that body.

negative, affords us no positive a priori ground for concluding that the Panathenaic procession or sacrifice is not represented on the Parthenon frieze. Since both the festival and the temple were closely connected with the same divinity, this possibility still remains. We will, therefore, now go on and show, by internal evidence, that

(A.) THE PARTHENON FRIEZE HAS NO CONNECTION WITH the PanathÊNAIA.

Since the theories which hold the contrary proposition are two, we will take them up in order and demonstrate that

(1) The subject of the Parthenon frieze is not the peplos-procession of the Panathenaia.

The arguments which may be adduced in favour of this position are of two kinds, a priori and a posteriori. The first are derived from general considerations of fact and art, the latter from a comparison of what we know of the Panathenaic procession with what we find portrayed on the Parthenon frieze.

The a priori grounds are mainly two. First, the Greeks never employed an established religious ceremony as a subject for the plastic decoration of a temple. Overbeck says most truly, "The Parthenon frieze, the subject of so many discordant interpretations, is the only essentially preserved (wesentlich erhalten) monument of its kind, that is, the only one in which a

religious act appears as the decoration of a temple. He might have gone a little farther, and said that the Greeks never employed for the plastic decoration of a temple any established usage or ceremony, religious or other, and then have drawn the conclusion that the subject of the Parthenon frieze was not likely to be the Panathenaic procession. The subjects which the Greeks employed for the purpose mentioned were always events, by them considered historical, and there was no reason why a religious event should not be portrayed, as well as any other, even although that event might be a ceremony. This distinction it is most important to observe. Second, the Panathenaic procession, being incapable of arrangement as a balanced group or series of balanced groups, is a most unsuitable subject for a frieze running round all the four sides of a temple. Inasmuch as the head of the procession would have to appear in the middle of the eastern end, over the main portal, one of two things, both equally awkward, would have to follow. Either the beginning and the end of the procession would have to appear in close contiguity on the east end, producing a most unpleasing and unartistic effect, or else the procession would have to be divided lengthwise, one half of it appearing on the northern, the other on the southern half of the frieze. But this would be precisely the same thing as making two distinct processions, for there is no way in relief of distinguishing between two sides of the same thing and two things. Of this more will be said below.

Rhein, Mus., N. F., vol. xiv. (1859), p. 186.

In

The a posteriori arguments are numerous. order to bring them out, we must first put into definite form what we know respecting the Panathenaic procession, and then compare this with what we find on the frieze. If the two wholly or nearly correspond, we shall arrive at a presumption sufficiently strong to justify us in saying that the subject of the frieze may be, and until some better suggestion is made, that it is, the Panathenaic procession. If, on the contrary, there is little or no correspondence, we shall be justified in saying positively that the subject is not the Panathenaic procession. This conclusion will be made more strong, if we can show that the frieze lends itself most naturally to an entirely different interpretation.

*

What then do we know of the Panathenaic procession, independently of the Parthenon frieze? In examining the evidence upon which the answer to this question is to be based, we must, in the first place, distinguish, much more carefully than has hitherto been done, between the Panathenaic festival as a whole, and the procession, which formed but one element in it-in other words, between the foprý and the woμrh. When we find certain things mentioned as occurring in the Panathenaia, we must not immediately conclude that they entered into the procession. The festival (oprý) consisted of three parts— games, a procession, and a sacrifice (ayŵveç Kaì woμπǹ

• This evidence is collected and arranged most conveniently under distinct heads in Michaelis' great work, Der Parthenon, pp. 327-333- The author is not careful, however, to distinguish between the doprý and the woμITH.

Kai Ovoía), occurring in this order.

Our present

purpose is to obtain as distinct a notion as possible of the second of these parts, namely, the procession; first, of its form and route, second, of its purpose, and, third, of its composition. We will consider these points separately.

First, then, the form and route of the procession. In regard to the form, we know that it was a single marching body, starting at a single fixed point, and marching by a single fixed route, to another single fixed point. In other words, the procession was one, not two or more. As to its route, we know that it started outside the Dipylon Gate, passed along the Dromos, crossed the Agora, skirted the north base of the Akropolis to the Eleusinion, rounded that, doubled the Pelasgikon,* passed the Pythion, skirted the

* Great confusion and misunderstanding have been introduced into the question concerning the course of the procession by an absurd theory respecting the position and nature of the Pelasgikon. This misunderstanding has been increased by Wachsmuth in his Die Stadt Athen im Alterthum, vol. i. pp. 289-295. Instead of being a kind of fortress on the north-west slope of the Akropolis, below the cave of Pan, it was part of the pre-Theseian wall of Athens (see Essay III.). In passing from the Eleusinion, which was to the north-east of the Akropolis (see Wachsmuth, ut sup., pp. 297 sqq.), to the Pythion which was to the south-east, the procession necessarily doubled (raphpenfe)· the eastern angle of this wall. The position of the Pythion has recently been definitely fixed by the discovery of the inscription which the younger Peisistratos placed upon its altar, and which Thoukydides copied into his history, bk. vi. ch. 54. See 'Athraior, vol. vi. (1877) pp. 149 sqq., and cf. the cut in Hermes, Bd. xii. Heft 4 (1877). The article by E. Curtius accompanying this cut (pp. 492-499) is marred by inexcusable blunders in regard to matters of fact.