From the location of the fragments at the time of their discovery, we must assume that the stele, and, therefore, probably the statue, were set up on the Acropolis.

The form of the letter would place the inscription earlier than 447/6 B.C., when the Parthenon was begun; yet the letters are not archaic, so that the work is clearly post-Persian, probably slightly earlier than the middle of the century.'

A colossal bronze statue, erected on the Acropolis shortly before the middle of the fifth century, at a cost of about 85 talents, can hardly have been other than the great bronze statue of Athena (the Promachos) by Phidias.

I am aware that in making this identification I am but adding another uncertainty to the many with which the Athena Promachos is surrounded. Date, size, and pose are all as yet undecided. With the pose we are not concerned; but the most reasonable estimates with regard to size and date seem to confirm the evidence of the inscription.

The colossal height of 70 to 80 feet including the pedestal, as suggested by Leake, Cockerell, Beulé, Penrose, Pennethorne, and many others, is certainly excessive. On the other hand, those who would reduce it to 30 feet including the pedestal, as Michaelis, Milchhöfer, Bötticher, Overbeck, Gurlitt, Collignon, Frazer, Lechat, Gardner, and others, are surely too conservative.

1 Michaelis (Parthenon, p. 287) dated it earlier than 436/5; Kirchhoff placed it before 438/7 (Memorie, p. 133), and afterwards before 444/3 (Corpus); Larfeld places it between 480 and 445 (Handbuch, p. 440), or at least before 444/3 (ibid. p. 45); Bannier (Rhein. Mus. 1908, p. 429) assigns it to about 446/5 B.C.

2 Leake, Topography of Athens, 1st ed., p. 243 n. 1 and plates, 2nd ed., p. 351; Beulé, Acropolis, II, p. 308; Pennethorne, Geometry and Optics, p. 35, pl. V; Dyer, Athens, p. 437; Penrose, Athenian Architecture, 2nd ed., p. x; Harrison, Studies in Greek Art, p. 201.

3 Michaelis, Ath. Mitt. 1877, pp. 89-90; Milchhöfer, in Baumeister, Denkmäler, p. 208, and Waldstein, ibid., p. 1311; Bötticher, Akropolis, p. 96; Overbeck, Gr. Plastik, 4th ed., I, p. 348; Collignon, Sculpture Gr. I, p. 524; Blümner, Pausanias, I, p. 303; Busolt, Gr. Gesch. III, p. 449 n.; Lechat, Phidias, p. 75; Fougères, Grèce, p. 44; Hadaczek, R. Ét. Gr. 1913, p. 21. A fanciful identification of a bronze Athena at Constantinople with the Promachos has been adduced as evidence for this height; see Gurlitt, Analecta Graecensia, 1893, pp. 101-121; Jones, Select Passages, pp. 78-80; Frazer, Pausanias, II, pp. 349350; Gardner, Greek Sculpture, 2nd ed., p. 281 n. 2; Gardner, Ancient Athens p. 213; Gardner, Six Greek Sculptors, p. 88; Michaelis, Arx Athenarum, pp. 76–77; Judeich, Topographie, pp. 101, 216 n.; D'Ooge, Acropolis, p. 299; Weller, Athens, p. 344.

A better estimate is that of Reisch,1based on the dimensions of the foundations, giving 30 cubits. For the pedestal is 5.58 m. square on the euthynteria and 5.28 m. square on the lowest finished course, implying, if we use the approximate ratio 1: 3.1 found in other colossi of this period (Athena Parthenos, base 4.096 m. and height 12.75 m., i.e. 26 cubits; Apollo Sitalcas, base 4.96 m. and height 15.50 m., i.e. 35 cubits), a height of about 16.40 m. or 50 Attic feet including the pedestal. Such a height would bring the crest of the helmet 10 metres below the summit of the pediments of the Parthenon and 6 metres above the summit of the Propylaea. We may assume that the pedestal was about 8 Attic feet in height;

this satisfies the requirements of the few scattered architectural fragments, belonging to a Pentelic marble capping course 1 Attic feet (0.485 m.) high, carved with a colossal bead-and-reel and eggand-dart, surmounted by a plain abacus from which the plinth of the statue receded 0.235 m. (Fig. 1), and to a die of Eleusinian 1 Reisch, Jh. Oest. Arch. I., 1906, p. 221.

2 Adapted from a photograph of the German Archaeological Institute at Athens, Akr. 662. This block, lying on the site itself, is 1.234 m. long and 0.489 m. high; of the latter dimension the beads occupy 0.081 m., the eggs 0.207 m., the abacus 0.201 m.; the eggs are spaced 0.308 m. on centres. A similar block, 0.482 m. high, is now in the Library of Hadrian, and a fragment in the Acropolis Museum (annex).

This capping course was erroneously assigned by Penrose to the cornice of the temple of Zeus Olympius; see Transactions Royal Inst. Brit. Architects, 1888, pp. 98, 102; Athenian Architecture, 2nd ed., p. 86.

limestone. Then the statue would have been about 42 Attic feet, less, as we should expect, than the Apollo of Calamis at Apollonia, which held the record of 45 feet for the fifth century.1

At a time when an ordinary portrait statue of life size, or more strictly heroic size (6 Attic feet, 1.96 m.), must have cost about a quarter of a talent, a colossal statue of seven times life size would have required, according to the law of Sextus Empiricus, the expenditure of about 85 talents.3

As for the date of the Athena Promachos, we have no valid. reason for dissenting from the view usually accepted, that it should be assigned to the Cimonian period, the decade before the ostracism of Cimon (461 B.c.). It would then be the earliest of the three great colossal statues designed by Phidias, all with bases of white Pentelic marble and black Eleusinian limestone, evidently the result of the collaboration of Ictinus: (1) the Athena Promachos, 465-456 B.C.; (2) the Zeus at Olympia, 456-447 B.C.5; and (3) the Athena Parthenos, 447-438 B.C.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.

NEW YORK

WILLIAM BELL DINSMOOR.

1 Pliny, N. H. XXXIV, 39–45, a chronological list of record-breaking colossi.

2 The price in the Hellenistic period was twice as much, a half talent; see A. de Ridder, R. Arch. 19152, p. 97.

3 See de Ridder, loc. cit.; the height, 7 (in terms of life-size statues), is cubed and then multiplied by talent (the value of one life-size statue).

4 The objections to this view, and the later dates proposed, are all based on untenable hypotheses. (1) Phidias was supposed by Müller (Werke, II, p. 17) to have died leaving it unfinished, since the shield was wrought by Mys and Parrhasius. (2) An extant inscription was supposed by Kirchhoff (I. G. I, 333) to have formed the dedication of the base, with letters too late for the Cimonian period; but it has been proved that the letters are too early, rather than too late, for the Cimonian period, and that the stone is in any case too small to have formed part of the base. (3) The Medici torso, of a style as late as 445 B.C. at least, was supposed by Lange and others to be a copy of the Athena Promachos.

5 This date of the Olympian Zeus agrees best with the building accounts of the Parthenon; see A. J. A. 1913, p. 71. The work of Ictinus at Olympia during this period is discussed in my Culmination of Greek Architecture in the Age of Pericles, to be published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Institute of America

THE ORIGINAL PLAN OF THE ERECHTHEUM1

Dr. Dörpfeld's recent amplification of his well-known views as to the "Old Athena Temple" on the Acropolis at Athens2 is likely to furnish the occasion for a reëxamination of many of the complex problems which his theories involve. As a corollary to his main thesis Dörpfeld restates his position, first presented in 1904, as to the "original plan" of the Erechtheum. It is with this feature of his article alone that we are now concerned.

Undoubtedly his brilliant discovery of Mnesicles's contemplated plan for the Propylaea' inspired Dörpfeld to seek a similar solution of the vexed problems connected with the Erechtheum. Few will now venture to question the correctness of his restoration of the original design of the Propylaea. Its unfinished walls, its waiting antae and cornice, its holes for roof-beams argue plainly the anticipated continuation of the building, and the theory has entered so fully into the literature about the Acropolis that further consideration is needless.

In his study of the Erechtheum Dörpfeld relies on evidence which he regards as identical in character with that which he

1 Since this article was placed in the printer's hands, Dr. Gerhart Rodenwaldt has published in the Neue Jahrbücher (24, 1921, pp. 1–13) an article on 'Die Form des Erechtheions,' which touches upon the same problems. Naturally we both have hit upon similar, and in some cases identical, arguments. In the main, however, Dr. Rodenwaldt devotes himself to a justification of the form of the existing building on aesthetic grounds, arriving by a very different course at the same goal. Since our methods of treatment are so distinct, the two articles seem fairly to supplement one another, and I feel at liberty to leave my paper unchanged. In due respect for the inestimable services of Dr. Dörpfeld in the field of Athenian topography I should like to adopt as an expression of my own sentiments a footnote of Rodenwaldt: "Dem hochverehrten Meister der Erforschung der antiken Architektur fühle ich mich auch in diesem Falle, wo Bedenken gegen eine seiner Hypothesen erhoben werden, zu tiefstem Dank verpflichtet."

2 'Das Hekatompedon in Athen,' Jb.. Arch. I. XXXIV, 1919,

pp. 1-40.

3 'Der Ursprüngliche Plan des Erechtheion,' Ath. Mitt. XXIX, 1904, pp. 101-107.

4 Ath. Mitt. X, 1885, pp. 38 ff., 131 ff.

Journal of the

American Journal of Archaeology, Second Series.
Archaeological Institute of America, Vol. XXV, (1921), No. 2.

130

found in the Propylaea. He enumerates the asymmetrical plan of the building, the extension of the North Porch beyond the west wall, the lack of a distinctive pilaster at the southwest corner next to the Porch of the Maidens, and the varying supports to the west-tall columns, short columns, Caryatidswhich seem to him to point to incompleteness, or at all events to a building not in conformity with the original design of the archi tect. Upon this evidence he bases the theory that the building was originally meant to extend farther to the west. Its presumable length he determines, from comparative measurements of the rooms of the present building with relation to the axis of

the north and south doors, as 120 Attic feet. In the central rooms he places the divine tokens-well, trident-mark, olivetree, etc. as well as the Pandroseum, and apparently the Cecropium. The west room, corresponding to the "cella for the Polias" to the east, he appropriates as an opisthodomus planned to replace the west rooms of the "Old Athena Temple," and therein finds support for his theory as to the perpetuation of the Hekatompedon (cf. Fig. 1).

This theory of an "original plan" has been received with more or less approbation by various scholars; by some stoutly supported; 1 Whom in his recent article, p. 13, he calls Mnesicles, perhaps by a slip of memory.