raoh, or one of the dukes of Edom.
There are no materials to construct a personal history which would be
interesting, such as abound in reference to Michael Angelo or Raphael.
Thus he must be made the mere text of a great subject. The development
of Art is an important part of the history of civilization. The
influence of Art on human culture and happiness is prodigious. Ancient
Grecian art marks one of the stepping-stones of the race. Any man who
largely contributed to its development was a world-benefactor.

Now, history says this much of Phidias: that he lived in the time of
Pericles,--in the culminating period of Grecian glory,--and ornamented
the Parthenon with his unrivalled statues; which Parthenon was to Athens
what Solomon's Temple was to Jerusalem,--a wonder, a pride, and a glory.
His great contribution to that matchless edifice was the statue of
Minerva, made of gold and ivory, forty feet in height, the gold of which
alone was worth forty-four talents,--about fifty-thousand dollars,--an
immense sum when gold was probably worth more than twenty times its
present value. All antiquity was unanimous in its praise of this statue,
and the exactness and finish of its details were as remarkable as the
grandeur and majesty of its proportions. Another of the famous works of
Phidias was the bronze statue of Minerva, which was the glory of the
Acropolis, This was sixty feet in height. But even this yielded to the
colossal statue of Zeus or Jupiter in his great temple at Olympia,
representing the figure in a sitting posture, forty feet high, on a
throne made of gold, ebony, ivory, and precious stones. In this statue
the immortal artist sought to represent power in repose, as Michael
Angelo did in his statue of Moses. So famous was this majestic statue,
that it was considered a calamity to die without seeing it; and it
served as a model for all subsequent representations of majesty and
repose among the ancients. This statue, removed to Constantinople by
Theodosius the Great, remained undestroyed until the year 475 A.D.

Phidias also executed various other works,--all famous in his
day,--which have, however, perished; but many executed under his
superintendence still remain, and are universally admired for their
grace and majesty of form. The great master himself was probably vastly
superior to any of his disciples, and impressed his genius on the age,
having, so far as we know, no rival among his contemporaries, as he has